food writing

Between the books you all picked for this week's buzzworthy challenge on food writing and the picks over on Yum's summer reading list, my stomach is growling. I can't wait to read a bunch of these, but I think I'll have to do it with a tall glass of lemonade and a yummy snack nearby. Here were a few of the great picks; after a jump, you can see a widget with all of them.

The $64 Tomato
Subtitled "How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden," this book was picked by Linda McP, who wrote: "William Alexander narrates the story of his love/hate relationship with his garden and his battle with the forces of nature to grow his own produce. The title comes from his cost-benefit analysis of how much it cost him to grow ONE tomato once the cost of animal traps, Velcro tomato wraps and steel edging for his garden were factored in. But, he concludes that there simply isn't a price tag that can be put on the pleasure of growing fresh garden produce for your own table."

A Thousand Days in Venice
smorzalli picked this intriguing book, and here's what she had to say about it: "This true story of an American chef who leaves behind her life and career to marry an Italian is romantic and full of beautiful descriptions of Venice and food. It also includes recipes for some of the featured dishes!"

Lots more food writing, so read more

All month, Yum has been posting some great food writing in the site's summer reading series. For this week's Buzzworthy challenge, I wanted to put Buzz readers to the test to see what other drool-worthy food books you had on your shelves.

Here are the parameters: Fiction and non-fiction are both OK, but no cookbooks — though books that include recipes within their chapters are certainly welcome. To start things off, I've bookmarked Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which Fit read recently and I just finished the other day. It's a well-written look at the very hot topic of eating locally, tracing Kingsolver's family's move to a farm where they raise much of their own food and buy the rest from their neighbors.

Just use Buzzsugar's cool bookmarking tool to bookmark your great reads online and tag them with the phrase food writing. I'll post some readers' picks here next week. You can also now make a list of your picks. Here are mine:

Source

Today would have marked the 99th birthday of prolific writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (most commonly known as M.F.K. Fisher). She was a prominent food critic and one of the great culinary writers of the 20th century. To commemorate her birthday I thought I'd share my favorite M.F.K. Fisher quote with you:

"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it; and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied; and it is all one." - M.F.K. Fisher, from The Art of Eating