Parties of the Month or Making Sense of Wine

Parties of the Month: Memories for a Lifetime

Author: Donna M Schueli

Parties Of The Month...Memories For A Lifetime is a comprehensive book with entertaining ideas for any size gathering! It covers:

• Party & decorating ideas
• Games for adults
• Tips for singles to meet someone at parties
• Theme-oriented cocktails, toasts & recipes
• Unique, fast and easy entertaining for every month of the year!

Parties Of The Month will help you entertain, giving you special advice, choices, and ideas when celebrating with a date or spouse to large groups of family, friends, or business associates.

Author Donna Schuelie wroteParties Of The Month for people with busy lifestyles. The ideas and recipes are healthy, quick, and inexpensive. The book is set up in an easy-to-find January to December format.

Celebrate New Years with Champagne Chicken; Enjoy a Touchdown Taco Bake at your Super Bowl party. For Valentine's Day, see the Aphrodisiac section for sensuous food ideas. Have a memorable Easter Egg Hunt. Serve red, white & blue frozen drinks at your 4th of July picnic. Learn how to give a Halloween party of a lifetime with fantastic costume ideas. Enjoy Pumpkin Pie Martinis. Serve red & green pepper wedges for Christmas. The ideas are limitless.

Interesting book: Lonely Planet Ireland or Frommers Maine Coast

Making Sense of Wine

Author: Matt Kramer

This new edition of Matt Kramer's classic guide to wine features a new preface and an all-new chapter that covers changes and advances in winemaking since first publication in 1989. The superbly written text explains everything an oenophile needs to know, including the creation and naming of wines, wine cellars, presentation and glassware, pairing wine with food, and much more. Kramer explores connoisseurship through the practical devices of "thinking wine" and "drinking wine," making for a most enjoyable and engrossing journey through one of life's most dependable pleasures.

Sacramento Bee

...Kramer remains as pleasurable to read as ever.

Publishers Weekly

Recommend Kramer's book to cherished adult ``children'' who refuse to be weaned from the beer bottle--this book may do the trick of transforming wine drinking into a familiar pleasure. While much wine writing verges on pedantry, columnist Kramer brings a disciplined reporter's ear to his job, along with wit and intelligence to spare. A relatively recent convert to wine, the author remembers how intimidating the drink can be, and seeks to tame it by solving the mysteries of its history, customs and manners. Why, for example, are many corks branded with their vineyard's name and year? As a precaution and tool for identification, lest the bottle label deteriorate in a damp cellar, and the cook or host need to verify the contents. Kramer is also not afraid to say, in his blunt style, that the overly technical language often used to explain how champagne comes by its bubbles is ``gobbledegook.'' And because he asserts that wine is meant to be imbibed with food--``without the context of food, wine is a eunuch''--his final chapter includes recipes for such delicacies as blanc-manger and butternut squash soup. (Sept.)

Library Journal

The author, a widely published food and wine writer, discusses the fundamentals of wine, as well as its fine points, from a perspective that combines common sense with scientific fact. Topics such as wine storage, service, and matching wine with food are dealt with in a no-nonsense fashion. Perhaps more interesting is the opening discussion of connoisseurship and the social dimension of wine. Some recipes are offered in the section on wine with food. The point of view taken is refreshingly free of dogma. This is recommended reading for those interested in wine and is a useful supplement to such standards as Andre Simon's Wines of the World , edited by Serena Sutcliffe (McGraw-Hill, 1981. 2d. ed.).-- Bruce Hulse, Vanguard Technologies Corp., Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents:

	Preface to the Second Edition	7
	Preface to the First Edition	11
	Acknowledgments	17
	Thinking Wine
	The Notion of Connoisseurship	21
	Wine in the Cellar and Society	35
	Appellation and Authenticity	61
	The Creation of Wine	79
	Twenty-First Century Fine Wine--The Consequences of Success	101
	Drinking Wine
	The Wine Cellar--A Brief History	123
	The Wine Cellar--Are You Ready for Reality?	135
	The Presentation of Wine	173
	Food Is the Meaning of Wine	187
	Bibliography	215
	Index	221

Tarts and Pastries or The Book Of Tea

Tarts and Pastries

Author: Le Cordon Bleu

This collection of timeless treats, perfected in the kitchens of Le Cordon Bleu, combines classic pastry-making with fresh fruits, chocolate, chopped nuts and pastry creams to create all your dessert favorites. From the ever-popular chocolate eclair to a delicious plum-filled brioche tart, these beautifully presented dishes have been specially created to give perfect results at home.

Book review: Hepatits C or Sex as Nature Intended It

The Book Of Tea

Author: Kakuzo Okakura

In 1906 in turn-of-the century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures.
Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea is still beloved the world over. In this edition, readers are treated to Kakuzo's delicious wisdom along with evocative quadratone photographs in an exquisite new package. Interwoven with a rich history of tea and its place in Japanese society is poignant commentary on Eastern culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.
Author Bio: Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) devoted his life to teaching, art, Zen, and the preservation of Japanese art and culture, working as an ambassador, teacher, writer, and, at the time of his death, as the Curator fo Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum.

Liza Dalby has lived intermittently in Japan since she was a teenager. She is the first non-Japanese ever to have become a geisha. She received a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University in 1978 and is the author of several books, including Geisha, and the upcoming Tale of Murasaki.

Booknews

Kakuzo was a leading figure in Japanese art and culture at the end of the 19th century, and this book, first published in 1906, is a classic treatise explicating the philosophical nuances of tea and the tea ceremony in Japanese culture. This edition contains an introduction by Liza Dalby who was the first American trained as a Geisha in the 1970s, and elegant photos by Daniel Proctor. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain or Edible Medicines

Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain

Author: H E M Cool

What were the eating and drinking habits of the inhabitants of Britain during the Roman period? Drawing on evidence from a large number of archaeological excavations, this fascinating new study shows how varied these habits were in different regions and amongst different communities and challenges the idea that there was any one single way of being Roman or native. Integrating a range of archaeological sources, including pottery, metalwork and environmental evidence such as animal bone and seeds, this book illuminates eating and drinking choices, providing invaluable insights into how those communities regarded their world. The book contains sections on the nature of the different types of evidence used and how this can be analysed. It will be a useful guide to all archaeologists and those who wish to learn about the strength and weaknesses of this material and how best to use it.

Look this: Greenback or Axiom

Edible Medicines: An Ethnopharmacology of Food

Author: Nina L Etkin

Chile pepper is used today as a flavoring, but Aztecs also applied it for toothache, sore throat, and asthma. The tonic properties of coffee have been recorded in Islamic pharmacopoeia since the eleventh century, and many peoples have used it to protect against Parkinson's disease. Although much has been documented regarding the nutritional values of foods, until recently little attention has been paid to the pharmacologic potential of diet. This book investigates the health implications of foods from the cuisines of peoples around the world to describe the place of food in health maintenance. In this wide-ranging book, Nina Etkin reveals the pharmacologic potential of foods in the specific cultural contexts in which they are used. Incorporating co-evolution with a biocultural perspective, she addresses some of the physiological effects of foods across cultures and through history while taking into account both the complex dynamics of food choice and the blurred distinctions between food and medicine. Showing that food choice is more closely linked to health than is commonly thought, she helps us to understand the health implications of people's food-centered actions in the context of real-life circumstances. Drawing on an extensive literature that transects food and culture, the history of medicine, ethnopharmacology, food history, nutrition, and human evolution, Edible Medicines demonstrates the intricate relationship between culture and nature. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars and professionals, from anthropologists to nutritionists, as well as general readers seeking a greater understanding of the medicinal aspects of food.

Table of Contents:

Ch. 1	Introduction	3
Ch. 2	Food in the history of biomedicine	44
Ch. 3	Spices : the pharmacology of the exotic	83
Ch. 4	Fermented foods and beverages	107
Ch. 5	The lives of social plants	134
Ch. 6	Medicinal qualities of animal foods	173
Ch. 7	Health in the marketplace : complementary and alternative medicine, functional foods, and more	204
App	Some common spices	229