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What was Pol Pot eating while two million Cambodians were dying of hunger? Did Idi Amin really eat human flesh? And why was Fidel Castro obsessed with one particular cow? Traveling across four continents, from the ruins of Iraq to the savannahs of Kenya, Witold Szabłowski tracked down the personal chefs of five dictators known for the oppression and massacre of their own citizens—Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot—and listened to their stories.

Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

Before New York City was the Big Apple, it could have been called the Big Oyster. Now award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants, the oyster, whose influence on the great metropolis remains unparalleled.

Greyhounds, streaks of lightning, were bred to be the fastest dogs on earth. Yet for decades, tens of thousands were destroyed, abandoned, and abused each year when they couldn't run fast enough. Scrappy Marion Fitzgibbon, whose empathy for animals made her relentless, became obsessed with saving these dogs - despite the overwhelming power of dog-racing proponents - when she became head of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Foodborne illness is a serious problem that can affect anyone. Everyone needs to know the basics of food safety at home to protect themselves and their loved ones. We all deserve a safe meal every day, and we can achieve this by following some simple steps outlined in Basics of Food Safety at Home! After hearing these essential tips, you will never feel helpless again about protecting yourself and your loved ones from foodborne illnesses. You don't have time or energy for misinformation when it comes to keeping your family safe from food poisoning.

Food & Wine editor Ray Isle does for wine what Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma did for food—showing listeners how to choose more delicious, interesting, and environmentally friendly wines without breaking the bank.

France is in a rut, and so is French cuisine. Twenty-five years ago it was hard to have a bad meal in France; now, in some cities and towns, it is a challenge to find a good one. For the first time in the annals of modern cooking, the most influential chefs and the most talked-about restaurants in the world are not French. Within France, large segments of the wine industry are in crisis, cherished artisanal cheeses are threatened with extinction, and bistros and brasseries are disappearing at an alarming rate.

From the farm to the curbside pickup parking spot, everything about the restaurant business is changing, for better or worse. The Next Supper tells this story and offers clear and essential advice for what and how to eat to ensure the well-being of cooks and waitstaff, not to mention our bodies and the environment.

Huw Richards set himself a challenge - to grow his own fruit and veg for free for a year. He succeeded, and now wants to help you do the same. Can't afford a raised bed? Try repurposing an old wooden pallet. Don't want to spend money on buying plants? Look in the fridge and your kitchen cupboards for food that you can plant. Need a particular tool? Barter or borrow from a neighbour. Don't have a garden? See if someone in your area has an untended patch you can turn into a well-loved veg plot.

Dogs have over time developed health problems which modern research credits to their poor quick-fix diets, a deviation from their ancestral diets. Pet owners have been investigating the benefits of feeding their dogs raw food for some time now, to keep them healthy and living longer. The raw-food diet is no secret, as it has been used successfully over the years, and provided a plethora of health benefits.

Malört may be the worst thing you'll ever taste. Known primarily for its intense bitterness, the infamous Chicago liqueur has been compared to "a forest fire, if the forest was made of earwax." Yet lurking in the horror and the mockery lies the truth of Malört: we keep going back for more. For nearly a hundred years, we've gone back.

You may think you don’t have the time or the money to start a big permaculture project. But permaculture doesn’t need to be overwhelming. You can start as small as you like, and you can move at a pace that suits you. Don’t feel you have to learn everything in one go and rush out to transform a whole wilderness in a year. Just deal in manageable chunks, and you’ll do just fine. Even if all you have done is tend to a few tomato plants on your window ledge, you can become an expert gardener; all it takes is a little time, patience, and practice.

Beneath the gloss of star chefs and crystal-laden tables, the truffle supply chain is touched by theft, secrecy, sabotage, and fraud. Farmers patrol their fields with rifles and fear losing trade secrets to spies. Hunters plant poisoned meatballs to eliminate rival truffle-hunting dogs. Naive buyers and even experts are duped by liars and counterfeits. Deeply reported and elegantly written, this exposé documents the dark, sometimes deadly crimes at each level of the truffle’s path from ground to plate, making sense of an industry that traffics in scarcity, seduction, and cash.

In early August 1889, César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier highly regarded for his exquisite taste, found himself at the Savoy Hotel in London. He had come at the request of Richard D'Oyly Carte, the financier of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic operas, who had modernized theater and was now looking to create the world's best hotel. D'Oyly Carte soon seduced Ritz to move to London with his team, which included Auguste Escoffier, the chef de cuisine known for his elevated, original dishes.

Marine algae are the supreme eco-engineers of life: they oxygenate the waters, create habitat for countless other organisms, and form the base of a food chain that keeps our planet unique in the universe as we know it. In this audiobook Josie Iselin explores both the artistic and the biological presence of 16 seaweeds and kelps that live in the thin region where the Pacific Ocean converges with the North American continent - a place of incomparable richness.

Kitty Tait grew up a funny, chatty redhead who made everyone in her family laugh. But around the time she turned 14, Kitty began experiencing anxiety. Slowly, she disconnected from everyone around her and struggled to wake up, get dressed and leave the house. Full of worry, her parents tried everything, from new hobbies like reading and painting to medication and visits to a specialist. Nothing seemed to help. Then, one day, as Kitty stood on a stool watching her dad mix flour, water and salt, she determined Al’s gloopy, sludgy blob of bread looked a whole lot like her brain.

In 1949, a young Chinese housewife arrived in Taiwan and transformed herself from a novice to a natural in the kitchen. She launched a career as a cookbook author and television cooking instructor. Years later, in America, flipping through her mother's copies of Fu Pei-mei's Chinese cookbooks, historian Michelle T. King discovered more than the recipes to meals of her childhood. She found, in Fu's story and in her food, a portal to another time, when a generation of middle-class female home cooks navigated the postwar transformations taking place across the world.

This book really is for the absolute beginner. We'll cover all the basics in a motivating, easy-to-digest way, and allow nature to do the heavy lifting. We'll discover your green thumb that's been there all along. We'll take good care of our fellow human and our planet. And we'll have a lot of fun doing it! Friend, you really can live the dream, and make it your reality. It all starts with one step.

Food is the primary way andrea bennett connects with the world. They worked in the restaurant industry for a decade, and though they don’t eat much meat and can’t eat gluten, they take as much pleasure in food as Jeffrey Steingarten, Anthony Bourdain, or Guy Fieri. When they want to show someone they care, they cook them a meal. The essays in Hearty offer a snapshot of the North American cultural relationship to food and eating.