Fun Food Books

I just listened to and read some fun food reads.

Every night before going to bed I have a fun book to be reading. Sleep has never come easy for me since I was a teenager. Maybe I don't need much sleep. I've read bios of people who function quite well on little sleep and my uncle is in that category. Over the years I've tried every technique I've heard/read of. Monte thinks I'm funny, saying "my body is willing, but not my brain", a dichotomous statement! - aren't I one whole being?! Oh well ...

My bedtime book I just finished is The Butcher and the Vegetarian - One Woman's Romp through a World of Men, Meat, and Moral Crisis. It was fun, and sometimes thought-provoking, and eye-opening. Tara Weaver (she has a blog - Tea & Cookies) grew up in a vegetarian family. As an adult, she found herself in poor health, and trying cures of every kind, a doctor finally ordered her to eat meat. This book is about Tara navigating around this foreign new world.

A fun novel I listened to is Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews (I've listened to several of her books - good - love the reader). A Southern food network chef Gina Foxton ends up having to compete with a rival food network chef, handsome Tate Moody (a hunter, fisherman chef) and his dog Moonbeam - paired up by the network for spice for the network. It's packed with Southern flavor and humor.

Then too I listened to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A Year of Food Life, read by the authors: primarily Barbara Kingslover (read her Poisonwood Bible), along with bits by her husband Steven Hopp and daughter, Camille. I bought the book when it came out in 2007, but wanted to listen to it. They left the sunbelt of Tucson Arizona, paddling against the then tide (not the current green tide) to Stephen's dilapidated farm in Appalachia country. It's part memoir, part journalisic investigation, and a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. Good humored and poetic - I like her writing style. I had to laugh at the chapter on turkeys and their sex life, since we have had turkeys in the past. For one year they vowed to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it - tho each family member chose one item they couldn't live without. I've not gone to their website yet (the book's title), but want to - supposedly lots of links, recipes etc posted there.