2 comments about Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (California Studies in Food and Culture, 12).

1. Simply terrible. A complete waste of money as I felt the author was just trying to talk over my head, and she succeeded.
   
   Don't waste your money



2. if you are interested in a scholarly approach to Christian fitness, this is the best book out there.

1 comments about From Our House to Yours: Comfort Food to Give and Share".

1. Over the course of the past few months I have had many friends in need of some comfort cooking--because of new babies, illnesses, work stresses, and other major life changes. Instead of a card, what these people need the most is some good food that they don't have to cook for themselves. This cookbook has updated classics, like polenta lasagne or stuffed peppers a la Michael Chiarello, old stand bys like chicken noodle soup and oatmeal cookies, even a section with herbal tonics and smoothies.

   The ingredients are easy to find and the recipes are easy to follow. I especially like the To Make Ahead instructions for each recipe. There's no guessing if a dish freezes well, or how to cook/assemble it for later. I write out these instructions for whomever gets the dish. Everyone loves gifts of pre-made, homemade meals.

1 comments about Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food (California Studies in Food and Culture).

1. First off, let me say that this book is not just a dry, dusty, tome of facts and figures. This is a funny, common sense filled book about the future of food, starting with a two hundred plus history of how mankind saw food. What would we eat? Would we have enough? Should we give up meat? After this foundation the author, Warren Belasco, slips us into the places and people who have shaped our ideas of future food. World fairs, Walt Disney, futurists, science fiction writers, businesses, car companies, and so on. This is really an enjoyable book. Yet it also asks us some serious questions about the future and where food is place in it. Do we want meat? Do we want food pills? Do we want to have any say in what it tastes like? Anybody who enjoys history or science fiction or future history needs this book!

5 comments about Garlic Is Life: A Memoir With Recipes.

1. This is an autobiographical slice of Chester Aaron's life as he waas intoduced to garlic growing and became a garlic devotee. Aaron and his cat take the reader into the world of garlic,its many varities, and how to best grow these bulbs of life. At the end of the book are thirty recipes for tasty garlic dishes. It is a very readable primer on garlic growing.



2. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Chester on my gardening show on a couple of occassions and found him charming, enlightening and certainly passionate about his garlic. I was thouroughly pleased when I found the book to be an extension of his interviews. This man at 80 something is more full of life than most twenty year olds and he exudes this energy and love of life into print in a way that makes you feel that you are in the field talking with him rather than reading a book. The recipies were devine. An absolute must for the Garlic aficionado.



3. Chester Aaron has something for everyone. His love of Garlic is only matched by his love of a richly varied life. The receipes are are a little simplistic and really a sidebar to the real story which is Aaron himself. I am buying several copies to Give to friends. This book is not a loaner



4. After reading Chester Aaron's Symptoms of Terminal Passion I needed to read a little more. Aaron's Memoir is a little premature, because his is still living and growing garlic more than 10 years later, using the garlic theme in all he writes.
   
   It was fascinating seeing the real-life background for the stories I had read. I'm also looking harder for different kinds of garlics, and even tempted to try to plant a clove or two in one of the pots on our patio.
   
   Strangely, I was reading this at the same time I read Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Norwegian writer, Per Petterson. It was amazing how the two books complemented each other!
   
   Both are written in the first person in beautiful, engaging prose. (Horses is so well translated that you don't notice that it was written in another language, except for the occasional Norwegian place names.)
   
   Both utilize many flashbacks to childhood, Petterson's Trond mostly to 1948 in alternate chapters, Chester to the 30's in Pennsylvania.
   
   Both have moved to the country to start over after losing their wives: Chester after a devastating divorce, Trond after a horrendous car accident.
   
   Both recall strong relations to difficult fathers, who continue to influence the way they try to create new lives as 70-something "old men." (Their mothers are lurking in the background.) Both fathers are still lurking to show how to do practical things on their farms.
   
   For both books the natural settings (fields, woods and ocean for Chester, forest, meadows and river for Trond) and the weather (wind, rain, and yes, also the sun) provide more than just the setting.
   
   Trond's dog Lyra and Chester's cat Sadie are their constant companions, while sheep, horses, gophers and other creatures also play important roles.
   
   Crops play important roles (garlic, of course, and fruit trees for Chester, trees for Trond.)
   
   Neighbors and other humans provide insight and sometimes help, but occasionally are more of an irritant to their daily lives alone on their farms - although Garlic ends with a wedding!
   
   But only Garlic provides you with numerous recipes for strange garlics, including 2 desserts!



5. Take a good helping of witty memoir, add a handful of very useful gardening/farming information, & a huge heap of garlic (and recipes) and you have a marvelous book. Highly recommended.

3 comments about The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook Volume II.

1. This book gives simple but good recipes for using the local vegetables and fruits that are available at the local farmer's market. I have clipped many of the recipes from past FOOD sections of the newspaper and now I have them all in one easy to find place. I like to cook new recipes and enjoy ones with lots of flavor and I find that in this book.



2. San Francisco has a very unique food and restaurant landscape with more ethinc cuisines on offer than in any other city in the US. This is reflected very well in this outstanding volume that brings together another great selection of eclectic dishes from local restaurants and coinisseurs. This is quite a big book and it is bursting with good stuff. It is also what I call a "no fluff" cookbook that really only has recipe after recipe, with no glossy pictures and other decor.

   The recipes are well-written, easy to follow and also organized extremely well. This is a detail that I look for a lot, since you want to be able to pull a cookbook out and get right to the section of dishes that might interest you for a particular type of menu. Many of the more glamorous cookbooks are meant for browsing rather than serious searching, this is not.

   If you are a beginner cook who needs visuals with every meal, this book is not for you. Basic cooking skills and a basic recipe skills are a must.




3. I've lived in SF since 1970 and I love these cookbooks - I rarely read the paper on Wednesday, but I know the recipes are great, and these books are the best way to collect the best of the best from the local paper!

5 comments about Bruce and Sharon Asakawa's California Gardener's Guide.

1. If you want something that lists a great deal of plants, look to the mainstays like "Sunset's Western Garden Book" or "American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants". What I like about this book is the full color illustrations, interesting lore about each plant, and the information about planting and problems with each type of plant.

   I see it more like a look into the authors' favorite plants, maybe a palette for landscaping, not a all encompasing guide in either taxinomy or technique.

   It would fail in that regard.




2. Great compainion book. Nice big pictures. Common and botanical names listed. Zone map listed with each plant. Very clear and simple using both words and symbols.



3. A well written and illustrated guide to the 165 or so plants that grow well in the author's portion of California. The book must be faulted for not including plants that grow well and provide color in the arid and desert regions of the state. Certainly water wise gardening should be included. No mention is made of the use of California native plants in the garden. A beginning gardener will be better served by Sunset's WESTERN GARDEN BOOK. Those who will admit to living in an arid region (this includes Los Angeles) will find Eric Johnson's JOHNSON'S GUIDE TO GARDENING: PLANTS FOR THE ARID WEST of great value for its coverage of native plants. Desert gardeners will need the Coachella Valley Water District's LUSH & EFFICIENT: GARDENING IN THE COACHELLA VALLEY as their guide to effective desert gardening.



4. This book is ok because it has nice pictures and stories. I do like it because it has a "when to plant" reference as well as sun exposure, bloom time and color and other useful information. I'm a Northern California gardner and found this book to be somewhat specific to Southern California in plant selection, although they do show, for each plant, a map of Caifornia where each plant would grow. I found Northern California Gardening: A Month-By-Month Guide by Katherine Grace Endicott a great book and of course Sunset's Western Garden book.



5. I agree with the other reviewers that Sunset's Western Garden Guide is the essential book. My only complaint with that book is while it is quite extensive, the small illustrated drawings are not always ideal for identifying unknown plants and the depth is occasionally lacking. I bought this book (cheap at a booksale) because it focused on a smaller number of plants (admittedly oriented toward Southern California), had nice big photographs of each plant and went into a little bit more depth (fertilizer ratios to use, specific planting directions, soil ph numbers, etc.)

5 comments about Baja! Cooking on the Edge.

1. I collect cookbooks, and lately it's been hard to find anything new. I'm excited about Baja. It's authentic, and the quick and easy recipes use fresh ingredients. I live 50 miles from Baja, but I don't often go down there. I'm so glad that I can make these dishes at home now! Free yourself from repetive "Tex-Mex." Buy this book.



2. As a native Southern California, and now cruising sailor of Baja and other Mexican locales, I've always wanted to get my hands on some of the recipes for the basic dishes that I enjoyed in Baja. Do you know the secret to making crunchy fish tacos? Have you ever wondered what was that white creamy sauce on fish tacos? Well, finally you can have the recipe for Mayonesa Secret Sauce on page 47!
   
   This book also "spills the beans" about, well, the beans. I've now made several pots of mouth-watering mexican style beans that are actually better than what is served in the US resturants. No, I'm not a great cook - the recipes are simple.
   
   All of the marinades and sauces that I've made from this book have been tasty and very easy to prepare. Using fresh ingredients is the key - no canned stuff. The tastes are "clean" and not heavy. The descriptions of chilis and what to make with them has made it so that I now can shop for these and make wonderful homemade dishes.



3. What a surprise to find a cookbook that invokes both the flavors and diversity of Baja California! Deborah Schneider takes us on a culinary journey that includes"street food" and farms to the wine regions and coastal cuisine of Baja California.Her recipes are quite easy to follow and she includes the basics for those who may be new to Mexican cooking. One of my favorites is the recipe for Pollo Lucas Tacos. "Lucas" means "crazy" and it is the sweet/salty contras tof this spice which makes it especially wonderful. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to try adventuresome cooking from a gifted chef.



4. I have had great success with the recipes in this book. The salsas are fabulous. One recipe I really like is the "Mariscos en Papellote".



5. This book is very well done and refreshing.
   
   Having spent many years traveling, backpacking, camping, boating, fly fishing, diving and off-road racing in Baja it brings back many happy memories. I particurally enjoied the historic references i.e., the Puerto Nuevo lobster craze.

2 comments about Wine Atlas of Australia.

1. If you read this book you get a very good vieuw of the Australian wines and winery's mr.Halliday did,as in his other books,an amazing job. for all the wine lovers out there a must buy



2. My recent month-plus tour of wineries in Australia and New Zealand was greatly based upon the excellent research,reviews and contacts using this fine reference.As a budding wine writer, collector, and head of a local Enological Society in the Pacific Northwest,Halliday's Atlas has been the virtual bible enabling the design of both the tour and subsequent writing.As my primary interest was a focus upon pinot noirs, my tour began in Australia where I visited Halliday's own Coldstream Hills Vineyard.His work provide a roadmap enabling me to contact other prominent pinot noir producers in the Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula-Main ridge, Stonier, Yering Station, Paringa Estates and others.While there, I also made contacts and was invited to a new release winetasting of New Zealand wines held in Melbourne. Quite amazingly, the first person I met was the great James, himself. It was fun and a privilege to share wine tasting experience and comments.
   From there, the tour extended to the whole of New Zealand. Again the Atlas laid the groundwork for my visits, enabling me to meet most of New Zealand's greatest owners and winemakers, including John Buck at Te Mata,Kevin Judd at the famous Cloudy Bay,Neil McClallum at Dry River, Grant Taylor at Gibbston Valley and many others.Naturally, covering nine separate wine regions entailed tasting many other prime quality varietals in such warmer climes as Waiheke Island and Hawkes Bay with their magnificent cabernets and Bordeaux blends,plus gorgeous chardonneys,etc. In all cases, the Atlas gave regional and subregional data and exacting descriptions of "terrior" necessary to a serious study.Halliday is, in my book, a more comprehensive writer and reviewer of "new world" wines than even Jancis Robinson or Robert Parker. He also adds the direct insights of his winemaking in Australia and his pioneering of pinot noir developments "down under". His reputation as a critic is simply impeccable and his easily read writing style, while detailed, is at once comprehensive and comprehensible.It is a must read and essential reference for serious oenophiles and fellow wine tourists.

5 comments about California Fresh Harvest: A Seasonal Journey through Northern California (California Fresh).

1. I received this cookbook as a gift. I must admit, at first I found it so nice to look at that it sat on my coffee table on display. Recently, however, I hosted a baby shower and prepared several dishes which were simple yet elegant. Everyone was so impressed--I felt like Martha Stewart without any of the hassle. Another nice feature of this cookbook is that it recommends menus, which is great, b/c I never know what to serve together. This is one of my favorite cookbooks now!



2. I originally received this cookbook as a gift. I was so delighted with it, I subsequently ordered four additional copies to give as gifts. The recipients are still thanking me! First, the recipes are creative and delicious -- fully enhancing the flavors of bountiful, diverse, fresh ingredients found in the San Francisco Bay Area and Wine Country. (It's hard NOT to eat well in this region!) Second, the cookbook itself is uncommonly successful in evoking this spectacular setting with gorgeous photos, sidebars of interesting sidetrips, local restaurants and wineries, and mind-boggling facts regarding the abundance of local agriculture. Food preparation tips, background information on local food and wine festivals/events, and delicacies such as Meyer Lemons are also highlighted. While it's fun to simply browse through this beautiful cookbook, it's even better to sample the Junior League's trade-mark "home cooking with flair." Full menus are offered here. My personal favorites are the Baja Guacamole, Savory Polenta w/Asiago Cheese, Garlic-Roasted Chicken, Pork Tenderloin w/Apricot Ginger Sauce, and Cherries & Berries Compote w/Crispy Puffed Pancake. The Chocolate Caramel Shortbread Bars are worth the price of admission all by themselves! I'm not surprised this cookbook is winning national rave reviews and awards. They are very well deserved! It is so beautifully rendered, it puts most commercially-produced cookbooks to shame.



3. Absolutely a phenomenonal cookbook! Just purchased on vacation in Cape May, New Jersey at Love the Cook. Gorgeous pictures, wonderful recipes......California at it's best! A real winner...a real find.



4. I received this book as a gift. What a treasure it has become - great recipes for all seasons, an excellent layout, beautiful illustrations, and simple instructions. It is now the first cookbook I go to!



5. Received this cookbook as a gift and have since given it as a wedding gift... this is my favorite cookbook hands down... has a great layout with nice pictures... recipes are organized seasonally with focus on fresh local food... recipes have interesting combinations of flavors and spices... everything I've made has turned out to be something I'd make again as a staple meal for entertaining or just for the family.

1 comments about The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living.

1. "The Plumpjack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living" gathers dishes from the Plumpjack Winery's café, renowned in San Francisco and in California's wine country areas - and provides specialties home cooks can easily duplicate. An opening history of PlumpJack covers its origins and development and moves quickly to some 80 recipes ranging from Gnocci with Fresh Basil Pesto to Rosemary Roast Chicken with New Potatoes and Carrots. Color photos pair well with these dishes in a collection which will especially appeal to California cooks in general and fans of PlumpJack in particular.