Episode 059 - Food and Cooking

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This episode we’re discussing Non-Fiction Food and Cooking books! We talk about the mystery of electric kettles, bodybuilding expertise, and fear of trying to make recipes that look like the pictures. Plus: Songs about bananas!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Robert Hamaker

Books We Discuss This Month

• Geek Sweets: An Adventurer's Guide to the World of Baking Wizardry by Jenny Burgesse
• The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook by Matthew Mead
  • Batman: Through the Genres
• The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
• Eat Live Love Die: Selected Essays by Betty Fussell
• Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food by Ann Hood
• An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler
• Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant by Amanda Cohen, Grady Hendrix, and Ryan Dunlavey
• Cook Korean!: A Comic Book with Recipes by Robin Ha
• Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck by Matt Holloway and Michelle Davis
• Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time by Carol J. Adams and Virginia Messina
• Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

Other Media We Mention

• The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes) by Erin Ergenbright and Thisbe Nissen
• The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker
  • So many editions: Robert's travel copy with Marion's illustration is from 1954. He says the editions to avoid are 1962 and 1997.
• Coffee Isn't Rocket Science: A Quick and Easy Guide to Buying, Brewing, Serving, Roasting, and Tasting Coffee by Sébastien Racineux, Chung-Leng Tran, Yannis Varoutsikos (Illustrations)
• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
• Nanny Ogg's Cookbook: A Useful and Improving Almanack of Information Including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan, and Paul Kidby
• How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman
• Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual by Peter Hertzmann
  • à la carte: the author's website
  • Chopping Vegetables with 8-Foot-Long Knives by Simone Giertz (features chopping an oven in half)
• Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B. Toklas
• The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel
• A Month of Sundaes by Michael Turback
  • Knickerbocker glory
• The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
• The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen
• Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford
• In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis

Links, Articles, and Things

• Cup (unit)
• Postum shows up in old restaurant menus and in a marketing campaign using Mr. Coffee Nerves. Search for it in New York Public Library’s historical menus. We also discuss it in Episode 029 - Westerns.
• Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen
  • Goblin Sandwiches
• Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union
• The Cook’s Thesaurus
• Yes! We Have No Bananas
  • Louis Prima - Yes We Have No Bananas
• Chiquita Banana The Original Commercial
• Is this the bananana song? We think so… (Clearly we misheard the lyrics.)
• Matthew published a cooking zine called “Slugs and Spice / Sugar and Snails” for Food Not Bombs Vancouver almost ten years ago. He found a terrible scan you can look at if you’re interested.
• Crying in H Mart By Michelle Zauner
  • Sobbing near the dry goods, I ask myself, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”

Check out our Pinterest board and Tumblr posts, follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September, 4th, when we’ll talk about our travel reading habits!

Then come back on Tuesday, September 18th, when we’ll talk about Romance Fiction!