Monthly Archives: February 2010

Watching Others Cook

Collins, Kathleen. (2009). Watching What We Eat: the evolution of television cooking shows. New York: Continuum. ISBN: 0-8264-2930-0

I’ve learned so much about food and cooking from watching cooking shows on television. As a teenager I would watch and long to be able to make the kinds of recipes being shown; dreamed of having a fancy kitchen, a professional mixer or food processor. Kathleen Collins has made a very detailed study of how those shows have changed over the decades of television history, and how those shows have influenced those of us who like to cook and eat.

The history of television cooking shows is much longer and richer than I could have imagined. Some of the earliest shows sound like some of the crazy Food Network shows on now. And it is interesting that throughout the entire history of cooking on television, here has been a voyeuristic quality and also a  vicarious quality. In other words, we love watching others cook thins we know we will never cook ourselves. And yet I think a regular viewer of these shows learns about cooking and technique, much like watching someone cook in a kitchen , but because television cooking shows are such controlled and “chopped up” presentations, they do not teach how to plan a meal, how to cook a whole meal or party so all the food is ready at the same time. They never teach you about cleaning up, or planning your shopping and menus so you don’t have a lot of waste.

Food is entertaining becuase it is part of all of our lives, and have used the cooking shows to help live  out and shape our fantasies of the ideal life. Collins does a great job of showing how these shows have excelled at that and captured the moving target of the American Dream over the last fifty years.

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The Morning After

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The Blizzard

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Garden Dreams of Philadelphia

White, Sharon. (2008). Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN: 0-8203-3156-2

This book was a great find, especially great for winter reading during the recent snow storm. The book combines a discussion of plants that grow in the city with city history. But the book is not nearly as dry as that makes it sound. The book is filled with descriptions of pastoral scenes, descriptions of varieties of plants, of famous gardens of the past, of eccentric gardeners. White’s style is especially effective in conveying a sense of connection among people who have gardened and loved gardening in Philadelphia over the last few centuries. She achieves this way of making history come alive by anchoring in her own life experiences. The book reads like a sort of formalized journal that wanders off into the lives of other people. Woven expertly into these contemporary explorations are the stories and exploits of people of the past.

When White writes, toward the beginning of the book, “The more I live in my corner of Philadelphia, the more it seems that the city is an extensive garden, a bit wild in parts” (p.4). For someone living in Center City, that is a great eye-opener; beauty and nature are all around us, even in what seems to be the most urban settings. All we have to do is open our eyes and see it, whether it is plants growing in a hidden spot, or a sense of the past and what has come before.

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Putting Your Life On a Green Diet

Uliano, Sophie. (2009). The Gorgeously Green Diet: How to Live Lean and Green. New York: Dutton. ISBN: 978-0-525-95115-5.

The title implies a diet book, but it is much more than the typical diet book. It has the usual suspects: eating plans, nicely exercises, allowed and not allowed foods. But the book expands the idea of dieting and shows that most of us need to put more than our bodeis on a diet. The pantry and refrigerator are prime targets, and we can move out from there.

Uliano’s plan has a basic, but thoughtful, beginning: figure out what you really want before you begin. How many times have I jumped into a plan of self-improvement in excitement after reading a book or seeing something on television?

And this book does inspire, It connects what we eat with the ecological and environmental movements we are all thining about. It offers three different levels of being green to show that living better is possible for all of us. And she lists many websites and company names that sell the kinds of healthy foods and products recommende in the bookthat makes it easy to do further research on the specific topics that appeal to you. ( )

Author’s Website: http://www.gorgeouslygreen.com

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