Category Archives: Food and Drink

Daniel Karaczun’s Out of This Kitchen: A History of the Ethnic Groups and Their Foods in Steel Valley

Food is part of the daily life of everyone, but the labouring class that worked in particularly dangerous occupations such as mining and steel making came to consider food more than something that you ate to keep going: food was … Continue reading

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Lesley Chamberlain’s The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe

I have previously reviewed The Food and Cooking of Russia, and I am finally ready to tell you about Chamberlain’s companion volume, The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe. Both are reissues of books initially released in the 1980s. This … Continue reading

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Lesley Chamberlain’s The Food and Cooking of Russia

I decided to stretch my reviewing muscles and try something a little different this time around, by accepting two regional cookbooks. The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe is now out as well, but today, from the same author, we … Continue reading

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Dark Horse’s action figures: Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins: The Lost Walt Disney Production

Dark Horse Books, a division of Dark Horse Comics, recently released Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the United States Air Force. In a slightly melodramatic and over-sentimentalized introduction, Leonard Maltin gives a nevertheless fascinating … Continue reading

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Kim Wilson’s Tea with Jane Austen

Books are a lot like meals: sometimes you want something long, drawn-out and filling, other times you want something light and easy, but with enough substance to make it worthwhile. I have to admit that my current diet of epic-length … Continue reading

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Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations: Iceland Special Edition

Joseph Thompson wrote this review. In January 2010 Anthony Bourdain may possibly have visited my favorite bar. I say “possibly” because his trip to Portland, Maine, won’t air on the Travel Channel until 12 April 2010, a few months after … Continue reading

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

Joseph Thompson wrote this review. Few things in this world highlight humanity’s truculence like the feast of Ortolan. This small bunting, force fed through manipulations of its diurnal cycle and then drowned in Armagnac, is eaten whole. With a cloth … Continue reading

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Chapon Chocolatier’s 100% Venezuelan Chocolate Mousse

Kelley wrote this for Sleeping Hedgehog. On entering the store at 69 Rue de Bac, the back wall covered in metal chocolate molds drew me in. The next thing I noticed was the gracious smile of the handsome young man … Continue reading

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Hammond’s Candies Double Chocolate Hot Cocoa

Hammond’s Cocoa was established in Denver in 1920 by Carl T. Hammond Sr. Hammond’s Candies has been in continuous operation ever since, priding itself on producing quality candies using ingredients and methods that harken back to the days of its … Continue reading

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Green & Black’s Organic Milk Chocolate, Organic Maya Gold, and Organic Bittersweet Dark Chocolate

Green & Black’s got its beginnings in 1991, when Craig Sams, founder of the English organic food company Whole Earth, was sent a bar of organic 70% cocoa dark bittersweet chocolate. Sams and his wife, Josephine Fairley, environment columnist for … Continue reading

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