Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days
May 7th, 2008 Posted in Hardcover
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0307264963
Manufacturer: Knopf
Release Date: 2006-10-17
Average Customer Review: 
(From 10 total reviews)
List Price: $27.50
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
From the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay—amateur chefs and perfect hosts—here is a charming, beautifully illustrated tour de table: a food lover’s companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year’s Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors’ own memories of successes and catastrophes.
For instance:
• The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night
• Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others
• The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini
• How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to
• John Irving’s family recipe for meatballs; Balzac’s love of coffee
• The greatest dinner ever given at the White House
• Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.
• How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchen
Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. “The meal is the emblem of civilization,” the Salters observe. “What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?”
Customer Reviews
Charming by Susan K. Mclaughlin
I love reading cookbooks and cooking magazines so this book was a bit of a change of pace. But I enjoyed it immensely. I read it on vacation and shared with my husband some of the tidbits of history in the book. It is easy to read in short spurts. It has a little bit of everything. Recipes, history, anecdotes, menus. The writers did a very nice job.
Delicious Reading by C. J. Friedlob
This uniquely unclassifiable book is an utter delight. More than a cookbook, more than advice on how to entertain, more than a history of food and its preparation, it is both a memoir and veritable instruction manual about how to dine and live with style and gusto. Simultaneously worldly and sophisticated, casual and candid, every page offers a new treat. The illustrations are charming and perfectly complement the tone of the book. You’ll want an extra copy to give to special friends.
Too rich! by L. Ellis
Although I did finish this book, and I found some of the ideas and information very interesting, I doubt this is a book I would ever thoroughly revisit. Some of the anecdotes, while obviously meant to be charming, disarming, and heartwarming, had the opposite effect, and made the authors seem pretentious. This did not feel like a collection of casual observations about food written by people who love it. Rather, it felt more like an affected assortment of entries written by finicky epicures. As an aside, I found the passages that he wrote much more enjoyable than hers. Unfortunately, she seems to have written the majority of the book.
Of course, this is only my opinion, but these authors have a very strong voice, and if you don’t enjoy it, it will be a constant irritation throughout the book. I would recommend Ruth Reichl’s books as an alternative for a food lover.
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
Simply, a masterpiece! by Hannibal
This book is a treasure. To read it is to be reminded of the joy of living, AND eating. - Exquisite in every way, one savors each page as one would savor a great wine or haute cuisine.
There is no book that I can think of which begs to be enjoyed as much as this one. It is informative and witty at the same time. The illustrations are works of art, and the Salters set new standards of writing for a work such as this.
God bless them and this book. They have enriched us all. A MUST BUY!
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