Alvah's Books

Julie & Julia
by Julie Powell
Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company, 2005
307 pages
$14.99

I was planning to post this review with my regular ones and keep it in my dry, third-person style, but since it does deal with food (and I am sucker for food memoirs) I thought I would it include it in the Sunday review.

I learned of Julie Powell and her Julie/Julia project when the book was first published in 2005 and  I was reminded of her endeavor when I saw the film crews in my Park Slope neighborhood one day. For those not familiar with the story, Julie Powell in a fit of ennui from her secretarial job decided to cook every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year’s time and record her adventures in the kitchen in a blog.

The reward to this personal challenge was national recognition, a book and movie deal, and a writing career–a dream come true for many bloggers and writers.

Because I like to cook and eat, I was very excited to read Powell’s book–thanks to Laura of the Book Tree for giving me the opportunity to win a copy.

Yet my enthusiasm soon soured after I read the first few pages, but I plodded on with the hope that Powell would get to what appealed to me–cooking and food. Although she knows how to turn a sentence, my interest wavered when she wrote at length about her childhood in Texas, the discovery of her parent’s copy of The Joy of Sex, the sex lives of her friends and so forth, these anecdotes held very little interest for me.

What I wanted to know was her relationship with food and cooking. Frankly, I was more interested in her bone marrow adventure rather than her job woes or her ovarian problems. When she stuck to cooking I kept reading, but when she meandered away from it, the book was set aside and I started reading something else.

Yet there’s more that didn’t appeal to me about the book and most of it had to do with Powell’s sarcasm and her over-the-top hysterics over cooking live lobsters, preparing aspics, and offal, her cutesy a la Rachel Ray acronym for Mastering the Art of French Cooking became tiring, and cussing out the Great Child. For the most part, much of the food that she writes about seems unappetizing, and I have to consider whether it’s my own personal bias against this Julia Child tome (her later cookbooks appeal to me more rather than this classic one.)

Although I wasn’t engaged with the fodder between the cooking, my kudos do go to Powell—an inexperienced cook—for attempting to master 524 complicated recipes in 365, and preparing meals late into the evening, night after night. That dogged determination to complete her project and not disappoint herself or her “bleaders” certainly merits a publishing and movie deal.

Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook
by Nancy Clark, MS, RD
Human Kinetics, 2008
461 pages
$19.95

Okay, I’m putting it out there, I’m no athlete. Not by a stretch, a jump, or even a jog. I consider myself lucky if I can walk briskly in heels to catch a bus. However since I embarked on this current fitness obsession, I’ve noticed my energy level has shot up considerably and I’m stepping up my workouts by several notches.

With that in mind, I know that I’ll need to fuel my body so I can workout efficiently. To help me make the best nutritional decisions, I’m using Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, which is considered the number one resource for active people.

Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD is an internationally known sports nutritionist and nutrition author. She is a registered dietitian (RD) who specializes in nutrition for exercise, health and the nutritional management of eating disorders. She is board certified as a specialist in sports dietietics (CSSD).

Clark is also the nutrition columnist for New England Runner, Adventure Cycling and American Fitness . She’s a frequent contributor to Runner’s World and is on the advisory board for SHAPE magazine. Clark also writes a monthly nutrition column called The Athlete’s Kitchen, which appears regularly in over 100 sports and health publications, including Active.com and the Running Network. So, in a nutshell, she’s the gal to turn to if you have any questions about sports and nutrition.

Clark cuts to the chase in her book by opening on how to build a high energy food plan. In this chapter, in the book’s first part, she breaks down each food category, offering suggestions for the top choices with meat, fats and oils, vegetables, grains and starches, and fruits, and how much should one consume. The chapter has several side-bars, tables and charts that break down nutritional elements in several food items. Clark is an advocate of a rainbow diet, i.e., one that includes a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables. For “colorblind” eaters she includes several suggestions to spruce up your meals with a palette of colorful food items.

For those who battle the carbohydrate quandary, Clark provides a comprehensive chapter on the subject to eliminate any confusion on the subject. Here she explains the chemistry of simple and complex carbs in language that won’t glaze your eyes.  Clark also answers the question whether carbs are fattening. She writes:

Fad diets preach the message that carbohydrate is fattening. Wrong! Carbohydrate is not fattening. Excess calories are fattening; in particular excess fat calorie are fattening. . . Fat provides 36 calories per teaspoon compared to with 16 per carbohydrate. Additionally, the conversion of excess carbohydrate into body fat is limited because you burn carbohydrate when you exercise. Your body preferentially burns the carbohydrate and stores the fat because  the metabolic cost of converting excess carbohydrate into body fat is 23 percent of the ingested calories. Excess dietary fat, on the other hand, is easily stored as body fat; the metabolic cost of converting into body fat is 3 percent of ingested calories.

Clark provides these points:

• Carbohydrate-based foods are less fattening than fatty foods.
• You need carbohydrates to fuel your muscles.
• You burn carbohydrates during hard exercise.
• Carbohydrate is a friendly fuel; the enemy is excess calories from fat.
• When dieting to lose weight, you should energize with fiber-rich cereal, whole-grain breads, potatoes, and other carbohydrate-dense vegetables but reduce your intake of butter, margarine, and mayonnaise that often accompany them.

Further in the chapter, Clark examines quick and slow forms of carbs, sugar highs and lows. There’s a side bar on whether white bread is poison or not (she says it can be part of a wholesome diet as long as you include whole-grains. She adds that white bread has a bad reputation because of its high glycemic effect in other words:

If you eat just plain bread without butter or sandwich filling that dampens the glycemic response—digest quickly and cause the blood glucose and insulin to rise higher than would the same amount of a whole-grain, fiber-rich bread.

Clark notes that if your physically fit, the muscles will store the sugar from the digested bread as glycogen with much less insulin than a sedentary person.

So the next time you hear one of your friends say (and I have one who tells me how he avoids carbs) make a photocopy of this chapter and give it to them to read. Hopefully, they will learn that not all carbs are bad and that our bodies require them to fuel our muscles.

The second and third parts of Clark’s book consist how to eat before and after exercise. She has a chapter about supplements, performance enhancers, and covers age-specific nutritional needs. Chapters 13 through 16 are all about balancing weight and activity. The last chapter in this section is in an important one, recognizing eating disorders and food obsessions.

The final section of the book provides a wide range of recipes ranging from breakfast ideas to snack and desserts. Some recipes include:

• Greek Shrimp with Feta and Tomatoes
• Spinach Salad with Sweet and Spicy Dressing
• Carrot Raisin Muffins
• Oatmeal Pancakes
• Oven French Fries

Each recipe comes with nutrition information, including total calories, calories per serving, carb, protein, and fat grams.

Last, but not least, Clark offers a fairly extensive appendix of publications and web sites, how to become a sports nutritionist, references cited throughout the book, and sports drinks and energy bars.

If you’re looking for a book that’s not too heavy on science, and you’re serious about eating healthy and keeping active, Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook is the ideal book. She’ll  answer all your questions about how to feed your body and in an easy to digest format without the chemistry and biology class jargon. Buy it, read it, get fit, and get healthy.

Dream Room:  Tales of the Dixie Mafia
by Chet Nicholson
Oakley Publishing Company
417 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Randall Radic

Chet Nicholson, who is the author of Dream Room, is an attorney.  Dream Room is his first book.  And it is – hands down – one of the best true crime books to be published – ever.  That is a bold and categorical statement, but it is an undeniable fact.         

Dream Room is the true story of the Dixie Mafia, which is sometimes called the Southern Mafia.  Unlike the more famous Sicilian Mafia, members of the Dixie Mafia were linked only by crime and not by family or ethnicity.  Their criminal activities included moonshine, bootlegging, gambling, drug trafficking, dog fighting, burglary, prostitution, and murder.  They achieved the peak of their power between 1960 and the end of the 1980s. 

“The Strip” in Biloxi, Mississippi, was ground zero for the Dixie Mafia.  Indeed, the title of the book – Dream Room – refers to a strip joint in Biloxi.  It was owned and operated by Mike Gillich, Jr., who was the unofficial Godfather of the organization.  Gillich, who was also known affectionately as “Junior,” owned a string of motels, nightclubs, and a bingo parlor. 

One of Junior’s henchmen was a goon named Kirksey Nix, who was a singularly unimaginative worm of reckless dynamism.  The story swirls around Nix and Junior as they ruthlessly intimidated and murdered anyone who got in the way of their criminal activities.  Which means a lot of people, including a judge and his wife, ended up dead.

The Dixie Mafia had only one law, which was akin to a Biblical commandment:  Thou shall not snitch to the cops.  Of course, since most criminals subscribe heavily to the doctrine of self-interest, the rule was often violated.  And in the end, Junior fractured the law with vigorous enthusiasm.  To relate how and why would vitiate the delicate forces of the story.  Needless to say, the episode seethes with the arithmetic of necessity, contingency, and negotiation.  It is the narrative of the justice system – if you want to play, you have to pay.

Nicholson’s raw ability in storytelling is fantastic.  And it is this talent that gives the tale its resonant vibrations.  Every word and paragraph is designed to titillate interest and, at the same time, entertain.  Most writers lose their readers because they try to charm them with verbal glitz.  Which means they forget to tell the story.  They’re so busy peddling Las Vegas-like neon that the reader needs sunglasses to see through the glare.  Nicholson, either by plan or by innate talent, avoids making that mistake.  Instead, he cedes ultimate authority to the story.  Which means the story is the Star of the book, not the special effects.  Which is the way it’s supposed to be.

What is more, Nicholson lets the story develop through the actions of the characters and their dialogue.  Dream Room places a premium on conversation.  And it’s obvious that Nicholson has a real ear for conversational quirks.  Listening to the characters speak induces a delicious rippling sensation through the reader’s diaphragm.  That’s the way people really talk!  People don’t talk like robots in real life.  People aren’t machines, spewing out perfect grammar and syntax. 

Try it this way:  Nicholson’s dialogue is as good as or better than that of Elmore Leonard. 

Dream Room is a supercharged book.  It has guts, which means it has rhythm and motion, and that means it has energy.  It’s alive!  Don’t miss this one.

In The New York Times City Room section, I stumbled across this interesting story about Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo:

A Library’s Approach to Books That Offend

by Alison Leigh Cowan

The cartoonist Hergé is popular again, as is his adventurous reporter Tintin, who will be featured in a Stephen Spielberg movie due out in 2011.

But if you go to the Brooklyn Public Library seeking a copy of “Tintin au Congo,” Hergé’s second book in a series, prepare to make an appointment and wait days to see the book.

“It’s not for the public,” a librarian in the children’s room said this month when a patron asked to see it.

The book, published 79 years ago, was moved in 2007 from the public area of the library to a back room where it is held under lock and key.

The move came after a patron objected, as others have, to the way Africans are depicted in the book. “The content is racially offensive to black people,’’ a librarian wrote on Form 286, also known as a Request for Reconsideration of Library Material [pdf].

Libraries often have policies that allow patrons to complain about content they find objectionable. New York City libraries have received almost two dozen written objections since 2005. But the book about Tintin (pronounced Tantan in his native Brussels) was the only challenged item to have been removed from the shelves, library officials said.

To read more about this and see some of the disputed artwork, go to The New York Times City Room blog.

Like Oklahoma’s Ado Annie, I am easily seduced. However, my seducers are not men, but books. On Monday, after clearing another surface to make room for yet another pile of books, I said aloud to anyone who would listen, “No more books until I’ve read through these six piles.” Lola, my Labrador retriever, picked up her head from the floor, and shot  me a look that basically said, “Yeah, right, I’ve heard that before,”  sighed loudly and then went back to sleep.

Well she was right; my resolve to not request or buy any more books went like smoke out the chiminey. Yesterday, I received emails from three publicists, inquiring if I’d be interested to review the books they were publicizing. After reading the blurbs and the synopsis, how could I say no? The titles seemed too tantalizing and as I my finger pushed the mouse cursor to “Reply” for a mere second I thought, but do you really need to read this? Don’t you have enough to tide you over for the rest of the year? Apparently not because I hit reply three times.

If you recall my Bibliophile or Bibliomaniac post, I listed recent acquistions. Here’s my progress: I’ve read and completed  two of the 14 listed (The Angel’s Game and The Scarecrow, reviews awaiting) , currently reading four (You or Someone Like You, Stardust, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Beowulf on the Beach) and outsourced two for review (Hunter and Two to Six) to my brilliant reviewer and speed reader Randall Radic—I still don’t know how he reads these books so quickly maybe it’s all that Merlot he drinks.

That leaves me with five from that list that are patiently waiting for their turn, but after I finish reading Julie & Julia and The Puzzle King, but wait what about the seven recent ones that came in the mail these past few days?

Okay, I have you all as my witnesses, no more books until I’ve finished and written reviews for all the books I have stacked all over the house. There, it’s in writing. Now hold me to it.

The Future Is Happy
By Sarah Sarai
blazeVOX Books 2009
93 pages. 
$16.00

Reviewed by Randall Radic

The reviewer freely and enthusiastically admits to knowing absolutely nothing about poetry.  Except for one thing.  He knows what he likes.  He likes Shelley, Lord Byron, Blake, e.e. cummings, and August Kleinzahler.  To the list of favorites he now adds Sarah Sarai, who has written a wonderful volume of poetry called The Future Is Happy.  It is full of truly excellent poems.

Like a Sorceress, Sarah has a magical way with words.  She casts them forth and beguiles the reader by creating an image in the visual region of his brain.  He finds himself breathless, struggling in the grasp of titanic emotions that he used to feel – once upon a time – but had forgotten about.  Which means her verse is enchanting and mystical while at the same time being concrete.  It’s like concrete love, if there is such a thing.  Which is a fancy way of saying it has substance, originality and – get this! – is comprehensible.  

What is most appealing is her use of traditional and Classical allusions.  Most contemporary poets don’t have the intestinal fortitude to bring the Bible into their poesy.  Why?  One supposes they believe it signals intellectual anarchy, the prostitution of logic.  Not Sarah.  This poetess has balls, which explains why her stuff is so excellent and so readable.  For example, in “Let Me Ask You This,” which is about great sex, she speaks of

Moses,
who’ll break stone tablets so
you get this night right

Talk about hormonal exuberance and the alpha-theta syncopation of sexual excitation!  This is the real deal, making magic wands from words, which in turn zap into spells and exsufflations and cantrips and merrythoughts. 

In another poem called “The Brave One,” she combines images of Jodie Foster, God, Scheherazade, Jimmy Carter, and Emily Dickinson to produce a singularly imaginative work on how proximity narrows perspective.  Or try it this way:  “The Brave One” asks a very simple question:  Is this, in sum, any way to live?  Which is a very serious question, seeming to demand much soul-searching.  But as the reader reads the poem, he has a smile on his face, because there’s an element of impishness in the question.  Like Bugs Bunny, looking over the barrel of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun, asking “What’s up, Doc?”

This is the essential quality of genius. 

The reviewer’s favorite – one of ‘em anyway – is “Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina in Heaven.”  The title alone makes one laugh out loud.  And reading it is like listening to ZZ Top sing “Jesus just left Chicago and he’s bound for New Orleans.”  It focuses the attention because of its quirkiness.  The poem starts out like this: 

Two suicides here?  There’s no screening.
Want a pocketbook kingdom come?
You’ll ascend.  The buzz
On heaven is a lot of white noise.

That last line is a killer, simply for its triple entendre.  It leaves a delicious sensation rippling through one’s diaphragm.           

If you love excellent poetry, buy this book.  For Sarah Sarai writes poetry to relish – poetry that one can read out loud to the one you love.  Sarah knows how to give words muscle.  Her verse is so buff it hurts.

Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant
by Annie Somerville
Bantam Books, 1993
437 pages
$35.00 

I lived in San Francisco for many years—fifteen to be precise—I attended university there, both undergrad and grad schools, and after graduating I stuck around because I lived with someone. That someone liked to eat and so did his friends. For the most part, we didn’t do much cooking, we ate out a lot and we went to some pretty good places in the City and in Napa and Sonoma counties. 

Our friends, who were foodies, liked to cook and they created some fabulous meals. One close friend Mourad Lahlou, owner and chef of Aziza, made one of the best chicken pastillas I’ve ever had. Nothing has ever come close to his, and believe me when I say this, I’ve eaten a lot of pastillas. 

I’ve dined at a number of well-known restaurants and one of the most memorable meals I’ve had was at Greens Restaurant located at Fort Mason. Although this was several years ago, I distinctly remember Annie Somerville’s exquisite carrot soup. Since then I’ve never had one that had the right balance of sweet and savory and the perfect creamy consistence. Like Mourad’s pastilla, I’ve tried many carrots soups (and even made my own) and none can compare to the one I had so many years ago at Greens.

When I discovered that Somerville had a cookbook, I plunked down my $30 because I knew I had to have it as part of my collection. Fields of Greens is a vegetarian cook book. The premise of the book is to use the freshest and seasonal produce with pasta, beans and grains. Some dairy products and eggs are essential ingredients for some dishes, but Somerville uses them sparingly. Fields of Greens is about “big flavors” in most of the dishes, but as Somerville writes in the introduction, “…but leave the final seasoning of salt, pepper, and vinegar to your taste.” 

Somerville provudes a nice little primer on planting an organic garden and suggests to start small and expand your garden as your knowledge develops. The advice is basic from cultivating the soil to starting your plants. From there she moves on to her recipes and there are a lot: salads with leafy greens, beans and grains, and marinated vegetables. She has recipes for grilled vegetables and for soups galore, including my favorite Carrot Soup with North African spices.

If you like your carbs, Somerville has recipes with pasta and risotto. One of my favorites is Spring Risotto with Asparagus and Peas made with a tomato and mushroom stock and with tender asparagus and sweet sugar snap peas—a perfect summer meal!

Not in the mood for pasta or risotto? Perhaps some pizza with onion confit, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese? Or maybe a Mexican pizza with salsa roja, cheddar cheese and cilantro pesto?

If you’re like me and want to make a healthy or rich dessert, Fields of Greens has an impressive selection of recipes to choose from. Some of my favorites include Lemon or Ginger Pots de Crème, Ginger Pound Cake, Gateau Moule – a very rich steamed chocolate cake.

Need advice of what to serve that’s in season? Fields of Greens has seasonal celebration meals. Also included is a section on pairing wines with vegetables, and a low-fat cooking guide.

 Now that we’re in the dog days of summer with fruit and veggie stands galore, pick up a copy of Fields of Greens, believe me, you won’t miss your barbecue meats.

Somehow you’d think the Canadians would be smarter than that. Below is the whole story. 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America’s Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

“The parent was concerned about some of the language in the book,” said Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Principal Kevin McGuire made the decision at the end of the school year to resolve the complaint quickly. The book, a fixture on high-school reading lists across the country, will still be available in the library, said Campbell.

“The school administration was aware of the parent’s concern and made the decision to use another board-approved resource that teaches the same concept for the coming year,” said Campbell.

“It’s not a requirement that the novel be used,” he said. “It’s an option on our list of board-approved resources, and the school can make a decision to use whatever resource (it) would feel best suits them.”

“In this case, the principal believed an alternate resource might be better suited for that community,” said Campbell.

But at a school with a significant black population, teachers say the book is a relevant and favoured tool for discussion on racism.

With the start of the school year less than one month away, teachers have yet to be told what they will teach instead of Mockingbird. McGuire could not be reached for comment.

Mockingbird has spurred numerous debates and bans since it was written in the 1960s. A Nova Scotia school board tried to ban the book in 2002 for similar concerns about language. In 1993, the principal at a Hamilton school removed the book from a Grade 10 reading list after a parent complained.

“There will always be a small number of people to take offence to words, images and ideas in books and think that the best way to protect society is to remove them,” said Franklin Carter, of the Freedom of Expression committee of the Book and Periodical Council.

“But in the long run, it is illiberal, arbitrary – and censorship usually fails. People will read what they want to read anyway,” he said.

The school board says it expects a written complaint from the parent, which would prompt a thorough review by library services, religious coordinators, trustees, parents and the superintendent.

This is not the first book controversy at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board.

In 2007, it removed the award-winning novel Snow Falling on Cedars – about Japanese American man accused of murder following World War II –  from library shelves and teaching materials after a parent complained about sexual content, but later reinstated the book.

Wellness Foods A to Z: An Indispensable Guide for Health-Conscious Food Lovers
by Sheldon Morgen, M.D., and the Editors of the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter
Rebus Inc., 2002
640 pages, illustrated
$39.95

Let me cut to the chase—the book’s title says it all by stating it is an indispensable guide, but I’d like to add valuable as well. The Wellness Foods A to Z is one of my favorite reference books on food and nutrition and provides readers with a cornucopia of information about the nutritional value of whatever your taste buds desire.

The book is divided by four sections. Part one is titled “Eating for Optimal Health” and provides readers with strategies to eat right such as the mainstays of keeping intake moderate, include colorful vegetable in your diet, drink enough fluids, and keep sodium intake to no more than 2,400 mg per day (about a teaspoon). Further in the section, there are brief explanations about carbohydrates, fibers, protein, cholesterol, etc. Each of these brief include  a “wellness recommendation.”  For example, in the section about fiber, experts recommend about 20 to 30 grams of fiber per day from a variety of foods along with the suggestion to drink plenty of fluids to avoid bowl blockage.

Part two is complete guide to vitamins and minerals and includes, what it does, the recommended levels, tips and facts, and where to find them.  For instance, let take a look at Vitamen K:  

• Without Vitamin K our blood would not clot. 
• Deficiencies in Vitamin K can occur in people with malabsorption syndromes or luver disease or who are on long-term or broad-spectrum antibiotics. 
• Newborns are deficient in Vitamin K and are given an shot of V-K to prevent excessive bleeding, which can be life-threatening in a baby.
• V-K is essential for bone formation and may be helpful in maintaining strong bones in older people
• The recommended level is 90 micrograms for women; 120 microgram for men
• A precaution is noted for people who take anticoagulant drugs such as warfarin should avoid large servings of V-K because it can cancel out the effects of the drug.
• Where is VK found: spinach, lettuce, watercress, and other leafy veggies as well as broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, vegetable oils, and soybean oil.

Part three breaks down the basics and provides short explanations about each food category and finally, part four, which is the major part of the book, is all about food from A to Z.  Each food item consists of the following:

• Nutritional profile
• In the market
• Nutritional chart with calories and key nutrients
• Sidebars that include serving suggestions
• How to choose the best
• Preparing to use
• Plus, a beautiful colorful photograph of the food

For kiwifruit, we see a lovely photograph of the fruit in its whole stage and sliced open. We learn that kiwi was to New Zealand from China in 1906. There’s a description of the fruit and the taste. From the nutritional chart we see that two medium kiwis total to 93 calories and it’s pretty high in fiber about 5 grams, and only 8 mg of sodium (these are the items, I tend to look for). if I’m shopping for kiwis, I should look for:

. . . plump, fragrant specimens that yield to gentle pressure. Unripe fruit has a hard core and a tart, astringent taste. If only firms kiwis are available, ripen them for a few days before eating them. Baby kiwifruit should be purchased firm and eaten that way.

The editors note to ripen the fruit, place them in a paper bag with a banana or apple for a day at room temperature. Also noted is the skin can be eaten once the peach-fuzz is  rubbed off. The skin is very thin and is chock-full of nutrients and fiber.

I use this book often when I have a question about food. Tonight, my husband is making Porcini Veal Chops with a side dish of braised fennel and salad. I won’t touch the veal, but I will eat the mushrooms, the salad, and the fennel. Since I don’t know much about fennel and all its good stuff, my Wellness Foods A to Z will clue me in.

Novelist, screenwriter, and HUAC informer Budd Schulberg passed away at his residence at West Hampton, NY. Mr. Schulberg was 96 years old. A son of Hollywood, Mr. Schulberg was famous for his screenplay On the Waterfront, the novel What Makes Sammy Run?, which angered both Hollywood and the CPUSA. Mr. Schulberg  also testified in front of HUAC in 1951 and named 17 directors and writers–three of whom were members of the Hollywood Ten.