Monday, June 23, 2014

Now Exploring "Door Way"

Weaving a tapestry of lives and landscapes, past and present, earth and water, Norbert Blei celebrates the unique heritage of Door County, Wisconsin, a spectacular peninsula reaching into Lake Michigan.

Blei ponders the balance of nature in a place where locals, tourists, and developers vie with the native flora and fauna of forests and lakeshore.

The People in the Landscape
by Norbert Blei
University of Wisconsin Press, 2014

Book Notes Wild
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
The Nature Pages
Outrider Reading Group

Saturday, June 14, 2014

What's Cooking with Canning, Pickling, and Freezing with Irma Harding

Preserving your own food is a fundamental part of a healthy lifestyle. Canning and pickling is a way of doing this. Not only do you source produce from your garden, farmer s market, or local shop, you can also ensure the preparation is wholesome and the ingredients are pure.

In this detailed guide, 1950s icon Irma Harding offers her firm guidance on how to properly prepare and preserve your own foods.

Recipes to Preserve Food, Family and the American Way
by Marilyn McCray and Michael Perry
Octane Press, 2014

Homemade Pickles
Outrider Reading Group
How to Make Jams and Jellies
Cookbooks
Book Store

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Food in America's Environmental History


Staking out American 'food history' is a promising way to change perceptions about the place and importance of the 'environment' in American history.  Food connects to the mainstream of 'American history,' and puts standard narratives in a new light: think of food and native America; establishing colonial societies; protests over tea and trade relations swirling through the American Revolution in the economic and political context of an Atlantic world; slaves growing rice and tobacco and the role of food in fighting the Civil War; the long westward conquest and the wholesale reordering of landscapes to support both a new regime of property and food production; immigration, foodways, identity, ethnicity and America as a Melting Pot; progressivism, home economics, and food reform; industrialization and corporate capitalism from Swift to Sunkist and Monsanto; the rise of tourism and consumer culture - especially consumer culture.


excerpted from:
Douglas Cazaux Sackman (Editor)
Wiley-Blackwell, 2014
Outrider Reading Group
The Nature Pages
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
History and American West Titles

Friday, May 16, 2014

New Guide to Carving a 1930s Street Scene

From an auto repair shop at one end of the street to a movie theater and a building under construction at the other, this book depicts downtown USA during the Great Depression, through the eyes of 29 of North America's top caricature carvers.

The Caricature Carvers of America (CCA) present the 1930s street scene, complete with 11 buildings and over 100 original caricature carvings.

The book includes a step-by-step chapter on carving a piece from the scene as well as patterns and details for many of the original carvings.

by Caricature Carvers of America
Schiffer Publishing, 2014
Carvings
Here's How To...
Guidebooks and How-to Titles
Outrider Reading Group

Sunday, May 4, 2014

New Guide to Homegrown Tea

This book explains how to grow a large variety of plants in your own garden, on a balcony or even on a window sill could become your tea cupboard. It shows you how to grow your tea from seeds, cuttings, or small plants, as well as which parts of the plant are used to make tea.

Liversidge lays out when and how to harvest your plants, as well as information on how to prepare the plant, including how to dry it to make tea you can store to last you throughout the year.

An Illustrated Guide to Planting, Harvesting, and Blending Teas and Tisanes
by Cassie Liversidge
St. Martin's Griffin, 2014
Tea
Here's How To...
Guidebooks and How-to Titles
Outrider Reading Group

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Farm and Garden Picks: Brassicaceae

This book is believed to be the the first collection of articles to summarize the most advanced information and studies of Brassicaceae, a special genus with vast species, which not only have tremendous human health beneficial compounds for dietary consumption, but also comprise the most metal hyperaccumulating species worldwide discovered to date with potential usage in phytoremediation of polluted soil, air and water.

Characterization, Functional Genomics and Health Benefits
Minglin Lang (Editor)
Nova Science Publishers, 2013
Farm and Garden Books
Science Writing
Growth Spurts
Home Grown

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Review: Sauces & Shapes

While there are plenty of pasta cookbooks available with recipes for spaghetti, linguine, or rigatoni, few offer as much guidance for handmade pastas in the home kitchen. This one explains how to make not just tagliatelle, but strozzapreti, garganelli, trofie, fusilli and dozens more.

The book includes recipes for about a hundred traditional sauces and soups derived from home kitchens throughout Italy and suggests matches for both homemade and store-bought pasta shapes. There's also a healthy serving of advice for cooking, serving and eating pasta.

Pasta the Italian Way
by Oretta Zanini De Vita and Maureen B. Fant
W.W. Norton & Co., 2013

continued in The Book Stall

Outrider Reading Group
Pasta
Cookbooks
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