by Becky "The Cerebral Rat" on January 16, 2010
Hello! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to Non-Sequiturs from the Tree of Irony RSS feed or get each post delivered to your e-mail account. Thanks for visiting!
It’s National Soup Month and what better time for soup than in the cold, snowy days of January. While I was preparing for a program on soup and soup making, I came across two great books that are worth taking a look at and, in my case, purchasing for my private cookbook collection.
The first is called The Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: a Country Inn Cookbook. Written by Crescent Dragonwagon (yes, really–more about her later), this is a great primer on stocks and soup basics and has a wonderful chapter on ‘The Soup’—an always tasty vegetable based soup that is easy and fast to make and has the potential for infinite variations. It also happens to be essentially low in calories and fat, so it can be used as the basis for a diet meal, if you so choose. It’s basically a ‘one from column a, one from column b’ type of recipe, making it flexible and variable (and easy–don’t forget, easy). The simplest version uses purchased stock and frozen vegetables, is ready in under an hour and tastes delicious. I love it.
What you pick up from this book is that soup is as much a state of mind as anything else and if you regard it in this fashion, it becomes much easier to be creative in your cooking. This is largely due to the attitude of the author, Ms. Dragonwagon, who is fascinating in herself. She has written a number of cookbooks and children’s books, run the Dairy Hollow House Inn, and is currently living in Vermont and conducting ‘Fearless Writing’ workshops. Read more about her and find out how she got her name by clicking on this link to her website.
The second book that fascinated me is entitled An Exaltation of Soups: 
the Soul-Satisfying Story of Soup, as Told in More than 100 Recipes. In addition to recipes, which are organized by rites of passage (to celebrate marriage), purpose (to chase a hangover), and holiday (Eastertide), there is also a section covering the origins and history of soup, proverbs and reflections on soup, and basic stocks and foundations. Sprinkled throughout are poems and short stories with soup as their theme. The recipes are great and the rest of the content will keep the interest of even the most attention impaired intellectual gadfly.
Reserve your copy by clicking on the book title and enjoy—with a cup of warm soup.
by Becky "The Cerebral Rat" on December 22, 2009
I love Michael Symon and I love cookbooks, so this one was a natural for me. As soon as I heard it was coming out, I put an order in for the library, put my request in for the book and waited. I was really excited when it arrived and it turned out to be everything I love in a cookbook and more.
I’m the sort of person who likes to read cookbooks. I like to read through the recipes, look at the pictures and try to imagine the settings in which the food was originally served. I like cookbooks that are evocative of a time, a place, the person who compiled/wrote them. Michael Symon’s Live to Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen has all of this. The recipes are great, but even better are the sections where he explains his technique and philosophy of cooking and those where he talks about his background and family–all of the things that contributed to his development as a person and a chef.
I’ve always thought that Symon sounded like a really great guy–someone who would be fun to know and that comes across in his book. He is down-to-earth, honest, and very aware of the debt he owes to his Greek and Mediterranean heritage and to his family and friends. He tells the story of how he learned his craft, the mistakes he made and what they taught him. When he tells you what techniques you need to master, he tells you why and in language that you can understand. It is all very simple, grounded in himself and his beliefs. The recipes are good too–so far my favorite is the ‘Ohio Creamed Corn with Bacon’—yum.
Give the book a try–I think you’ll like it. Click on the cover to reserve your copy and be careful—you just may end up buying it.
by Becky "The Cerebral Rat" on December 11, 2009
I’ve been waiting for Maureen Ash’s newest in the Knight Templar series. At the end of the last book, A Plague of Poison, de Marins was left with the choice of leaving the Templars permanently to accept the King’s offer to restore his father’s lands to him so that he could name an heir, remaining as a retainer of Nicolaa de la Haye (thus enabling him to care for Gianni, his servant/son surrogate in another way) or remaining with the Templars, keeping the vows he made before going to the Holy Land. Gianni expressed a desire to stay in the de la Haye household to train as a clerk, thus freeing de Marins to follow his ‘fate.’ He was given a year to wrap up business and return to the Templars.
I’ve been anxious to see what happens, how Ash will continue the series. I was really excited to get the book and the fact that it is set at Christmas time is a wonderful bonus. I like to read fiction with a holiday background at this time of year and it is nice to have something new (although I will go back and read some old favorites) this year.
I found out the other day that I am not the only one who has developed this habit. One of my patrons reads all of Dickens’ Christmas stories every year in the order in which Dickens wrote them! That is truly impressive. I, on the other hand, am not quite that dedicated. I’ll settle for a couple of Miss Read books and de Marin’s latest adventure in the thirteenth century.
Click on the book cover or title to reserve your copy and discover or revisit de Marins today.
by Becky "The Cerebral Rat" on December 2, 2009
I was excited to learn from one of the folks commenting on my blog about Miss Read that there is a new book that came out this fall called Christmas at Thrush Green (thanks to Sandy). We don’t have it on order yet, but that seemed reasonable because her books are published in the UK first. I decided to go to Amazon UK to see if they had it and if there were any reviews as I had decided that I would probably order it. I was dismayed to find out that it was not written by her, but by her editor, Jenny Dereham. According to one review, quoting the acknowledgement, Miss Read “discussed the initial idea, developed the storyline, then left [Jenny Dereham] to put it into words.”
I’m not so sure I like the idea of someone other than Miss Read actually ‘moving in’ and working on the world she created in Thrush Green, so I’ll have to think twice about buying it. However, some folks did like it, others hated it, and some had mixed feelings. Check out what they had to say on Amazon UK, and when someone reads it, let us all know what you think.