Tag Archive for: book review

Herbert Ypma is back with his hip travel book, New Map France

Herbert Ypma created an entire genre of cool and hip eye-candy travel guides, and has returned with a new book called NEW MAP FRANCE, which makes us very happy indeed.

FEED YOUR PEOPLE is the Big-Batch Cookbook You’ve been Waiting for

 

Powerhouse Books has released a lavish new cookbook, Feed Your People. The book offers “big-batch recipes from big-hearted chefs and cooks for the foods we gather around”.

Feed Your People

The book opens with an introduction to big-batch cooking, and features dishes by San Francisco culinary legends like Alice Waters, Bryant Terry, Gonzalo Guzman, Joyce Goldstein, Tanya Holland, Dennis Lee, Preeti Mistry, and other chefs and cooks who know how to feed a crowd. It includes ideas and practical information for creating dumpling dinners, vegetarian suppers, meatball fund-raisers, soup swaps, chili cook-offs, seafood boils, backyard barbecues, ice cream socials, and more.

The recipes are designed to be scale upward for larger groups, and range from simple comfort foods to show-stopping recipes such as tamales, rustic minestrone soup, Gujarati-inspired chili, big-pan paella, homemade gnocchi, Korean bo ssäm, fork-tender carnitas, seafood boils, Provençal-style grand aioli with roasted salmon, a chocolatey Texas sheet cake, slab pies, and even trifles.

More information at powerhousebooks.com
Hardcover, 8-3/4 x10 inches, 320 pages
ISBN: 978-1-57687-804-0, $39.95 US/CAN

ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS

Leslie Jonath is a book packager specializing in cookbooks. Before launching Connected Dots media, she was a creative director at Chronicle Books where she produced many successful titles leveraging partnerships with high-profile causes and foundations, including The Pleasures of Slow Food by Corby Kummer; From Our House to Yours: Comfort Food to Share with Meals on Wheels of San Francisco; and The Edible Schoolyard with renowned chef and restaurateur Alice Waters. Her most recent titles include the Miette Bakery Cookbook (over 150,000 sold to date), The Flower Workshop, Give Yourself a Gold Star, The Model Bakery Cookbook, The Amazing (mostly) Edible Science Cookbook, and The Little Pleasures of Paris. She lives in San Francisco.

Molly De Coudreaux is a San Francisco-based photographer who thrives on telling stories about food and culture. She works collaboratively to capture the essence of each moment through nuance and gesture. Her clients include Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Dandelion Chocolate, Scribe Winery, and Al’s Place, and she is currently working on a book project with Bernal Cutlery.

18 Reasons strives to “empower the community with confidence and creativity to buy, cook, and eat good food each day,” which they do through classes and community dinners. Passionate, committed teachers include farmers, winemakers, ranchers, crafters, and cooks who share their stories, skills, and knowledge on everything from knife skills to world cooking. As well, people can share a community dinner with friends, taste home­-cooked meals from around the world, and forge new friendships through food. Beyond its classroom walls, 18 Reasons offers Cooking Matters classes in low-income communities on how to make quick, healthy, affordable, and delicious meals. Professional chefs and nutritionists volunteer their time for the Cooking Matters program, which reaches over 2,000 adults and kids every year.

Need a Dress? Author Erin Mckean Has About 100

100_Dresses

100 DRESSES

Erin McKeanAuthor Erin McKean has a thing about dresses, in particular, for iconic dress styles. That’s why she has recently released her new book on the topic, “THE HUNDRED DRESSES: The Most Iconic Styles of Our Time (Bloomsbury).”

Says Erin, “I spend way, way too much time thinking about dresses — not just how they look, but how they make their wearers feel. After blogging about dresses for so many years (since 2005, which is like the Pleistocene, in blogger time) I wanted to collect all my favorite dress ‘types’ in one place. And of course, the Eleanor Estes book has always been a favorite, so I wanted to pay it a bit of homage with the title.”

The Breakfast at TiffanysErin recounts how the project itself took about six months of work, and 1 year of planning with the illustrator, Donna Mehalko. Apparently this was not too long. Says Donna, “For me this was a dream project. I happily researched and worked on the drawings for the book over the course of a year. I researched by sourcing as many  images  in books, magazines and online that I could find that related to the list of dresses Erin had given me.  My goal was to illustrate the dresses, but also, I  wanted to capture a person I thought would wear each dress. Her attitude and gesture.” She adds, “It was our editor Nancy Miller’s idea to use illustrations for the book. Illustrations allowed for specificity but not necessarily an exact depiction of any dress. I think there is some room for the reader’s imagination.”

 

The Classic Party Dress

The dresses have a variety of names, ranging from the Bandage to the Sack, the Baby-doll to the Siren; the Wench; the Sari; the Vreeland; the Wrap; the Austen; the Beckham; the Chanel; the Ingenue; the Caftan; the Jackie; the Slip Dress; and the Biohazard. On the naming protocol, Mckean says, “The dresses named themselves. That was one of the tests for iconicity — if I couldn’t describe the dress in a few words and have someone (preferably someone who wasn’t a dress-lover) know what it was, then it wasn’t really an iconic dress. It’s funny — Jennifer Lopez has probably worn thousands of dresses in her career, but when I said ‘The J.Lo dress’ people knew instantly that I meant the green plunging number from the Grammys! And when I say ‘the Space Empress’ people can picture that, too.”

The Bond GirlDespite her large variety of choices, the style she personally wears most often is dirndl-style dress (close-fitting bodice and full skirt). “I’m also a huge fan of the June Cleaver. I like a big full skirt — easy to move in, and you can wear them while riding a bike.”

 

 

EXCERPTED FROM THE SEPIA REPORT

The Flashdance