This episode we’re discussing Non-Fiction Food and Cooking books! We talk about the mystery of electric kettles, bodybuilding expertise, and fear of trying to make recipes that look like the pictures. Plus: Songs about bananas!

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In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Robert Hamaker

Books We Discuss This Month

• Geek Sweets: An Adventurer’s Guide to the World of Baking Wizardry by Jenny Burgesse
• The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook by Matthew Mead
  • Batman: Through the Genres
• The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
• Eat Live Love Die: Selected Essays by Betty Fussell
• Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food by Ann Hood
• An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler
• Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant by Amanda Cohen,  Grady Hendrix, and Ryan Dunlavey
• Cook Korean!: A Comic Book with Recipes by Robin Ha
• Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck by Matt Holloway and Michelle Davis
• Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time by Carol J. Adams and  Virginia Messina
• Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel

Other Media We Mention

• The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes) by Erin Ergenbright and  Thisbe Nissen
• The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer,  Marion Rombauer Becker and Ethan Becker
  • So many editions: Robert’s travel copy with Marion’s illustration is from 1954. He says the editions to avoid are 1962 and 1997.
• Coffee Isn’t Rocket Science: A Quick and Easy Guide to Buying, Brewing, Serving, Roasting, and Tasting Coffee by Sébastien Racineux,  Chung-Leng Tran, Yannis Varoutsikos (Illustrations)
• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
• Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook: A Useful and Improving Almanack of Information Including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, Tina Hannan, and Paul Kidby
• How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman
• Knife Skills Illustrated: A User’s Manual by Peter Hertzmann
  • à la carte: the author’s website
  • Chopping Vegetables with 8-Foot-Long Knives by Simone Giertz (features chopping an oven in half)
• Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B. Toklas
• The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel
• A Month of Sundaes by Michael Turback
  • Knickerbocker glory
• The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
• The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen
• Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford
• In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis

Links, Articles, and Things

• Cup (unit)
• Postum shows up in old restaurant menus and in a marketing campaign using Mr. Coffee Nerves. Search for it in New York Public Library’s historical menus. We also discuss it in Episode 029 – Westerns.
• Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen
  • Goblin Sandwiches
• Geographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union
• The Cook’s Thesaurus
• Yes! We Have No Bananas
  • Louis Prima – Yes We Have No Bananas
• Chiquita Banana The Original Commercial
• Is this the bananana song? We think so… (Clearly we misheard the lyrics.)
• Matthew published a cooking zine called “Slugs and Spice / Sugar and Snails” for Food Not Bombs Vancouver almost ten years ago. He found a terrible scan you can look at if you’re interested.
• Crying in H Mart By Michelle Zauner
  • Sobbing near the dry goods, I ask myself, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”

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Join us again on Tuesday, September, 4th, when we’ll talk about our travel reading habits!

Then come back on Tuesday, September 18th, when we’ll talk about Romance Fiction!