What the French do

Part cultural study, part memoir, part children's food guide, Karen Le Billon's "French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters" is a breezy, useful volume for hurried parents looking to keep their kids well-fed.
 
A mother of two young girls, Sophie and Claire, the author recalls the year her family moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Pléneuf Val-André, France, her husband Philippe's hometown on the Brittany coast.

She compares North American eating habits to which they had been accustomed (e.g. fast-food consumption, constant snacking) to French norms they needed to learn along the way.

"French parents gently compel their children to eat healthy food. They expect their kids to eat everything they are served, uncomplainingly. They ask them to spend long hours at the table (where they are expected to be extremely well behaved)..."

In due time, Le Billon (Eau Canada) drafts a set of rules for her daughters, strategies she believes readers can easily follow as well. Parents should "schedule meals and menus," for example. "Kids should eat what adults eat: no substitutes and no short-order cooking."

Her tone is straightforward, generous and gentle. That Le Billon concludes with a small collection of kid-friendly recipes - including a Five-Minute Fish en Papillote and Clafoutis (sweet cherry soufflé) - helps make this foodie manifesto all the more accessible.

(A version of this review appeared originally in Publishers Weekly.)

Producers and purveyors

In an effort to highlight local producers and purveyors, Seattle resident Leora Y. Bloom talks to a cross-section of people in the eye-catching volume "Washington Food Artisans: Farm Stories and Chef Recipes."

Meet Stina Booth, for example, and her husband, John Richardson, who run Booth Canyon Orchard near Twisp. They "take turns driving their truck across the Cascades to bring their apples and pears to Seattle so that someone is always at home taking care of the trees." 

Or Pete Knutson of Loki Fish Co. in Seattle, who resembles "a Norwegian fisherman... movie-star handsome, aging with craggy wrinkles in all the right places." He is similarly attached to his trade - when he's not fishing, he's teaching at Seattle Central Community College. Knutson is "an activist in the fishing industry" as well.

The author also collects recipes ranging from spiced albacore tuna with stone fruit chutney to goat cheesecake with pears and honey. They will have denizens of the Northwest and beyond drooling - most ingredients can be sourced nationwide.

Clare Barboza's sumptuous landscape and food photos complement the narrative nicely. They give sight and sound to an admirable group of people committed to the health and well-being of their customers and their communities.

(A version of this review appeared originally in Publishers Weekly.)

Without question

Because in life there should always be cake.

You and me

A visit to Umami Burger yields a port and stilton burger, topped with port-caramelized onions and blue cheese. It proves an excellent yield.

"Mycophilia"

Mushroom hunting, Eugenia Bone reminds us, isn't simply traipsing through the woods after weeks of wet weather, eyes to the ground. It requires a decent amount of patience, fearlessness, skill and "knowledge both of the organism and of its habits and habitats."

In "Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms," the journalist and noted food writer sheds light on groups of fungi aficionados from around the country and chronicles her own growing interest in the field over the past decade. She introduces us to a distinct subculture.

Some people, Bone says, gather mushrooms for the thrill as well as the taste. They join mycological societies that offer "lectures on fungal biology, slideshows of mushroom photography... (and) small guided walks." They take part in regional forays and festivals.

Like her, they look forward to spring, when morels – "probably the most fetishized of all wild edible mushrooms" – can be found in abundance. Getting good ones will reward them with delicious meals afterward.

But eating bad ones can send them to the hospital. One cap of an Amanita phalloides, for instance, "will make you very sick, even do you in, especially if you exhibit symptoms within six hours of eating." Telltale signs of mushroom poisoning include gastrointestinal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

Other mushroom people forage for the money. Commercial pickers who hunt for chanterelles, truffles and matsutakes in the Pacific Northwest, for example, are part of a thriving industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They sell the mushrooms they find in the wild to restaurants or distributors, following a trail from British Columbia in the summer south to Washington and Oregon in the fall and Northern California in the winter.

Made up primarily of Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong or Mien immigrants, Latino migrant workers and "white off-the-grid types," the workforce can get competitive. Stories abound of groups "staking out and defending territory in national forests with automatic weapons," the author tells us, "robbing each other of their mushrooms and robbing the mushroom buyers of their cash." There is an inherent danger to their search.

Bone, whose food books include "At Mesa's Edge: Cooking and Ranching in Colorado's North Fork Valley" and "Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods," nominated in 2009 for a James Beard Award, also touches on other aspects of mycology in the United States today.

Talk of fungi biology and molecular make-ups, of spore dispersal (the way in which spores ensure their survival), ecosystems and parasites get fairly heady. They prove a bit much for non-academics to fully comprehend.

Likewise, chapters on psychedelic mushrooms – "the black sheep of the mycological world" – and mycotechnologies can be challenging.

The former looks at physical and psychological effects hallucinogenic mushrooms can have. Bone recalls a trip to the Telluride Mushroom Festival where she tried some; it is among the few events that celebrate psychoactive mushrooms as well.

Meanwhile, the latter tackles advances in burgeoning scientific fields where fungi are used, for instance, to remediate oil-polluted soil or agricultural waste.

For the food-inclined, however, sections about white button mushrooms are fascinating. As are discussions on cultivated criminis, portobellos, oysters, shiitakes and enokis. They are varieties with which many of us are familiar.

Grown largely in Chester County, Pennsylvania – "the heart and soul of the American button mushroom industry" – about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, the white button is by far the most ubiquitous. Total mushroom sales in the U.S. in 2008-2009 topped 817 million pounds, Bone says. White button mushrooms accounted for 802 million pounds.

Seventy farms in the area make up roughly 70 percent of the mushroom farms in the country, all of which are family-owned and operated.

Fungi farming is both labor-intensive and time-consuming. Mushrooms "must be selected for size, cut, and trimmed, each one by hand." Italian laborers from a century ago were replaced in the 1970s by Puerto Rican workers. They in turn were gradually replaced by Mexican workers. Approximately 98 percent of the labor force on mushroom farms these days are Mexican workers.

By taking mushrooms out of the kitchen and into the forest and field, Bone gives us a greater understanding of these unique ingredients. Whether foraged in the wild or grown on a network of farms, they are part of an intricate and flourishing food system.

In this sometimes too technical but overall interesting examination, she introduces us to a few of the people behind the things we eat, and the remarkable work they do every day. She helps us appreciate their efforts.

(A version of this review appears at www.culinate.com.)

Chocolate eggs

Because it is Easter Sunday.

An April fool

Because I am still a fool for rhubarb and yogurt.

Sweet on sweets

"Traditionally, all Indian desserts are made on top of a stove, whether steamed, simmered, boiled in syrup, toasted, panfried, or deep-fried, or sometimes a combination of all these techniques.

"The popular gulab jamun, for example, is a syrup-soaked fritter about the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Like so many Indian sweets, its ingredients are simple, essentially sugar and milk, but the recipe requires a great deal of precision, technique, and labor - again, like so many of the subcontinent's confections.

"The process begins by making mawa (also known as khoa or khaya), produced by cooking milk over a slow fire for hours to evaporate almost all of its moisture.

"Ideally the result should be fairly dry with a delicate golden color and a taste hinting of caramel. Mawa is used in numerous Indian desserts. (Some cookbook authors suggest substituting milk powder for the mawa, but then all the complexity is lost.)

"Once the mawa is ready, the cook mixes it with flour and more milk or cream, forms the batter into balls, then deep-fries them. Finally, they get a soak in syrup.

"The resulting gulab jamun is part doughnut, part baba rum with a pleasantly bitter edge from the twice-caramelized milk sugars. Most Americans find it too sweet. Indians adore it."

Michael Krondl, in "Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert"

Green with envy

For the inner leprechaun, a cupcake with green frosting.

For an early morning kick, coffee with Baileys Irish Cream.

Good taste

"Start to view your quotidian breakfast as a sensory event. Observe a full sixty-second moment of alimentary appreciation before lifting a single utensil or eating a single bite.

"Put the newspaper aside for a day and simply pay attention to your breakfast and see how it changes the way you start your day.

"Visually inspect it as if you were seeing it for the first time. Smell it deeply before putting a bite in your mouth. Wait until you get to the office before checking your e-mail.

"If you must eat during the commute, find a carpool or use public transportation. Friends don't let friends eat and drive."

Barb Stuckey in "Taste What You're Missing: The Passionate Eater's Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good"

Nice and slow

Jim Weaver, a restaurateur in Princeton, New Jersey, describes the work he has done in recent years with the Slow Food movement in "Locavore Adventures: One Chef's Slow Food Journey."

He helped to found a local chapter in 1999 to be part of something larger, he says, and "to support authentic food that's been grown and enjoyed as close to its source as possible."

He pays tribute to a network of organic farmers and artisanal producers in the Tri-State area. He presents Eran Wajswol, for example, a real estate developer turned cheesemaker who "(gave) up his wingtips and pinstripes for a hair net, black rubber boots, and overalls with suspenders, his daily garb for churning out memorable cheese." Wajswol runs the Valley Shepherd Creamery in Long Valley.

Weaver writes of Pegi Ballister-Howells, an early supporter of Slow Food who maintains the website for the New Jersey Vegetable Growers Association and manages the Tri-County Cooperative Auction Market in East Windsor. "People need to understand that family dinners are critical, and kids need to know that fresh food is good," she says.

And he visits Salumeria Biellese, a deli, catering and salumi shop in New York City that offers terrifically cured meats. "The company makes its products properly: everything is handmade using all-natural ingredients and the meat from specific breeds... and then naturally aged."

The author provides a compelling look at food people and places in his corner of the country. In doing so, he reminds us to pay attention to the remarkable folks in our own corners as well.

(A version of this review appears in Publishers Weekly.)

Sweet or savory

"Is there anyone who doesn't inwardly melt at the sight of a golden glazed pie crust, with its little cottage chimney of steam wafting the scent of buried juices, the auguries of delight of what lies beneath?

"There is something so recondite about making a pie, and yet its image is dainty-dish, nursery-rhyme redolent of comfort and simplicity, 'as American as apple pie', 'as easy as pie'.

"The image of the pie is somehow quaint, romantic, one we feel nostalgic for; it is old-fashioned, welcoming, the cosiness we imagine when we are homesick, lovesick.

"The prinking and crimping and rolling and baking, the making and shaping by hand, the crafting of the crust are all about feeling, smelling, touching and tapping."

Tamasin Day-Lewis, in "Tarts with Tops On or How to Make the Perfect Pie"

Sweet tarts

"Once inside, there was nothing especially quaint or ye olde about Patisserie Tante Marie: just a few plain tables, a freezer full of homemade ice cream, and a long display case of cakes and tarts. But what cakes and tarts!

"Lumpy golden fruit tarts oozing golden nectar were lined up beside fudge-brown disks floating above clouds of mousse. Sheets of almond sponge barely contained a lava flow of coffee cream. Lemon tarts, the color of butter, almost shivered with fragility."

Michael Krondl, in "Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert"

In Claire's corner

Claire Criscuolo, who owns and runs Claire's Corner Copia in New Haven, Conn., with her husband, Frank, looks back at decades of vegetarian cooking in "Welcome to Claire's: 35 Years of Recipes and Reflections from the Landmark Vegetarian Restaurant."

She talks of inspiration and their "commitment to using organic and local foods," and the joy with which they have served generations of students and professors.

Their restaurant, at Chapel and College streets, is on "undeniably the most beautiful corner in the city," she writes. "It's the place where you can see the first daffodils of spring as they pop up from the land surrounding the Yale campus... the place where you can feel like you're in the center of the city."

Criscuolo ("Claire's Classic American Vegetarian Cooking") divides the book into seven convenient sections, including breakfast; soups, stews and sandwiches; and desserts.

The first contains recipes for apple-maple muffins, chocolate chip-and-walnut scones, and healthy fresh fruit smoothies.

By far the largest chapter, though, is the one on appetizers, salads, dressings, dips and salsas. It showcases everything from black bean-and-sweet corn quesadillas to pan-grilled vegetable fattoush, a Lebanese bread salad. Criscuolo also notes dishes that are gluten-free or vegan, or can easily be made so.

In this substantial volume, she rewards longtime customers with satisfying favorites and introduces the rest of us to a slew of delicious possibilities.

(A version of this review appears in Publishers Weekly.)

Mindful eating

"He opens the door, and enters
a dark room. Silent men and a few
little boys are eating supper. Someone
hands over a rice bowl and chopsticks,
and gestures eat eat. The food
is leftovers of leftovers. Even
the child monks practice eating meditation,
mindfully selecting some unrecognizable
brown vegetable, chewing it many times,
tasting it, identifying it, thinking about
and appreciating who grew it and cooked it, grateful
to them, and to the sun and the rain and the soil,
and all that generates and continues all."

Maxine Hong Kingston, in "I Love a Broad Margin to My Life"

Talking about pie

"The expression as easy as pie, meaning very easy indeed, is a curious one. Why should a pie be easy, after all? It seems that the ease of the pie is in the eating rather than the making of it, as in the similar expression nice as pie. Both originate in nineteenth-century America, where likening something to a particular pie is also archetypally American - as American as apple pie, in fact.

"Something described as pie in the sky is essentially a good idea but unlikely to amount to anything in reality. The phrase comes from a trade union parody of the hymn 'The Sweet By and By' that was often sung during the years of the Great Depression early in the twentieth century...

"Moving back across the Atlantic, to have a finger in every pie is an expression commonly used to describe a person who has an interest in many things, especially business-related. It would be easier to understand if the phrase read 'a finger in making every pie,' which would rid us of the image of somebody going around poking their finger into other people's peach crumble, thereby suggesting an interfering meddler. The expression has been in use for over four hundred years and is applied to anybody with wide and varied business interests. It is also used by some people to describe themselves in an attempt to appear mysterious and interesting when in fact they've probably never had their finger in anybody's pie."

Albert Jack, in "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

The Lunar New Year

Because it is the Year of the Dragon 4710. And it promises to be fierce.

Why ask why?

Peach pie.

Everything everywhere

"Sabine had never seen a kitchen like the one at La Villa Fernand. It was a nightmare. There was too much of everything everywhere. Forty wooden spoons stuffed into one drawer. Cake and butter molds in the shapes of rabbits, elephants, swans, crosses, trees, stars, moons, countless different variations of Saint Nicholas, several fleur-de-lis, and an assortment of lions and lambs.

"And there were molds for petit-fours, tarts, madeleine, brioche, tartlett-croustade, dariole-baba, parfait, charlotte, bombe, ice cream loaves, poundcake and terrine a pate.

"There were larding needles, salamanders, a cocotte and a conical, pyramid-shaped, of course. And there were so many multiples of potato ricers, mashers and whisks of every size and shape that they tumbled onto the countertop with the slightest provocation.

"Porcelain dishes and pottery bowls were stacked and stuffed into every available space along with boxes upon boxes of silver serving spoons, plates and bowls that Escoffier had bought at estate auctions for use at his restaurants. And - perfect or chipped, some matched and some not - there seemed to be enough dinnerware to feed several armies, and then some.

"Each pot and pan, each tin, every spoon and plate - was part of the history of Escoffier's life and it was all gathering dust."

N.M. Kelby, in the novel "White Truffles in Winter"

Lucky peas

Because it is New Year's Day.

Once a year

"Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven."

W.C. Fields, quoted in Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

Candy cane cupcake

Because it is Christmas Eve.

To start

It is a decent way to start the day.

Makin' a list

This time of year, when store shelves brim with cooking manuals and food books big and small, I begin to play matchmaker. I decide what to present to whom. Like Santa, I make a list and check it twice. I whittle down the gift-giving to eight.



The friend who relied on Ottolenghi, a mini-chain of prepared-food shops in London, for dinner parties when she last lived in the U.K. gets chef and Guardian columnist Yotam Ottolenghi's "Plenty."

Organized conveniently by ingredients, it pulls together more than 100 recipes featuring everyday items cooked in unusual ways.

Bell peppers, fava beans, tomatoes, artichokes and olives, for example, shine in an accessible paella. Roasted eggplant, sweet potatoes and zucchini combine with ricotta, feta and eggs for a savory Mediterranean-inspired tart. The book ought to help make her Stateside get-togethers now equally tasty and stylish.



To the sister who wanted to travel to Seoul but couldn't, I will present Marja Vongerichten's "The Kimchi Chronicles: Korean Cooking for an American Kitchen." It is the next best thing, a substitute to temper the wanderlust.

Done in conjunction with the PBS series of the same name, it is part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook. Vongerichten describes early experiences with her adoptive parents in Virginia, and the reunion two decades later in Brooklyn with her Korean birth mother. The women connected over bulgogi and kimchi.

She visits South Korea, and plays with traditional foods and flavors when she returns home, experimenting with celebrity-chef husband Jean-Georges in their kitchen. They make a mean lobster roll, and grill sea bass marinated with Korean rice ale and doenjang, coarse miso paste.



I would surprise the guy who celebrated a milestone birthday at Chez Panisse not long ago with a coffee-table volume celebrating the Berkeley restaurant's own recent milestone anniversary.

Filled with photos, menus and reprinted event posters as well as recollections from former and current staff members, "40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering" captures the history and spirit of the iconic eatery, opened in 1971 by Alice Waters.

It sheds light on the bakers, farmers and winemakers who have collaborated with them, and describes The Edible Schoolyard, which teaches children about good food and healthy eating.



For the friend wowed by images in Rachel Saunders' "The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook," I would offer Romney Steele's "Plum Gorgeous: Recipes and Memories from the Orchard."

Like the former, it, too, features photos by Sara Remington, nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. The shots alone are plum gorgeous.

Steele, who grew up in Big Sur and lived in orchards throughout her life, showcases seasonal fruits in their simplicity. She uses them in everything from lemon curd and cherry salsa to peach gelato and apple butter. Meanwhile, Remington captures the colors, textures and shapes, evoking a romantic nostalgia.



To my fellow Anglophile, who likes the British author as much as I do and gleans as much from his stories as I have, I would give Nigel Slater's "Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch." At more than 600 pages, it is quite the read.

A popular food writer in the U.K. and longtime columnist for The Observer – I call him the thinking man's Jamie Oliver – Slater details time spent in his backyard garden in London's Highbury neighborhood.

He recalls successes and failures. He has always grown things, he says, tomato plants on a window ledge in a student flat, for example, or pots of herbs out on a fire escape. That he would turn a lawn into a vegetable patch was inevitable.

Slater's tone is confident yet wistful, smart yet down-to-earth.



I would give the guy with the grill Lourdes Castro's "Latin Grilling: Recipes to Share, from Patagonian Asado to Yucatecan Barbecue and More." Organized by Latin American region, this book should bring different flavors to his outdoor meals, providing a nice change of pace.

Castro, a New York City chef and cooking instructor, creates menus that highlight popular foods in several countries, concentrating on meats as well as starters, sides, drinks and desserts.

Her Nicaraguan ranch roast, for instance, offers instructions for coffee-rubbed rib-eye steaks as well as grilled ripe plantains and a rum-and-guava cooler. The Chilean seafood cookout includes grilled clams and chorizo as well as bacon-wrapped scallops and a meringue cake.



The brother with a deep-fryer would benefit from Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen." I want to encourage him to prepare more nutritious meals instead, especially when I visit.

A follow-up to "Super Natural Cooking," the collection includes easy recipes for quick breakfasts, brown-bag lunches and weeknight dinners. Swanson relies mostly on whole grains and natural ingredients.

A spinach strata, for example, calls for milk, eggs, spinach, whole wheat bread and feta. It can be assembled the night before and cooked first thing in the morning. A tortellini salad combines ricotta-stuffed tortellini with asparagus, broccoli, sprouts and avocado. Swanson uses alfalfa sprouts. But other sprouts would work, too.



And for me, there is Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods." Because at the end of the gift-giving day, even Santa needs some love.

Jack looks at the origins behind many of our favorite foods, including eggs Benedict, Salisbury steak, the Cobb salad and dim sum. The chapter on traditional desserts such as apple pie, crepes Suzette and trifle is particularly sweet.

The author examines eating and drinking rituals as well, explaining, for instance, the esoteric connection between the toast we have with jam and the toasts we make at the table with our wine glasses.

His prose is informative, his writing style breezy. Though others might consider a book on culinary inventions trivia, I find it fascinating, and believe it provides a different kind of sustenance.

(A version of this article appears on www.culinate.com.)

"Plenty"

"For me, every food can be special. I always think you can add beauty and luxury to a dish by adding lots of herbs to it.

"I think a huge platter always looks better than a small plate, so to make my guests welcome and feel special I put many beautiful platters with food, as I do in my shops, so it's quite a lot around, a lot to choose from.

"Once you've done that, you can make the simplest things in the world, and still everyone thinks you've gone to the longest of efforts, but actually it's as simple as that."

Yotam Ottolenghi, author of "Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi," on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday

Handy dandy

The thing that helps

"There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass a champagne."

Bette Davis

Lunch time

"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."

Orson Welles, quoted in Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

Still life with pears

Squash squashed

Or squashed squash. Same difference.

The hot chocolate life

"When I've reached the bottom of my cup, fully sated, I head toward the door without any feeling of overindulgence, but fortified enough to handle the fiercest of Parisian winter weather. With a warm glow, I slip on my jacket, re-macrame my scarf around my neck, drop a few coins in the dish by the register, and leave. As I exit, I'm always careful to make a sharp ninety-degree turn just after I'm out the door so I don't inadvertently meet my maker. (Or my hot chocolate maker, although I'd sure like to meet him to pick his brain.)"

David Lebovitz in "The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City"

Hot Chocolate
from David Lebovitz's "The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City"

2 cups whole or low-fat milk
5 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
pinch of coarse salt

In a medium saucepan, warm the milk, chocolate and salt. Heat until it begins to boil. (It will probably boil up quite a bit at first, so keep an eye on it.)

Lower the heat to the barest simmer and cook the mixture, whisking frequently, for 3 minutes. If you want a thicker consistency, cook it another 1 to 2 minutes.

Serve naturel, or with a giant mound of slightly sweetened whipped cream. Sugar can be added, to taste. Makes 4 to 6 cups.

The glazed jelly donut

"He knew when to leave the boy's mother alone and how best to ask her for ice cream. Don't ask her too often and when you do, don't let her know how much you really want it. Don't beg. Don't whine.

"He knew which restaurants would serve them lunch and which would not. He knew which barbers would cut their kind of hair. The best ones, of course.

"The thing that he loved most about America, he once confided to the boy, was the glazed jelly donut. Can't be beat."

Julie Otsuka, in the novel "When the Emperor Was Divine"

Boo

Because it is Halloween.

Them apples

Because it is apple season.

The English breakfast

"To eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day."

W. Somerset Maugham, quoted in Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods"

An apple (cake) a day

An apple (cake) a day. 'Tis not an altogether bad thought.

Craving curry

A Ferris wheel set up for the Treasure Island Music Festival reminds me in some way of the London Eye, you know, if the Ferris wheel had been many times larger, if the bay had been the Thames, the Bay Bridge the Westminster Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Yes, I am crazy.

But I think of London. I do. All the time. When the sky is overcast, I think of London. When it threatens to rain in Northern California, I welcome the wet weather. Bring it. When I hear an accent, from an actor or writer or broadcaster, I think of London. I am here, but I suspect I should be there.

I think of London and begin to crave curry. Any kind. When a head of cauliflower costs less than a dollar at the market, I grab one to make curry, using a straightforward recipe from Bon Appetit. I combine cauliflower with chickpeas, tomatoes and coconut milk, and cook it down. I eat curry with rice, basmati if I have some, medium grain white rice if I don't. At the table, I think of London.

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Stew

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups chopped onions
5 tsp. curry powder
6 cups small cauliflower florets (from 1 medium head)
2 15 1/2-ounce cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
2 10-ounce cans diced tomatoes
1 14-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Heat oil in large skillet over high heat.

Add onions and saute until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Add curry powder and stir 20 seconds.

Add cauliflower and garbanzo beans. Stir 1 minute. Add diced tomatoes, then coconut milk. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and boil gently until cauliflower is tender and liquid thickens slightly, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in cilantro. Serve over rice. Makes 4 servings.

Watching waste lines

I toss out fistfuls of feta, disappointed with myself for not having used it all quickly enough, before it got moldy. I throw out cooked green beans left over from the weekend's stir-fry after catching a nasty whiff of them in the Rubbermaid container.

That 10-pound bag of potatoes worries me, too. I had plans - big plans - when I bought it initially at the grocery store. Life unfortunately got in the way of those plans. Truth be told, I have yet to peel even a pound of potatoes.

And though I know the amount of food I put into the compost bin at the side of the house every week pales in comparison to the great amount people everywhere must just pitch carelessly and casually into landfills and Dumpsters every day, I still feel bad. We all need to watch our waste lines.

In "American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It)," Jonathan Bloom looks at food waste in this country. With a journalist's attention to research and observation, and a do-gooder's sense of urgency, he tackles the issue from different perspectives.

He examines links along our national food chain, including farms, supermarkets, restaurants and individual kitchens. He shows us how and why most of our waste gets generated, and suggests ways in which we can bring about relevant change.

Bloom differentiates between food loss and food waste. It is a necessary, albeit slim, distinction.

"Certainly, some food loss is unavoidable," he says. "For example, there are many potential pitfalls, such as harsh weather, disease and insects invading the farmer's fields, that are outside of our control. And then there's storage loss, spoilage and mechanical malfunctions."

On the other hand, food is "wasted when an edible item goes unconsumed as a result of human action or inaction." I think of my feta cheese and green beans.

"There is culpability in waste. Whether it's from an individual's choice, a business mistake or a government policy, most food waste stems from decisions made somewhere from farm to fork. A grower doesn't harvest a field in response to a crop's lowered price. Grocers throw away imperfect produce to satisfy their (and, as consumers, our) obsession with freshness. We allow groceries to rot in our refrigerators while we eat out..."

In other words, there are factors beyond much of our control. But there are also plenty of factors we can control.

The author takes us to Salinas, Calif., for instance, where the majority of America's lettuce is grown, packed and shipped. Dubbed the "Salad Bowl to the World," the agricultural town along Highway 101 in Monterey County is home to large-scale producers such as Taylor Farms, Fresh Express and River Ranch Fresh Foods.

He brings us to nearby Crazy Horse Canyon Landfill, too. There, Bloom sees lettuce that was "still perfectly good - crispy, even - (thrown) away for various reasons. It may have been damaged in the warehouse or maybe it sat for too long to withstand shipping." It is an eye-popping fieldtrip.

Until it closed in 2009, Crazy Horse handled 200 tons of excess, rejected or misbagged produce every day. It closed because it was full, "an outcome hastened by that ceaseless supply of green waste."

When we throw away food in such high volume, we also throw away the natural resources that go into growing, harvesting, processing, transporting and cooking that food. "Wasting that food squanders our supply of water, depletes nutrients in the soil and wastes the fossil fuels that are used throughout the food chain." The choices we make matter.

Supermarkets present a similar set of challenges. Hoping for further behind-the-scenes glimpses at waste in this country, beyond what executives told him their companies did, Bloom applied for a position in the produce department of a regional grocery chain and worked there for three months.

Ten minutes into his first day on the job, he says, he was discarding decent food. Instructed by his supervisor to cull out-of-code products, Bloom picked through shelves of pre-washed, pre-cut packages of fruits and vegetables, and removed anything with an imminent expiration date.

"I collected sliced mushrooms, cut peppers and diced onions. I pulled seven varieties of bagged salads and veggie trays of crudités with dip included... I tossed 24 pounds of packaged watermelon, pineapple and cantaloupe chunks that first morning." All of it had still been edible. All of it went out back to the Dumpster.

It is a situation with which Tristram Stuart is familiar. In "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal," the British author talks at length about purchasing dates and deadlines. He clears up some of the confusion on the other side of the Atlantic regarding labeling laws and food-safety policies.

In the European Union, for example, pre-packed products are required to carry either a "use-by" date or a "best-before" date, he explains. Grocery stores and manufacturers, however, often also stamp merchandise with "sell-by" or "display-until" dates. These primarily "help shop staff manage stock and should be completely ignored by consumers."

Like Bloom, who touches on the topic in the United States, Stuart discusses recovery efforts in the United Kingdom as well. Or, sometimes, the lack thereof.

He commends Fareshare. The charity contracts with supermarkets such as Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose to deliver pallets of excess food - everything from apples and broccoli to boxes of cereal and loaves of bread - to community centers and homeless shelters across Great Britain.

"In 2008, it redistributed 3,000 tons of food to 25,000 people in 500 different community centers and other organizations, with a further 5,000 tons that either ended up being diverted into animal feed, anaerobic-digestion plants, composting or other waste-recycling routes."

That said, "the amount the supermarkets donate still represents only a tiny fraction of their overall waste; the trend is promising but movement is still far too slow."

Manufacturers like Kraft in the United States and Kellogg's in the United Kingdom also cooperate with Feeding America and Fareshare, respectively, providing them truckloads of surplus on a regular basis. "These companies are beginning to do what all of them ought to do," Stuart says.

Unlike Bloom, who focuses primarily on waste in this country, Stuart takes a geographically broader approach. He expands his narrative beyond North America and Europe to include Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

He describes a brief, serendipitous visit with a traditional family, the Kawasakis, in Hakata in southwest Japan. Over dinner one night, they talked about growing food for sustenance - the father, Jingo Kawasaki, farmed the same fields his father and grandfather did before him - and the concept of mottainai.

It "cannot be translated, but it indicates a condemnation of wastefulness and squandering, and implies an endorsement of thrift and frugality. The word is used for anything from darning socks to scraping the last grains of rice from the bottom of a bowl."

Given its prosperity in recent decades, however, Japan in general has not been immune to the problem of waste. In fact, Stuart says, "the Japanese predilection for high-quality, extremely fresh food results in enormous levels of waste," approximately 19 million tons a year.

Of that, 6 million tons come from supermarkets and convenience stores, where lunch-box meals are easily and widely available. There are cooked noodles with vegetables, for example, trays of sushi, and meat-filled dumplings, all of which stay on the shelves for only a few days. What does not get sold gets thrown away.

Significant change can only come through concerted effort. The American government, Bloom says, should provide incentives to farmers to harvest all that they grow, leaving as little as possible in the fields. It should encourage donations and work more effectively with gleaning organizations to redistribute excess.

In an ideal world, Stuart says, we would learn to respect the food in our refrigerators, to buy what we eat and eat what we buy. "All unavoidable organic waste would go to feed either animals or the soil." These and other actions might not completely solve the current food waste situation. But they certainly would help.

(A version of this article appears in Gastronomica.)

Ready for their close-ups

Food on television seldom looks the same as food in real life. It looks better actually. For this, we have stylists, tabletop directors and special-effects riggers to thank.

The business section of The New York Times provides insight on people in the ad world "hired to turn the most mundane and fattening staples of the American diet into luscious objects of irresistible beauty."

From director Michael Somoroff, for instance:

"I make my living basically taking food and painting a reality with it... And if I succeed in a given moment, you're going to go buy that dish because you're going to identify with the experience we've created.

"To do that with something as banal as food is the challenge. I mean, it's easy to go out and shoot a beautiful sunset or a beautiful girl. They're beautiful, O.K.? I've got a noodle over here."

Making soup

The days get shorter and inevitably colder. I think to make soup, using Lisa Schroeder's recipe as a decent jumping-off point.

Manhattan Clam Chowder
from Lisa Schroeder's "Mother's Best: Comfort Food That Takes You Home Again"

2 strips bacon, finely diced
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
1 large carrot, peeled and finely diced
2 ribs celery, finely diced
1 leek, white part only, thinly sliced into half-moons and washed
1 medium green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, with juice
1 10.75-ounce can tomato puree
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
1 pound russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 1/2 cups fish stock or 2 14-ounce cans clam juice
1 10-ounce cans baby clams in juice
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
5 dashes Tabasco sauce
3 dashes Worcestershire sauce

Place a heavy soup pot over medium-high heat. When hot, add the bacon. When it starts to brown in spots, lower the heat to medium. Continue to cook until most of the fat has been rendered and the bacon is almost crisp, about 4 minutes.

Add the vegetable oil, onions, carrots, celery, leeks and green bell peppers. Saute, stirring occasionally, until very soft, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another 2 minutes.

Add the diced and pureed tomatoes, bay leaf, thyme and potatoes.

Add the stock or clam juice. Stir to mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, and then lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the potatoes are fork tender.

Add the clams with their juice and season with salt and pepper. Add the Tabasco and Worcestershire. Bring back to a simmer for several minutes.

Ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread or crackers. Makes 7 servings.

Food court fare

The dining options at Westfield Century City take food court fare to a whole other tastier level. There is sushi and ramen, Italian and Chinese, cupcake and yogurt. I could get used to this quite easily.

Sugar bomb

Would you like a cookie with that frosting?

What I like

What I like most about Korean restaurant meals: the variety that makes its way to the table.

Even exchange

"From the New World to the Old came amaranth grain, avocados, various beans, bell peppers, blueberries, cashews, chile peppers, cocoa, vanilla, corn, papayas, peanuts, pecans, pineapples, white and sweet potatoes, pumpkins, quinoa, and tomatoes.

"In turn, the Old World sent to the New apples, artichokes, asparagus, bananas, barley, black pepper, cabbage, carrots, coffee, lemons and limes, garlic, lettuce, oats, millet, olives, peaches, peas, rice, rye, soybeans, sugarcane, tea, and, perhaps most important, wheat."

John Mariani, in "How Italian Food Conquered the World"

Powdered donuts

"As the miles shifted into days and Texas ranches became Tennessee hills and Tennessee hills became historical Pennsylvania, I too began to shift. I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. I ate snacks. I immersed myself in life's essentials: food, drink, shelter and warmth.

"I thought about miles and inclines, flat tires and rain. I thought about the strength of my body and the strength of my spirit. I pedaled, grinding my history, its lessons, and the countless times I'd willed it gone into my muscles and joints, until they became a part of my fiber.

And somewhere in New York state, about two to three cycling days west of Syracuse, I sat contentedly outside a convenience store eating mini-donuts. My back rested against the standard bland beige color of the cement wall and I felt the heat of the sun on my already toasted face.

"I popped a donut, the white-powdered kind that leaves white traces around your lips, into my mouth and washed it down with chocolate milk..."

Michelle Hamilton, in "The Long Road," from the anthology "Her Fork in the Road: Women Celebrate Food and Travel"

Easy as pie

It is often easier to eat pie than it is to slice and serve pie intact. The filling is sweeter than I would have liked. But it is nothing a small scoop of vanilla ice cream afterward can not temper.

Burger bliss

The U stands for Umami, by far the best burger in Southern California I have eaten today.

Like magic

The tree by the side of the house is sprouting apples again, if sprouting is the right word for apples on a tree. The thing is, I haven't cared for it all year. I haven't given it any special treatment. I haven't pruned it or fertilized it. Nothing. Like clockwork, autumn approaches. The apples return. Like magic, time shifts.

What sugar is

"What sugar is and what it means changes according to where we happen to find it. It's a wholesome ingredient blended into down-home confections or it's the non-nutritive additive dumped into junk food. It's the pure and natural sweetener in fruity retro-chic sodas, or it's the stuff of evil lurking in cereal, baby food, and juice. It's a woman's food, in chocolates and cupcakes. It's a man's food, the stuff of sodas, energy drinks, and nutrition bars.

"It's troubling, these multiple lives. As an equal-opportunity lover of all things sweet, I'd like to think the best of them. I'd like to believe they do no harm when enjoyed in moderation and offer only the most excellent things in life - if not good health exactly, then certainly good spirits, good times, and a sense of freedom that takes us back to our youth. But in reality, the taste of sweet can have positive effects and negative effects depending on the kind we eat, how often we eat it, and what else we're eating with it. Those choices we make color other people's perception of our level of sophistication and our wealth... They highlight the disparities between the haves and the have-nots, and between the strivers and the lucky ones who are already where they want to be."

Joanne Chen, in "The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair with Our Favorite Treats"

The cool down

I see directions for a vegetable paella in a cookbook, and think to tackle the dish myself. I saute onions and bell peppers, but mess up on the spices. The heat is just a tad too intense. Not to worry. There is peach ice cream to finish.

The alumni network

A restaurant does not stay in business for four decades without graduating a few fascinating food folks.

The San Francisco Chronicle's story on Alice Waters and Chez Panisse highlights, among other things, the Berkeley eatery's impressive and far-reaching network of alumni, which extends "to high-end restaurants, artisan bakeries, ice cream shops and cafes - not to mention the pages of dozens of cookbooks throughout the years."

It includes:

Alison Barakat, co-owner of Bakesale Betty in Oakland.

Paul Bertolli, former executive chef of Oliveto in Oakland, and founder of Fra' Mani, a handcrafted salumi and sausage company.

Mary Canales, co-owner of Ici ice cream in Berkeley.

Diane Dexter, co-founder of Metropolis Baking Company in Berkeley.

Suzanne Goin, chef and co-owner of Lucques in Los Angeles, and cookbook author ("Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table").

Joyce Goldstein, former chef and owner of Square One, and cookbook author ("Mediterranean Fresh: A Compendium of One-Plate Salad Meals and Mix-and-Match Dressings").

Rick Hackett, chef and owner of Bocanova in Oakland's Jack London Square.

Charlie Hallowell, owner of Pizzaiolo, and Boot and Shoe Service in Oakland.

Paul Johnson, president and founder of Monterey Fish Market in Berkeley and San Francisco.

David Lebovitz, cookbook author ("The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City").

Lili Lecoq, founder of La Farine in Berkeley.

Deborah Madison, founding chef of Greens, and cookbook author ("Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone").

Russell Moore, chef and co-owner of Camino in Oakland.

Mark Peel, opened Campanile in Los Angeles.

Gayle Pirie, chef and co-owner of Foreign Cinema in San Francisco.

Claire Ptak, owner of baking company, cafe and cake shop Violet in London's East End, and cookbook author ("The Whoopie Pie Book").

Judy Rodgers, chef and co-owner of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco.

Amaryll Schwertner, co-owner of Boulettes Larder in San Francisco's Ferry Building Marketplace.

Lindsey Shere, opened Downtown Bakery & Creamery in Healdsburg.

Peggy Smith, co-founded Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station.

Steve Sullivan, founded Acme Bread in Berkeley.

Jeremiah Tower, chef and co-owner of Stars in San Francisco.

Jonathan Waxman, chef and owner of Barbuto in New York City, and cookbook author ("A Great American Cook: Recipes from the Home Kitchen of One of Our Most Influential Chefs").

Picking a peach

"Consider where the fruit came from. If it came from 3,000 miles away, then bear in mind that it was probably picked at a much more immature stage, and it's not going to be as ripe and delicious. If it came from a neighboring state, it's probably a whole lot riper."

Desmond Layne, Clemson University peach specialist, on NPR's "All Things Considered"

"The Giant Peach"

"It was quite a large hole, the sort of thing an animal about the size of a fox might have made.

"James knelt down in front of it and poked his head and shoulders inside.

"He crawled in.

"He kept on crawling.

"This isn't just a hole, he thought excitedly. It's a tunnel!

"The tunnel was damp and murky, and all around him there was the curious bittersweet smell of fresh peach. The floor was soggy under his knees, the walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.

"He was crawling uphill now, as though the tunnel were leading straight toward the very center of the gigantic fruit. Every few seconds he paused and took a bite out of the wall. The peach flesh was sweet and juicy, and marvelously refreshing.

"He crawled on for several more yards, and then suddenly - bang - the top of his head bumped into something extremely hard blocking his way. He glanced up. In front of him there was a solid wall that seemed at first as though it were made of wood. He touched it with his fingers. It certainly felt like wood, except that it was very jagged and full of deep grooves.

"'Good heavens!' he said. 'I know what this is! I've come to the stone in the middle of the peach!'"

Roald Dahl, in "James and the Giant Peach"

A human noodle vacuum

"You're gonna slurp those noodles. You're not chewing them. You're not cutting them up. You're trying to inhale them like a human noodle vacuum. And they should slurp in a pleasing way...

"And then that broth that they're served in, it should dress the noodles. It should coat the noodles. It should flavor the noodles. It seems like the simplest thing for a bowl of noodle soup to do. But when you're in front of a bowl and that's happening... you're most of the way there..."

Peter Meehan, co-editor of Lucky Peach, on a proper bowl of ramen on NPR's "All Things Considered"

Finger-lickin' good

For Nigel Slater, the best part about honey-glazed chicken wings comes toward the end of the meal.

"Like watching the credits rolling after a film, the licking of fingers is when you get to savour what you have just enjoyed..."

The British food writer serves up another damn fine read in The Observer. Without fail, he makes us hungry.

Bagels on the brain

One minute I am reading about bagels in Britain, reminiscing, for example, about Brick Lane Beigel Bake in London.

"Anyone who has visited an authentic bagel shop will know the steamy, burnished aroma of bagels made in small batches... Freshness is the core philosophy in this place, and the ovens are on the go continually. Under the glossy crust, the dough is dense yet tender, slightly sweet with a beery yeastiness..."

The next minute I am toasting a bagel for breakfast and slathering it with cream cheese. It doesn't take a whole lot of convincing. I am easy like that.

Hard to resist

"Then the Tour started. And it was impossible to resist. It always is. It sits there like a slice of key lime pie or the last piece of fried chicken, mocking will power. Cycling may punish you later, but it's so seductive in the present. That is what the sport knows, why it perseveres, despite its repeated, maddening mess-making..."

Only in The Wall Street Journal perhaps can a sports writer compare the Tour de France, "already stuck in a queasy fog," to key lime pie and fried chicken. Oddly enough, though, the references work.

Peeling the banana

Who knew the banana could be such a complicated fruit? Or, perhaps more accurately, who didn't know? Really.

Dan Koeppel's book "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World" is fascinating.

"The more I researched, the more it became clear that there's nothing we eat - that the world eats - more paradoxical than the banana," he writes. "The humble treat we pack into our lunchboxes is among the most complex crops cultivated by humans. In ancient times, the fruit helped the earliest farmers put down roots and establish communities. In the modern era, the banana - literally - has destroyed nations and ruined lives."

Koeppel's segment on "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow on NPR is equally fascinating.

"Plum Gorgeous"

This is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams, quoted in Romney Steele's "Plum Gorgeous: Recipes and Memories from the Orchard"

Cookie coincidence

I could not let the moment in Manhattan Beach pass without a picture.

Pass the passata

Ever since a friend in London mentioned passata in a curry recipe from his mother's kitchen, I have wondered about it. Is it essentially pureed tomatoes?

The Telegraph talks about San Marzano tomatoes in a piece on store-bought passata, used in this case to add depth and texture to weeknight pasta sauces. It provides some enlightenment.

Kabuki before Carmageddon

On a Thursday in Southern California, we navigate the 405 one last time before Carmageddon strikes over the weekend.

The sushi at Kabuki in the Howard Hughes Center is worth the drive. We enjoy the food and the company.

All-around goodness

Breakfast might or might not be our favorite meal of the day. That remains a toss-up. It does, however, give us an excellent reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Travel + Leisure offers a compelling look at hotel breakfasts around the world. There are dumplings in China, for example, and parathas in India. There are bangers and bacon in Britain, and biscuits and beignets in the U.S. There is goodness everywhere.