Bedside Reading: Books about Presenting and Eating Food

Right now I have six books (besides the two trashy novels I'm reading) calling out my name. All six have something to do with food from styling it, photographing it, choosing and storing ingredients to cooking it. The books currently inspiring my dreams of future dinner parties are Eat Love Food Concepts by Eating Designer Marije Vogelzang, Delicious, Plate to Pixel, Food Styling for Photographers, Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food, and They Draw & Cook.

Unfortunately I've been too tired lately to cook; the most I do in the kitchen at the moment is reheat things or brew a cup of tea. While we haven't tried any of the recipes in Eat Good Food yet, we've learned a few things about storing food. First, I learned my mom was right: if you're not going to be able to eat a loaf of bread in a couple of days, the best way to store it is in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Second, we learned that tomatoes are best kept at room temperature and not in the refrigerator.

I've always believed that we eat with all of our senses. If a dish is not appealing to my eyes, I have a very hard time even trying a bite. Even when I'm dining alone, I still plate my food artistically.

I remember the first time I saw Wayne Theibaud's work at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. I became obsessed with recreating my favorite foods using the limited color palette of my Crayola Broad Line Markers. I had paper cutouts of all my favorite Farrell's desserts from an ice cream sundae to a rootbeer float.

Eat Love takes food from nutrition to art, providing inspiration for food-themed gatherings where guests are presented with edible art. The other two books on my nightstand, Food Styling for Photographers and Plate to Pixel, offer practical advice on how to capture the impermanence of  edible art and excite the rest of the senses. I can't wait to try out some ideas I've come up with after just skimming these books.

As I dive further into these books, I'll share a few of my favorite tips, illustrations, and recipes.

Bon Apetit!

Eden

 

Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Retro Kitchen: Designing Your Retro Cookbook, Part 1

Creating your own cookbook for family and friends? Want it to appear as if it's a family heirloom? That's what we were aiming for with our wedding favors (yes we didn't finish them in time for the wedding itself and we're going to be scrambling to finish in time for our 1st anniversary). Here are some tips for what you need to do, from font selection, to color choice, to section dividers, to necessary content.

First, your typeface. Many cookbooks will feature at least two typefaces - one san serif and one cursive - on their cover.

For the text itself, Times Roman features prominently.

Second, color. If your cookbook favors a particular country's cuisine, you may want to incorporate colors from that country's flag.

Remember that full color is more expensive than black and white or spot color. Unlike today's cookbooks which feature page upon page of full color photographs, many yesteryear cookbooks restrict color to the covers. For example, the two Italian cookbooks in the third photograph above, c.1977 and c.1964 from top to bottom, have no color within their pages.

Both their dust jackets, as well as their clothbound covers, feature color.

The softcover, The French Cookbook, c.1965, features a full color illustrated cover and then employs spot colors pulled from the cover throughout its pages.

Third, illustrations. While reference cookbooks, for example, The Talisman Italian Cook Book, may not include any graphics - line drawings or photographs - most are illustrated. All promotional cookbooks, such as the two in the first photograph, have either illustrations or photographs. The softcover, The French Cookbook, has both illustrations and photographs.

Illustrations can either be black and white or color. To see more examples, check out Flickr.

Fourth, glossary and index. Most cookbooks over 50 pages have both a glossary as well as an index.

In the next Designing Your Retro Cookbook, I'll cover the recipes themselves. Good luck with designing your retro cookbook!

Bon Apetit!

Eden

 

Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: Shall we Sup?

Ever wonder what the difference is between lunch, supper, and dinner? Wonder no more!

"Lunch is a noon or evening meal, depending on when the main meal I'd served. The main meal is dinner, whether it is served at noon or evening. When dinner is served in the evening, the noon meal is known at lunch; when dinner is served at noon, the evening meal is called supper. 

There are also three types of luncheons or suppers: light, medium, and heavy. Light lunches or suppers are only for grownups who are very inactive, who have eaten a late heavy breakfast, or will have an early heavy dinner."

- Laura Baxter, Margaret M. Justin, Lucile O. Rust, Our Share in the Home, c.1945, pp217-219

Bon Apetit!

Eden

 

Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: Inspiration for SpriteKat's Party

I discovered where SpriteKat got the idea that cheese equals mice. She's an avid reader and directed me to a children's tale about food, The King, The Mice, and The Cheese. It was written and illustrated in 1965 by Nancy and Eric Gurney.

Basically the story goes like this. The King's cheesemakers produce the most amazing cheese. A mouse smells this cheese. He tells his friends and they come to the kingdom.

The King then entertains the mice nightly at elegant dinner parties and they all live happily ever after.

Ok, there's a little more to the story than that. The king and the mice didn't exactly get along from the start, but you'll have to the read (or listen to) the story. Let just say sharing and manners save the day (and the kingdom from ruin by stampeding elephants).

This book and its illustrations are inspiring my invitations for SpriteKat's party. Where do you draw inspiration from?

Bon Apetit!

Eden

 

Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: Obscure Ingredients

Once again we turn to Let's Cook it Right (previous insight).

"Only a few enterprising women will make the effort to obtain foods not generally on the market. After they have located a source of supply or the food is put on sale because of their efforts, other families soon use the food, and the health of the community is improved accordingly. Hugh Black has said, "The purpose of life is to serve, not to be served; to give, not to get; to love, not to be loved; and to the giver comes the wonder of it, and the joy."

- Adelle Davis, Let's Cook it Right, c.1947, p. 562

Finding refined-sugar free ingredients is a challenge. When I find a source I want to be able to rely on it. I get frustrated, when a store changes their inventory, for example Bi-Rite Market stopped carrying my core baking staple - Maple Sugar Crystals. Luckily I discovered Rainbow Grocery (right down the street from where we live), who stocks Maple Sugar Crystals in bulk as well as on the shelves.

While local is better, I'm glad we live in the age of the Internet and Amazon.

Why Amazon? Amazon offers door-to-door grocery delivery and a subscription service. So guess what will be delivered monthly to my parents' house? Maple Sugar.

Anyone else have Amazon deliver their groceries? What do you think of the service?

Bon Apetit!

Eden

 

Credits: All images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: A Chat About Photographs

If you looked closely in the bedroom sneak peek photo you might have noticed that two books I'd highlighted previously are actually at my bedside: Our Share in the Home and The Art of Home Making. Every book in the night stand (not on top which is piled high with magazines and novels) is at least 50 years old. There are a couple that are over 100 years old (one is a map book that belonged to my step-grandfather).

Today's food for thought is from The Art of Home Making, c.1898, p.210:

In these times almost everybody can afford to have pictures taken often, and our boys and girls carry kodaks and have great success in taking likenesses of those they love and beautiful interiors. Whenever one can do it, it is well to have frequent pictures taken of children, for these darlings of the home change a great many times as they grow up, and it is interesting to watch the development, both of body and mind, as the little rosy, dimpled baby face changes to the older countenance of school-boy or school-girl, and then as that gives place to the look of the youth or maiden, and finally as the face takes on the beauty of maturity.

One blog that I follow daily, Making It Lovely, has adapted this advice for the digital age. She has two children and is taking a photo of each child monthly until their second birthday. Her eldest Eleanor is twenty-two months old; her youngest August-Ray-Balch is two months old.

Even if you don't have children, how interesting would this idea be for a newlywed couple? A photograph a month for the first year and then a photograph each year after? It would be interesting to see how the couple changes over the years.

One project that I've got planned is to digitize negatives from my old Kodak InstaChrome 110 and Canon AE-1 that I took in junior high and through college. My mother never liked having her photo taken and I realized that I had a collection of every day moments of my parents - when my mom got her new stove (it was a really big deal), when she presented my dad with a homebaked birthday cake, when they were sitting waiting for the ferry, etc.

What do you photograph? How do you tell your story?

Credits: Image taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: Interiors to Dream Of

It's finally here; my copy of Decorate arrived. Right now it sits on my nightstand (come back for a pic of my nightstand tomorrow). Soon though it will be decorated with flags as I highlight ideas and tips.

Holly's book couldn't have come at a better time. We're getting our living room back this weekend! For the past few months our living room has been more of a storage room (aka dumping ground). Tomorrow (fingers crossed) at our friends' garage sale, my matched pine nightstands and cubes distressed nightstand will be going to new homes (fingers crossed).

Credits: Image taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.

Bedside Reading: Good Health Comes from Good Cooking

At our wedding we served a raw foods wedding cake. We didn't publicize this; in fact, if you weren't told the cake hadn't been baked, you wouldn't know.

Why am I bringing up our wedding cake? Because raw foods relate to a cookbook by Adelle Davis that I'm currently reading. Adelle Davis, according to Wikipedia, was a pioneer in nutrition and advocated whole unprocessed foods. Her beliefs were radical for their time and have since been proven to be "largely right" by medical research.

"If nutrition is to be successfully applied, the homemaker must be able to prepare delicious foods which appeal to the eyes and nostrils as well as to the taste buds. It is a popular belief that anything which builds health tastes like witches' brew and looks like baby spinach. Exactly the reverse; foods which retain their greatest nutritive value also have the best flavor, texture, and color."

- Let's Cook It Right by Adelle Davis, c.1947, Chapter 1, p.3 

See the connection to our raw foods wedding cake? Delicious, nutritious food that appealed to the eyes and nostrils as well as the taste buds.

Credits: Image taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for Recipes for the Good Life.