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How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food Lowest Price!

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food Lowest Price!

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List Price: $35.00

Amazon Price: $21.70

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How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food Description:

The ultimate one-stop vegetarian cookbook-from the author of the classic How to Cook Everything

Hailed as “a more hip Joy of Cooking” by the Washington Post, Mark Bittman’s award-winning book How to Cook Everything has become the bible for a new generation of home cooks, and the series has more than 1 million copies in print. Now, with How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian, Bittman has written the definitive guide to meatless meals-a book that will appeal to everyone who wants to cook simple but delicious meatless dishes, from health-conscious omnivores to passionate vegetarians.

How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian includes more than 2,000 recipes and variations-far more than any other vegetarian cookbook. As always, Bittman’s recipes are refreshingly straightforward, resolutely unfussy, and unfailingly delicious-producing dishes that home cooks can prepare with ease and serve with confidence. The book covers the whole spectrum of meatless cooking-including salads, soups, eggs and dairy, vegetables and fruit, pasta, grains, legumes, tofu and other meat substitutes, breads, condiments, desserts, and beverages. Special icons identify recipes that can be made in 30 minutes or less and in advance, as well as those that are vegan. Illustrated throughout with handsome line illustrations and brimming with Bittman’s lucid, opinionated advice on everything from selecting vegetables to preparing pad Thai, How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian truly makes meatless cooking more accessible than ever.

Praise for How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

“Mark Bittman’s category lock on definitive, massive food tomes continues with this well-thought-out ode to the garden and beyond. Combining deep research, tasty information, and delicious easy-to-cook recipes is Mark’s forte and everything I want to cook is in here, from chickpea fries to cheese soufflés.”
—Mario Batali, chef, author, and entrepreneur

“How do you make an avid meat eater (like me) fall in love with vegetarian cooking? Make Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian part of your culinary library.”
—Bobby Flay, chef/owner of Mesa Grill and Bar Americain and author of the Mesa Grill Cookbook

“Recipes that taste this good aren’t supposed to be so healthy. Mark Bittman makes being a vegetarian fun.”
—Dr. Mehmet Oz, Professor of Surgery, New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center and coauthor of You: The Owner’s Manual

Amazon Sales Rank: #436 in Books
Published on: 2007-10-15
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
1008 pages

Customer Reviews:

This is the one I’ve been looking for!
Let me start by saying I’m a busy working mom of two. I grew up eating Hamburger Helper and hot dogs, so I didn’t learn to cook until I was an adult. My dad’s had triple bypass and my mom’s having gastric bypass, so we’re trying to learn from their mistakes and eat not entirely vegetarian, but definitely a more plant-based diet. I’m sure all this sounds familiar to a lot of people!

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is exactly the cookbook I’ve been trying to find for a long time. It has the simple, everyday recipes that I sometimes need, combined with a LOT of wonderful vegetarian dishes from ordinary supermarket ingredients. How about Peanut Soup, Senegalese Style? Or Korean-Style Noodles in Cool Bean Broth (in less than 20 minutes for when the kids are whining for dinner) Mustard Cheese Fondue?

This book is written in Bittman’s typical `theme and variations’ style, with a basic recipe (like for waffles) and then a sidebar or list following the recipe that gives variations (like a list of things you can add to waffles for flavoring). The great thing about this is that it means you rarely have to reject a recipe because you don’t have the exact ingredients, just go with a variant. The only quibble I have with it is, it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of what you are supposed to sub out & sub back in when you have a crying toddler on your ankle.

A basic cookbook should also walk you through basic techniques and ingredients. I was a little surprised to see the vegetables chapter was nearly 200 pages. Then I looked through it and realized a lot of that is guidance on how to select and prep the various vegetables. It’s also helpful that he includes substitution suggestions – I may be out of broccoli, but if I can make the same recipe with green beans, then I can forgo the trip to the store one more day.

Another nice thing about this cookbook is, unlike most vegetarian cookbooks I have seen, it doesn’t rely heavily on unusual ingredients or meat substitutes. It seems like there has to be a happy medium between burgers & fries on one hand and stuff you’ve never seen before. Surely we can make a healthy diet based on basic veggies, fruit, grains, and legumes, and that’s JUST what this book focuses on.

But it doesn’t matter how great the book is if the recipes aren’t good! So I tried a few. The Spicy Autumn Veggie Burgers (we made less spicy for the kids) were terrific with a dollop of peach chutney, although the kids preferred ketchup. I was pleased at how quickly they came together too. The Glazed Carrot Soup the kids ate without any complaint at all. And oh my the Apple “Fries”!!!!

Because I’m sure people are wondering – yes, he has another cookbook called How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian that came out several years ago. This is NOT just a remake of that slim volume. This is a completely new book. (Why his publishers wanted to do two books with titles the same except for a colon I’ll never know.) There’s no exact overlap with How to Cook Everything, that I saw – even for recipes like Waldorf Salad, that are essentially the same in both books, there is some slight variation and different text that shows that this was re-written, not just a cut-and-paste job.

In short, I’m very happy with it. I’ve cooked out of it every day since I got it and I’m sure this will be one of my `go-to’ cookbooks for years to come.

It’s o.k., but the same problem I always have with Bittman
I’m a vegetarian of 15 years (with a meat-eating but open minded fiance) and an avid home cook. I got this book for Christmas and have slowly been exploring it. It’s an interesting book and there are a lot of recipes that I’m tempted by, but it’s the same problem I have with “How to cook everything”: something is always wrong with the recipe. For example, his kosher pickles: the first time I tried making them with his measurements, the pickles were inedibly salty (and I love salt!) I’m now working with about a third less salt than he recommends and it’s getting better. And that’s what I always find with his recipes: they give you a promising start but require some major tinkering before they are really good, and I don’t usually feel up to committing to that sort of trial and error. I am a passionate fan of Debbie Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.” As an example of the difference, this week I had a dinner party and I made her cauliflower salad with green olives and capers even though I’d never tried it before, and it was a hit. Having used her book so much, I trust her recipes to be at least decent right out of the gate. I would never serve a Bittman recipe that I hadn’t made before to guests because there are pretty good odds that the initial recipe needs some changes.
That being said, I’m certainly not sorry that I have this book. It has a good section on condiments that I’m sure I’ll make use of fairly often, and it’s a good cookbook to have on hand if you’re tinkering in the kitchen and want some perspective on your technique. It’s really more of a reference book than an book of recipes, and in that it is useful. But if you want ideas for delicious, satisfying vegetarian food, get “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.”

Excellent General Cookbook for Liberal Vegetarian. Buy It!
`How to Cook Everything Vegetarian’ by New York Times culinary columnist, Mark Bittman, is an important entry into the best vegetarian cookbook sweepstakes. Please be clear that this green covered book is far larger and far better than the yellow covered subset of his earlier best-selling `How to Cook Everything’.
Since I gave that yellow subset a bad review, a kind commentator pointed out that what is a person to do if they are vegetarian, and don’t need to know how to make veal parmesan, meatballs, or fried chicken! This volume clearly answers that question.
The competition for this book is Deborah Madison’s classic `Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone’. An encyclopedic companion to both would be Crescent Dragonwagon’s `Passionate Vegetarian’. If space and finances permit, I would suggest you own all three volumes.
The difference between Bittman and Madison may lie primarily in the fact that the former is a culinary journalist and the latter began her career as a professional chef. So, Bittman has a better eye for communicating to a larger audience while Madison is better on some of the basic truths of cooking. Her discussion of soups and stocks is especially brilliant.
Bittman addresses the largest possible `vegetarian’ audience, which includes the most liberal, who consume eggs and milk products. But he is quite effective in identifying for the vegans among you which recipes are free of all animal products, both in icons accompanying each recipe and in a master list of recipes at the back of the book. Eggs are so prominent that the index contains a full page, that’s four columns of small print, of entries under egg related recipes. Under cheese recipes, there are two pages, eight columns of fine print of recipes. Bittman explains this in the section on vegetarian substitutions when he gives easy replacements for butter, milk, and cream, but says that virtually nothing can replace eggs and most cheeses in traditional recipes. I am puzzled and grateful that Bittman does not suggest using synthetic lecithin in the place of eggs in recipes. Lecithin does not even appear in the index of this book. This substitutions section also has some really great suggestions for omnivores in the realm of less saturated replacements for butter and flavored butters.
This is a full service cookbook. I am especially impressed by the fact that he starts out in the same way as James Peterson in his recent textbook, `Cooking’. Both begin with a description of `The Ten Essential Cooking Techniques’. Being a teaching book, Peterson’s sections on each method are longer, running to three large pages compared to Bittman’s two to three paragraphs. But, if you are vegetarian, Bittman’s book is still more useful, as much of Peterson’s space is dedicated to cooking animal protein. Another interesting contrast to Peterson is that while the teacher uses series of photographs to illustrate techniques, Bittman uses black ink drawings. And, amazingly enough, the latter is generally the more successful technique, as nothing is out of focus and there are never any obscuring shadows, and only the essentials of the technique are depicted.
A common technique in many of Bittman’s recipes is to amend each recipe with several variations, as when he suggests five fillings for sweet crepes and six fillings for savory crepes. Hard on this section is ‘10 Other Ideas for Pancakes’ and seven `Pancake Variations’. Bittman also spends much time on teaching us the range of ingredient types, and general ways to handle each type. For example, we get `A Lexicon of Salad Greens’. This material is even more important for the vegetarian, as they need to seek the greatest possible variety of tastes and colors in the vegetable world. A vegetarian salad repertoire which knew nothing beyond iceberg lettuce would be dull indeed. Bittman does better in this area than the salad queen, Alice Waters, in her excellent `The Art of Simple Cooking’.
Bittman’s mastery of communication is best represented by his many cross-indexing of recipe types, as he does in a sidebar of lettuce cups and wraps, giving the names and page numbers of fourteen recipes scattered throughout the book which use this technique. The centerpiece of this cross-indexing is the `Recipes by Icon’ in the back of the book which tick off those which are `Fast’, `Make Ahead’, and `Vegan’. A similar feature is the list of forty menus for Breakfasts, Brunches, Lunches, Dinners, and Holiday Dinners. For his vegetarian audience, this is far more useful than for omnivores, who have a far greater choice of protein types.
Every trend in the book is magnified in the excellent chapter on pasta, noodles, and dumplings. Every sidebar seemed to offer not ten, but up to 50 variations on all sorts of stuff. I was momentarily disappointed to find no recipe for making fresh pasta in the first 10 pages of the chapter, but there it was, of page 474 and the following 21 pages. Everything you would need to make fresh pasta, gnocchi, dumplings. It even included the German specialty, Spaetzle, bless his heart. While all the standards are well-represented, some peripheral ingredients such as rhubarb and celeriac get good representation in uncommon recipes. I was especially pleased to find four excellent recipes for my favorite Brussels Sprouts. Even chestnuts get a dozen entries in the index. Madison has nothing on chestnuts!
Bittman’s `How to Cook Everything’ is always my first stop whenever I want to try a classic dish unfamiliar to me, and I have been invariably pleased with the clarity and results of his recipes. This book continues this trend. Every recipe I read is clear, unfussy, and easy to follow. If you are a vegetarian who permits milk and eggs, this book is a must. If you are a tad stricter, Deborah Madison’s classic may be more useful for the money.

Amazon.com Review
Author of a dozen bestselling cookbooks and beloved columnist for The New York Times (”The Minimalist”), Chef Mark Bittman bookends his award-winning modern classic, How to Cook Everything, with How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian the ultimate one-stop resource for meatless meals. Refreshingly straightforward and filled with illustrated recipes, this is a book that puts vegetarian cuisine within the reach of every home cook. You’ll want to spend countless days in the kitchen with Bittman’s latest culinary treasure.

Recipe Excerpts from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

• Spinach with Chiles
• Chickpea Fries (Panelle)
• Braised Tofu with Eggplant and Shiitakes
• Amazon-Exclusive Crunchy Corn Guacamole

5 Questions for Mark Bittman

Q. What motivated you to write a comprehensive cookbook of vegetarian recipes right now?

A: What motivated me–several years ago–was seeing the handwriting on the wall: That although being a principled, all-or-nothing vegetarian was not a course of action that would ever likely inspire the majority of Americans, the days of all-meat-all-the-time (or, to be slightly less extreme, of a diet heavily dependent on meat) could not go on. Averaging a consumption of two pounds a week or more of meat (as Americans do) is not sustainable, either for the earth or our planet. And, as more and more of us realize this, I thought it was important to develop a cookbook along the lines of How to Cook Everything, but without meat, fish, or poultry. Needless to say, there’s plenty of material.

Q: In the course of writing How to Cook Everything Vegetarian did your approach to food shopping, cooking or dining change significantly?

A: Completely. The more I tried new ways of cooking with vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, the more I enjoyed them. I probably eat sixty or seventy percent fewer animal products than I did three years ago.

Q: Because meatless cooking isn’t limited to a single cuisine, your recipes introduce the flavors and techniques of many different cultures and cuisines. How did you manage to cover so much ground? Seems like a daunting task.

A: It’s what I do.

Q: Out of the more than 2,000 recipes in the cookbook do you have a favorite dish or dessert that you turn to again and again?

A: No. There are hundreds I wish I could cook all the time, but one can only cook and eat so much. But in the last week, for example, I’ve made Fava Bean and Mint Salad with Asparagus; Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes; Cornbread Salad; and Red Lentils with Chaat Masala.

Q: Why is simplicity so important in cooking? What does the novice home cook need to know to cook and eat well?

A: Simplicity is only important because it’s the way to learn to cook; it’s very difficult to start cooking with complex dishes. For people to learn to cook, they must start simply–the way everyone used to cook. And, for most of us–including me–there’s no reason to carry things much further. Even the simplest cooking is rewarding, enjoyable, and–obviously–the healthiest and best way to eat.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Marking how mainstream vegetarian cooking has become, the next must-have for the vegetarian cook’s shelf comes from New York Times Minimalist chef Bittman, an avowed meat eater. And that ensures one of this massive compendium’s many attractions: a wealth of recipes that don’t scream vegetarian and plentiful guidelines to make cooking vegetarian as intuitive as cooking with meat. Like his now classic How to Cook Everything, this book opens with terrifically useful, straightforward discussions of essential ingredients, appliances and techniques, which Bittman builds on throughout in to-the-point sidebars and illustrated boxes. The recipes flow thick and fast in his theme-and-variations style: Green Tea with Udon Noodles is followed by concise instructions for making it 17 different ways, while Coconut Rice gets five additional takes and Kidney Beans with Apples and Sherry four; other lists (six Great Spreads for Bruschetta or Crostini, 10 Garnishes for Pozole with Mole) abound and inspire. New vegetarians and vegetarians cooking for omnivores will appreciate Bittman’s avoidance of faux meat products in favor of flavorful high-protein dishes like Braised Tofu in Caramel Sauce and Bechamel Burgers with Nuts. Even owners of the original book will find much new to savor while benefiting from Bittman’s remarkable ability to teach foundational skills and encourage innovation with them, which will help even longtime vegetarians freshen their repertory. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Today a good general vegetarian cookbook ought to be de rigueur in any kitchen…. Mr. Bittman works hard to concentrate on accessible, nonesoteric cooking while introducing a big though nonprogrammatic range of international possibilities”. (Online New York Times Book Review, December 12, 2007)

Marking how mainstream vegetarian cooking has become, the next must-have for the vegetarian cook’s shelf comes from New York Times “Minimalist” chef Bittman, an avowed meat eater. And that ensures one of this massive compendium’s many attractions: a wealth of recipes that don’t scream “vegetarian” and plentiful guidelines to make cooking vegetarian as intuitive as cooking with meat. Like his now classic How to Cook Everything, this book opens with terrifically useful, straightforward discussions of essential ingredients, appliances and techniques, which Bittman builds on throughout in to-the-point sidebars and illustrated boxes. The recipes flow thick and fast in his theme-and-variations style: Green Tea with Udon Noodles is followed by concise instructions for making it 17 different ways, while Coconut Rice gets five additional takes and Kidney Beans with Apples and Sherry four; other lists (six Great Spreads for Bruschetta or Crostini, 10 Garnishes for Pozole with Mole) abound and inspire. New vegetarians and vegetarians cooking for omnivores will appreciate Bittman’s avoidance of faux meat products in favor of flavorful high-protein dishes like Braised Tofu in Caramel Sauce and Bechamel Burgers with Nuts. Even owners of the original book will find much new to savor while benefiting from Bittman’s remarkable ability to teach foundational skills and encourage innovation with them, which will help even longtime vegetarians freshen their repertory. (Oct.)(Publishers Weekly, June 18, 2007)

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Buy Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps At Amazon!

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Buy Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps At Amazon!

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Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps Description:

“What I want to say to you is that sometimes life catches you by surprise and you feel unequipped to handle what it brings you, but every bit of life you’ve lived before that moment equips you to live through it. That’s what I would give to you.” -Fanni Victoria Green-Lemons, in conversation with her daughter, Danyealah Green-Lemons

In Mom, Dave Isay-StoryCorps’s founder and the editor of the project’s bestselling collection, Listening Is an Act of Love-presents a celebration of American mothers. Featuring StoryCorps’s most revelatory stories on the subject, Mom looks across a diversity of experience to present an entirely original portrait of motherhood.

Through conversations between parents and children, husbands and wives, siblings and friends, the life of the American mother unfolds. In stories that take us from the woods of New Hampshire to urban Detroit and beyond, we meet mothers and children from all walks of life-an immigrant mother instilling in her children the importance of education, adult children caring for an elderly parent, a woman remembering the sound of her mother’s laugh, and mothers and children of all ages learning to grow into new roles over time. Visiting families in moments of profound joy and sadness, courage and despair, struggle and triumph, we learn new truths about that most primal and sacred of bonds-the relationship between mother and child.

With this vital contribution to the American storybook, StoryCorps has created a tribute to mothers that honors the wealth of our national experience. An appreciation of the wisdom and generosity passed between mothers and children, this generation to the next, Mom offers powerful lessons in the meaning of family and the expansiveness of the human heart.

Amazon Sales Rank: #75 in Books
Published on: 2010-04-15
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
208 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9781594202612
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Customer Reviews:

We love our moms…
StoryCorps is a fabulous notion. Ordinary people interview other ordinary people. Over the past seven years thousands of us have told our stories for the StoryCorps project. Every interview is recorded for posterity. One copy goes to the participants. The other copy will be preserved as part of our oral history. David Isay, the founder of StoryCorps had a brilliant notion and it just keeps growing.

We all have stories to tell. This latest collection comes out just in time for Mother’s Day. These are excerpts from interviews about mothers. These stories about moms will touch your heart. Some are told by moms. Some are told by spouses, others by children. Every story is unique.

As Isay closes this collection he talks about the time he interviewed his own mother. Going into it he assumed he knew all about her, that there would not be any new revelations. Boy, was he wrong. Something about the StoryCorps Project brings out the best in participants. They remember. They reflect. They give honor. They show their grit in the face of life’s obstacles. These stories are magical. Isay’s mom told stories that blew him away. He was amazed.

Prepare to be delighted and amazed by this fabulous, tender collection of stories about MOM. You gotta love it~ya gotta love your mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

From Publishers Weekly
In time for Mother’s Day, Isay brings a satisfying second collection of StoryCorps selections after the bestselling Listening Is an Act of Love. Throughout 30,000 recorded interviews by everyday Americans are numerous memories of parents, and among the many mothers who share their stories in this collection are mothers of every variety—single, working, stay-at-home, with one child or a dozen. A couple describe an unexpected camaraderie between their mothers: one American, the other Ethiopian: My mom would speak in English, and your mom would speak in Amharic, and then they’d laugh and throw their hands up. A mother of 12 tells her youngest, age 12, about her oldest, a soldier killed in Iraq. Reunited at age 60 with the son she reluctantly gave away, Hilory Boucher tells him what happened as she rode away from a Boston home for unwed mothers: You were handed off to a social worker at a stop on the Merritt Parkway, with your pink bunny and your layette. Readers will encounter an emotional range from heart-wrenching to inspirational in these compelling maternal accounts. Photos. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including five Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. He is the author/editor of four books that grew out of his public radio documentary work, including the first StoryCorps book, Listening Is an Act of Love, a New York Times bestseller.

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How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times Lowest Price!

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

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Compare Prices on How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

The definitive guide on how to prepare for any crisis–from global financial collapse to a pandemic

It would only take one unthinkable event to disrupt our way of life. If there is a terrorist attack, a global pandemic, or sharp currency devaluation–you may be forced to fend for yourself in ways you’ve never imagined. Where would you get water? How would you communicate with relatives who live in other states? What would you use for fuel?

Survivalist expert James Wesley, Rawles, author of Patriots and editor of SurvivalBlog.com, shares the essential tools and skills you will need for you family to survive, including:

Water: Filtration, transport, storage, and treatment options.
Food Storage: How much to store, pack-it-yourself methods, storage space and rotation, countering vermin.
Fuel and Home Power: Home heating fuels, fuel storage safety, backup generators.
Garden, Orchard Trees, and Small Livestock: Gardening basics, non-hybrid seeds, greenhouses; choosing the right livestock.
Medical Supplies and Training: Building a first aid kit, minor surgery, chronic health issues.
Communications: Following international news, staying in touch with loved ones.
Home Security: Your panic room, self-defense training and tools.
When to Get Outta Dodge: Vehicle selection, kit packing lists, routes and planning.
Investing and Barter: Tangibles investing, building your barter stockpile. And much more.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It is a must-have for every well-prepared family.

Amazon Sales Rank: #312 in Books
Published on: 2009-09-30
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
336 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9780452295834
Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
Notes:

Overall it’s pretty OK
I have followed Rawles blog and his writings. This book is pretty OK, and here is why. The book does provoke a lot of thought, but.. Here is where it misses. The situation that Rawles describes, he has not lived through. I still have a rather normal life I have to live and for most of us, ditching it all and moving to the mountains is not a feasible option. He often cites needing a years worth of anything on hand, but what happens after that year? Do you really want to live in a place of constant death and destruction. He lists a lot of doomsday scenarios by where the ones who survive will not be the lucky ones.

I think the much more likely future is similar to what happened in Argentina or what has been slowly happening in South Africa.

So while next spring I will be tilling up a good part of yard for a garden, harvesting rain water, and buying and stocking in bulk. I will not be buying a GOOD location or a buying an old diesel junker truck to get there.

There is a lot you can learn from this book, but don’t make it your sole reference. Where you live determines your survival strategy, there is no one size fits all approach.

Not bad, but misses the boat
Rawles is a great non-fiction writer, and this is a well written book. However, it has some major faults:

- The book is for hard core survivalists only. It assumes complete and absolute break down of civilization. It does not deal with “simpler” short-term emergencies (tornado, fire, flood) that you can ride out living in your normal urban or suburban environment. The book is practically all about establishing a well-stocked remote rural retreat, which you defend tooth-and-nail against looters and invaders, while keeping the curtains down not to let them see your window lights.

- Rawles preaches to the choir, not to the uninitiated. If you are not familiar with the survivalist vernacular and have not read similar books / blogs, you will find this book a little jarring and over your head. In fact, Rawles often cross-references his fiction novel Patriots as supplementary guide. Speaking of preaching to the choir: all these five stars reviews which are highly rated as helpful – feel free to ignore the ones written before October 2. Given that this book started shipping on the last day of September and is not available for Kindle, there is simply no way people could have received and read the book before Friday October 2. Rawles is known for encouraging his blog readers to all buy the book on the same day to create a “bestseller” effect on Amazon, and this carries over to the reviews. So beware.

- Book is way too tiny and short for much useful learning. In fact, each chapter is basically a thoughtful intro followed by a list of items to get, with some quick facts (e.g. how long honey or wheat can be stored, where to buy the containers, etc). There is barely any attempt to teach survival attitude and skills – those are farmed out to other books or training courses. To the author’s credit, he has plenty of great pointers to other books and courses. However, you are much better off going there in the first place.

- Rawles has a misanthropic, dog-eat-dog sense to his writing, both in this book and in Patriots. It is too much about hunkering down in your darkened bunker, eating MREs, and using plenty of ammo to keep the less fortunate souls away. While it is possible that a major event could end civilization as we know it, I do wish Rawles had a more positive tone and attitude, at least when trying to covert newcomers to his cause

There is one really big issue with hard core survivalism in general. If a truly massive global or nationwide disaster comes to pass, the likelihood of surviving it is low, no matter how well you prepare. Surviving a nuclear war or a mass epidemic is unlikely, and more about random chance than preparation. The survivors are bound to come together in sizable groups for strength and protection. If a well armed gang or ex-military unit converges on one of the Rawles-style rural retreats, game is over. So at the end of the day, at least to me, hard-core survivalism comes across as a militaristic make-believe game, mostly indulged by paranoid guys. Last but not least, unlike “soft-core” temporary disaster survival, what Rawles recommends is expensive and requires major lifestyle changes, which limits its appeal tremendously.

So, what’s good about this book? The chapters on food storage and vehicles stand out. Also, if you are looking for a primer on surviving a major end-of-civilization disaster, this is a great starting point. To the author’s credit, his survival blog has more readers than most daily newspapers, so he knows his stuff, whether you agree with him or not.

A reference for further learning.
This book doesn’t cover every detail of every disaster, of course. No one book could. What it has is easily referenced, concise summaries of particular events–hurricanes, earthquakes, brush fires, economic collapses, grid failures–and summaries of preparations one can make. Then, those preparations are roughly described.

All this gives a person or family a handy guidebook to create a disaster plan from.

Obviously, not all disasters have equal probability, nor are relevant to all locations–brush fires and hurricanes don’t affect me in the Midwest. Tornadoes, flash floods and blizzards do, as might a New Madrid earthquake. Long term societal problems aren’t currently a problem in the US, but are in quite a few other western nations, such as Argentina and sometimes Chile. There’s even advice on a checklist to prioritize exactly those issues.

As usual, a lot of the negative reviews revolve around a provincial “it can’t happen here” mindset. A given disaster might not be likely in your current location at your current time, but places, people and societies change. Preparing ahead costs little, and can save your life. If you never need it, think of it as insurance.

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FAT TO SKINNY Fast and Easy!: Eat Great, Lose Weight, and Lower Blood Sugar Without Exercise Discount.

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

FAT TO SKINNY Fast and Easy!: Eat Great, Lose Weight, and Lower Blood Sugar Without Exercise

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Doug Varrieur lost more than 100 pounds…and kept it off, by identifying and eliminating the enemy: Sugar! Now he reveals his proven plan for going from fat to skinny—easily, effortlessly, and quickly.

Varrieur explains why sugar is lethal to both our waist and our health, the different types of sugars found in foods; and the various sources of sugar that we unwittingly take into our bodies. Anyone who thinks desserts are the sole culprits will be surprised when Varrieur reveals the sugar content of some typical meals.

Most important, dieters will learn how to wean themselves off sugar and carbs and “eat themselves skinny” with recipes for flavorful dishes such as Chicken Cacciatore with Spaghetti Squash, Baked Shrimp with Crabmeat Stuffing, Roast Cajun Pork Loin with Creamed Spinach Alfredo with Mushrooms, Strawberry Shortcakes, Crêpes, and more!

The book is so simply written and easy to understand, anyone can follow Varrieur’s formula for success—and become the next “biggest loser.”

Amazon Sales Rank: #1463 in Books
Published on: 2010-01-05
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
192 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9781402771330
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Fat to Skinny! The best I’ve tried!
I’ve tried many different diets, but never stuck to them. I was already attracted when I saw people I know use this diet and lose the weight, but when I received my book and read through it, I knew this was one diet I could do. Doug not only explains how, but why. He gives you delicious and simple meals that are filling and help keep those nasty hunger pains at bay. He shows you in simple terms why what we normally eat and consider good for us, isn’t, if we want to lose weight.

I love the book and look forward to continued success in my own goal of losing weight.

A FAMILY DOCTORS VIEW
I am proud to be able to contribute in a small way to Doug’s efforts to enlighten people as to the true cause of weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high-cholesterol and that thing called “metabolic syndrome”. You should have been a doctor. In many ways what you’re doing now will make a bigger impact on the country’s health than anything a doctor could dream of accomplishing. I am so so pleased to have found a book that coincides with everything I have been telling my patients for years. Now I can talk briefly with patients and hand them a book knowing that what is put forth in the text is everything I believe and transcends the stalled stale conversation of low carbs and exercise. This is a seminal work that awakens us to what is all around us but yet invisible. Like water to a fish we have been unable to see what has been in front of us all the time. Water? What water I don’t see any water! Sugar? What sugar? I don’t see any sugar! Unfortunately our bodies do see all the sugar and respond with obesity and “metabolic syndrome”. This book is a must read for anyone interested in taking their health to the next level. Sincerely Dr. Paul Cump, D.O. Family Medicine

Doug Varrieur Is 100% Correct About The Catastrophic Consequences Of Carbs
How can you NOT love an outstanding weight loss success story like Doug Varrieur? As a former 260-pounder who was tired of living his life as a fat guy, he took action to change his life forever and shed an incredible 100 pounds off of his body by implementing some key strategies into his routine. And for those of us who are livin’ la vida low-carb and lovin’ it, this story will bring a great big smile to your face.

Half-autobiographical/half-children’s book-style, Varrieur definitely wanted to capture your attention while hopefully imparting to you everything he has learned about weight control and health over the past few years with the book. It’s quite entertaining with all the cute illustrations that hammer home the various points and the strategic use of an all-caps “FAT” anytime that word is used in the book. You can tell Varrieur has quite a creative mind for communicating his message and he does so very well throughout.

Varrieur says foods like corn, sugar, vegetables, grains, and other carbohydrate-filled foods are doing nothing more than than leading to stored body FAT. Again, he uses all-caps when sharing about SUGAR because he wants people to realize eating foods that contain it or turn to it in the body will make them FAT. On page 22 alone he capitalizes SUGAR sixteen times. I guess you could say he believes it’s a point worth repeating (and I tee-totally agree with him!).

The concept of measuring food in terms of “teaspoons of sugar” is not a new one, but it is not talked about nearly enough. Varrieur does so brilliantly yet again by looking at the SUGAR contained in French fries, soda, the bun, and a pie from a fast food restaurant. The way the numbers add up so quickly are shocking…and it’s a message people need to hear loud and clear. Obviously, if people can cut down on these “teaspoons of sugar” in their diet, then they’ll be a lot better off in their efforts to losing weight “fast and easy.”

Half of the book is filled with recipes that Varrieur himself uses on his low-carb plan as well as some key low-carb foods and substitutions in his diet that have helped him keep his “skinny” body. Eating low-carb has obviously worked for him not just for weight loss but radically improved health markers too. His triglycerides plummeted from 400 down to 70, but I was somewhat concerned to see Varrieur concerned about his cholesterol levels so much that he feels the need to take a statin drug like Lipitor to lower them.

A high-fat, low-carb nutritional approach has been shown to lower triglyceride levels well below 100, raise HDL “good” cholesterol above 50, and make your LDL cholesterol the large, fluffy, and protective kind that you don’t need to be concerned with. Sadly, Varrieur has bought into the notion shared to him by his doctor that he needs to take these risky prescription drugs with his low-carb diet to make his heart arteries “healthy.” Additionally, he cuts down on healthy saturated fats, meat and egg consumption, and opts for low-fat cheeses, fish and soy for protein instead.

It is such a shame that Doug Varrieur and so many others like him have it right about the carbohydrates being at the root cause of obesity and health that far too many people are dealing with these days, but then are still caught up in conventional wisdom regarding the unproven and disastrous cholesterol-heart hypothesis that Ancel Keys unleashed on America so many decades ago. While I’m happy for his 100-pound weight loss success, I hope Varrieur will continue to do his own personal research on what will keep his heart and health strong for many years to come.

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The Search Discount.

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

The Search

Product: The Search Discount.

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The #1 New York Times-bestselling author presents a riveting novel where a canine search and rescue volunteer fights danger and finds love in the Pacific Northwest wilderness.

To most people, Fiona Bristow seems to have an idyllic life-a quaint house on an island off Seattle’s coast, a thriving dog-training school, and a challenging volunteer job performing canine search and rescues. Not to mention her three intensely loyal Labs. But Fiona got to this point by surviving a nightmare…

Several years ago, Fiona was the only survivor of the Red Scarf serial killer, who shot and killed Fiona’s cop fiancé and his K-9 partner.

On Orcas Island, Fiona found the peace and solitude she needed to rebuild her life. But all that changes on the day Simon Doyle barrels up her drive, desperate for her help. He’s the reluctant owner of an out-of-control puppy, foisted upon him by his mother. Jaws has eaten through Simon’s house, and he’s at his wit’s end.

To Fiona, Jaws is nothing she can’t handle. Simon, however, is another matter. A newcomer to Orcas, he’s a rugged and in-tensely private artist, known for the exquisite furniture he creates from wood. Simon never wanted a puppy-and he most definitely doesn’t want a woman. Besides, the lanky redhead is not his type. But tell that to his hormones.

As Fiona embarks on training Jaws, and Simon begins to appreciate both dog and trainer, the past tears back into Fiona’s life. A copycat killer has emerged out of the shadows, a man whose bloodlust has been channeled by a master with one motive: to reclaim the woman who slipped out of his hands…

Amazon Sales Rank: #338 in Books
Published on: 2010-07-06
Released on: 2010-07-06
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
496 pages

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The Last Child Sale-$10.19!

Monday, July 26th, 2010

The Last Child

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John Hart’s New York Times bestselling debut, The King of Lies, announced the arrival of a major talent. With Down River, he surpassed his earlier success, transcending the barrier between thriller and literature and winning the 2008 Edgar Award for best novel. Now, with The Last Child, he achieves his most significant work to date, an intricate, powerful story of loss, hope, and courage in the face of evil.

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he’d been taught since birth to trust. No one else believes that Alyssa is still alive, but Johnny is certain that she is—confident in a way that he can never fully explain.

Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.

Then a second child goes missing . . .

Undeterred by Hunt’s threats or his mother’s pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.

Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.

Amazon Sales Rank: #516 in Books
Published on: 2010-03-09
Released on: 2010-03-09
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
432 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9780312642365
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Dark and moody with a good dose of disturbing
I dare you to read the prologue of this book without getting totally pulled in to the story. My heart was pounding by page 2, and I think my boss might want to have a talk with Mr. Hart because I went in to work a couple of mornings on very little sleep because I couldn’t put this book down until I got to the last word.

Johnny Merrimon was once a happy child. He and his twin sister, Alyssa, lived with their beautiful, vibrant mother and strong, caring father. Then Alyssa goes missing. She’s seen being pulled into a mysterious van, and a year later, Johnny’s life is completely different. His mother is bullied into passivity by a rich, abusive man who keeps her strung out on drugs and treats her like a possession. Johnny knows in his heart that he can find his sister, bring his father home, and save his mother, and for months he plays a dangerous game of spying on local child predators, convinced that at least one of them knows what happened to his sister. Detective Hunt is the haunted cop who cannot break out of his obsession with Alyssa’s case – and the beautiful mother – to save his own family from falling apart. Jack is the wounded best friend who idolizes Johnny and tries to mask his own pain with the alcohol he steals from his cop father.

Hart could have taken the easy way out and turned this into a suspenseful but heartwarming story of mystery and redemption. Instead, he creates complex, rich characters and places them in terrifying, soul searching situations. Johnny is a child living with nightmares, and he reaches into ancient mysticism, searching for strength and clues to help him heal his family. He’s seen too much of the harsh reality of life for someone his age, and this dark desperation colors all the events in this book.

I was, simply put, blown away by this book. It is well written, intelligent, and impossible to forget. A week after finishing it, I’m still thinking about it. Hart is now on my must-read list, and I look forward to reading his next novel.

Thirteen-Year Old Towers Over Tragedy
John Hart’s “The Last Child” is a gripping story of Johnny Merrimon, a thirteen-year old who lost his twin sister to an abduction. The year before, his best friend, Jack Cross, saw Johnny’s sister Alyssa taken into van. When the tragedy happened, what used to be the happy Merrimon family started to crumble. His mother Katherine blamed her husband for not picking their daughter up. The accusation drove Spencer Merrimon away. Katherine spirals into a world of drugs and dependency on an old manipulative boyfriend.

Johnny has lost everything he grew up with. But he wouldn’t give up looking for his sister. Hoping against hope, Johnny relentlessly pores over the county’s terrain, keeping tabs on sex offenders and acting on any lead he finds in order to solve the mystery of his sister’s disappearance.

But he is not alone. The detective assigned to the case has spent the entire year trying to figure out what happened, too. Detective Clyde Hunt couldn’t let this case go and when another abduction takes place, he is determined not to let it go unsolved. Tiffany Shore was another local girl and a classmate of Johnny.

Johnny and Detective Hunt run parallel tracks as they try to uncover who the town’s possible serial kidnapper is. A strange series of events will keep the reader guessing on who the real perpetrator is and when the truth finally unfolds, the ugly side of Raven County surfaces.

I’m very impressed at the crisp writing and the constant movement. It’s poignant, thoughtful, and Mr. Hart has a talent for getting into the mind of his characters and taking his readers with him. It is quite amazing how everything falls into place.

In the end, “The Last Child” is a story of how much a parent loves a child, of how much friendship means, and of how everything seems to happen for a reason.

Not a thriller, but a good story
I admit I was hesitant about this book, however the author’s writing and story telling abilities grabbed me from the first page and kept me reading until the end.

A year ago, Johnny’s sister was abducted changing his life completely. His mother has a total breakdown and her constant accusations drive Johnny’s father away. He just left one day and didn’t come back. His mother turns to drinking and drugs by way of her affluent boyfriend who ‘lets’ them stay in one of his run down rental houses, however he resents Johnny and is abusive, both mentally and physically to both of them.

Johnny tries to take care of him mother and somehow manages to attend school and get good grades despite staying up and out all night scouring neighborhoods for clues to where his sister may be.
He is sometimes joined by his best, and only friend Jack, son of a gruff policeman.

In the meantime, Detective Hunt has never given up on the case. He’s become obsessive to the point of loosing his wife and alienating his son. Knowing Johnny’s living situation, Detective Hunt tries to keep an eye out for Johnny. He knows what Johnny is up to and tries his best to keep him safe even though Johnny would prefer he stay out of it.

One day after ditching school, Johnny and Jack are hanging out at the river when they witness a murder. That’s when things start to get interesting.

I have to admit I was clueless until the end of the book. I sort of figured it out toward the end, but still, it was a good ending.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for a hard-core detective story, but for those just looking for a good story and a book that will keep you interested until the end, I would tell you to read this book.
Thank you.
MEF

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MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit Exam 70-680: Configuring Windows 7 Lowest Price!

Monday, July 26th, 2010

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit Exam 70-680: Configuring Windows 7

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Announcing an all-new SELF-PACED TRAINING KIT designed to help maximize your performance on 70-680, the required exam for the new Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows 7, Configuration certification.This 2-in-1 kit includes the official Microsoft study guide, plus practice tests on CD to help you assess your skills. It comes packed with the tools and features exam candidates want most—including in-depth, self-paced training based on final exam content; rigorous, objective-by-objective review; exam tips from expert, exam-certified authors; and customizable testing options. It also provides real-world scenarios, case study examples, and troubleshooting labs to give you the skills and expertise you can use on the job.Work at your own pace through the lessons and lab exercises. This official study guide covers installing, upgrading, and migrating to Windows 7; configuring network connectivity, applications, and devices; implementing backup and recovery; configuring User Account Control (UAC), mobility options, and new features such as DirectAccess and BranchCache; and managing system updates.Then assess yourself using the 200 practice questions on CD, featuring multiple customizable testing options to meet your specific needs. Choose timed or untimed testing mode, generate random tests, or focus on discrete objectives. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers—including pointers back to the book for further study. You also get an exam discount voucher—making this kit an exceptional value and a great career investment.

Amazon Sales Rank: #873 in Books
Published on: 2009-10-21
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
912 pages

This book helped me pass the Windows 7 exam
I got this book to help me pass the Windows 7 exam. After reading the book and doing all the exercises and practice test questions I got above 900 when I took the test. This is the first time I have taken a Microsoft exam since Windows XP so I am pretty happy with the result.

The practice tests are similar enough to the exam that they helped me pass. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was that some of the exercises take a while and you really need a computer with 4 GB of RAM if you are going to do them using VMWARE. This was okay for me, but might not be good for others. I was able to do all the practices using the RC version of Windows 7 even though they are designed for the real version of Windows 7.

I do not know what book the other reviews are talking about as the text seemed to be clear and I noticed few mistakes. If you want to pass the exam this book will help you do that. If you want to have a book as a Windows 7 reference you should get the resource kit book.

Excellent book..I passed 70-680 after reading it first try
This is an excellent study guide for the 70-680 exam. I spent about 2 weeks reading the book cover to cover and I was able to pass the exam on my first try with a score of 805. I have only been using Windows 7 Enterprise for about a month, so this book really helped me out. FYI the exam has NO SIMULATIONS at this time.

I would most certainly purchase another book by Orin Thomas!

Easy read
I found this book to be quite a good read. Helped me pass my exam, which I got 93% for. As always there are more details than strictly needed for the exam, but its always better to over prepare than under prepare.

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How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time-Retail $19.95! Sale Only $13.57!

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time-Retail $19.95! Sale Only $13.57!

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How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time Description:

Everything needed to brew beer right the first time. Presented in a light-hearted style without frivolous interruptions, this authoritative text introduces brewing in a easy step-by-step review.

Amazon Sales Rank: #809 in Books
Published on: 2006-06-25
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
400 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9780937381885
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Customer Reviews:

Currently the best place to start, and NOT out of print!
Like most homebrewers, I started out with Charlie Papazian’s book “The New Joy of Homebrewing”. I had the second edition. It was a good book, but comparing it to this text, it seems hopelessly dated.

With the explosion of microbreweries across the country, lots of people got turned on to GOOD beer – and many of those looked into homebrewing. With so many people trying different methods and equipment, over time, brewing became simpler and much of what was deemed necessary in the earlier days was discarded. Many of the techniques and equipment listed here are the results of years of trial-and-error streamlining by other homebrewers. In addition, there’s never been so many resources available via mail order and on the net. Homebrewing really is easy at this point.

This is the best basic brewing text I’ve found. You can start with it by making extract only beers, graduating to specialty grains in addition to extract, then to all grain brewing and making your own recipes and beer styles. The book is linear, presents the information as you need it and the information ranges from the most basic (like sanitation) to as technical as you could possibly want (water chemistry).

For years I’ve been an extract and specialty grain brewer. I never completely understood the process of all-grain brewing until I bought this text. It gave me the courage to build my own lautering tun and brew my first batch of beer made completely from scratch. It was a pale ale, nothing exotic, but man was it good beer. Check out the author’s website and read the first edition online. The second edition is improved, so if you like the online text buy the hard copy book.

There are other good texts out there (the author lists many of them in the back of the book) but if you only want one homebrewing text, buy this one. It’s a shame that Amazon doesn’t carry it anymore. Track it down.

The first book for any hombrewer
I borrowed, bought and read a few brewing books, but found “How to Brew” to be the best. The very first chapter gets you off to a running start should you find yourself with an unpacked brew kit, needing only the most vital information to start brewing immediately. The rest of the book is well written and provides a clear outlay of brewing from the basics to the esoteric. There are clear explinations, many recipies and a wealth of information regarding the process and ingredients.

There are a few other books that are good, but if you own just one brewing book, this is it.

Update:3/2008
Almost two years later, I have to say this book remains at the forefront of my now expanded beer library. If you are just starting to brew, if you are curious, if you’re looking for a book for someone who is starting out or if you are a brewer looking for an A-Z guide, this remains the one to get. It will provide a foundation of knowledge that will serve you well in your brewing pursuits.

Update 2: 2/2010
All this time and this book still is indispensable. As I have learned more and become more experienced, How To Brew has been there. I thought that I would pick this book up less and less, but the more skilled I became and the more I learned, the more I reached for this book. My move from extract brewing to all grain was much less difficult and for now, it seems from my experience that John Palmer has written the final word on home brewing to date. (All due respect to Charlie Papazian)

For the technically-minded
Of all the authors who talk about homebrewing, John J. Palmer is by far the best writer. His prose is witty, entertaining and relentlessly focussed on clarifying the complexities and celebrating the simplicities of the small-scale brewing of beer.

There are probably three books that are genuinely helpful for the beginning homebrewer. Which one is right for you depends on how you approach techniques of dealing with things in the physical world.
If the idea of doing anything physical scares the bejabbers out of you, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition (Harperresource Book). This is a very simple, slow and reassuring book. The author sounds like the friendliest, least intimidating guy in the world. The style is very chummy in a post-frathouse kind of way that some people find very difficult to read and that others find relaxing. In this book you may see the ancestor of the Complete Dummies series. I believe that Papazian, who has made a carreer of coaching homebrewers, has been published on the topic for thirty years or so.
If you’re the sort of person who likes the idea of baking his own bread or wiring her own lamp, then probably The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing is right for you. The information is straightforward and well-organized and he allows for the fact that sometimes you want to make it fast and simple and other times you may want to linger over the details. There’s a separate book of recipes ordered by beer style and also by degree of difficulty.
If you love fundamentals, then Palmer is the book for you. There are dozens of complications lurking in Palmer’s world of brewing and a host of precautions and gadgets for avoiding them. The author is not a negative soul, on the contrary, he seems like a guy who just wants to get to the bottom of things. How to BrewHow to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time is also the book for those who are themselves curious about fundamentals: the hard science of brewing is to be found here.

–Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine and bang BANG

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Buy My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method At Amazon!

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method

Product: Buy My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method At Amazon!

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Lahey’s “breathtaking, miraculous, no-work, no-knead bread” (Vogue) has revolutionized the food world. When he wrote about Jim Lahey’s bread in the New York Times, Mark Bittman’s excitement was palpable: “The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I’ve used, and it will blow your mind.” Here, thanks to Jim Lahey, New York’s premier baker, is a way to make bread at home that doesn’t rely on a fancy bread machine or complicated kneading techniques. Witnessing the excitement that Bittman’s initial piece unleashed worldwide among bakers experienced and beginner alike, Jim grew convinced that home cooks were eager for a no-fuss way to make bread, and so now, in this eagerly anticipated collection of recipes, Jim shares his one-of-a-kind method for baking rustic, deep-flavored bread in your own oven.

The secret to Jim Lahey’s bread is slow-rise fermentation. As Jim shows in My Bread, with step-by-step instructions followed by step-by-step pictures, the amount of labor you put in amounts to 5 minutes: mix water, flour, yeast, and salt, and then let time work its magic—no kneading necessary. Wait 12 to 18 hours for the bread to rise, developing structure and flavor; then, after another short rise, briefly bake the bread in a covered cast-iron pot.

The process couldn’t be more simple, or the results more inspiring. My Bread devotes chapters to Jim’s variations on the basic loaf, including an olive loaf, pecorino cheese bread, pancetta rolls, the classic Italian baguette (stirato), and the stunning bread stick studded with tomatoes, olives, or garlic (stecca). He gets even more creative with loaves like Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread, others that use juice instead of water, and his Irish Brown Bread, which calls for Guinness stout. For any leftover loaves, Jim includes what to do with old bread (try bread soup or a chocolate torte) and how to make truly special sandwiches.

And no book by Jim Lahey would be complete without his Sullivan Street Bakery signature, pizza Bianca—light, crispy flatbread with olive oil and rosemary that Jim has made even better than that of Italy’s finest bakeries. Other pizza recipes, like a pomodoro (tomato), only require you to spread the risen dough across a baking sheet and add toppings before baking.

Here—finally—Jim Lahey gives us a cookbook that enables us to fit quality bread into our lives at home. color photos throughout.

Amazon Sales Rank: #733 in Books
Published on: 2009-10-05
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Hardcover
224 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9780393066302
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Great book from a great baker
I prefer bread books written by practicing bakers. I find that they usually reflect author’s approach to bread-baking, his philosophy, and in my opinion such books are more complete and entertaining than the ones written by professional food writers, although there are some notable exception. So from that point of view a book by Jim Lahey, owner and founder of New York Sullivan Street Bakery is an obvious choice. There is another reason altogether though – arguably it was Mr. Lahey’s recipe for no-knead-bread and publication by Mark Bittman in NY Times that started the resurgence of amateur bread baking. It was his recipe that transformed me from occasional to everyday baker. Therefore for me buying this book was a no brainer.
My first impression is very positive (I don’t expect it to change). The book is printed in convenient 10×8″ format on a high-quality glossy paper. Most but not all recipes are accompanied by photos, which make the process very clear. The recipes are given in cups and in metric units, a good thing in my opinion, but if you’re used to ounces, you’re a bit out luck, although quite a few recipes start with 280 g. of flour which is pretty much 10 oz. The layout is very clear, typeface makes it easy to read, there are no gaudy colors, and every recipe can be found in the table of contents.
There are six chapters. First comes highly personal, rather entertaining and mercifully short explanation of how Mr. Lahey became a baker and what bread represents to him. Second chapter is theory, it explains what the ingredients are, and how the process works. Third chapter is where the recipes begin, there’s no-knead-bread itself and about dozen of breads based on it as well as some breads based on liquids other than water. Fourth chapter is pizza and focaccia. Brace yourself, you won’t find much tomato sauce there and even less cheese. Fifth chapter is called “The Art of the Sandwich” and describes about a score of paninis and gives recipes for most ingredients that go into them – roasts, spreads, marinated vegetables, dressings, they are all there. The last chapter deals with the things you can do with the stale bread.
Sadly there’re no sourdough recipes, and many Sullivan Street Bakery staple breads are not in the book, but then again it is not called “Sullivan Street Bakery Bread Book”, so I can’t fault the author for not including them, no matter how much I’d like them to be there.
So all in all it’s an excellent book and highly recommend it. Seasoned baker or beginner, no matter, you will find something there that will make it worth the purchase. And mark my word, in a couple of months everyone and his uncle will have blogged about stecca.

First Time
I have done the bread machine and other quick methods of making bread for years. This is the first time ever that a loaf of bread has come out of my oven, that the taste and texture made me pinch myself. Could not believe that the slice of bread that I was eating came out of my oven. By the way this is also the first time that I have reviewed a cookbook, even though i have bought at least a hundred of them. This book does not have tons of recipes, but focuses on the technique. The descriptions and photos were very helpful. Can’t wait to try the couple dozen varieties included within.

In which Jim Lahey answers the question, “What now?”
Three years ago, Jim Lahey’s “No Knead Bread” recipe, written up by NYTimes food writer Mark Bittman (he of How to Cook Everything fame, ripped through the culinary blogosphere as one of the first really famous viral recipes. Though perhaps not very original, Lahey’s bread technique, compatible as it is with a culture that relies heavily on convenience cooking and crockpots, became a flashpoint for a resurgence in home bread baking that helped pick up where the bread machine market had fallen off. Knockoffs, refinements, and alternate takes appeared, and even well-known instructors like Peter Reinhart brought their own skills to the party. But there’s still nothing like a book from the man who started the ball rolling, and Lahey and coauthor Rick Flaste managed to put together an entirely worthwhile book not only on the bread, but on the many possible uses for it — after all, a loaf of fresh bread is always good, but what do you do with it after it comes out of the oven, and how does the recipe work to begin with?

Hype is unavoidable, but so, too often, is letdown. “My Bread”, despite the hyperbolic subtitle, avoids this by doing what smart inventors have been doing at least since Thomas Edison — not just the invention itself, but an end-to-end framework; in fact, add a section on pastries and this could easily have been the “Sullivan St. Bakery Cookbook”. Lahey begins with a brief biography of how his bakery came to be, then proceeds into a fairly thorough discussion (with some help from Harold McGee) of how the recipe actually works, with moisture and enzyme action doing the work overnight that would usually be done with muscle or motor power. He then follows with several examples of variations done with the same technique (including an Italian-style whole wheat bread and a pb&j loaf for kids), followed with a chapter on his bakery-style pizza and foccacia. At this point, the subject of the book has seemingly run out of gas, so he turns his attention to the most obvious use for his bread — sandwiches. Starting with roast beef and pork and an assortment of condiments and vegetable preparations, he devotes a chapter to specialty sandwiches, before wrapping up the book with some soups, desserts, and other effective ways to use leftovers. The layout is clean and readable, with appetizing pictures and (woohoo!) metric weight measurements for every recipe.

It’s far too easy to take a subject like this and slap it together with a pile of shovelware, so it’s very refreshing to find someone who took what could have been a quick-and-dirty bid for money and take the project seriously. Lahey and Flaste’s book was a long time coming, but when you consider the slapdash mess it could have been, it was worth it. For bread fans and kitchen geeks, this is one to go on the shelf next to Cookwise, Nancy Silverton, and The Bread Builders.

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Buy Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life At Amazon!

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Buy Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life At Amazon!

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Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Description:

In this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated “bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany’s people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.

Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany–and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.

With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.

Amazon Sales Rank: #1411 in Books
Published on: 2010-03-09
Released on: 2010-03-09
Original language: English
Number of items: 1
Binding: Roughcut
320 pages

Features

ISBN13: 9780767929820
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Customer Reviews:

a Leisurely and Loving Stroll Though Tuscany with Frances Mayes
Almost twenty years ago, the publication of Frances Mayes’ “Under the Tuscan Sun” signaled the dawn of a new era in the perennial love affair between American travelers and all things Tuscan. This month, she continues her string of fascinating memoirs with “Every Day in Tuscany – Seasons of An Italian Life.”

I am one of those Americans who has fallen under the spell of Tuscany – Firenze, Siena, Chianti, the Ponte Vecchio, the three versions of Michelangelo’s David that can be found within Florence, the Duoma, the Uffizi. I absorbed the sights, sounds and flavors of this book with great gusto. If, after reading Mayes’ latest offering, you are not tempted to book a trip to Italy this summer, then I will be surprised.

The structure of this latest memoir is set between the bookends of Mayes’ arrival with her poet husband, Ed, in Cortona for their annual season in Tuscany at her beloved villa of Bramasole and their departure for their winter home in North Carolina. In her chronicling of the intervening months, she leads her readers down a leisurely path that introduces them to some of the colorful characters in town, her life-embracing neighbors, the kitchens of some of the best cooks in the world, and the vineyards and olive groves of the surrounding hillside towns.

Another thread that weaves together her meandering narratives is her love for the paintings of Luca Signorelli. She and Ed visit many Tuscan towns to have another look at some of her favorite Signorelli paintings and frescoes. Spicing up the pages of each chapter are recipes that Mayes has gleaned from treasured Italian friends, and words and phrases from the colorful Italian language. Her use of these phrases is wonderfully instructive, rather than intrusive.

She describes in loving detail some wonderful places I look forward to visiting – townsal like Urbino, Citta di Castello, Sansepolchro, Umbertide, Perugia.

When she first made the investment in the crumbling Bramasole, Mayes was regrouping after a divorce. The town folks embraced her – but cautiously. Along the way, there have been occasional indications that she was still viewed as an outsider. But the anecdotes she shares in this latest memoir make it clear that as a byproduct of her investment in the community of Cortona – and in her serving an evangelist for the ethos and frame of mind that is Tuscany – the Tuscans have now embraced her wholeheartedly as a valued member of the community and family. She describes the subtle growth and evolution of her own mind set about Tuscany – its people, its foods, its wines, its history, its joys and challenges.

This book is a total delight – like a warm and comforting taste of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil. I encourage you to read it if you love Tuscany – or are open to being seduced by its multi-sensory beauty and charming homeliness.

Enjoy.

Abbondanza!

Not as good as her first book
I am a fan of Frances Mayes first book, “Under the Tuscan Sun” and thought I would really enjoy this book, but I was rather disappointed and had a lot of mixed feelings about it. The things I liked about her writing style is that she sometimes writes with a kind of flourish, lyrical and almost poetic in her descriptions. But I didn’t like that this book read more like a blog more than a story of her life there. Sometimes it felt like a lot of random thoughts that didn’t have much of a direction. It had a “thrown together” feel. Rather than feeling involved in the book like I did with her first one, I found it difficult to concentrate on it. It took me weeks to get through and I actually started and finished a couple other books while I was reading it.

I liked the recipes that were included and loved the idea of the Italians eating fresh and seasonally available foods. I liked her description of people eating and enjoying life rather than over analyzing everything they put in their mouths like many of us do here. She had many descriptions of simple meals that went on for hours, of food being a celebration rather than just a means of nourishment. This she conveyed well.

What I didn’t like was her description of “ex-pats” and tourists in Italy which came off as being condescending. Although she has owned a home there for many years, from what I’ve read she lives both there and in the U.S. during different parts of the year and it seems likely that the Italians would put her in that same “ex-pat” category. The book reads like an American living in Italy not as someone who is really a part of the community.

I thought the long discussions of her trips around the country to see the art of Luca Signorelli were just plain tedious. Perhaps including photos of his works would have made it more interesting but her descriptions weren’t enough to hold my interest and instead of drawing me in, my mind just wandered. I would rather have read more about the different towns, many of which I’ve visited, and gotten more of an insider’s view rather than the tourist’s view that she provided.

I loved her descriptions of her grandson Willie’s experiences when he came to visit. You could feel her love for him in her writing and had an idea of his amazement with Italy as seen through a child’s eyes. I could also feel her sense of loss when his vacation was over and he had to leave.

If I could have given the book 2 ½ stars, that would have been my rating, but giving the book the benefit of the doubt I’m giving it 3. I really wanted to like this book more than I did.

Tuscany: The Every Day Blog
Many people will adore this book. Those people are attracted by Mayes previous books; they fell in love with them, and dream of having her life. This book is a voyeuristic sequel to the first two; the adoring reader can now live out the fantasy of ‘every day’ of Frances Mayes’ life in Tuscany.

For the uninitiated or the less star struck, this book is the equivalent of a rambling blog, random thoughts, observations, and events that Frances Mayes has strewn together.

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life, tries to be many things. The book tries hard to be a story, a travel guide, a recounting of the author’s personal trials and tribulations, a cook book, an Italian language course, and art history. Sadly it doesn’t do a particularly good job at any of these tasks. It even fails at recounting the passage of time and seasons.

The title hints at a romantic view of life in utopian small town Italy. I expected some insight into Italian life and culture, or at least a small thread of story to weave that fabric of all things Italian. Instead the book is a rambling series of paragraphs disconnected from one another. Interesting stories are started and never finished. People come and go, flow in and out of the book for no apparent reason, except that Frances Mayes met them and finds them interesting for a moment. Italian artists, towns, and areas are all mentioned with the expectation that the reader knows these things, or that they are simply common knowledge. Recipes are presented willy nilly, some are fabulous, some are impossible to make. At first the recipes are described in incredible detail, gradually they become vague descriptions, and then finally they devolve into restaurant menus. The book attempts to be an Italian language course, Ms. Mayes has an annoying habit of including Italian phrases in italics and then translating them into English after a comma. This artifact is cute early in the book, but becomes annoying as the book wears on.

The great news for the Mayes fan, she uses so many towns and street names, the rabid fan can actually follow her everyday life around central and northern Italy. They can probably even locate the carefully built and heated pizza oven in her backyard, or the enormous rock table lovingly built during the bocce terrain construction, or the man wearing the wife beater t-shirt near the tranquil piazza, or the apartment floor that looks like a yacht deck in Portofino, or some minute detail of a painting by Signorelli. All these details were mentioned in the book, but none were given context, or story, or a life that had any meaning to me. They were random things that I was supposed to understand and adore.

The book turned a particularly bad corner for me during a diatribe about `ex-pats,’ or foreign tourists invading the private world of Frances Mayes and her husband Ed. She describes how the `ex-pats’ arrive, don’t speak Italian but insist on speaking loudly in English, don’t work hard with their own hands, spend too much money, and have no Italian friends. Based on what Ms. Mayes has written in this book it is very difficult to swallow her disdain for tourists. She and her husband purchased two houses that no Italian would buy. They then hired people to do the renovation. Her Italian friends mostly appear to be people with something to sell to her, from the wine merchant to the various chefs. She may well speak Italian, and that seems to be the only difference between her and the tourists. Frances Mayes has exactly one job, to be entertained every day.

Good literature engages my imagination, transports me to another place, and excites me to read every word the author has written. Very subtly, it parades the questions in front of me without answering those questions. This book is very far from that type of literature. Instead this book is many pages of the musings of a ne’er do well that is on eternal vacation. I was never engaged even when she described places I know well.

Amazon.com Review
Kim Sunée Reviews Every Day in Tuscany

Kim Sunée is the author of Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home.

“The Bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) is back and better than ever. Two decades have passed since the purchase of Bramasole, Frances Mayes’s first Italian adventure into the meaning of home, made famous in Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany. In Every Day in Tuscany, her third beautifully rendered memoir, Mayes generously serves up another delicious helping. She continues to contemplate the satisfaction of a life created by one’s own hard work, but also celebrates the joys of the piazza, reminisces on her South Georgia roots, reveals her love of architecture and painting, and is especially hungry to follow the trail (which she has generously mapped out for us) of Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli.

After transforming Bramasole, you’d think that Mayes would have had enough of repairs and renovations, but she expands the idea of belonging with the purchase of a mountainside cottage. One day, as she and husband, Ed, are picking blackberries on a rugged slope above Cortona, Mayes writes of being “fatally attracted” to a “lonesome beauty,” a partially collapsed stone-roof cottage. This new home becomes a place of comfort, especially when something shifts, when “one glorious summer evening at Bramasole,” Mayes writes, “something unexpected intruded on this paradise.”

Enchanted by the simple life, a life lived in accordance with the cycles of the sun and moon, Mayes tells her story through the seasons of a country and those of the heart. Winter is about restoring privacy, summer for reading, moonlight swims, watermelon and plum crostata. Mostly, though, the seasons are made up of days meant for being. She admires the Italians for their ease and grace of pure existence. “How do Italian friends naturally keep the jouissance they were born with?” she wonders.

Since Mayes is a poet first, her prose is infused with startling and indelible moments, and she will always inspire you to cook something. Luckily, there are recipes for everything from Melva’s Peach Pie to Risotto with White Truffles, as well as mouthwatering menus, including Roasted Garlic with Walnuts and Guinea Hen with Pancetta. Of the choreography of the kitchen, she writes, “meat glistens, lettuces float, you sneeze, I sing oh, my love, my darling, and dough rises in soft moons the size of my cupped hand as planet earth tilts us toward dinner.”

People are always eating in Mayes’s world, and eating well. But good food is essential for a good life, which includes travel and the private discovery of something no less significant than a new star. On watching a couple from Milan eat a midday meal consisting of a full antipasto platter, risotto, then steaks, she writes, “Those are delicious moments for the traveler–a fine lunch with someone you love, poring over the The Blue Guide and Gambero Rosso, a weekend to explore a new place and each other.”

More than anything, Every Day in Tuscany is a book for all travelers, those hungry hearts craving a lesson in living life to the fullest, whether at home or on the road. “It is paradoxical but true,” she tells us, “that something that takes you out of yourself also restores you to yourself with a greater freedom…. The excitement of exploration sprang me from a life I knew how to live into a challenging space where I was forced–and overjoyed–to invent each new day.”

With Mayes as our luminous North Star, we can navigate our way to a place where–if we are lucky–we will choose the road less-traveled, find our own rugged mountainside, and become part of the landscape, perhaps even find a sense of self, if not a place to call home.

From Publishers Weekly
In her most recent Tuscan tour, Mayes conducts readers through the gentle and sometimes violent and disruptive undulations of the seasons from winter to summer in her Tuscan home of Bramasole. In this new memoir, she reflects on the palpable scents emitted by the old-growth chestnut, apple, and olive trees, the jovial hospitality and strength of her friends and neighbors, and the familiar and sometimes disturbing sounds of herds of wild boars rushing through the orchards. Mayes and her husband, Ed, situated themselves even more firmly in Tuscany a few years ago when they discovered a falling-down stone cottage on a rugged slope and restored it as a second home. We follow Mayes as she forages for the prized amarini, cherries the size of five-caret rubies, which are bottled with alcohol and brought out in winter to spoon over polenta cake, pears, blackberries, asparagus, fennel flowers, and figs. We continue on our journey with her as she leads us in search of the great Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli from Cortona, where her new house lies. Mayes’s affectionate and warm memoir vividly celebrates the lush abundance and charm of daily life in the Italian countryside. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Almost 20 years have passed since Mayes planted roots in a dilapidated (read: insanely charming) old farmhouse outside the Tuscan hill town of Cortona. Now, in her third memoir, she takes us to her second Italian abode, a rundown (read: cozy and idyllic) cottage in the woods. We take an hour walk to gather the makings for tonight’s dinner, we smell the lemon trees growing in the next room over; we’re right there with Mayes, fighting every urge to jump straight into these sun-soaked and citrus-scented pages. Also on the menu: Mayes serves up a delightful smattering of the recipes that she has the undisputed privilege to enjoy during lengthy dinners with friends. Following in the tradition of her first two memoirs, Under the Tuscan Sun (1996) and Bella Tuscany (1999), Mayes is generous with her thoughts, and her evocative writing simply oozes charm and warmth. In these times, this quick read is a thoroughly enjoyable way to visit Italy without once considering the heartbreaking dollar-to-euro conversion rate. –Annie Bostrom

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