Whether the subject of her fancy is the lowly, unassuming potato or the love life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with a simplicity that belies the complexities of the life she often muses on. She is hailed as one of America's preeminent writers about gastronomy. But to limit her to that genre would be a disservice. She was passionate and well–traveled, and her narratives fill over two dozen highly acclaimed books. In this collection of some of her finest works, we learn that Fisher's palette was not only well trained in gastronomical masterpieces, but in life's best pleasures as well. Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary Delights by M.F.K. Fisher is an instructional manual on how to live, eat, and love brought together by prolific researcher and culinary enthusiast Anne Zimmerman. With great care she has selected essays that sometimes forgive our lustful appetites, yet simultaneously celebrate them, as in "Once a Tramp, Always . . . " and "Love in a Dish," which guides us down the path to marital bliss via the family dining table. It is through this carefully chosen selection, which includes two essays never before collected in book form, that we encounter Fisher's bold passion for cuisine and an introduction to her idea of what constitutes the delicious life.
The woman who elevated food writing to an art is at her best in this mouthwatering collection of memoirs and recipes. Boldly confessing her prejudices and her passions, M. F. K Fisher includes more than 140 recipes in the 17 chapters of this book. Dishes for every course of every meal can be found here, from the simplest to the most esoteric: tidbits, appetizers, breads, pastries, fish, fowl, meats, soups, vegetables, desserts, and casseroles. Whether recalling forbidden fruits from her childhood (such as mashed potatoes with catsup), her mother’s legendary mustard pickles, or a Caribbean bride singing about peas and rice, each description is flavored with the eloquence, warmth, and wit that became Fisher’s hallmark. Among the many admirers Fisher accrued during her illustrious and varied career was W. H. Auden, who said of her, “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.”
This contains the author's five most popular books - "Consider the Oyster", "The Gastronomical Me", "Serve it Forth", "How to Cook a Wolf", and "An Alphabet for Gourmets". The volume contains an array of thoughts, memories and recipes.
Fisher identifies a variety of human cravings and the means to find nourishment in what is the most intimate of the five volumes in North Point's jacketed paperback series, now complete.
Whether the subject of her fancy is the lowly, unassuming potato or the love life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with a simplicity that belies the complexities of the life she often muses on. She is hailed as one of America's preeminent writers about gastronomy. But to limit her to that genre would be a disservice. She was passionate and well–traveled, and her narratives fill over two dozen highly acclaimed books. In this collection of some of her finest works, we learn that Fisher's palette was not only well trained in gastronomical masterpieces, but in life's best pleasures as well. Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary Delights by M.F.K. Fisher is an instructional manual on how to live, eat, and love brought together by prolific researcher and culinary enthusiast Anne Zimmerman. With great care she has selected essays that sometimes forgive our lustful appetites, yet simultaneously celebrate them, as in "Once a Tramp, Always . . . " and "Love in a Dish," which guides us down the path to marital bliss via the family dining table. It is through this carefully chosen selection, which includes two essays never before collected in book form, that we encounter Fisher's bold passion for cuisine and an introduction to her idea of what constitutes the delicious life.
This collection of entertaining anecdotes includes the abuses of the potato and how it can be dignified, social status relative to one's appreciation of vegetables, and the growth of the art of eating in ancient Greece and Rome.
A Vintage Shorts Travel Selection Nowhere in the world did the beloved food and travel writer M.F.K Fisher feel more at ease than in the port of Marseille. From her timeless A Considerable Town, published as part of Two Towns in Provence, here is her affectionate introduction to the old streets and bustling waterfront of France’s second city. “I first spent a night there in late 1929, and since then I have returned even oftener than seems reasonable,” says Fisher of her long-term love affair with the city by the sea. In these recollections she paints a vibrant, sun-drenched portrait of the distinctive character of Marseille and its residents, the insolite or “indefinable” identity that makes it unlike anywhere else. As she reflects on the history, the culture and, of course, the foods, that make Marseille what it is, Fisher brings the city to life as only she can. An eBook short.
When Robert Lescher died in 2012 an unpublished manuscript of M.F.K. Fisher's was discovered neatly packed in the one of the literary agent's signature red boxes. Inspired by Fisher's affair with Dillwyn Parrish — who was to become her second husband — The Theoretical Foot is the master stylist's first novel. In it she describes the life she all–too–briefly had with the man she'd ever after describe as the one great love of her life. It tells of a late–summer idyll at the Swiss farmhouse of Tim and Sara, where guests have gathered at ease on the terrace next to the burbling fountain in which baby lettuces are being washed, there to enjoy the food and wine served them by this stylish American couple. But all around these seemingly fortunate people, the forces of darkness are gathering: The year is 1939; World War II approaches. And the paradise Tim and Sara have made is being besieged from within as Tim — closely based on Parrish — is about to suffer the first of the circulatory attacks that will cause him to lose his leg to amputation.
Enjoy M.F.K. Fisher's strong sense of place and deep love of Provence with this collection of rich, gorgeous photographs paired with some of Fisher's best-known essays. M.F.K. Fisher’s Provence highlights Fisher’s Celtic eye for detail with a comparison of Aix-en-Provence, a university town, the site of an international music festival and the former capital of Provence, and Marseille, the port town. Fisher’s description of the sights and smells belonging to an Aix bakery shop window is her Platonic ideal of a bakery shop to be found anywhere in France, for example, with its “delicately layered” scents of “fresh eggs, fresh sweet butter, grated nutmeg, vanilla beans, old kirsch and newly ground almonds.” Then, there is her portrayal of the sounds of Aix’s fountains mixed with the music of Mozart during the town’s festival, leaving her bedazzled. She would return again and again to stroll the narrow streets of Aix with two young daughters who “seemed to grow like water-flowers under the greening buds of the plane trees.” It is the quality of Fisher’s writing that inspired photographer Aileen Ah-Tye to look for her Provence. In a letter to Fisher, Aileen would report back from Marseille: “The eels and the prickly rascasse were exotique to my San Francisco eyes, the smells as pungent as you can get, and . . . miracle of all miracles . . . the men and women on the docks were exactly as you described them.” Thus began a collaboration that illustrates Fisher’s passion for life and all its sensual pleasures that nourish the soul. “It’s difficult to pick out just one favorite travel book. But if I had to pick just one favorite, it wouldn’t exactly be a travel book, but rather a ‘being there’ book – and that is Two Towns in Provence by M.F.K. Fisher . . . [Reading it] was one of the turning moments in my life. She was writing about a café I’ve subsequently come to know very well in Aix-en-Provence called the Deux Garçons. I could smell it, and I could taste the little things she and her children were having at the time. And I thought, That’s where I want to be.” —Peter Mayle
In Among Friends M. F. K. Fisher begins her recollections in Albion, Michigan, but they soon lead her to Whittier, California, where her family moved in 1912, when she was four. The "Friends" of the title range from the hobos who could count on food at the family's back door to the businessmen who advertised in Father's paper—but above all they are the Quakers who were the prominent group in Whittier. Mary Frances Kennedy found them unusual friends indeed, in the more than forty years that she lived in Whittier she was never invited inside a Friend's house. Her portraits of her father, Rex—her mentor, himself the editor of the local newspaper—her mother, Edith, and the other members of her family are memorable and moving. Originally published in 1970, Among Friends provides a fascinating glimpse into the background and development of one of our most delightful and best–loved writers, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher.
Fisher's magic with language is intertwined with her culinary expertise to provide the perfect recipe for teaching some basic steps to satisfying one's appetite.
“Should be required reading for every cook. It defines in a sensual and beautiful way the vital relationship between food and culture.”—Alice Waters This comprehensive volume of essays on culinary and other pleasures of life comes from the legendary and widely traveled writer “whose artful personal essays about food created a genre” (The New York Times) and who writes “practically, often profoundly, and always beautifully” (San Francisco Chronicle). Spanning from the autobiographical to the historical, it compiles her works Serve It Forth; Consider the Oyster; How to Cook a Wolf; The Gastronomical Me; and An Alphabet for Gourmets. “How wonderful to have here in my hands the essence of M.F.K. Fisher, whose wit and fulsome opinions on food and those who produce it, comment upon it, and consume it are as apt today as they were several decades ago, when she composed them. Why did she choose food and hunger she was asked, and she replied, ‘When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it…and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.’ This is the stuff we need to hear, and to hear again and again.”—Julia Child “Mary Frances [Fisher] has the extraordinary ability to make the ordinary seem rich and wonderful. Her dignity comes from her absolute insistence on appreciating life as it comes to her.”—Ruth Reichl
Poet of the appetites'John Updike M.F.K. Fisher's personal, intimate culinary essays are well-loved American classics, combining recipes with her anecdotes, reminiscences, cultural observations and passionate storytelling. Considered the greatest American prose writer by W. H. Auden, Fisher saw eating as inextricably bound up with living well. Whether reflecting on an epic lunch served by a fanatical waitress, the life-giving properties of wine, quails whose glorious smell 'would rouse Lazarus' or how the love of food can save a marriage, each piece is a perfectly-crafted work of art. Throughout the history of civilization, food has been more than simple necessity. In countless cultures, it has been livelihood, status symbol, entertainment - and passion. In the GREAT FOOD series, Penguin brings you the finest food writing from the last 400 years, and opens the door to the wonders of every kitchen.
Bringing together twenty of the author's prefaces to books by other writers and fifteen to her own, this volume collects a variety of observations on life, art, travel, food, and drink
Those who court danger are often the most circumspect. In this stylish novel, M. F. K. Fisher traces the course of Jennie, a willful wandering woman, a lovely enchantress calculating the havoc caused by her life of danger and license. Jennie's path is devastating to those around her, a sinister invasion. But Jennie, more Lilith than Eve, survives unscathed. First published in 1947, Not Now But Now traces the subtleties and nuances of a woman's mind. Jennie is not controlled by others, nor by time, and we follow her through separate eras and beautifully drawn settings. Whether in San Francisco, Chicago, Lausanne, or Paris, Jennie is surrounded by sensuality, fine food and furniture, and beautiful clothes. Those not yet familiar with Fisher's style will delight in her careful, exact prose. She is the author of several books, including How to Cook a Wolf, A Considerable Town, The Cooking of Provincial France, and As They Were.
First published in 1942 when wartime shortages were at their worst, the ever-popular How to Cook a Wolf, continues to surmount the unavoidable problem of cooking within a budget. Here is a wealth of practical and delicious ways to keep the wolf from the door.
In these fifteen remarkable stories, M.F.K. Fisher, one of the most admired writers of our time, embraces the coming of old age. With a saint to guide us, she writes, perhaps we can accept in a loving way "the inevitable visits of a possibly nagging harpy like Sister Age" But in the stories, it is the human strength in the unavoidable encounter with the end of life that Fisher dramatizes so powerfully. Other themes—the importance of witnessing death, the marvelous resilience of the old, the passing of vanity—are all explored with insight, sympathy and, often, a sly wit.
M. F. K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our “poet of the appetites,” here pays tribute to that most enigmatic of ocean creatures, the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel—and of the pearls sometimes found therein—Fisher describes her mother’s joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls’ dorm in the 1890s, recalls her own initiation into the “strange cold succulence” of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve’s famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the “dreadful but exciting” life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose. “Consider the Oyster marks M. F. K. Fisher’s emergence as a storyteller so confident that she can maneuver a reader through a narrative in which recipes enhance instead of interrupt the reader’s attention to the tales. She approaches a recipe as a published dream or wish, and the stories she tells here...are also stories of the pleasures and disillusionments of dreams fulfilled.”—PATRICIA STORACE, The New York Review of Books “Since Lewis Carroll no one had written charmingly about that indecisively sexed bivalve until Mrs. Fisher came along with her Consider the Oyster. Surely this will stand for some time as the most judicious treatment in English.”—CLIFFTON FADIMAN
This volume brings together two delightful books—Map of Another Town and A Considerable Town—by one of our most beloved food and travel writers. In her inimitable style, here M.F.K. Fisher tells the stories—and reveals the secrets—of two quintessential French cities. Map of Another Town, Fisher’s memoir of the French provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence is, as the author tells us, “my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself,” and a vibrant and perceptive profile of the kinship between a person and a place. Then, in A Considerable Town, she scans the centuries to reveal the ancient sources that clarify the Marseille of today and the indestructible nature of its people, and in so doing weaves a delightful journey filtered through the senses of a profound writer.
M.F.K Fisher’s latest excursion into the art or science of gastronomy is more an anthology of the finest writing on the subject than strictly a text of her own composition . . . A royal feast, indeed!" —The New York Times Betty Fussell—winner of the James Beard Foundation’s journalism award, and whose essays on food, travel, and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Saveur, and Vogue—is the perfect writer to introduce M.F.K Fisher’s Here Let Us Feast, first published in 1946. The author of Eat, Live, Love, Die has penned a brilliant introduction to this fabulous anthology of gastronomic writing, selected and with commentary from the inimitable M.F.K. Fisher. The celebrated author of such books as The Art of Eating, The Cooking of Provincial France, and With Bold Knife and Fork, Fisher knows how to prepare a feast of reading as no other. Excerpting descriptions of bountiful meals from classic works of British and American literature, Fisher weaves them into a profound discussion of feasting. She also traces gluttony through the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and claims that the story of a nation's life is charted by its gastronomy. M.F.K. Fisher has arranged everything perfectly, and the result is a succession of unforgettable courses that will entice the most reluctant epicure.
When Robert Lescher died in 2012 an unpublished manuscript of M.F.K. Fisher's was discovered neatly packed in the one of the literary agent's signature red boxes. Inspired by Fisher's affair with Dillwyn Parrish — who was to become her second husband — The Theoretical Foot is the master stylist's first novel. In it she describes the life she all–too–briefly had with the man she'd ever after describe as the one great love of her life. It tells of a late–summer idyll at the Swiss farmhouse of Tim and Sara, where guests have gathered at ease on the terrace next to the burbling fountain in which baby lettuces are being washed, there to enjoy the food and wine served them by this stylish American couple. But all around these seemingly fortunate people, the forces of darkness are gathering: The year is 1939; World War II approaches. And the paradise Tim and Sara have made is being besieged from within as Tim — closely based on Parrish — is about to suffer the first of the circulatory attacks that will cause him to lose his leg to amputation.
M.F.K. Fisher's A Cordiall Water is a collection of remedies, elixirs, restoratives, and fortifiers interspersed with autobiographical anecdotes from her life in California, France, Mexico and Switzerland. These recipes deal with commonplace ailments - warts, nosebleeds, cures for cats, aging skin, and hangovers - and a surprising list of ingredients.
Enjoy M.F.K. Fisher's strong sense of place and deep love of Provence with this collection of rich, gorgeous photographs paired with some of Fisher's best-known essays. M.F.K. Fisher’s Provence highlights Fisher’s Celtic eye for detail with a comparison of Aix-en-Provence, a university town, the site of an international music festival and the former capital of Provence, and Marseille, the port town. Fisher’s description of the sights and smells belonging to an Aix bakery shop window is her Platonic ideal of a bakery shop to be found anywhere in France, for example, with its “delicately layered” scents of “fresh eggs, fresh sweet butter, grated nutmeg, vanilla beans, old kirsch and newly ground almonds.” Then, there is her portrayal of the sounds of Aix’s fountains mixed with the music of Mozart during the town’s festival, leaving her bedazzled. She would return again and again to stroll the narrow streets of Aix with two young daughters who “seemed to grow like water-flowers under the greening buds of the plane trees.” It is the quality of Fisher’s writing that inspired photographer Aileen Ah-Tye to look for her Provence. In a letter to Fisher, Aileen would report back from Marseille: “The eels and the prickly rascasse were exotique to my San Francisco eyes, the smells as pungent as you can get, and . . . miracle of all miracles . . . the men and women on the docks were exactly as you described them.” Thus began a collaboration that illustrates Fisher’s passion for life and all its sensual pleasures that nourish the soul. “It’s difficult to pick out just one favorite travel book. But if I had to pick just one favorite, it wouldn’t exactly be a travel book, but rather a ‘being there’ book – and that is Two Towns in Provence by M.F.K. Fisher . . . [Reading it] was one of the turning moments in my life. She was writing about a café I’ve subsequently come to know very well in Aix-en-Provence called the Deux Garçons. I could smell it, and I could taste the little things she and her children were having at the time. And I thought, That’s where I want to be.” —Peter Mayle
Whether the subject of her fancy is the lowly, unassuming potato or the love life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with a simplicity that belies the complexities of the life she often muses on. She is hailed as one of America's preeminent writers about gastronomy. But to limit her to that genre would be a disservice. She was passionate and well–traveled, and her narratives fill over two dozen highly acclaimed books. In this collection of some of her finest works, we learn that Fisher's palette was not only well trained in gastronomical masterpieces, but in life's best pleasures as well. Love in a Dish . . . and Other Culinary Delights by M.F.K. Fisher is an instructional manual on how to live, eat, and love brought together by prolific researcher and culinary enthusiast Anne Zimmerman. With great care she has selected essays that sometimes forgive our lustful appetites, yet simultaneously celebrate them, as in "Once a Tramp, Always . . . " and "Love in a Dish," which guides us down the path to marital bliss via the family dining table. It is through this carefully chosen selection, which includes two essays never before collected in book form, that we encounter Fisher's bold passion for cuisine and an introduction to her idea of what constitutes the delicious life.
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