As the White House's organic gardener, Casey Calhoun is up to her elbows in dirt. But when someone starts tampering with the Presidential vegetable garden, embarrassing the First lady-and a hard-nosed investigative reporter is found dead, Casey realizes that the next thing buried in the dirt might just be her...
For nearly a century in Florida and throughout the South, election to the United States Senate virtually guaranteed a lifetime position, especially if you were a Democrat. Certainly no Republican candidate stood a chance in the general election, and it was nearly unthinkable to imagine a serious challenger emerging in the primary. Claude "Red" Pepper first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1934. Though unsuccessful, despite allegations of voter fraud, he won a special election two years later after both senators from Florida died in office. Reelected to full terms in 1938 and 1944 as a vigorous supporter of the New Deal, he had every reason to suspect the seat was his indefinitely--or at least until he decided it was time to seek higher office. Pepper saw himself as the national heir to Roosevelt's foreign policy; he encouraged cooperation with the Soviet Union, our World War II ally, and actively worked to defeat Truman’s presidential nomination in 1948. After nearly fourteen years in office, Pepper had earned the enmity of the president, alienated most of his colleagues in the senate, and aligned himself with the ultra-left-wing politics of Henry Wallace. Still, in the entire history of the state, no sitting Florida Senator had ever been voted out of office. However, the political world was changing, and it was the right-leaning "Gorgeous" George Smathers, not Pepper, who recognized and took advantage of this fact. Smathers fought a vicious, bare-knuckled campaign, employing ferocious and divisive attacks against Pepper. He helped make "iberal" anathema to aspiring southern politics, and was the first of a new breed of conservative politicians--though not yet Republican--to rise to power. Eventually the era would be named for a junior senator from Wisconsin, but it was Smathers who first successfully employed the strategies of McCarthyism to unseat an incumbent. He was so successful, in fact, that before the general election Smathers had to reassure President Truman and other potential supporters that his loyalties did, in fact, lie with the Democractic Party. His resounding victory inspired others--including Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater--to adopt similar tactics in their senatorial campaigns. It also helped set the stage for the complete reversal of the political power structure that had ruled the South since the end of Reconstruction. Red Pepper and Gorgeous George is a fascinating look at the campaign that changed everything in Florida--and the South. It is also a shocking, sobering reminder that, despite introducing the phrase "hanging chad" to the national lexicon, the 2000 presidential election was merely the second most important national election to take place in the state.
In New England in the late nineteenth century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.
Chef James Haller, the chef and owner of the renowned Blue Strawbery restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, serves up a perfect blend of humor, nostalgia, and wisdom in this delightful culinary memoir - the chronicle of a lifetime of cooking. www.chefjameshaller.com July 29, 2015, Kirkus Review: "With these funny stories, an award-winning chef reflects on the formative roles of food, family, and friendship in his life. "Former executive chef and owner of Portsmouth, New Hampshire's Blue Strawbery restaurant, Haller (Vie de France, 2002, etc.) grew up during the Depression, a poor kid in a Chicago suburb. His working-class extended family and Old World neighborhoods inspired a fascination with eclectic food combinations. Whether watching his Grandma Hazel dispatch a barnyard chicken by spinning it overhead "like David with his sling" or splashing "a little Benedictine Brandy on fried eggs after I heard Betty Grable order eggs benedict between dance numbers," it's clear that his insatiable curiosity about food began early. A young Italian girl, Louisa, became Haller's childhood friend and introduced him to cannoli, which easily eclipsed his grandmother's tapioca and butterscotch puddings. Growing up with many rural relatives, Haller paints a vivid picture of a bygone era with recollections of dinners fit for farmhands and the "womenfolk" preparing massive harvest feasts. His financially strapped, city-dwelling parents had more pedestrian palates, favoring "hot dog and beans...hamburgers, meat loaf, sloppy Joe's...creamed chip beef on toast...or my mother's tuna casserole." His mother's long hours waitressing required young Haller to prepare family meals, spurring a lifetime of culinary adventurousness, as he dished up string beans with pumpkin pie spices and lime and grape Kool-Aid baked into angel food cake for unwitting loved ones. Wit à la Ruth Reichl in Tender at the Bone (1998) invigorates these anecdotes throughout. Haller left for New York to make it as a writer and actor, often waiting tables to get by and eventually opening the Blue Strawbery in New Hampshire with some enterprising pals. Character sketches of family and friends here are as keenly observed and beautifully depicted as the food-the author's self-effacing humor a fantastic leavening agent. "Flavorful serving of hilarious, poignant memories that will leave readers wanting seconds.
A timeless and insightful volume of essays—with more than 130 recipes—by the master of American cuisine The Armchair James Beard showcases the many roles of America’s first celebrity chef: teacher, culinary alchemist, restaurant reviewer, occasional dieter, visionary, and gourmand. Collected by Beard’s longtime friend and colleague John Ferrone, each essay resonates with impassioned opinions and a distinctly American voice. Beard takes us on a journey from his childhood in Portland, Oregon, to his dining and cooking experiences around the world. These reminiscences, paired with more than 130 recipes, provide an intimate portrait of a lifetime spent studying, preparing, and enjoying food. Beard fondly recalls his father’s homemade breakfast sausage seasoned with thyme and pepper; bouillabaisse made from fresh fish in the South of France; and a large, buttery baked potato aboard the Northern Pacific railroad on one of his many cross-country trips. Rich with tales of meals shared with family and old friends, Beard ponders not just the importance of what we eat, but how food brings us together, and the role it can play in our memories. Heartfelt, enlightening, and often humorous, these memoir-like selections are an inspiring addition to any culinary collection.
This book takes you on a tongue-tingling exploration of the world of chiles, both common and unusual. It includes an illustrated list of chiles identifying which are hot and which are not; sections on growing, buying, storing, and preserving chiles; and tips on handling and cooking them.
The best recipes from one of America's most influential food personalities in a big, delicious cookbook that delights in every category Known as the Dean of American Cooking, James Beard set a standard of culinary excellence that's still a benchmark today. He was an early television presence who helped shape what America ate in restaurants and cooked at home, and was both an innovative recipe writer and a scholar of American foodways, preserving classic dishes from the past for his readers to cook in the present. Compiled from twelve of his classic books and freshened for a modern audience, The Essential James Beard will stand with definitive and lively cookbooks such as The New York Times Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking. It covers the best and most necessary recipes in every category: - appetizers and hors d'oeuvres - soups - pastas and noodles - fish and shellfish - meat and game - rice, potatoes and stuffings - breads - desserts - and more
Culinary master James Beard’s ultimate guide to entertaining is a must for any host or hostess Expert chef James Beard was passionate about food and even more passionate about entertaining. Beard’s cookbooks, with recipes that have delighted for decades—such as duck glazed with honey and curry, and zucchini frittata—have long been a staple in the culinary libraries of home cooks. This thorough guide combines Beard’s delicious menus with his expertise on hosting any event from an intimate dinner party to a much larger gathering. The indispensable tips and advice in James Beard’s Menus for Entertaining make anything from a lavish champagne breakfast to a festive beach picnic easy for the host and unforgettable for the guests. In addition to his scrumptious tried-and-true recipes, Beard also offers guidance on pairing the perfect wines, liqueurs, and aperitifs to round out your meal. Featuring more than 100 menus, 600 dishes, and Beard’s wisdom on everything from planning to plating, Menus for Entertaining will make your next event a delectable success.
The Mystery of Herbs and Spices offers 53 tell-all biographies of celebrated spices and herbs. Tales of war, sex, greed, hedonism, cunning, exploration and adventure reveal how mankind turned the mere need for nourishment into the exaltation of culinary arts. Is it a spice or herb? Where does it come from and what causes its taste? What legends or scandals embellish it? To what curious uses has it been put? How can you use it today? Neither a cookbook nor dry scholarship, the book employs anecdotes and humor to demystify the use and character of every spice or herb. Sample chapters from The Mystery of Herbs and Spices follow. INTRODUCTION “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.” — Proverbs 15:17 Herbs and spices. They impart glory to food, and variety to life. They are what separate the mere cook from the gourmet. But they can be confusing. What is the difference between a herb and a spice? What foods do they go with? And don’t you feel silly, not knowing if you are supposed to say “herb” or “erb”? You might think a gourmet, who understands such things, is a sort of wizard — that’s what people thought in the Middle Ages, when users of herbal medicines were accused of witchcraft and burnt! But to people who grow up in India or Thailand, exotic spices are common. They use a wealth of seasonings as casually as we scatter ketchup and pepper. Cooking with cardamom or cumin might seem a mystery of subtle kitchens, but did you know that ordinary pepper was once precious and rare? If you lived in Europe seven hundred years ago, you could pay your rent or taxes in peppercorns, counting them out like coins. You could have bought a horse for a pound of saffron; a pound of ginger would get you a cow; and a pound of nutmeg was worth seven fat oxen. If you were an exceptionally lucky bride, your father might give you peppercorns as a dowry. Now consider how casually we dash a bit of pepper over a fried egg today! Like anything else, herbs and spices are easy to use when you are familiar with them. But, like nothing else, the story of spices is laced with adventure. Ferdinand Magellan launched the first voyage around our planet. By the time he reached the Pacific Ocean, he had been out of touch with civilization for a year. Sailing from the west coast of South America, he headed out onto a briny desert of burning glass. He had no maps. He had no radio. He had ridiculously small and leaky ships. He was going where no one had ever gone before. The hissing swells of the Pacific would take him four frightening months to cross, without laying eyes once on land. There would be nothing like this adventure for another five hundred years — not until our exploration of space. Magellan died out there in the unknown. Only eighteen of his 237 sailors straggled back to Spain. What did they have to show for it? Silver? Gold? Scientific discoveries? No...nutmegs and cloves! Twenty-six tons of them — enough to pay for the entire cost of the voyage and make a profit of 500 gold ducats for every shareholder. No one doubted for one second that the whole adventure had been worth it! Spices. They enhance our food. That’s all. But, since the human race began to dream, the story of spices has enchanted our fantasy as well. Where do they come from? Why are they so enticing? In what new ways can we use them? This is a book of discovery. Unfurl your sails, like Magellan, and follow the fragrance of spices and herbs to their source, gather their lore, and let them not only season your cooking, but enrich your enjoyment of life. PETER PIPER If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? It might seem funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. Pierre Poivre of Lyons, France, otherwise known as Peter Pepper or Peter Piper, was a real person. Born in 1719, he started his career as a Christian missionary, and founded a bank in Vietnam. In 1766
James McNair, acknowledged master of the single-subject cookbook, explores the exciting upscale approach to grilling, the world's oldest cooking method. Features smoking as well as grilling techniques.
“The Dean of American Cuisine” and mentor to some of the country’s most acclaimed chefs offers essential kitchen wisdom in this illustrated guide (Julia Child). “In my twenty-five years of teaching I have tried to make people realize that cooking is primarily fun and that the more they know about what they are doing, the more fun it is.” So begins James Beard’s expansive book of culinary terms, methods, tools, and techniques. No one knew food better than Beard, and in these pages his timeless wisdom is on full display. Perfect for both seasoned chefs and those just starting out in the kitchen, James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking will be one of the most comprehensive and important cookbooks in your library. With a guide to kitchenware, step-by-step explanations of foundational cooking techniques, and more than 300 classic recipes to add to your repertoire, this invaluable volume provides all you need to become a star in the kitchen. Beard’s dishes, from poached pears to steak au poivre, stuffed clams to chocolate soufflé, will delight the senses. And his unpretentious advice, alongside personal anecdotes and food histories, will make cooking a joy.
From America’s favorite cooking teacher, multiple award-winner James Peterson, an invaluable reference handbook. Culinary students everywhere rely on the comprehensive and authoritative cookbooks published by chef, instructor, and award-winning author Jim Peterson. And now, for the first time, this guru-to-the-professionals turns his prodigious knowledge into a practical, chockablock, quick-reference, A-to-Z answer book for the rest of us. Look elsewhere for how to bone skate or trim out a saddle of lamb, how to sauté sweetbreads or flambé dessert. Look here instead for how to zest a lemon, make the perfect hamburger, bread a chicken breast, make (truly hot) coffee in a French press, make magic with a Microplane. It’s all here: how to season a castiron pan, bake a perfect pie, keep shells from sticking to hardcooked eggs. How to carve a turkey, roast a chicken, and chop, slice, beat, broil, braise, or boil any ingredient you’re likely to encounter. Information on seasoning, saucing, and determining doneness (by internal temperatures, timings, touch, and sight) guarantee that you’ve eaten your last bland and overcooked meal. Here are 500 invaluable techniques with nearly as many color photographs, bundled into a handy, accessible format.
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