Just about the last thing I want to do in the summer is fire up the oven, but in cooler weather soup sounds better to me than salad.  There’s always my thrifty Surprise Soup – want the recipe?  Look in the refrigerator, see what’s left over, add chicken broth and if it’s good, surprise! Occasionally I want to make soup that’s a little more, ah, planned. Looking in our catalog for ideas, I found:

Love Soup: 160 all-new vegetarian recipes from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure

A collection of soup recipes, many vegan, from a renowned vegetarian cook. According to the reviews, it includes a pickle soup recipe. I’m not sure I want to eat that but I do want to read the recipe.

An exaltation of soups: the soul-satisfying story of soup, as told in more than 100 recipes

This book comes from a fascinating blog (formerly a website) called SoupSong. Patricia Solley has been writing about soup online for more than 10 years, mixing soup history and local culture in with the recipes. Want to make a soup that’s a little out of the ordinary? Try Yemen’s saltah or a Turkish balik corbasi.

Closer to home, you could head to Buckhead to eat at Souper Jenny, recently featured in the AJC . The article includes some of Jenny Levison’s recipes and we’ve got her cookbook at the Library.

And while you stir, you can sing:

I spent my twenties wandering in the food service wilderness, toying with the idea of going to cooking school, dreaming of opening my own rib shack or bakery as I washed dishes in a country club kitchen, made toast and scrambled eggs for 300 at a church camp, worked the line in a hotel kitchen in a popular tourist trap and cleaned and shelled 60 pounds of frozen shrimp every single day at a nightclub. Cooking for a living is what I wanted and, for the young and energetic, food service is fun—it’s grueling and will leave you broke and broken, but there’s nothing like the adrenaline jolt of a hot, busy kitchen on a Saturday night when Chef is bellowing, “Let’s move it people, we’re in the weeds!”

Library work can be as physically demanding as kitchen work—you’re on your feet all day, lifting heavy stuff and working odd hours.  However, I’ve never gotten a second degree burn from accidentally bumping into a hot bookshelf and I’ve never nearly severed a finger doing storytime.  I now have a job that doesn’t leave me reeking of grease and gets me into my own bed well before 2:00 a.m. but I often look back on the pressure cooker days and nights of those various kitchens with a great deal of nostalgia. When the longing hits, I turn to our collection for solace. If you have a similarly checkered work history or just get swept up in the drama of TV cooking shows (YES, I’m talking about you Gordon Ramsay!) these titles are all in the collection:

Heat: An Amateurs’ Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta Maker and Apprentice to a Dante Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America by Michael Ruhlman

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip—Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve Dublanica

Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch

Cooking Dirty: a Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death by Jason Sheehan

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin

Two years ago the State of Georgia saw a change in how restaurants are “graded” as far as food safety.  In some areas of the state the restaurants and the health inspectors are still trying to understand the relatively new law called the 2007 GA Food code ( Public Health Division’s Chapter 290-5-14)

How does this affect the everyday customer of the local restaurants? The scoring is different and can vary according to the various violations. Interested in what the health inspectors are looking for and how the law has changed for the employees of a restaurant? Check out this frequently asked question and answer page that the Georgia Restaurant Association created. The Georgia Divison of Public Health also has a wealth of information about food safety and code revisions.

If you want to know where your favorite restaurant or potential new restaurant falls in the scoring, the Dekalb Board of Health has a website where they post current scores. It can be found here. This site also gives information on understanding scores and a reference for violations.

So what if you’re like me and you don’t eat out too often. The library has several books about food safety that can help home cooks keep their food safe.

Food Alert!: The ultimate sourcebook for food safety

Food Safety

It’s Friday once again and today I thought we’d start off the weekend by introducing a simple game that generates charitable food aid while building your vocabulary! The game is called Free Rice, and it is a non-profit website run by the United Nations Food Program. Free Rice has two goals, to provide education to everyone for free, and to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It works towards these goals by presenting visitors to the site with one word followed by a set of four possible definitions. Picking the correct definition allows you to move onto the next (more difficult) word and generates a donation of ten grains of rice. As the website notes, ten grains isn’t a particularly large amount, but when enough people play enough times, an enormous difference can be made in the lives of millions of those less fortunate all over the world. Since its inception in 2007 Free Rice has donated a total of 66,985,896,480 grains of rice! So the next time you have access to the internet and a few minutes to spare, consider spending them building up your vocabulary and helping to feed someone in need.

If you are interested in learning about the causes and possible solutions to the problem of world hunger, the library has several books in the catalog that can further inform you. A good book to start your exploration with is the well researched and argued Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel. Check it out.

psst – yes, we know this has been written about on this blog before, but we thought it was time for a reminder!

Since July was National Ice Cream month and the Dog Days of August are from July 3 through August 11–why not celebrate with homemade ice cream for your DOG?  Sure you can probably buy it at the grocery store but nothing says loving like homemade ice cream. Here’s the recipe for doggy ice cream. Take 32 oz. of vanilla or plain yogurt, 1 well mashed banana, 2 T. peanut butter and 2 T. honey.  Blend in a blender or food processor, pour into small paper cups and freeze until solid.

While you’re waiting for your pup cream to harden, you can ponder the  Dog Days of Summer which occur when the Dog Star is easiest for viewing. Or you can read the book Totally Fun Things to do with your Dog by Maxine Rock. She’d probably suggest serving your new creation at a Paw-ty.

If you know anything about Paula Deen, you know she likes butter.  I have to confess that I like to have butter on a variety of dishes too.  Butter has been around forever. In fact, it is said to have been around two thousand years before Christ. As all good things, it was discovered by mistake when people were collecting a variety of milks and kept stirring the liquids which turned into what we know today as butter.

I discovered a great website devoted to butter. The website is interestingly enough called Butter through the Ages. The site is part of WebExhibits an interactive online non-profit museum.

Butter was the only food that the United States Congress defined before the creation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 . Did you know that it takes 21 pounds of cows milk to make a pound of butter? The site includes a lot of interesting facts including the history, how it’s made, how to cook with it, and the composition of it .

The library of course has books on butter and a variety of Paula Deen’s cookbooks. Here is a sampling of books we have on butter:

The Great Big Butter Cookbook: because everything is better with butter

Butter

What Einstein told his Cook

On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen

Paula Deen’s books

for ice cream.  Creamy, yummy, good for the tummy – July is National Ice Cream Month. Americans have been celebrating National Ice Cream Month since 1984 when President Ronald Regan designated it as a special occasion.

In fact, the third Sunday in July is National Ice Cream Day (July 19th this year.) President Reagan felt that since ninety percent of the nation’s population enjoys eating ice cream, we should celebrate!

The International Ice Cream Association (IICA) encourages celebrating because ice cream sales account for twenty billion dollars in sales each year and provides thousands of jobs. Nine percent of all milk produced is used in making ice cream. (I bet some kids wish they could have an ice cream cone instead of a glass of milk.)

Whether you like the fancy stuff or plain vanilla (the most popular flavor.), there’s something out there for you. If you were interested in making your own, check out Ice Cream by Pippa Cuthbert and Lindsay Cameron Wilson. (641.862 Cuth) or Ice Cream and frozen desserts by Peggy Fallon, (641.862 Fall.)

That’s the scoop on National Ice Cream Month. Be sure and have a sundae on Sunday, July 19th.

Ever since man first put a chunk of dinosaur meat over a hot flame in some lonely cave, he has quested for new and better ways to cook meat. Give a guy a grill and you’ll find one happy man.

You’ll find two types of grilling methods – gas and charcoal. The size of the grill is up to the man and his budget. Wander around a hardware store and you’ll see all sizes and brands ready and waiting to make the trip to the back yard or deck.

Wander over to the 641.5784 section of the library stacks and you’ll find Bobby Flay, George Foreman and many others ready to teach you how to marinade, filet or rub your meat to pre-flame perfection.

There’s even an indoor electric grill for rainy days. And it doesn’t matter if you like beef, pork, chicken, fish or even veggie burgers – there’s something available for your taste. No pun intended.

As I was searching for something to post about on this first day of June, I discovered that I can be healthy or not depending on what I want to celebrate this month. June is Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month but it also National Candy Month.  So I’m asking you, do you want to be healthy or not?

If you want to be healthy here are some books that we have on fresh fruits a vegetables.

How to Pick a Peach: the search for flavor from farm to table

The Farmers’  Market Guide to Fruit

Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook

The Produce Bible: essential ingredient information and more than 200 receipes for fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts

If you do not want to be healthy, try these books about candy:

Chocolate: a healthy passion

The Ultimate Candy Book

Candy and Me: a love story

For now, I am choosing to be healthy maybe in the middle of the month, I will be bad!

It’s Mardi Gras time again…and we’re stuck here in Atlanta. No offense, ATL, but I can’t help but envy all the Fat Tuesday revellers who’ll be traipsing down to New Orleans getting their fill of food, fun and festivities. But that’s okay. We book-lovers and, um, vacation-planning procrastinators still can kick up our heels–albeit quietly–here at the Library. There are lots of great titles at DCPL to satisfy one’s appetite for all things related to the Big Easy. So browse around, have fun and behave yourselves. But no beads, guys! Things get too out-of-hand…

Here are some fun Mardi Gras titles for the kiddies;

Mardi Gras by Dianne M. Macmillan (Enslow Publishers)

The Greentail Mouse by Leo Lionni (Alfred A. Knopf; Random House Children’s Books)

On Mardi Gras Day by Fatima Shaik (Dial Books for Young Readers): This one is a lively and beautifully illustrated book about Mardi Gras custome and festivities.

For more grown-up reading here are some more suggestions:

Carnival, American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile by Sam Kinser (University of Chicago Press): I, for one, didn’t know there were Mardi Gras festivities in Mobile, Alabama. I’m gonna try to get my hands on this one myself–it seems really fascinating.

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at The New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen (W. W. Norton): Now this title isn’t so much a Mardi Gras book but isn’t this the perfect time to delve into New Orleans’ culinary customs and traditions?

Up From The Cradle of Jazz: New Orleans Music Since World War II by Jason Berry, Jonathan Foose and Tad Jones (University of Georgia Press): Here’s a book that I’ve been reading that discusses New Orleans’ rich musical and cultural heritage. For those, such as myself, who are looking to gain insight into the Crescent City’s history and an introduction to such musical greats as Fats Domino, Professor Longhair and others, this is a great starting point.

All of this Mardi Gras jazz has really made me want to see New Orleans even more. For anyone looking for a tour guide into the Big Easy don’t forget the ever-popular and informative Frommer’s and Fodor’s guides to the city. If I get started planning right now, who knows? This time next year I may be doing this blog post from the French Quarter.