Baby Shower Book or Anthony Dias Blues Pocket Guide to Wine 2006

Baby Shower Book: Etiquette, Decorations, Games and Food

Author: Pauline Glendenning

This book is the first, complete step-by-step guide to making a baby shower fun! Its filled with easy ideas on planning, dozens of baby shower games & activities for the party itself, as well as lots of simple & tasty recipes & detailed instructions on establishing guest lists, handling the gift, registry, choosing a theme, & decorating the home in which the shower will be held. Dont throw an ordinary baby shower! Jazz up the invitations, supercharge the menu, & get both the guests & the Mother of Honor laughing. A complete & practical guide for new & experienced baby shower hostesses alike. Illustrated.

See also: Master Motivator or Five Minds for the Future

Anthony Dias Blue's Pocket Guide to Wine 2006

Author: Anthony Dias Blu

From the expert who promises to avoid winespeak comes an unfussy guide that focuses on American wines and on up-and-coming wineries from around the globe.

For novices and afficionados alike, Anthony Dias Blue's Pocket Guide to Wine 2006 will lead you to the best choices -- and values -- without pretense or hyperbole. With a special eye for American wines and those that are unheralded yet not to be missed, Blue makes the process of choosing wine in a store or restaurant simple. He provides:

• Extensive listings of wineries on six continents, from Mexico to South Africa, from Long Island to Israel, and even from China to India

• Outstanding and cult wineries -- and wineries to watch

• Profiles of each region that focus on key characteristics and varieties

• Ratings, succinct descriptions, and opinions about each producer

• Updated vintage reports

• Advice about what to drink now

Salud or Fresh from the Past

Salud!: The Rise of Santa Barbara's Wine Industry

Author: Victor W Geraci

In 1965, soil and climatic studies indicated that the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys of Santa Barbara County, California, offered suitable conditions for growing high-quality wine grapes. Thus was launched a revival of the area's two-centuries-old wine industry that by 1995 made Santa Barbara County an internationally prominent wine region. Salud! traces the evolution of Santa Barbara viticulture in the larger context of California's history and economy, offering unique insight into one of the state's most important industries.

California has produced wine since Spanish missionaries first planted grapes to make sacramental wines, but it was not until the late twentieth century that changing consumer tastes and a flourishing national economy created the conditions that led to the state's wine boom. Historian Victor W. Geraci uses the Santa Barbara wine industry as a case study to analyze the history and evolution of American viticulture from its obscure colonial beginnings to its current international acclaim. As elsewhere in the state, Santa Barbara County vintners faced the multiple challenges of selecting grape varieties appropriate to their unique conditions, protecting their crops from disease and insects, then of developing local wineries capable of producing consistently high-quality wines and of marketing their products in a highly competitive national and international market. Geraci gives careful attention to all the details of this production: agriculture, science, and technology; capitalization and investment; land-use issues; politics; the specter posed by the behemoth Napa and multinational wine corporations; and the social and personal consequences of creating and supporting an industry vulnerable to so many natural and economic crises. His extensive research includes interviews with many industry professionals.

California is today one of the world's major wine producers, and Santa Barbara County contributes significantly to the volume and renowned quality of this wine production. Salud! offers a detailed and highly engaging overview of an industry in which the ancient romance of wine too often obscures a complex and highly diverse modern vintibusiness that for better, and sometimes for worse, has shaped the regions it dominates.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Northern European Roots and the First American Wine Culture	7
2	Boom and Bust: Birth and Death of the First California Wine Industry	25
3	The California Wine Revolution	47
4	Santa Barbara Pioneers Plant Winegrapes	62
5	Santa Barbara Develops Wineries: 1970s-1980s	80
6	Santa Barbara Gains Recognition	100
7	The Business of Wine: 1990s	116
8	Santa Barbara Vintibusiness	131
9	Wine Is Here to Stay: Santa Barbara, California, and the United States	144
	Epilogue: A Backward Look Forward	153
	Notes	179
	Selected Bibliography	213
	Index	231

Look this: Feeding Your Appetites or Half a Brain Is Enough

Fresh from the Past

Author: Sandra Sherman

Sherman takes readers along on a wild ride back in time, describing how historic families learned to cook with the seasons. From cookbook of the day she gives us 120 original recipes, together with contemporary translations that give step-by-step instructions for cooks of any level.

Library Journal

Sherman, a food and cultural historian and professor of British literature (Univ. of Arkansas), became interested in British recipes of the 18th century when she wrote an earlier book on the food crisis that arose then. For this ambitious new title, she researched the food of the era's rich and the poor and, with the Chotokowskis' assistance, "translated" 120 recipes from cookbooks of the time. Unlike the recipes in Francine Segan's recent The Philosopher's Kitchen (LJ 8/04), which featured the food of ancient Greece and Rome, most of these probably have more appeal as curiosities than as dishes for a contemporary cook; many seem overly rich or complicated, with lengthy ingredients lists and subcomponents like General Cullis and Essence of Ham. The breadth of Sherman's research is impressive, but her book will be more valuable as a culinary history. Recommended for special collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Fortune Cookie Chronicles or Food in the Social Order

Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

Author: Jennifer 8 Le

If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

The New York Times - Jane and Michael Stern -

Lee is a city-beat reporter for The New York Times. Her inclination as a journalist is to trace a story all the way to its genesis, but not without taking some fascinating detours…It's fun to read about the Jewish passion for "safe treyf" (Yiddish for nonkosher food) and to accompany Lee on an exhaustive hunt for "The Greatest Chinese Restaurant in the World" outside China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. But amusing as such diversions are, Lee's book is more serious than its jolly subtitle suggests, exposing some very ugly sides of the business.

The Washington Post - Christine Y. Chen

Reading Lee's book is almost like watching a documentary travelogue. From all-you-can-eat buffets in Kansas to the small southern Chinese village of Jietoupu, where she tracks down descendants of General Tso (who, natch, have never heard of, seen or tasted their forefather's infamous chicken dish), the author takes readers by the hand and brings them on her adventure…Where Lee really shines, though, is in describing the people who have cooked, served and delivered America's favorite cuisine. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles isn't just about the popularization of Chinese food; it's also a story of Chinese immigrants in America.

Publishers Weekly

Readers will take an unexpected and entertaining journey-through culinary, social and cultural history-in this delightful first book on the origins of the customary after-Chinese-dinner treat by New York Timesreporter Lee. When a large number of Powerball winners in a 2005 drawing revealed that mass-printed paper fortunes were to blame, the author (whose middle initial is Chinese for "prosperity") went in search of the backstory. She tracked the winners down to Chinese restaurants all over America, and the paper slips the fortunes are written on back to a Brooklyn company. This travellike narrative serves as the spine of her cultural history-not a book on Chinese cuisine, but the Chinese food of take-out-and-delivery-and permits her to frequently but safely wander off into various tangents related to the cookie. There are satisfying minihistories on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food and a biography of the real General Tso, but Lee also pries open factoids and tidbits of American culture that eventually touch on large social and cultural subjects such as identity, immigration and nutrition. Copious research backs her many lively anecdotes, and being American-born Chinese yet willing to scrutinize herself as much as her objectives, she wins the reader over. Like the numbers on those lottery fortunes, the book's a winner. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

School Library Journal

Adult/High School- Lee takes readers on a delightful journey through the origins and mysteries of the popular, yet often overlooked, world of the American Chinese food industry. Crossing dozens of states and multiple countries, the author sought answers to the mysteries surrounding the shocking origins of the fortune cookie, the inventor of popular dishes such as chop suey and General Tso's chicken, and more. What she uncovers are the fascinating connections and historical details that give faces and names to the restaurants and products that have become part of a universal American experience. While searching for the "greatest Chinese restaurant," readers are taken on a culinary tour as Lee discovers the characteristics that define an exceptional and unique Chinese dining experience. Readers will learn about the cultural contributions and sacrifices made by the Chinese immigrants who comprise the labor force and infrastructure that supports Chinese restaurants all over the world. This title will appeal to teens who are interested in history, Chinese culture, and, of course, cuisine. Recommend it to sophisticated readers who revel in the details and history that help explain our current global culture, including fans of Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat (Farrar, 2006) and Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics (Morrow, 2006).-Lynn Rashid, Marriots Ridge High School, Marriotsville, MD

Kirkus Reviews

A quest. With eggrolls. Debut author Lee, a New York Times metro reporter, has been fascinated by the culturally mixed nature of Chinese restaurants ever since she discovered from reading The Joy Luck Club in middle school that fortune cookies are not Chinese. "It was like learning I was adopted while being told there was no Santa Claus," writes this ABC (American-born Chinese), who never thought to wonder why the food in those white takeout cartons tasted nothing like Mom's home cooking. But she didn't become really obsessed until March 30, 2005, when a surprisingly large batch of lottery-ticket buyers across the country scored some big money in a Powerball drawing with numbers they got from fortune cookies. Lee drew up a list of the restaurants that had served the Powerball winners and used that as a jumping-off point for a trip that covered 42 states and included stops at eateries ranging from no-frills chow mein joints to upscale dim sum parlors. As she explored this vast sector of the food-service world-there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than McDonald's, Burger Kings and KFCs combined-she learned about the science of soy sauce, the manufacture of takeout containers and the connection between Jewish culture and Chinese food. Lee's charming book combines the attitude and tone of two successful food industry-themed titles from 2007. Like Trevor Corson (The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket), she embeds her subject's history in an entertaining personal narrative, eschewing cookie-cutter interviews and dry lists of facts and figures. Like Phoebe Damrosch (Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter), she has a breezy,likable literary demeanor that makes the first-person material engaging. Thanks to Lee's journalistic chops, the text moves along energetically even in its more expository sections. Tasty morsels delivered quickly and reliably.

Table of Contents:

Prologue: March 30, 2005     1
American-Born Chinese     9
The Menu Wars     27
A Cookie Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma     38
The Biggest Culinary Joke Played by One Culture on Another     49
The Long March of General Tso     66
The Bean Sprout People Are in the Same Boat We Are     84
Why Chow Mein Is the Chosen Food of the Chosen People-or, The Kosher Duck Scandal of 1989     89
The Golden Venture: Restaurant Workers to Go     107
Take-out Takeaways     139
The Oldest Surviving Fortune Cookies in the World?     143
The Mystery of the Missing Chinese Deliveryman     151
The Soy Sauce Trade Dispute     165
Waizhou, U.S.A.     179
The Greatest Chinese Restaurant in the World     209
American Stir-fry     250
Tsujiura Senbei     260
Open-Source Chinese Restaurants     266
So What Did Confucius Really Say?     273
Acknowledgments     292
Notes     296
Bibliography     303

Book review: Global Insitutions and Development or Cost Estimating

Food in the Social Order: Studies of Food and Festivities in Three American Communities, Vol. 9

Author: Mary Douglas

This title is available as part of the 10-volume set, Mary Douglas: Collected Works, or as an individual volume.