Food Writing

If you're at all interested in reading about food and are looking for something easy to digest (ew... bad pun), check out Best Food Writing (Holly Hughes, ed.). The 2004 edition is the book for my Gastronomy class, and I see that the 2005 book will be out in October. The book is full of articles, book excerpts, thing like that, usually in the 3-5 page range on a wide variety of topics. Some are written by bigger names like Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl, others are written by food writers from small city newspapers, and all with a good mix of chefs and journalists.

But like the name says, it's the best food writing of the year. Whenever I'm doing the assigned reading, I always find myself reading two or three articles more that weren't assigned just because the titles are interesting or the author's name catches my eye. There's an entire essay, an ode, if you will, to meatloaf. There's a piece about a guy who made his own chef's knife. There are articles about life-changing meals and others about downright gluttony. Amazon's got it for less than $11, or of course you could hit your local library.

In any event, I'm giving it my full endorsement.