DIY Cooking
People get ambitious in the summer. Vistas of leisure time seem to beckon, although all too often they turn out to be illusions. Some of us decide to build decks. Some of us buy packs of vegetable starts, which we…
2011
Alan Davidson
Bruce Palling - Food columnist for the Wall Street Journal Europe looks at the life of the late Alan Davidson and recalls some memorable meetings with him. Bruce has his own blog, Gastronenophile where you can read…
"How" books
In today's mailbox were two bits of nonfiction from the shadowy waysides of the cookbook industry: food memoir and food exposé. I call them "how" books, as opposed to "how-to" books. That's because of their subtitles,…
Looking out for number one
It was just a little over a year ago, I think, that Judith Jones' little book came out--The Pleasures of Cooking For One seemed charming, quirky, contrarian in an age of conspicuous entertainment. But like any…
London eating
Although I now live on the opposite side of the world to my home city of London, I'm fortunate to get back often enough to still feel in touch. I don't tend to keep up to date while I'm away, so sometimes I find a new…
The Southern books are here
Like grill books, Mexican cooking books, and beach entertaining books, Southern cookbooks are usually published in late spring. There's a good reason--because that's when the rest of the country starts warming up enough…
400,000th recipe indexed
We reached another milestone this week when we indexed our 400,000th recipe on EYB. I remember when we started EYB that the 100,000th recipes seemed a phenomenal amount. But then we had just 15,000 cookbooks in the…
Camp cooking
This week brought a brace of camping cookbooks, which I regarded with curiosity. Though our family lives on 20 rustic acres, all my outdoor cooking--whether on propane burner or kettle grill--takes place no more than…
And yet another Joy of Cooking gets indexed
We've just indexed the 1997 Revised Edition of Joy of Cooking, which contains 2,547 recipes (thanks to our indexer Tracey who labored on this one for weeks). Since this is the third edition of the book we've indexed,…
Subliminal marketing and the "Every Day"
I've just been noticing that suddenly the words "Every Day" are appearing in the new cookbooks I see, well, every day. This week it was Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River…
A very special dinner
Every so often we get to do something that is so special we can't believe it's really happening. I had that feeling this weekend when I had the privilege of attending a dinner cooked by two of the world's greatest chefs…
Joan Nathan
Joan Nathan talks about how she unearths the stories she includes her books. The question I am most frequently asked is, "how do you find all the people with their stories for your books?" And secondly, "how do you get…