Most days of the week, my kids and I gather around the table for breakfast or dinner, with or without my husband. We read the paper, review our plans for the day, talk about school, sports, friends and the state of the food on our plates. After countless tantrums and an abundance of whining, I have learned the art of spinning a complaint about vegetables into an opportunity to discuss something more...anything, really, that takes focus away from the matter at hand.
"That yellow thing on my chicken looks rotten and I won't eat it!" can lead into twenty minutes about lemons; decomposition; preservation; the tagine; Morocco; colonization; Islam; head scarves; yarmulkes and burqas; life in a desert climate and our next trip to see family in Tucson. No matter how random or off topic a comment seems to be, there is always some connection with which to pull it back into what I consider to be the center: what goes into our stomachs.
This ability to tangentially connect just about anything to food comes from many years of reading and experimenting in my kitchen and garden. Above are links to some of my favorite books, divided into two lists. One contains cookbooks, the other are food literature books we have read for the book club I moderate at San Francisco's 18 Reasons .
