The Surprising Power of Family Meals is the first book to takea complete look at a ritual that was virtually universal ageneration ago but has undergone a striking transformation. Nolonger honored by society as a time of day that must be set aside,some families see family supper as little more than a quaint relic.But others are beginning to recognize it as a lifeline – a way toconnect with their loved ones on a regular basis and to get moreenjoyment out of family life. The Surprising Power of Family Mealspresents stories, studies, and arguments from the fields ofpsychology, education, nutrition, family therapy, anthropology,sociology, linguistics, and religion. It provides examples offamilies and communities around North America responding creativelyto the pressures of a 24/7 world to share strategies for takingwhat is best from our past and transforming it to meet currentneeds.

Jeanne Rose is one of America's best known herbalists andKitchen Cosmetics is her most intimate guide to natural health andbeauty. Over 100 of Jeanne's favorite recipes and tips provide safeand simple applications created by Jeanne for her own family'sneeds. Based on common kitchen and garden ingredients - from yogurtto berries to rosemary - these lotions, creams, and othermoisturizers, masks, teas, toothpastes, deodorants, shampoos, andconditioners are easily prepared in the home. Shopping suggestions,herbal cosmetic techniques for the whole body, and fascinatingherbal lore make Kitchen Cosmetics a valuable and charming guide tonatural beauty and health care. Since its publication in 1978, Kitchen Cosmetics has become theleading title in home preparation of natural cosmetics. It is usedby apartment dwellers who buy herbs, gardeners who tend a few potsin sunny windows, and gardeners with spacious beds...a steadilygrowing number of people who want to 'take back' the pleasure ofworking with herbs themselves -

For the Trigianis, cooking has always been a family affair–andthe kitchen was the bustling center of their home, where folksgathered around the table for good food, good conversation, and theoccasional eruption. Example: Being thrown out of the kitchenbecause one’s Easter bread kneading technique isn’t up to par. AsAdriana says: “When the Trigianis reach out and touch someone, wedo it with food.” Like the recipes that have been handed down forgenerations from mother to daughter and grandmother togranddaughter, the family’s celebrations are also anchored to thelife and laughter around the table. We learn how Grandmom YolandaTrigiani sometimes wrote her recipes in code, or worked frommemory, guarding her recipes carefully. And we meet Grandma LuciaBonicelli, who never raised her voice and believed that when peoplefight at the dinner table, the food turns to poison in thebody. Adriana Trigiani’s voice springs to life from the first page ofCooking with My Sisters, a collection of belove

The extremes of American eating--our equal urges to stuff and tostarve ourselves--are easy to blame on the excesses of modernliving. But Frederick Kaufman followed the winding road of theAmerican intestine back to that cold morning when the firstfamished Pilgrim clambered off the Mayflower, and he discovered thealarming truth: We've been this way all along. With outraged witand an incredible range of sources that includes everything fromCotton Mather's diary to interviews with Amish black-marketraw-milk dealers, Kaufman offers a highly selective,take-no-prisoners tour of American history by way of the Americanstomach. Travel with him as he tracks down our earliest foodies;discovers the secret history of Puritan purges; introduces dietgurus of the nineteenth century such as William Alcott, whobelieved that "Nothing ought to be mashed before it is eaten";traces extreme feeders from Paul Bunyan to eating-contest champDale Boone (descended from Daniel, of course); and investigates ourblithe efforts to re-create

Ten years ago, Colbin's Food and Healing stood at theforefront of the food revolution, exploring the link between dietand health. In this anniversary edition, she provides updates onrecent dietary systems, including low-fat, food combining, andalternative medicine.

From the legendary editor who helped shape modern cookbookpublishing-one of the food world's most admired figures-comes thisevocative and inspiring memoir. Living in Paris after World War II, Jones broke free of blandAmerican food and reveled in everyday French culinary delights. Onreturning to the States she published Julia Child's Mastering theArt of French Cooking. The rest is publishing and gastronomichistory. A new world now opened up to Jones as she discovered, withher husband Evan, the delights of American food, publishing some ofthe premier culinary luminaries of the twentieth century: fromJulia Child, James Beard, and M.F.K. Fisher to Claudia Roden, EdnaLewis, and Lidia Bastianich. Here also are fifty of Jones'sfavorite recipes collected over a lifetime of cooking-each with itsown story and special tips. The Tenth Muse is an absolutelycharming memoir by a woman who was present at the creation of theAmerican food revolution and played a pivotal role in shapingit.

The daughter of a British Foreign Service officer, MoiraHodgson spent her childhood in many a strange and exotic land. Shediscovered American food in Saigon, ate wild boar in Berlin, andlearned how to prepare potatoes from her eccentric Irishgrandmother. Today, Hodgson has a well-deserved reputation as adiscerning critic whose columns in the New York Observer were devoured by dedicated food lovers for two decades. A delightful memoir of meals from around the world—completewith recipes— It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time reflectsHodgson’s talent for connecting her love of food and travel withthe people and places in her life. Whether she’s dining on Moroccan mechoui , a whole lamb baked for a day over coals, orstruggling to entertain in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment, herreminiscences are always a treat.

America's favorite baker, Nancy Baggett, has been on a roadtrip around the country. Now she's back, with something for everydessert lover: the best pies, cakes, puddings, crisps, cookies, icecreams, and candies in the land. Many of her discoveries werelocally famous family secretsuntil now. They include a memorablysimple blueberry buckle from a Vermont bed-and-breakfast; a coconutchiffon cake from an island off the coast of Virginia that hasbecome a "destination dessert"; a never-before-revealed recipe forchocolate-dipped caramel candies, the fund-raising specialty of thewomen of an Episcopal church in New Mexico; and a sublime peachcobbler from a cook in the Ozarks. Baggett has tested and retestedevery recipe in her home kitchen to ensure that all cooks get thesame results. She has even included a chapter on easy gifts to makewith children, from "bars in a jar" (a homemade brownie mix) tofancifully decorated graham-cracker holiday cottages. Every recipein this lavishly photographed book comes with an

Kathleen Daelemans's inspiring story is familiar to millionsof readers and TV viewers. After creating a new cuisine for one ofthe world's most luxurious spas, the Grand Wailea, in Maui, Hawaii,she earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Bon Apptit, theLos Angeles Times, and Esquire. In the process, she herself lost 75pounds, dropping all the way down from a size 22 to a trim and fitsize 8. Now she tells how she did it, sharing tips and favoriterecipes for her outrageously delicious food. Kathleen, who is afrequent contributor to NBC's Today Show, is also the author ofGetting Thin and Loving Food!

Each chapter in this revolutionary new cookery book focuses on asingle ingredient, and the accompanying recipes in chef AlizaGreen's culinary tour-de-force demonstrate the broad range ofpossibilities for each ingredient, utilizing a variety of cookingmethods, flavours and ethnic inspirations. This innovative work isthe product of Green's ceaseless culinary curiosity and in-depthknowledge of ingredients. With these tools, she has createdhundreds of clear and imaginative recipes that will enableexperienced and fledgling chefs to recognize how foods should lookand behave, their fragrance and feel, their seasonal changes, howthey are transformed by different cooking methods, and theirflavour affinities. Extensive sidebars satisfy the most curiousepicure.

Witty, one-of-a-kind imaginative cupcake designs using candiesfrom the local convenience store. America's favorite foodphotography team, responsible for the covers of America's topmagazines, shows how to create funny, scary, and sophisticatedmasterpieces, using a zipper lock bag and common candies and snackitems.With these easy-to-follow techniques, even the mostkitchen-challenged cooks can - raise a big-top circus cupcake tierfor a kid's birthday - plant candy vegetables on Oreo earthcupcakes for a garden party - trot out a line of confectionery"pupcakes" for a dog fancier - serve sausage and pepperoni pizzacupcakes for April Fool's Day - bewitch trick-or-treaters withchilly ghost chocolate cupcakes - create holidays on icing withturkey cupcake place cards, a white cupcake Christmas wreath, andEaster egg cupcakes No baking skills or fancy pastry equipment isrequired. Spotting the familiar items in the hundreds of brilliantphotos is at least half the fun.

Lidia Bastianich, loved by millions of Americans for her goodItalian cooking, gives us her most instructive and personalcookbook yet. Focusing on the Italian-American kitchen—the cooking sheencountered when she first came to America as a youngadolescent—she pays homage to this “cuisine of adaptation born ofnecessity.” But she transforms it subtly with her light,discriminating touch, using the authentic ingredients, notaccessible to the early immigrants, which are all so readilyavailable today. The aromatic flavors of fine Italian olive oil,imported Parmigiano-Reggiano and Gorgonzola dolce latte, freshbasil, oregano, and rosemary, sun-sweetened San Marzano tomatoes,prosciutto, and pancetta permeate the dishes she makes in herItalian-American kitchen today. And they will transform for youthis time-honored cuisine, as you cook with Lidia, learning fromher the many secret, sensuous touches that make her foodsuperlative. You’ll find recipes for Scampi alla Buonavia (the garlicky shrimp

"I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them naturaland most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak thetruth even if we argue," says Alice Feiring. Join her as she setsoff on her one-woman crusade against the tyranny of homogenization,wine consultants, and, of course, the 100-point scoring system of acertain all-powerful wine writer. Traveling through the ancientvineyards of the Loire and Champagne, to Piedmont and Spain, shegoes in search of authentic barolo, the last old-style rioja, andthe tastiest new terroir-driven champagnes. She reveals just whatgoes into the average bottle--the reverse osmosis, the yeasts andenzymes, the sawdust and oak chips--and why she doesn’t find muchto drink in California. And she introduces rebel winemakers who areembracing old-fashioned techniques and making wines withindividuality and soul. No matter what your palate, travel the wine world with Feiringand you’ll have to ask yourself: What do I really want in myglass?

Few chefs in America have won more acclaim than Suzanne Goin,owner of Lucques restaurant. A chef of impeccable pedigree, she gother start cooking at some of the best restaurants in theworld–L’Arpège. Olives, and Chez Panisse, to name a few–placeswhere she acquired top-notch skills to match her already flawlessculinary instincts. “A great many cooks have come through thekitchen at Chez Panisse,” observes the legendary Alice Waters, “ButSuzanne Goin was a stand-out. We all knew immediately that one dayshe would have a restaurant of her own, and that other cooks wouldbe coming to her for kitchen wisdom and a warm welcome.” And come they have, in droves. Since opening her L.A. restaurant,Lucques, in 1998, Goin’s cooking has garnered extraordinaryaccolades. Lucques is now recognized as one of the best restaurantsin the country, and she is widely acknowledged as one of the mosttalented chefs around. Goin’s gospel is her commitment to thefreshest ingredients available; her way of comb

As the chef and owner of the acclaimed Blue Ginger restaurantin Wellesley, Massachusetts, and an Emmy award-winning televisionpersonality, Ming Tsai has become the standard-bearer of East-Westcuisine, the innovative blending of Eastern flavors and techniqueswith Western ingredients and presentations. Now, in Simply Ming, he presents a breakthrough technique forbringing East-West flair to everyday cooking, making it possible totransform a handful of fresh ingredients into a delicious meal in amatter of minutes. The genius of Simply Ming is a versatile arrayof master recipes—intensely flavored sauces, pestos, salsas,dressings, rubs, and more that eliminate much of the last-minuteprep work. So sophisticated dishes such as Tea-Rubbed Salmon withSteamed Scallion-Lemon Rice, Grilled Miso-Citrus Scallop Lollipops,and Green Peppercorn Beef Tenderloin with Vinegar-Glazed Leeks canbe on the table in less than 30 minutes. Even casual dishes such as spaghetti, burgers, fried calamari,and chicken wing

After five years atop the Skinny Bitch phenomenon, author KimBarnouin has grown as a cook, a nutritionist, and a mom. Now shedelivers the Ultimate cookbook that will be for everyone lookingfor a healthier way to feed themselves, their families, andfriends. Kims emphasis is on easy, and her kick-ass recipes featureseasonal produce (no fake meat or hard-to-find ingredients) andprovide a versatility of tastes and cuisines, from Mediterranean toCalifornia-fresh. With almost 150 recipes, full-color photos,complete nutritional breakdowns, and simple switch-outs for quickvariations, it will be the new gotta have" on any bookshelf.