Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain

From Goodreads:  "In the ten years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business—and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food."


I enjoyed Kitchen Confidential and Anthony Bourdain's very real and vivid anger.  I find that I respond to people who write angrily, as I'm sure most of us do.  My husband also enjoyed the book, as a huge fan of cooking and food.  So, when our son spilled a container of mustard all over this book at Barnes and Noble, it was clearly a sign from the book gods that we were intended to buy it.

Medium Raw is a collection of essays relating to his previous book, his current life, the enemies and friends he's made, how he's changed over the years, and some updated thoughts on food and the people who work with it.  Quite honestly, the best bits are his thoughts on food and the related industry.  The chapter labeled Lust made me want to eat morning, noon, and night.  A chapter regarding a man who worked fish prep for Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin is delightful for several reasons including Bourdain's own awe and respect for the man's skill.  Bourdain manages very effectively to get across his feelings and his opinions when his essays relate to food.  You can practically feel his weariness at the idea of tasting menus when you read the chapter on Per Se.

I was less impressed with his chapter on David Chang.  Unlike the essays in which he slams a person eloquently (Alice Waters and Alan Richman get their own special chapters) so that you understand the hate in his heart, his chapter about David Chang is almost loving, but I have no further understand of that love than David himself is a hater.  (Do haters like to stick together?)

Finally, his chapters on himself are more hit or miss.  Some do not speak to me at all because I have no experience being either an underpaid, overworked, coked out chef or a very rich, powerful, and influential writer.  Others, like his chapter on dancing with his two year old daughter, speak powerfully to me as it highlights the fact that having a child can change your whole life outlook.

I really can't recommend this book enough if you like books on food or the cooking industry.  Also, read this if you like anger.  I really do like anger when it is not directed at me.

Verdict: 9.  It made me think and I enjoyed it.  There are very few books that I could say more of.

Thoughts:  While some of the book is cohesive and attempts to segue from one chapter to another, it really is best to treat each individual chapter as its own essay and leave it at that.  Also, I love angry writing.  I just identify with it so well.

Mistress of the House: Great Ladies and Grand Houses by Rosemary Baird

From Amazon's product page:  "In the 18th and 19th centuries, to become Mistress of the House was the natural prospect of women born into Britain’s wealthy aristocratic families. An advantageous marriage would bring with it an important ancestral home—a visible expression of power, prestige, and good taste. Rosemary Baird introduces us to ten of these remarkable women, detailing their accomplishments in the creation and running of Britain’s great houses. We also learn about their education and training, the marriage market, and their obligations as leaders of fashion, interior design, and society. Based on diaries, letters, and family archives, Mistress of the House is a fascinating work of social history. Rosemary Baird was educated at Cambridge and Oxford; a former consultant at Sotheby’s, she is now Curator of the Goodwood Collection."

This incredible dry book starts off in a fairly interesting manner, detailing how women in years past in England helped build giant homes, decorate them, and create incredible legacies which they'd leave to the family members in their names.  The book describes how the legacy of these women would be kept fairly quiet due to their gender and history's general desire to attribute their work and effort to their husbands.  It also lists what a rich wife of that time would be expected to do, and what she could do given leeway. 

Unfortunately, it quickly moves to individual ladies of the time, and this is where the work suffers.  While some ladies have stories interesting enough to hold the attention (Catherine Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu and the Duchess of Portsmouth) while others bored me silly.  Combined with the fact that most chapters read like a laundry list of accomplishments, it tended towards the tedious in chapters for people such as Theresa Parker.  "Yes, yes, they worked on their house.  Yes, yes, they put up Indian Paper in the great hall." 

Sadly, due to the method in which this book describes the ladies (lady by lady), it also becomes greatly repetitive in the chapters of women with no great claim to fame other than their houses.  I powered through it, but it would be lists of items purchased by ladies interspersed with a sentence like "Husband managed to make her a duchess."

I am going to give it a positive verdict, but I'm writing the review the way I am because I want you to know that if you do not have a great patience or if you have little interest in manor homes of England or strong females of bygone eras, this is probably not going to be a book you enjoy.  My love of the running of manor homes and of strong female personalities is great, and I'm still only giving it a six out of ten!

Verdict: 6.  However, I would not rate it higher than a four unless you have a rather deep interest in intellectual, dry works regarding large manors in England.

Thoughts:  One third of this book was footnotes.  I kind of felt robbed!

The Seasons On Henry's Farm by Terra Brockman

From the author's website:  Through closely observed natural phenomena and engagingly told stories, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm takes readers deep inside the world of a small-scale farmer, and in so doing, opens a window into what sustainable farming really entails and why it is vital and relevant to everyone who eats.




Every year, when Christmas comes around, I panic and buy my husband a book or three as stocking-stuffers.  The last several years have seen a few fantasies and one or two non-fiction books about cooking and restaurants.  After doing some gardening with him this year, I decided to get him a book about something we're both interested in -- the local farm scene.  I had initially wanted to get him My Empire of Dirt, but I always hesitate before giving a book I haven't read which has received lukewarm reviews.  Luckily, the Amazon page for that book recommended the much more popular The Seasons on Henry's Farm.

After my husband opened the book, I couldn't help myself and I started to nibble away at the book.  It's conveniently set up to have a new chapter for each week through one year of farming.  A week here, a week there.  The next thing I knew, my husband was a few weeks in and I was done it. 

My favorite parts of this book were definitely the chapters in which she goes into detail about either what gardening needs to be done for the season and how hard it is and who does what task or the sections in which she talks about the CSA her brother runs.  These feel both informative and entertaining.  For instance, one of the beginning chapters which is all about the hardships of planting garlic makes me want to go buy some farm stand garlic and it also makes me want to try growing garlic!  Another chapter which easily sticks out in my mind is the one in which she discusses her brother's attempts to stop using plastic bags at his farm stand and the response of people who are resistant to this change.

While some of the chapters that only barely touch on farming, focusing instead on her family or the state of gardening today, drag or feel overly preachy, it's worth reading through them to glean the bits about gardening that sit within.

Overall, I really liked this book and I'm happy that I got it for my husband.


Verdict: 7.  Definitely had enough enjoyable bits to easily outweigh the sections I found dull.

Thoughts:  It's been a while since I last read non-fiction, but this makes me want to find other books about sustainable farming.  I think it might be time to start ratcheting up how much non-fiction I read since the last several books I've enjoyed the most have all been non-fiction.