Food Books (not cookbooks)

[mailgirl]

There are a lot of books that are centered around a food theme.  What are your favorites?

[Morganna]

Only centered on, or could I list books that have great depictions of food in them?

[mailgirl]

Any book!

[Morganna]

Well, I've mentioned here in another thread (I think) about the Little House series.  The descriptions of food in those just make me drool.   So simple but so interesting.

Also, the Clan of the Cave Bear books, especially from the second book on, have some really cool descriptions of foods and cooking methods that intrigue me and have encouraged me to consider different flavour combinations.

I've gotten, but not read yet, a book called Mina which is supposed to be set in a kitchen in a manor house or something (I can't remember specifically).  It's supposed to have neat food stuff.

[Alice Levitt]

Anything Tony Bourdain, of course. Cook's Tour, especially, is just hilarious. He can be thought-provoking, too. I refer to his essay "Bloods and Crips" in The Nasty Bits all the time.

I read fiction very, very rarely, but I did have occasion to read Aspects of Love by David Garnett this winter. It's not very well written – except for the breathtakingly delicious food descriptions. The characters spend afternoons in bed, then very casually making navarins of lamb and luscious-sounding omelettes before they can even get their clothes back on.

What also comes to mind is any food description when a character is hungry and suffering. My boyfriend James says that when reading about the Civil War in school "hard tack always sounded yum." I see where he's coming from. When the kid in Hatchet caught a plump bird and cooked it for the first time, didn't you just drool? Or when Yoko Kawashima Watkins finally had a bowl of miso soup after having to drink pee water in So Far from the Bamboo Grove... As James' father always says, "Hunger is the best sauce."

As Morganna pointed out, history is also a great source for food porn. I have always wrung my hands through Titanic books waiting for menus. Anything with banquets, I'm so there. I always look forward to wedding reportage in celebrity magazines for the menus, too.

[mailgirl]

One of my favorite food reads was the menu on the Army ship that my father was on after WW2.  The last item on the Thanksgiving menu was cigarettes!

[weglarz]

I just finished Bill Buford's _Heat_, an account of his time working in one of Mario Batali's kitchen and how that led him to Italy to apprentice as a pasta-maker and butcher.  The account of Batali's kitchen is great, the rest of the book not so much.

[jhberkley]

Like Water for Chocolate
Ruth Reichl books
Julie and Julia
Chocolat
Eat Pray Love
So many others ...
I love books (and movies too) that focus on food.

[weglarz]

Those Ruth Reichl books are great.  I haven't read the rest.

There are good food movies?

[Morganna]

There are good food movies?

*blink blink*  Are you being serious with this question?

[weglarz]

There are good food movies?

*blink blink*  Are you being serious with this question?

I'm afraid so!