Episode 509: Food Books

Episode 509: Books with Food logo

Welcome back to the show. We are so glad you are here, joining us for the book group discussion!

Each week we talk  about books and about different genres, and provide useful information for people who want to talk about books. There are so many books out there that it’s tough to be an expert on all of them. So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar genre! We want to help you find new books for yourself, and to be ready to share them with others.

This week we are chatting about food books! Food is always important, and can cover so many different aspects of life, so it’s a very full genre. If you like this, you should check out our episode 301 on Cookbooks. We are going to look at other areas of food this time, and that one was filled with all sorts of tasty books!

This week our returning Guest Host is Ariel Kirst, from Great River Regional Public Library. 

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have a beverage go ahead and get one now. Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself!

This week’s beverages have vegetables in them, and the recipes are from Food and Wine magazine’s website.

Carrot-Pear Shrub

With spicy ginger and fresh lime juice, this tonic is refreshing, energizing and healthy. 

Ingredients

  • 1 pound carrots, peeled and grated on the large holes of a box grater (3 cups packed)
  • 2 ripe Anjou pears—peeled, cored and chopped (2 cups)
  • 2 tablespoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger
  • 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Ice, for serving

How to Make It

In a blender, combine all of the ingredients except for the ice with 1/2 cup of water and puree until smooth. Strain the shrub through a sieve lined with 3 layers of cheesecloth, pressing on the solids. Serve in 2 glasses over ice.

The Radiant Glow

Leslie Needleman, co-owner of  The Gem in Dallas, came up with this recipe to help give her extra energy and vitamins during a round of chemotherapy.  

Ingredients

  • One 1-inch piece of fresh ginger (about 1/2 ounce)
  • 1 lemon (about 4 ounces)—peeled, pith removed and halved
  • 5 Tuscan kale leaves (about 4 ounces)
  • 1 Gala apple (about 8 ounces)—halved, cored and cut into wedges
  • 1 small red beet (about 8 ounces), scrubbed and cut into wedges
  • 1 large cucumber (about 12 ounces), cut into 3-inch pieces

How to Make It

In an electric juicer, juice all of the ingredients. Serve right away.

Electro Shot

This vitamin C–packed juice, flavored with fresh fennel and green apple, is an immunity booster.  

Ingredients

  • Ice
  • 1 large fennel bulb—trimmed, cored and quartered
  • 1 medium Granny Smith apple, quartered

How to Make It

Fill a large glass measuring cup with ice and place it underneath the spout of an electric juicer. Juice the fennel and apple over the ice. Strain the juice into four 2-ounce glasses and serve immediately.

Genre Discussion:

Food is such a huge topic, it’s almost impossible to really get your hands around this topic. We aren’t even going to try today! None of us are doctors or nutritionists, so we aren’t here to tell you about the best food – or even the best food books. Instead, we have some books to share with you about the ideas of food, food prep and the lives of chefs, how food mixes with culture, or how food and the environment interact. This is a fun genre, with so many possibilities to explore new ideas – and so many possibilities to find a great new food you might enjoy!

What makes food such a huge topic – other than being required to continue to live? The European Food Information Council talks about six factors that influence your food choices:

  • Biological determinants such as hunger, appetite, and taste
  • Economic determinants such as cost, income, availability
  • Physical determinants such as access, education, skills (e.g. cooking) and time
  • Social determinants such as culture, family, peers and meal patterns
  • Psychological determinants such as mood, stress and guilt
  • Attitudes, beliefs and knowledge about food

With all of that involved – none of that even touches of growing, producing, and sharing food – you can see how many books could be shared on this topic!

You can really dig down into the science of how food is grown, produced, slaughtered, shipped, and created. There are a lot of new food strategies happening, and if you want to learn about them, there are books available.

Or, you can read about different food types – for making food choices for yourself and your family. How different foods affect different people is fascinating, and definitely not a one-size-fits-all process of experimentation and learning.

Or, you can read about political and social aspects of food and food production. From the farm-to-table movement, and the value of locally grown food, to the privilege of food designed by science to be grown and harvested in huge quantities that has helped the world’s population decrease death by starvation, to the use of chemicals in the food chain, to the care and killing of the animals involved in food – there are many things to consider. And there are many books to explore here.

Or, you can read biographies of chefs and other people involved in the production and creation of food. Learning about the lives and motivations of people who help to bring food to us can be very interesting, and there are a lot of great books about chefs in specific.

You can read about different diets. You can read about home gardening. You can read about large-scale farming. You can read about genetics You can read about cooking.

And one of the great values of enjoying food is to learn about different cultures – both the culture of an individual family and the culture of a larger group. The choices people make about what they eat and what they like can be so personal, that sharing someone’s special food can really give you a better understanding of them.

Suggested Reading Resources:

Book Discussion

Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!

You can click on any of these links to go to Amazon.com for more information about the books we shared this week. If you buy anything while you are there, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits from your purchase. Thanks in advance for helping to support the mission of CMLE – we appreciate it!

Conclusion

Thanks to Ariel, for sharing this discussion with us!

Thanks so much to you for joining us this week for the book group! It’s always better when you are here with us. Join us on Patreon, to get some behind-the scenes secrets after every episode. Official Office Dog Lady Grey appreciates your support. (She’s paid in treats, and a portion of your support goes directly to rewarding her for being such a good doggo!).

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Join us next week for more genre discussions!

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