I realize we’re nearly halfway through July but I still wanted to send out these book selections for this month’s edition of our Tasty Books Book Club. I’ve included the summary of each book from Amazon website. The first selection, Tomatoland, is a book that was sent to me by the publisher but I found to be quite an intriguing subject given the focus lately on eating “green” and eating locally. You can read my review by clicking on the picture of the book and it will bring you to the Amazon page. Wow! What an eye opener. I hope you will check it out!

The second selection is the first in a series that I just discovered last summer called the Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanna Fluke. I love mysteries and those that include recipes so this was a perfect match for me! While this book was published several years ago, the author has published seventeen books in the series so you’re sure to be able to keep on reading for awhile. They’re a fun, light read with twists and turns that will surprise you! The bonus? Recipes in every book–yum! And the good news? a cookbook that includes recipes from ALL of Fluke’s books is due out in September 2011!

The cookbook selection is The Family Kitchen: Easy and Delicious Recipes for Parents and Kids to Make and Enjoy Together by Debra Ponzek. This book is chock-full of yummy sounding recipes that will appeal to parents and kids! You can read a review that I did for this book by clicking here.

Our children’s picture book selection this month is Cook-A-Doodle-Doo by Janet Stevens. It’s a book I picked up at the library for my own children and what a fun read it was! Lastly, there’s the middle grades fiction book, The Dazzle Disaster Dinner Party by Sharon Draper. We’ve not yet read this one but it looks fun!

And the middle grades novel is The Dazzle Disaster Dinner Party book! What kid won’t love reading about planning a fabulous party and the craziness that comes when things go wrong. Young readers will enjoy this book.

Below are the descriptions of each book. Remember, if you purchase a book by clicking on the links below it helps me out as I am an Amazon affiliate. But I am also a big fan of my library. So if you are too and are able to find these books there, I won’t know either way!

I hope you enjoy these books. Be sure to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below. Happy reading!

Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, “The Price of Tomatoes,” investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?

[Read more...]

It’s the first week of June and time to get thinking about some great summer reads for our Tasty Books Book Club! (details on how it will work and how to order books are here). Below is the June 2011 book selection list with a description of the titles (from the publisher or online site–they say it just as good or better than I can!):

NON-FICTION SELECTION:

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) by Jonathan Bloom
From Publishers Weekly-
Since the Great Depression and the world wars, the American attitude toward food has gone from a “use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without” patriotic and parsimonious duty to an orgy of “grab-and-go” where food’s fetish and convenience qualities are valued above sustainability or nutrition. Journalist Bloom follows the trajectory of America’s food from gathering to garbage bin in this compelling and finely reported study, examining why roughly half of our harvest ends up in landfills or rots in the field. He accounts for every source of food waste, from how it is picked, purchased, and tossed in fear of being past inscrutable “best by” dates. Bloom’s most interesting point is psychological: we have trained ourselves to regard food as a symbol of American plenty that should be available at all seasons and times, and in dizzying quantities. “Current rates of waste and population growth can’t coexist much longer,” he warns and makes smart suggestions on becoming individually and collectively more food conscious “to keep our Earth and its inhabitants physically and morally healthy

FICTION SELECTION:
The Bake-Off by Beth Kendrick
Suburban soccer mom Amy has always wanted to stand out from the crowd. Former child prodigy Linnie just wants to fit in. The two sisters have been estranged for years, but thanks to a series of personal crises and their wily grandmother, they’ve teamed up to enter a national bake-off in the hopes of winning some serious cash. Armed with the top-secret recipe for Grammy’s apple pie, they should be unstoppable. Sure, neither one of them has ever baked anything more complicated than brownie mix, but it’s just pie-how hard could it be?

COOKBOOK SELECTION:
Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients by Jeff Hertzberg MD and Zoe Francois
Two years ago, the authors published Artisan Bread in Five Minutes, presenting European-inspired loafs and baked goods, relying on traditional baking ingredients. After the authors started a blog based on that book, they responded to readers requests for recipes for healthy breads, including those made with less white flour, lower refined sugars and gluten-free options. Relying on the same five-minute, no-knead method, a master recipe is the base for most of the 100 recipes. The book’s strength lies in the unusual selections inspired from around the globe including Turkish pear coffee bread; tabbouleh bread with parsley, garlic and bulgur; and Indian-spiced doughnuts. A chapter entitled “Sneaky Breads” cleverly incorporates fruits and vegetables into doughs, resulting in tasty and healthy creations such as brown rice and prune bread and beet-red buns. A selection of pizzas and an entire chapter dedicated to gluten-free baked goods round out the title. The friendly tone, including headnotes and stories behind recipes, keep this from becoming a didactic diet book. Though traditionalists may shy away from the method and ingredient substitutions presented, others will find inspiration within the pages of this unconventional baking title.

CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOK SELECTION:
The Greatest Potatoes by Penelope Stowell
In an effort to serve the perfect fried potato dish to the famous but fussy Cornelius Vanderbilt at Cary Moon’s Lake Lodge House Restaurant, fry cook George Crum accidentally invents the potato chip. This story is based on true events.

YOUNG/MIDDLE GRADES FICTION BOOK:
President of the Whole Fifth Grade by Sherri Winston
From Booklist- Brianna Justice plans to be a millionaire when she grows up, just like her hero, celebrity chef Miss Delicious. When Miss Delicious credits her rise to the top to the experience she gained as fifth-grade president, Brianna knows what she must do. With the support of her best friends, Brianna strategizes her worldwide domination, starting with a successful run for president of her own fifth-grade class. But unexpected and underhanded competition from new girl Jasmine Moon threatens not only to ruin Brianna’s ambitions but to knock Brianna’s moral compass out of whack as she loses sight of herself and her purpose in a win-at-all-costs race. Although Jasmine’s villainy seems over the top and Brianna’s peeps turn on her unconvincingly, Brianna’s struggle to run a clean campaign is believable and entertaining. Cupcake recipes and a fair amount of U.S. history are worked into the book.

Each week I’ll further highlight one (or more) of the books and we’ll get the discussion going! For the cookbook selection, choose a recipe that looks good to you and then we can all share our experiences. Leave a comment if you have any questions. Happy reading!

The first day of summer officially kicks off for us today as school is out! Whether your children are not yet in school, you have grown children or none at all, summertime usually means fewer things on your “to-do” list, visits to, from and with family and friends and generally a more relaxed time of year.

For me, it also means I’ll have more free time.  So I’m excited to introduce the Meal Planning Magic Tasty Books Summer Book Club! Being lover of all things food related, I’m naturally drawn to books about, well, food. And since discovering several years back that books written about food don’t necessarily mean they need to be cookbooks, I was hooked.

Since we’re all on a different part of the journey towards preparing healthy foods for our families that also save time and money, I thought it would be a great idea to share books with my readers to help us all learn to think about the foods we love (or will come to love!) on many different levels.

So, let me get down to the details! [Read more...]