4:20 AM
A couple weeks ago over on Recomendo, Kevin Kelly recommended The Penguin Companion to Food. Putting together an Amazon order last weekend, I saw that the book was just over twenty bucks and ordered it on a whim. It arrived yesterday afternoon, and after a night spent casually dipping into it I can already say that the book is twenty dollars well spent. Like my beloved Brewer's Dictionaries of Phrase and Fable, in addition to being a great reference it's also a perfect browser's book. Open it to any page, and you'll find both the fascinating and the unexpected. From the horrifyingly fascinating explanation of how to make 'monkey sauce' (under the entry for "Larvae"!) to an entry for "Orange" that puts the fruit into a historical perspective*, what you won't find in recipes (none) is more than compensated with a wealth of amazing reading. Best I don't leave it in the kitchen, though, or I'll end up burning dinner when I get sucked into the book's depths...

*John McPhee remains the king of orange writing. But the Penguin entry on the fruit isn't bad for a book with more than 2,500 articles packed into just over a thousand pages.