NB: I'm done with the whole set now. A whole bunch of "blocks" seem to have gotten tangled up in the spam filter. With this subreddit's largely inactive moderation, I have no idea how to fix this. If you want to read all of my answers, go through the last few pages of my profile's submitted comments.

Second note: Since this has blown up on /r/bestof, I think I should clarify that the star/no-star thing isn't me trying to show off how how little I need to look up stuff because I'm all-knowing and infallible - it's to indicate that I HAVEN'T LOOKED UP THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION - I MIGHT BE WRONG. Common ones I've been corrected on are the // thing, the svchost thing, the trees-in-fields issue and the moustaches on cars. Bullets are blunt for aerodynamic reasons, Poseidon actually favoured the Greeks and it was all down to the son-killing. With that caveat in place, here we go:

Answers - first "box" (starred ones are ones I had to look up):

Why do whales jump*?
No-one knows exactly, though it's theorised that socialising is part of it, as its a far more common behaviour in pods than with lone whales.

Why are witches green?
There are theories floating around that it's to link them with death/putrefaction or plants/herbs. Personally, I think it's mostly because of the popularity of the film version of The Wizard of Oz, where the green skin was chosen partly to indicate she's a bad guy in a kid's fantasy world, and partly because it helped demonstrate their new Technicolour technology.

Why are there mirrors above beds? Ask your parents when you're older. Or don't, since you'll probably work it out by yourself by then. If you mean on the wall behind beds, I've never really seen this as common, but mirrors help to give the impression that the room is larger than it actually is.

Why do I say uh? This is a phenomenon called "speech dysfluency". Again, no definitive answer but often explained as placeholders while you struggle to find the word you use next. If you mean "why uh as opposed to, say, quorpl", different languages have different dysfluencies. You say uh/um because you speak English or another language that uses the same sound for this purpose.

Why is sea salt better? It's not really, it just has a cachet to it these days as panning is a more labour-intensive process and the added expense means more exclusivity. Prior to industrialised salt-making, people wanted finer-grained salt. There's a REALLY interesting book on the subject by Mark Kurlansky, if you want to know more about the history of the stuff.

Why are there trees in the middle of fields? They provide shade for field-workers during breaks. Less relevant now with increasing mechanisation, so most are there these days because they've "always" been there, and getting rid of trees is a bitch of a job.

Why is there not a Pokemon MMO*? The creator wanted (and still wants) to encourage people to play games with one another face to face. MMOs don't work like that.

Why is there laughing in TV shows? Because comedy shows with laugh tracks have historically outperformed those without them. People might bitch about them, the same way people bitch about trailers that give away too much of the story, but market research shows that you get more butts in seats regardless of the bitching, so that's the way they do it. I believe that the data on laugh tracks is coming back differently these days, which is why they're largely fading out.

Why are there doors on the freeway? Maintenance access. That or portals to alternate realities, depending on whether you've read 1Q84.

Why are there so many svchost.exe running? Failsafing. The svchost processes handle background services for the operating system. You have a lot of them because it means that if there's an error with one service (and hence one svchost process) it doesn't bring down the whole thing. There are other ways of handling this, but this is the way that Windows chose to go.

Why aren't there any countries in Antarctica? The Antarctic Treaty of (let me look it up) 1961 disallowed signatories from taking permanent territorial sovereignty of the continent. This hasn't stopped countries claiming chunks of land (including overlapping claims like the Argentine-British annoyance) but in practice access is shared for scientific research. Tat said, I expect that if it ever became economically worthwhile to actually start exploiting the resources in Antarctica, the Treaty would go up in a puff of smoke.

Why are there scary sounds in Minecraft? Because they add to a sense of danger, which gives a bit more of a thrill to players. It also gives another incentive to avoid Creepers, as the explosion scares the bejeezus out of me every time, even without the environmental damage.

Why is there kicking in my stomach? - you know those sticks you can buy that you pee on and get one line or two? You might want to go and get one of those. And then schedule an appointment with a doctor.

Why are there two slashes after http? Syntax - it separates the protocol being used (ftp being an alternative) from the address you're looking for.

For a fun read, I love The Disappearing Spoon.

For a while, I've been meaning to read Salt which is another fun read.

I also just love the Periodic Table of Videos YouTube channel for other fun stuff.

Textbook-wise, you can't beat Stumm and Morgan or Metcalf and Eddy for your water chemistry/water treatment needs.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616

Edit: Thanks for the gold

Edit 2: Coolio you owe me some commission!

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking for sure.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. This would be a great place to start. It contains discussions on the science of cooking and the natural history of various ingredients and techniques.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Great introductory book to how the U.S. food system functions. Outlines the prevalence of corn in the American diet, "big organic", where bacon comes from, sustainable farms, and the dependency on fossil fuels. Made me alter my diet and I can no longer look at supermarket bacon the same.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is highly regarded as a comprehensive background for history, and science of food. It does not have any recipes though.

YTA

Jesus I don’t even know where to begin with this. I’m gonna break it down the way I would for my toddlers.

I understand that you feel badly for being mean to Sarah, but do you think the problem will be solved by being mean to Luke and Scott? How would you feel if they sat you down and said “listen dad. We’ve been giving mom a really hard time lately so we’ve decided that for Mother’s Day this year we’re going to send her on an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii for the weekend. You’re gonna go too, but you have to pay your own way. Also, we’re giving you a new set of grill tongs for Father’s Day. Fair is fair!” You’d probably feel like they don’t care about you as much right?

The way to solve this problem is not by throwing money at your daughter and shoving your other kids’ faces in it. You could have avoided this ENTIRELY by not telling them IN FRONT OF SARAH exactly what you were giving her as a birthday gift. Also, once weekly veggie burger night is like the bare minimum you can be doing for your daughter food wise. Buy this book and do better.

When we were first dating, my wife baked a lot and had this cookbook set
on her Amazon wishlist. It's basically a set of cooking textbooks for $500. They're really cool (showing the science behind cooking and all), but I couldn't afford it on my own.

I split the cost with my parents and got it for her for Xmas that year. It's been sitting on our kitchen counter for about four years now, but maybe some day she'll get bored and dust them off?

So a few off the top of my head:

1. The Professional Chef. Geared towards professional chefs but a great resource.
   
   
2. On Food and Cooking. A classic. Not really a 'cookbook' per se but rather a book that discusses history and food science.
   
   
3. The now out-of-print Williams and Sonoma Mastering Series. Specifically, their book on sauces - the others are solid but not quite as good. Those books were how I personally learned to cook. (still can find used)
   
   
4. The Flavor Bible. Obligatory. Eventually you grow out of it a bit, but it's still a great resource to have around.
   
   
5. Flour Water Salt Yeast. I just got this book recently this last Christmas, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.

How to Cook Anything replaced Joy of Cooking as my favorite general cooking reference.

Need to know how long to steam a artichoke, or the ratio of stock to rice in risotto, or what to do with that random ingredient you bought at the store. It's got all the basics covered.

Well, his cookbook is doing surprisingly well...
Cookin' with Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439117616/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zo9vybX1XV1CZ

They absolutely are--google "highways" and "indian trails" and you can find twenty local news articles about it from various locales in the United States. We built highways, and eventually big interstates, on top of the roads that we built on conveniently established tracks stomped down (and eventually ridden on, after horses were introduced) by Native Americans. Those Native Americans were, similarly, walking on top of game trails, which often went between important resource locations, like a good spring--or according to Mark Kurlansky, salt licks--or through or around obstacles in efficient ways.

We're driving 75mph on top of old, paved-over game trails. Not just deer, but buffalo or lots of other herd creatures--some of them may have been established previously by now-extinct megafauna. If the Interstate seems to not go exactly where you want it to, blame the woolly mammoths.

Oh, similarly, if you like this sort of thing, check out Craig McClain's instant-classic piece about how modern U.S. Presidential Elections are influenced by a 100-million-year-old coastline!

I'm a huge fan of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. He presents basic techniques for almost any ingredient imaginable and then shows you how to branch out from there. I've learned how to improvise as a home cook with this book.

How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything: Basics by Mark Bittman

On Food and Cooking is pretty popular when it comes to understanding the transformations that foods undergo. It's not a cookbook per se but it's pretty heavy on the science of stuff. I used it as a sole resource for a short paper I wrote in eggs a couple semesters back. It might not be the most enjoyable read but it sure is informative.

Behold, the Gastronomicon

Here's a great book

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of Cooking
http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

Cooking for Geeks
http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-Hacks/dp/0596805888/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=14FPMEDBMV4EW2MS7PBR

*The Science of Good Cooking
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Cooking-Cooks-Illustrated-Cookbooks/dp/1933615982/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=14FPMEDBMV4EW2MS7PBR

He has a cookbook, I bought it for a friend. It's actually a great cookbook, funny too.

Until about a year ago, I knew next to nothing about cooking but I've been learning. I wish I had known this stuff in college. What I did is I bought a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and went through it. The regular How to Cook Everything is also good. Both of them give you lots of really easy recipes (like how to make scrambled eggs) as well as more advanced ones if you want to serve dinner to people for example.

Also, I watched every episode of Good Eats and learned a lot from that. Most if not all of those are on YouTube. Just start with Season 1 Episode 1 and start plowing through them.

I don't prepare meat because I'm paranoid about germs, but don't let that stop you. The things I've been preparing the most are:

• Eggs: fried, scrambled, omelettes. Hands down the easiest thing.
  
  
• Sauteed, braised, boiled, or steamed vegetables. These are all very easy and once you've done it a bit you start to understand what the best method is for different vegetables and you don't even need to look in a recipe book. Most recent thing I did is sauteed plantains.
  
  
• Rice dishes. Pilaf and rice with beans/peas/other legumes are easy and nutritious.
  
  
• Soups. Things like potato leek soup, french onion soup, split pea soup, lentil soup are all very easy.
  
  
• Simple baked desserts like muffins, banana bread, apple cobber etc.
  
  If you have an oven, it's really not very hard to make your own pizza, for that matter.

Now's the time to point out that there's a book to answer all your salt-related questions.

Here's a book that poses the same question and offers an answer:
http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

Wrangham submits that because cooking makes nutrients more bioavailable, our ancestors' jaws and GI tracts shrank and our brains grew, leading to the physiology of modern humans.

I am also the proud owner of his incredible cook book

I don't think he has a restaurant, but he did release a cookbook and also made a mini series about it.

That was like 10 years ago though, so truthfully I have no idea what he's done since.

I disagree with this and with /u/flyinggeorge, by a little. It is fun and easy to poke fun at people about what is or isn't natural but that's just to say that (a) people have an exceedingly poor grasp of chemistry, and (b) definitions are hard.

But on the other hand it's really easy to do this: how much work, and of what sort, has something undergone between its creation and your consumption? The more work, and the less comprehensible the work is to the consumer, the more industrial / processed the ingredient is.

Take Chez Panisse, or St. John.

I can look at the menu and tell you pretty well exactly what everything is and how it's made, and my knowledge of chemistry fell off around the same time I could drive a car. I'm willing to bet that I could go into the kitchen and somebody would know where everything, or nearly everything, was sourced.

Take sweet potatoes or shrimp I can get at the farmer's market. I can tell you the same sort of stuff - how it was grown/caught, by whom, and how it got to my plate. If you're eating with me and I'm serving you that, you can ask and I can tell you a pretty good history of the food from seed / egg to stomach.

Compare a steak (or if you prefer, a bag of greens) from the grocery store: I know what it is, but I don't know - and probably don't want to know - where it came from, or how the cow/greens was/were treated en route.

Compare American cheese: I think we'd all agree it's one step further removed from the steak / greens because the ordinary consumer probably can't tell you how it's made, much less where.

Now where does "swiss or cheddar" fall? It depends, right? Take Rogue River Blue, for instance. I can tell you how it's made, from what it's made - even which cows (generally) produce the milk. And it's done the same way, roughly, as cheese has been made for a long goddamned time. So near as I can tell, it's closer to the sweet potato / shrimp.

Which is why I asked about the Chez Panisse example - I'm willing to bet that most of the folks here, if we were eating at Chez Panisse and a dish came out with American cheese on it, we would be a little bemused, because however you define 'natural,' that's not it. If rogue river blue comes out, you're probably OK with that. Why? One fits in the idea of what Chez Panisse is all about; the other does not.

Now, I'm not meaning to make a normative judgment. If you went to Alinea or the Fat Duck, you'd hardly be surprised to find cheese + sodium citrate, and you'd be less surprised if you couldn't learn about the origin of every ingredient. They're all great places, but they do different things.

This is all just a longwinded way of saying "just because definitions are squishy doesn't meant they're meaningless."

Edit: tl;dr: Maybe 'natural' means 'I know what this is and where it comes from.'

Double edit: typos / clarity

Triple edit: it occurs to me that I'm borrowing, heavily, from Michael Pollan's argument in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

That is actually true, because happy = it grew up like a chicken should, the right food and freedom to move and have social chicken interactions. Makes for much better meat. These guys, made famous by the hugely successful book "The Omnivores Dilemma", use that simple truth for their commercial advantage.

Back to Basics: "On Food & Cooking" by Harold McGee. When a recipe works, or doesn't work, and you want to know why? This is the place to find the answers.

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467030185&sr=8-1&keywords=on+food+and+cooking

How to Grill. Knowing how to grill and cook delicious food is very important for self care in my heavily biased opinion.

In all honesty, you'll be given the 'good' books to read while you are in school.

*Edited to complete my thought.

Of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Read Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham. Basically, women have traditionally cooked for close family only. Men are the ones who would cook for the entire community. So cooking at home is "women's work" but cooking professionally is men's.

I think those points fall under Richard Wrangham's big idea. He released a book on it. http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

If you like his take on food science, definitely read On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harry McGee. It'll change your life.

On Food And Cooking is a MUST in any kitchen, maybe the only non-recipe-dedicated cookbook you'll ever need. The culinary school I took a few classes at recently, the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC, highly recommends this; even Per Se, the #1 restaurant in the US, #6 in the world, keeps a tattered copy in their restaurant. With 800 pages, it explains so much of the science, history, and tips behind practically everything culinary related that you need to know. The book is really a staple.

Cooking for Geeks is similar, but I feel OFaC is more all-encompassing.

Biggest change you can make is stop supporting animal agriculture. This outweighs all transportation greenhouse gas effects including freight shipment by sea.


Beef is really the problem with the combined deforestation of grazing lands and land for planting feed crops. Plus the methane emissions, run off, and fresh water consumption for feed plants.


That pound of beef you buy for 1.99 in the US has huge externalized costs.


Fun fact, there are currently 99 billion domesticated animals, and the mass of humans and our domesticated animals makes up 99% of animal life biome on the planet.


Limit animal protein and eat close to the source and both you and the planet will benefit immensely.


Sources:

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

https://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583


Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/


The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

https://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-Implications/dp/1932100660

1. How to Cook Everything
   
   
2. Mastering the Art of French Cooking

• Start with the guy who wrote a book on techniques. Jacques Pépin.
  
• Expand into an American Master showcasing family americana style food but with high technique Thomas Keller Ad Hoc
  
• Check out the deep science behind food to understand why people do what they do Modernist Cusine at Home
  
• Or if you want someone to explore the science and break it down for you in Alton Brown
  
• Youtube. Check out Gordon Ramsay, American Test Kitchen, Heston blumenthal or Blumenthal again, Thomas Keller, Pepin Videos, There's so many food videos from chefs my reply would be huge if I linked it all

Yeah...he actually has a cookbook... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439117616/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_KrJlub0CJEMRF

This.

• The Food Lab: Cooking Through Science by Kenji Lopez-Alt
  
• On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
  
• The Flavor Bible
  

On Food and Cooking

This is probably your best bet to understanding what is going on when you cook. There are food chemistry textbooks out there but they can be pricey and you may need a significant chemistry background to understand them.

https://i.imgur.com/dbdgEA3.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mTzoQCT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mCig6Ce.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DXfik1W.jpg

Book these are from

I'd recommend using a grill unless you have a MAPP or Propylene blowtorch. Other kinds can leave a faint taste of fuel on the meat.

You rang?

I haven't read the book, but I've heard a couple interviews with the author through my various foodie podcasts. He seems cool, and he made bananas seem downright fascinating the entire time he was speaking.

Edit: I have read and would heartily recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan if you're even a little interested in the genetic, behavioral, and political! manipulation of our food. Corn, in particular, as it's the backbone of the American food industry, but he covers a lot of ground. It's really eye-opening. Do recommend. (And any half-decent American library will have it, so awesome and free.)

Good article on a very important subject. For a lot more information on these topics check out Michael Pollan's books (particularly The Omnivore's Dilemma) and the documentary Food, Inc..

The good news is a solution exists that will still allow us to eat our bacon, but it's going to require breaking down the current industrial food system first. And for those of us with the income and means to start buying quality products (including meat) from our local farmers.

Give sous vide a try--it's the gateway drug of modernist techniques, because you really only need a probe thermometer, freezer bags, a pot of water, and maybe an oven to do it. It'll let you know just how worth it the whole world of modernist techniques are. And then you'll feel compelled to actually get an immersion circulator and a vacuum sealer to do it easier as you become increasingly addicted to it.

Things that are helpful for modernist techniques but aren't particularly esoteric and won't break the bank: A steel plate, propane blow torch from the hardware store, whipping siphon, pressure cooker. The next step is chemistry, which means thickeners (carageenan and agar agar were my first purchases) and gels (sodium alginate and calcium chloride), and recently I picked up some meat glue (transglutaminase). After that it's buying expensive lab equipment to feed your habit, which I haven't stepped into yet [because I don't have a house for it]. I want a pacojet.

As for resources, my first book was Cooking for Geeks, then the Modernist Cuisine book set from Nathan Myhrvold (and have it signed by him "For Science!") which is the bible, but free options include their website, Seattle Food Geek, molecular recipes, this YouTube playlist from Harvard and the usual science-based cooking resources like Good Eats, America's Test Kitchen, and Chef Steps.

I can't believe noone has mentioned Modernist Cuisine.

Thousands of pages of cooking science, history, and techniques.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_Cuisine

http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-The-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

Thug Kitchen was a fucking mess. Having to explain to people why a book written in faux-AAVE by two WASP-y motherfuckers was racist as fuck got really grating.

It was also entirely superfluous, as Coolio already wrote the go to "ghetto gourmet" cook book.

Anyone else who wants to get this, buy this instead:

http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

It's like 1/10 the price (edit: I guess more like 1/30th), has all the interesting technical data and science you want, doesn't obsess with boiling everything in a bag, and doesn't have any stupid cutaways of dutch ovens so you can "see what's inside" (you know another way to see what's inside a dutch oven? open it).

Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking is a go-to book for amateurs and professionals alike.

He might also like Cooking for Geeks, The Science of Good Cooking and On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

I've only read the first, but I've heard good things about all three.

I also enjoy history of food books. However, not all of them have the cookbook aspect to them. Here are a few, I’ve read:

Milk: The Surprising Story...

Salt

Consider the Fork

They reference Michael Pollan "In Defense of Food" in the article. I am currently reading another book by Michael Pollan called "Omnivore's Dilema" which is an incredible book on the history and techniques used by modern farmers, both industrial and organic.

This guy knows what he is talking about. I really recommend the read if you are interested in where your food comes from, which I believe everyone should know.

Harold McGee is pretty much the standard tome for a scientific approach to the cooking process. If you can get through most of On Food and Cooking you are doing pretty damn good.

The only major step up from that would be the more exhaustive and much more expensive, 50 lb, 6 volume set called Modernist Cuisine

Edit: words are hard

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

When I started out, I relied most of the Fannie Farmer cookbook, to be honest, but something like The Joy of Cooking, Bittman's How To Cook Everything or Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food would be good, too. Joy is classic, simple recipes with clear instructions, aimed at beginners. Brown is excellent at explaining the science behind why reciepes work the way they do. Bittman emphasizes showing a technique, then showing lots of simple variations, allowing you to learn a skill and then apply it to different ingredients.

You might also take a look at Rhulman's Ratio --- for a certain sort of personaility, that book can be like a lightbulb going off. It's all about the common principles that underlay many sorts of recipes. Some people find it too abstract, especially if they're just starting (most actual recipes break his rules a little, one way or another), but if you're more of an abstract logical thinker it can be quite helpful.

But cooking in general can be quite diffucult to pick up from books --- techniques that are quite simple to demonstrate can be super difficult to describe. Youtube/the internet can be your friend, here --- Jacques Pepin, America's Test Kitchen, and Good Eats are all good at demonstrating and explaining technique. Check out the Food Wishes youtube channel, too --- Chef John is a former culinary instructor, and he demostrates a lot of classic techniques in the reciepes he does.

At the end of the day though, cooking's like Carnigie Hall. Think of stuff you like to eat, find a recipe for that stuff, and just go for it. If you start off making things you know and like, then it will be easier to tell if you're getting it right as you go along, and that I think is the most crucial and most difficult part of becoming a skilled cook --- being able to tell when something's ready vs. when it needs 5 more minutes, being able to tell if the batter looks right before you cook it, if something needs more seasoning and if so what kind. All that's mostly a karate kid, wax on, wax off thing --- you just got to keep making stuff in order to have the experience to tell when something's right.

This might be too obvious, but maybe Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian?

Joy of Cooking

How to Cook Everything

The Art of Simple Food

> *On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of Cooking http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012[1]

I use this one and its full of good info. You could basically call it cooking-for-engineers.

Three that come quickly to mind:

A History of the World in Six Glasses

Salt: A World History


The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America

After Guns, Germs and Steel I read and enjoyed Salt: A World History

America's Test Kitchen cookbooks are great about this. They have recipes with explanations for why you cook certain parts to get the desired effects, and how you might alter cooking methods to get different textures or whatever. Often, they give sidenotes about how to get basic elements cooked perfectly. Highly recommend: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Recipe-Cooks-Illustrated-Magazine/dp/0936184744

Mark Bittman's "How to cook everything"

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0764578650/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_wdrOBbYY1ZWXV

In the book Salt it mentioned India being forced to export salt to the UK at low prices. Was that an isolated incident or were forced (cheap) exports the norm for the empire? If the latter, were the UK consumer savings a significant amount?

The Omnivore's Dilemma is another good one about how agriculture/food has changed since WWII.

Not really a cookbook, But I learned more about food and cooking from this book than any other.

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

And both of them really owe a debt to Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. It's the next book after the food lab if you really want to get in the weeds.

I encourage you to read The Omnivores Dilemma and come to your own conclusion about whether the current standards are fair or not.

Roman soldiers were paid in salt. Ghandi's uprising in India was because of salt. Roads in small towns and cities were based on on old indian trails, which were based on deer trails. At the end of every deer trail was a salt lick. Improvements in salt making made it possible to preserve fish and meat in salt, making the discovery of the new world possible.

Fascinating book: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

Philosophy, writing, gaming, art (music, photography, /r/glitch_art). Honestly anything classified as a "soft science" kinda gets my motor going. I also really like anthorpology...specifically food anthro. I just started reading through Salt: A World History, and it's been interesting so far. From Amazon:
> In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Salt is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

Seconding the recommendation for Salt - fascinating read. You'd never imagine half the stuff in that book.

This is actually a really good book about salt. It was widely available in little shakers and otherwise, and the supply and demand of it changed world history several times over. He compares it to oxygen - it's something you take for granted but when you don't have it, it's suddenly very, very important.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346953278&sr=1-1

I don't own the cookbooks (yet), but, according to amazon, there are 524 recipes between the two volumes.

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Volume/dp/0307593525

I'd presume that the average homemade dinner costs about $20. However, I'm sure a lot of these recipes are condiments, appetizers, and desserts, so that'd have an affect on the total price.

So, from near-complete ignorance, I'd say anywhere between $8,000-15,000.

Which is not so bad for a year-plus worth of delicious meals.

I recently donated away about 100 cookbooks I had collected over the years (I organize virtually everything digitally now) but I kept these 5:

Child et al, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (well-used, next to the stove)

Hazan, Essentials of Italian Cooking (carried to Italy and used there twice)

Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking (such a good read)

Rombauer. An older than I am edition (with how-to-skin-a-squirrel recipes) of the Joy of Cooking (falling apart, kept for sentimental reasons)

Fox, On Vegetables: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen (for the porn)

Obligatory link to McGee On Food and Cooking for those interested in a lay person explanation of lots of cookery science.

According to this book most "store brand" chicken actually comes from the same farms as national brands, so there's nothing to be ashamed of.

This is true for other foods as well actually, such as butter, which is made in very few factories nationwide.

This book is wonderful and has been around for ages.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Recipes-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

How to Cook Everything one cookbook to rule them all.

I usually only use cookbooks that are also textbooks for culinary art students. The CIA has a textbook that is phenomenal. I used to own a textbook from the western culinary institute in Portland, which is now a cordon bleu school and I dont know what they use. Those books will teach you the basics of fine cooking. Ratio is also a great book because it gives you the tools to create your own recipes using what real culinary professionals use: ratios of basic ingredients to create the desired dish.

But the creme de la creme of culinary arts books is this crazy encyclopedia of ingredients called On food and cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen. It is invaluable. It should not be the first book you buy (if youre a newbie) but it should be your most well thumbed.

For a sauce pan what you want is something with straight sides. Sautee pans have are a good substitute, but often have bases that have too wide a diameter for perfect sauces. Fine saucepots are made of copper for even heat transfer. Stainless steel is also a good substitute. What you have there is something of a hybrid between a skillet and a saucepot. Its more like a chicken fryer or something. At the restaurant we use stainless steel skillets for absolutely everything to order: sauces, fried oysters, what have you. But when you get down to the finest you need to fine a real saucepot: 2-3 qts will do, straight sides, made of copper. teach a man to fish

I dont really know how to teach you the varied tricks and such. It is something that I pick up by listening to the varied cooks and chefs I work with. What I would advise you is to watch cooking shows and read recipes and pay a lot of attention to what they are doing. Half of the things I know I dont know why I do them, just that they produce superior results. Or, consequently I would have a hot pan thrown at me if I did not do them. And I mean these are just ridiculous nuances of cooking. I was reading The Art of French Cooking and learned that you should not mix your egg yolks and sugar too early when making creme brulee because it will produce and inferior cooking and look like it has become curdled. That is a drop in the bucket to perfect creme brulee making, but it is part of the process.

I wish I could be more help, but the best advice I could give you to become the cook you want to be is go to school. Or barring that (it is a ridiculous expense) get a job cooking. Neither of those things are very efficient, but it is the best way to learn those little things.

I adore this cookbook (or any in that series, really). I know, you are asking: why buy a book when you can get recipes online for free? I will tell you: because these recipes will teach you how to cook and they are pretty much failproof.

The book is just a collection of recipes from Cook's Illustrated Magazine and basically it tackles standard recipes rather than funky new ones like many cooking magazines. They don't just grab any ol' recipe for meatloaf, lentil soup, fried chicken or whatever. They meticulously test each recipe and optimize the cooking strategy to make it perfect. Every recipe is accompanied by an article describing exactly why each ingredient is there and how each technique achieves the desired outcome. It is really quite scientific (I love that).

They also have tips/recipes for really basic things, like how best to chop onions or boil pasta which can be helpful if you don't have much experience.

Ah, I love non-fictin as well. Though most of my favorites are more science oriented, there should be a few on here that pique your interest.

• Salt: A World History - A fascinating history of humanity's favorite mineral. Wars have been fought over it, it sustained whole economies ... you'll be surprised to learn just how much of human history has been influenced by salt.
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything - One of my favorite books. Bryson tells the story and history of science through amazing discoveries and stories about the quirky people who made them.
  
• Homage to Catalonia - A mostly auto-biographical account of George Orwell's time fighting for the communists in the Spanish Civil War.
  
• Capital: Vol. 1 Marx's seminal work and a logically sound criticism of capitalism. Whether or not you agree with his proposed solutions, his criticism is spot on. Depending on how leftist you are, you may have already read The Communist Manifesto. It's a nice introduction to Marx's ideas, but you should really go straight to the source and just read Capital.
  
• Why We Believe What We Believe - The neurology of belief, what could be more interesting? The authors go into great detail on how belief happens at the neurological level, as well as summing up nicely all sorts of findings from differing fields relating to belief. The most interesting part is the research the authors themselves conducted: fMRI scans of people praying, Buddhist monks meditating, Pentecostals speaking in tongues, and an atheist meditating.

Salt is exactly what you are looking for!

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

Great read.

Pop-culture summary: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calorie-counts-are-wrong-cooked-food-provides-a-lot-more-energy/

1. How to Cook Everything
   
   
2. Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. I can't believe no one posted this yet.

The pathogens are entirely on the exterior unless the steak gets punctured or the animal is sick and shouldn't be used for food. Source: The Art and Science of cooking. Basically an enormously wealthy cooking enthusiast set up a kitchen lab with staff and created a fine dining molecular science cookbook. Basically The Mythbusters of cookbooks. It's why rare and blue steaks can be eaten and people don't get ill. Also covers the egg myth, meaning all eggs in the U.S. unless farmers market/farm procured have to be pasteurized which is why an egg with a clean shell used for cookie dough can be eaten and not make people sick. These are things readers shouldn't attempt without reading the book and have kitchen experience focusing on how not to cross contaminate or contaminate the food you're working with and knife skills though. Food handled improperly can be extremely dangerous. https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

cookin with coolio

seriously, though, I know it's not what you asked, but good eats taught me a lot. others will suggest the usual suspects: the food lab, salt,fat, acid, heat, and America's test kitchen books

DO NOT buy one of those "kitchen in a box" starter kits for $99. You will only learn how to burn things because the steel is so thin! You will end up years from now either donating them all to Goodwill or using them only to boil water. Buy one nice pan every month or two and you will never regret it.

Required Reading For New Cooks:

• Alton Brown: I'm Just Here for the Food Not only teaches you the kitchen basics, but the science behind why it is so.
  
• Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen Not just gear, it also has some recipes :)
  
  Happy cooking!

If you dig the science aspect, have a look at Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking

I read it nearly cover to cover. Very well done. It's also where Alton Brown got the vast majority of his science stuff for Good Eats -- to the point where Brown literally says phrases from the book.

This is going to be the opposite of what you want to hear. But, you asked for it and I respect that. I think that there's no substitute for going about this old school and traditionally. The good news is that you can mostly do this for yourself, by yourself.

If you're disinclined (due to time or for another reason) to enroll in a culinary program get yourself either The Professional Chef or Martha Stewart's Cooking School

I know what you're thinking, "Martha Stewart? What am I? A housewife from Iowa?" Fuck that. I've been fortunate to have met and worked with Martha Stewart she's smart enough to know what she doesn't know and that particular book was actually written by a CIA alum and very closely follows the first year or so that you'd get in a program like that. It starts with knife work and then moves on to stocks and sauces. This particular book has actually been criticized as being too advance for people who have no idea what they're doing so, despite appearances, it may be perfect for you. If you want to feel more pro and go a little deeper, get the CIA text but know that it's more or less the same info and frankly, the pictures in the MSO book are really great. Plus, it looks like Amazon has them used for $6 bucks.

These resources will show you HOW to do what you want and they follow a specific, traditional track for a reason. Each thing that you learn builds on the next. You learn how to use your knife. Then, you practice your knife work while you make stocks. Then, you start to learn sauces in which to use your stocks. Etc. Etc. Etc. Almost like building flavors... It's all part of the discipline and you'll take that attention to detail into the kitchen with you and THAT'S what makes great food.

Then, get either Culinary Artistry or The Flavor Bible (Both by Page and Dornenburg. Also consider Ruhlman's Ratio (a colleague of mine won "Chopped" because she memorized all the dessert ratios in that book) and Segnit's Flavor Thesaurus. These will give you the "where" on building flavors and help you to start to express yourself creatively as you start to get your mechanics and fundamentals down.

Now, I know you want the fancy science stuff so that you can throw around smarty pants things about pH and phase transitions and heat transfer. So...go get Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking THAT is the bible. When the people who run the Ferran Adria class at Harvard have a question, it's not Myhrvold that they call up, it's Harold McGee. While Modernist Cuisine always has a long, exciting complicated solution to a problem I didn't even know I had, when I really want to know what the fuck is going on, I consult McGee and you will too, once you dig in.

Another one to consider which does a great job is the America's Test Kitchen Science of Good Cooking this will give you the fundamental "why's" or what's happening in practical situations and provides useful examples to see it for yourself.

Honestly, if someone came to me and asked if they should get MC or McGee and The Science of Good Cooking and could only pick one and never have the other, I'd recommend the McGee / ATK combo everyday of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Good luck, dude. Go tear it up!

Early Romans yes, later Romans, no. So, the simple answer is "yes", and this is why all the related words.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0142001619

The link above is for Mark Kurlansky's book "Salt" that basically tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Sodium Chloride, but were afraid to ask.

He also has books on Cod (the fish), Birdseye (the guy who froze vegetables), and several others. He's a social historian who focuses on specific topics and then shows how they've connected history and the development of society throughout time. They're good reads if you're into learning about the details of common things that had a huge impact.

The book Salt: a world history is pretty cool.

Salt: A World History
by Mark Kurlansky
Link: http://amzn.com/0142001619

Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is easily the best book to learn French cooking. It has very thorough instructions for techniques, authentic recipes, adapted for the American kitchen.

I also recommend Larousse Gastronomique,
Escoffier and
Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques.

You mentioned that you prefer recipes that are simple and not too time consuming. The problem with that is, most authentic French cooking is time-consuming and laborious. This is why it is so delicious and intricate. However, I do have one cookbook that I don't use too much anymore, but it features great recipes that are fairly quick and accessible.

Actually, we have. This biological anthropologist makes the case that humans have evolved to specifically to eat cooked food, which thus reduces the gut size needed to process raw food, thus allowing more mass expenditure to go to the brain. A very interesting read. He also talks about the origin of the sexual division of labor to cooking.

Thus the "vestigial organ" we've lost is the more extensive intestinal gut system of our primate ancestors.

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334189058&sr=8-1

1. Same way you get to Carnegie Hall - practice
   
2. Come home to a clean kitchen
   
3. Prepare your mise en place before you start.
   
4. Keep notes on how each recipe turned out and where you think it went wrong or right
   
5. Like u/NoraTC said, read cookbooks like novels. (I might recommend Think Like a Chef, On Food and Cooking, Ruhlman's Twenty, and Cooking School )

Invest in Bittman's How To Cook Everything. It takes an analytical approach to cooking and teaches you techniques and modular recipes which you can combine to your liking! Great as a "technique" cookbook for experimenting, very well notated.

My favorite "techniques and basics of everything" cookbook is The New Best Recipes by Cook's Illustrated. But the one I use the most in my own kitchen has to be The Betty Crocker Cookie Book

I would recommend Modernist Cuisine at Home to anyone looking into a scientific approach to cooking without a second thought it is absolutely fantastic.

The full version of Modernist Cuisine is wonderful and interesting and I would say only about 15% of the recipes can be recreated using a standard home kitchen. If you're looking for practicality and recipes you can make yourself with a more scientific approach I would go with Modernist Cuisine at Home but if someone wants to know the ENTIRE in depth science(and history) behind the dishes Modernist Cuisine is the best.

It's not cheap, but Modernist Cooking at Home has some really cool tips on basic cooking. They do a lot things where they've cross sectioned appliances and you can see what the food looks like at different cooking steps and times to know what effect the actions you're taking have on the food.

I bought Japanese Soul Cooking, and one of the recommendations given in the book to get the yolk right is to constantly swirl the the eggs with a chopstick so the yolk never gets a chance to settle. They also call them 6 minute eggs in the book, due to cooking in boiling water for exactly 6 minutes - so I'm curious how you have gotten them to set properly with less than 2 minutes cook time.

For me, personally, the only cookbook(s) I can think of that I'd be interested in that I don't own is Modernist Cuisine, just because of the price.

Because it's an entertaining video that came to the same conclusion as other well-respected food writers including J. Kenji López-Alt, Nathan Myhrvold, and Thomas Keller.

And one hell of a chef.

Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For The Food and the sequel. They teach you not just how to cook, but why particular methods are used from a scientific standpoint. It helped me a lot when I was getting started a few years ago.

Here's one that I got from Alton Brown.

You'll need a good steak. Costco sells good ones, but you have to throw a party to eat them all. I've also had success with higher-end grocery stores.

You'll also need a cast-iron pan. Iron holds more heat than aluminum or stainless, and is a bit more affordable than copper.

A good ventilation hood is nice too, because this recipe makes lots of burning-protein smoke.

Set the meat on your countertop for 20 minutes. This allows it to come to the right temperature - if it's too cold, the insides will cook less; too warm and it'll cook too much. Obviously this is a variable you can adjust to how you like your steak; I like mine rarer than most.

Put your pan on the stove and set it to high before you do the rest. You want that pan HOT.

Next, rub a small amount of olive oil on each side of the steaks, a couple of drops for each side. This acts as a heat conductor, like thermal paste on your CPU heatsink. Sprinkle a pinch of salt (kosher if you have it) on each side, and massage it in. Let the steaks sit for 5 minutes.

Now you're ready to cook. Pick up the steaks with tongs, and gently lay them down in the pan, and leave them absolutely alone for 2 minutes. If you slide the steak around, you'll ruin the nice crust that forms on the outside. At this point you'll want to turn on your hood. When the 2 minutes is up, flip the steaks (again, with tongs - good steak shouldn't have a fork stuck in it until it's on the table), and leave them alone for 3 minutes.

Remove the steaks from the pan, and set them on a plate. Cover it with aluminum foil or a big mixing bowl, and let them sit for 5 minutes. The steak is actually still cooking on the inside, and this lets some of the juices soak back to the outside surface. Serve and enjoy - they shouldn't need any A-1.

Let's just add this to pile, along with Fast Food Nation, Omnivore's Dilemma, and maybe The Jungle.

Though animals are delicious; sadly I'll just have to continue eating them.

For (northern) Thai food Andy Ricker is very similar lived in Thailand developed a love for the food learned as much as he could and brought it back to the states and made a cookbook finally

Rick Bayless and Justin Wilson are respected for their shows on Mexican and Cajun cooking respectively

This book is an essential read, as is COD by the same author. Riveting stuff.

La sal en exceso es mala, no consumir sal en lo único que te ayudara a bajar de peso es en ayudarte a deshidratarte.

Los problemas que tenemos con la sal normalmente son a causa de la comida procesada que contiene sal en exceso.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/menu/que-le-pasa-tu-cuerpo-si-dejas-la-sal

Te recomiendo muchísimo este libro para conocer la historia de la sal.

Salt: A World History https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/0142001619/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_29j6Bb889GJFQ

I swear I'm starting to become a salt facts bot, but if you're interested in salt, you really should pick up Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. It's really fascinating!!

It's even more than that - the first form of artificial food preservation (that is to say beyond letting grapes wither on the vine to make raisins or the spontaneous fermentation of fruit or juice and into intentionally creating an environment with which to preserve food in) was by the use of salt, often to promote lacto-fermentation. (The other contender here is smoking as a method of preservation of but whether it occurred by happenstance or by intention is anyone's guess.)

Many foods that you find today, especially sauces, pickles, and things that are (traditionally) sour were originally lacto-fermented with salt. Many foods today are still preserved in a traditional way. Some common ones are pickes (obviously) but also sushi, kimchi, soy sauce, tempeh, salted fish like rollmops, sauerkraut, ketchup, shrimp paste and so on.

Here's a video to get you started on the history of salt/lactic acid fermentation for food preservation and here's your further reading.

The "end all be all" book on the science of cooking is the book: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.
There is a TV show entirely based on that book called Good eats with Alton Brown. The TV show has recipes the book has not. The TV show is entertaining, the book is definitely NOT light reading!

From the bible: The one major region of the Old World not to embrace dairying was China, perhaps because Chinese agriculture began where the natural vegetation runs to often toxic relatives of wormwood and epazote rather than ruminant-friendly grasses. Even so, frequent contact with central Asian nomads introduced a variety of dairy products to China, whose elite long enjoyed yogurt, koumiss, butter, acid-set curds, and, around 1300 and thanks to the Mongols, even milk in their tea!

I'm going to paraphrase another section, but most cheeses were not very interesting until they started being made further north because the cheese had to be more heavily salted and acidic to combat spoilage in the warmer climates of eastern European and Asia. Once it started to be made in the Roman territories, especially modem day Switzerland and France, you were able to allow the cheeses to ripen over a much longer time period with less salt and acid. This allowed for a MUCH greater diversity in cheese making, giving rise to the delicious cheeses of today.

A word on lactose intolerance and cheese. There are two kinds of "lactose intolerance" that people talk about. The first is an allergy to casein and that actually is dangerous. It's a full blown allergic reaction similar to a peanut allergy with symptoms as bad as anaphylactic shock. Thankfully it is very rare and you DEFINITELY know if you have it.

The other kind is a lack of lactase in your gut to process the lactose. If you don't have enough lactase, the lactose passes into your small intenstine where it gets eaten by bacteria releasing lots of co2 and methane, which makes you bloated and fart and all the other happy fun times associated with a lactose intolerance. It is this lack of lactase that most of the non Scandinavian descendants of the world have.

Luckily for everyone, in NON PROCESSED cheese, most of the lactose is suspended in the whey, which means that it doesn't end up in the cheese. This is even more pronounced in cheeses made from raw milk. As the cheese ages, the remaining lactose gets used up.

The upshot of all of this is that for lactose intolerant people the harder and older and less processed/pasteurized the cheese is, the more of it you can eat. Also, you can just disregard everything that I just said and take some aspergillus with your dairy product and be totally fine (it breaks down lactose for you so your body can process it).

Get a cast iron skillet, a mid-range chef's knife, and a copy of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

An alarm clock to get her used to waking up at 2am? ;-)
I'm not a professional baker, but did work as one for several months 20 years ago. Enough to let me know that although I enjoyed baking, I didn't enjoy doing it as a profession. So these suggestions are from a home baker, not a pro.
I would suggest a cookbook or subscription to Cook's Illustrated or America's Test Kitchen.
I bought The New Best Recipe Cookbook ten years ago for myself and have gifted a copy to several friends since. It goes through not only a recipe, but what changing different ingredients will do to the final product. The chocolate chip cookie recipe was quite informative with illustrations showing not only what different sugars would do, but different fats, flours, and the effect of chilling the dough had on the final product.
There is also Baking Illustrated which is just about baking. It's probably going to be hard to find, but if you stumble across it, it's worth it. Some folks complain that it's just the baking chapters from the best recipe cookbook with a few extra recipes, but if your kid is really focused on baking, this may be a better fit for now and then the best recipe cookbook later when she feels like branching out into thing to go with the baked goods.
I do not own the Cooks Illustrated Baking Book but I have several of their other cookbooks and friends who have this one think highly of it. It's been described as a combination recipe book and class in baking. Like the New Best Recipe Cookbook, it includes not just recipes, but paragraphs about what is going on in the recipe and what changes to the recipe will do.
You may also want to look at getting a large vermin resistant container to store flour. I use a Vittles Vault pet food container to store my flour. It allows me to buy 25 lbs of flour for $8 instead of 5 lbs for $4 and not run out in the middle of a baking session.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

If you're not going to use lye, it's a good idea to bake your baking soda. This converts the sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, which is a stronger alkali, and will give the pretzels a better flavor. Lye gives the best flavor, but baked baking soda is close.

(Linked article is by Harold McGee, who wrote On Food and Cooking.)

The rancidity refers more to oils held within the nut going bad - simply an off-putting flavor and dampened aroma. The texture will also be a little bit more mealy.
Beyond that, the origin of the nut could matter as far as spoilage goes.

• Chinese pine nuts - 78% oil content
  
• American pine nuts - 62% oil content
  
• European pine nuts - 45% oil content
  
  Strangely enough, I've never frozen pine nuts, but foods high in fat freeze rather well. As for pine mouth, I believe that a lot of the cases are sourced from Chinese pine nuts, where as those sourced from Turkey have the lowest probability(from a newspaper I read recently - the oil content is from Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen )

http://www.amazon.com/How-Grill-Complete-Illustrated-Techniques/dp/0761120149

I can't recommend this book enough. Read it. Make notes. Mine is covered with sauce stains and all dog eared.

Not sure if you're joking, but I'm pretty sure that's just a coincidence. See the ISBN of this book for comparison. Unless the barcode isn't the ISBN.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a great, very comprehensive one.

Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

How to Cook Everything. It's a big cookbook, and it really does cover almost everything. There are a ton of great recipes in there I make over and over again, and lots of great information on techniques, too.

Just pick a meal that you like to eat and make it. It's ok to make mistakes, that is part of learning what works and what doesn't. You don't need a lot of stuff either.
I recommend How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman for clear instructions and lots of tips.

I would suggest How to cook everything by Mark Bittman. He breaks down most recipes into a simple project and sticks to well known ingredients.

It's a nice volume for the single person just starting. You'll get some good techniques out of it as well.

if you want to learn to cook, I highly recommend How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I would also recommend thinking in terms of techniques as you learn, rather than on just following recipes by rote. It's really the key to going from " I know how to make a couple of things" to being able to cook generally.

a proper cast iron setup

a great cookbook

a set of unique spices or ingredients in the style of his favorite cuisine?
italian, french, mexican, indian, spanish, chinese...

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen –
by Harold McGee

is the bible.

Also Modernist Cuisine

Apparently, people who bought that book also bought Cookin' with Coolio.
I'm not sure in what way these two books are any similar - apart from both probably featuring ovens ...

A great book about the impact of corn on the U.S.'s agriculture is "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I highly recommend reading it.

To get you started:

Pok Pok (book)

Thai Food (book)

Thai Food and Travel (website)

Thai Table (website)

This recipe was adapted from the Pok Pok cookbook.

To make the dish, I made a marinade for the short ribs consisting of minced lemongrass, black pepper, and Thai thin soy sauce. I bagged the marinade with the beef and cooked for 48 hours at 140 F.

I removed the beef from the bag. To make the sauce I combined some of the bag juices with a lot of citrus juice (~3:2 ratio to the beef), fish sauce, sugar, and toasted Thai chili powder (to make this I just toasted dried Thai chiles in the oven, then ground with a spice grinder).

I seared the beef on the stove, then de-glazed with the dressing. I sliced the beef, poured the dressing over the beef, and served it topped with an herb salad (mint, cilantro, lemongrass, and shallots) and toasted rice powder.

http://www.amazon.com/Pok-Stories-Roadside-Restaurants-Thailand/dp/1607742888 Andy Ricker really knows his stuff if you want real thai food beyond things like pad thai and whatnot

If this is of interest to you, I recommend you read the book "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kurlansky. Among many other things, he goes into great detail about how salt has been used as a flavoring and preserving agent in condiments for millennia. He talks specifically about garum.

Preservation. Refrigeration is a modern invention: butter used to be heavily salted to slow spoilage. When you wanted to use the butter, you'd wash the salt out with water to make it edible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJL-HYSlvRM The whole video is good, but the most relevant bit is at 7:30'ish.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

As for why we still have salted butter? It tastes good when used as a condiment.

Well, it just means it's not as surprising as the shock sites would have you believe. Osmotic pressure modification is a pretty well known way to preserve food -- by direct dehydration (as in raisins, beans or peas, hardtack, and jerky), salting or sugaring (as in pickles, jam, garum, and salt pork), or a combination of those things (as in fruit roll-ups and bacon). Since McDonald's patties are salted and cooked well-done, it's not surprising that they act in some ways like jerky.

Incidentally, the fact that high osmotic pressure inhibits bacterial growth has had a very long and interesting effect throughout history. Garum was on virtually every Roman dinner table, and variants of it led to the development of soy sauce (originally a poor man's substitute for good salted fish sauce) and ketchup. Saltworks were key to roman conquest of the mediterranean, mostly because they were used to preserve food. More recently, lack of salt in the American south was a major contributing factor to the North's success in the American civil war. If this kind of stuff interests you, have a gander at Kurlansky's "Salt: A World History".

Read your own page.

> "According to The Mayo Clinic and Australian Professor Bruce Neal, the health consequences of ingesting sea salt or regular table salt are the same, as the content of sea salt is still mainly sodium chloride.[11][12] "

Stop being scared of chemical names. CHLORIDE IS NOT A MAN MADE CONSPIRACY. You want to reduce your overall salt intake, great. But don't spout crap about a natural nutrient.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite


https://books.google.com/books?id=_R00NqWST6MC&pg=PA248&dq=some+sea+salt+contain+sulfates&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTv_P-9bbUAhUU7GMKHd6WAJ44ChDoAQgxMAM#v=onepage&q=some%20sea%20salt%20contain%20sulfates&f=false

I don't even know where to start...

• Organic food is expensive because it shows the real cost of producing food without using chemicals and fertilizers to cut corners.
  
• Organic food is smaller because it reflects a more realistic variation in fruit and vegetables. Standard produce is selectively bread and/or genetically modified for size and yield, not for nutritional content or taste or anything else. Just grow bigger, faster, so it can be sold for less while keeping profits up.
  
• Genetic modification is not the solution. It is in fact what causes so many of the "problems" traditional farms have. Growing crops in monocultures makes them extremely susceptible to pests since it's an extremely unnatural way for plants to grow. Further genetic modification introduces more weaknesses we don't understand into a system that could support its self very well before humans came in and tried to play $DIETY.
  
  If you're up for it, read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. A great read that explains all of this and much more.

This really depends on the gelatin concentration. Even at high temperatures, a sauce with a high concentration of gelatin will be thick. Think of a classic glace de viande. This type of sauce can be a quarter gelatin, very high concentration.

As you say though, you won't notice the gelatin in this sauce as a thickener. I agree (at least in terms of viscosity) since you really need to get up to around 10% gelatin by weight to make a discernible difference, and at this concentration it will quickly congeal as it cools.

However, the mouthfeel of a sauce can be impacted by lower gelatin concentrations. Gelatin molecules are typically long and obstruct the free movement of water throughout the sauce, making it feel heavier and silkier in the mouth.

Note too that sauces thickened with starches will also gel up at cooler temperatures. Cornstarch, like other grain starches, has a relatively high proportion of amylose (as opposed to amylopectin), which means it quickly congeals as it cools.

Gelatin is preferred to cornstarch in situations where the sauce should be translucent and not cloudy looking.

Info is from On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

It's a self-contained course on electronics, not at all a collection of data sheets.

To use an analogy: you can download food recipes from the Internet all you want, but you will learn how to become a cook by reading Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking (another book that would remain on my bookshelf).

Oh wow, good luck with immigration!!

How do you feel about the They're Real mascara? I kind of love it. I also have the MAC Gigablack whatever and the Too Faced lashgasm - they are not quite as intense, but probably better for everyday wear.

That book looks great! I have Kitchen Confidential on my nightstand right now, and this!

Salt: A World History
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Read [Salt](http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229375215&sr=8-1 "His other books are equally awesome") by Mark Kurlansky; it goes into detail about ancient Chinese salt works, including the invention of drilling and percussion drilling, all for salt sources.

You are so right! Modern IRL civs don't just ban random luxury goods (kinder eggs, pot, heroin, horse meat) that gameplay feature is totally unrealistic.

Salt and citrus, so unimportant in the modern world, film and luxury jewelry are way more important.

Film industry: 38 billion in global sales, 2016

Jewelry: 70 billion in global sales, 2016

Citrus: 100 billion in global sales, 2015

Salt: 21 billion in global value, 2013. This is just for NaCl, MgSO4 or magnesium sulphate is another 7 billion (in 2015) and there are a number of other "salts" out there that "salt" in civ undoubtedly represents, since there are no sodium bisulphate, potassium dichromate, or calcium chloride luxury resources represented, and are these key pieces of historic and modern food and chemical production. If anything salts are far more important in a modernized industrial world than in a pre industrial world.

If anything salt should be a strategic luxury, required for most classical through modern era units.

For further reading, check out market data reports (if you can find ones not behind a steep paywall) and this book: https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

seconding this but also pointing out the book that came out before King Corn called The Omnivore's Dilemma

Which also gets into our heavy dependence on corn and corn-fed beef.

Joel Salatin (the author) is a bit of a (admitted) nut job though. A lifetime of being the voice in the wilderness will do that to you.

I've seen him speak, and he's very persuasive. When he mentioned that raising animals on pasture produces meat/dairy with the optimal omega-3/6 balance for human health, it made my head pop.

For more on the benefits of traditional, natural ways of cooking, growing crops & raising animals, check out Michael Pollan's books: Omnivore's Dilemna and In Defense of Food.

These books have literally changed my life and my relationship to food - it's been a wonderful, rewarding experience.

Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma." The corn fed, hormone treated meat we get from grocery stores is hardly better than poison. And as usual, as with HFCS, it's the government's fault (just in case you don't know, US companies use HFCS because it's cheaper than sugar as a result of the sugar lobby's efforts to have government make it artificially more expensive).

As for grass-fed beef, Here's a taste of its benefits (not from the book):

"Real beef, that is to say grass-fed beef, is a bona fide health food. It's packed with high quality protein, omega-3s, and even conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). It's also low in the things that you need less of: saturated fat and omega-6s. And it's delicious.

The corn-fed crap they sell in the grocery store is not real beef. It's poison that looks and tastes sort of like beef. The problem is corn. And as you might suspect, the government is behind it.

Cattle are superbly adapted to thrive on high-cellulose foods like grass. That's why they're called herbivores ("grass eaters"). When you feed cattle a diet based on corn, soybeans, and other grains, they gets fat and sickly, just like people. The meat becomes loaded with pro-inflammatory omega-6s and saturated fat; the anti-inflammatory omega-3s are practically nonexistent.

In an actual free market economy, only an idiot would grow corn, because it costs about a dollar more to produce a bushel of corn than the corn is worth. And you can't eat debt. However, in our country, the government pays farmers to raise corn that the market doesn't want. These subsidies have created a vast surplus of corn, which is sold to feedlots and force-fed to obese couch-potato cows.

It takes about 16 pounds of corn and soy to make just onepound of grain-fed beef. Multiply that by the thousands of tons of grain fed beef produced annually in this country. Under normal supply and demand, corn-fed beef wouldn't exist: it's only possible (by which we mean "profitable") because of about 5 billion dollars a year in government subsidies.

Simply stated, the government uses your tax dollars to pay off farmers and cattle growers who produce inferior food that in fact poisons you. Think about that on April 15."

BTW, he's right about the beef tasting significantly better. I buy grass-fed from the farmer's market every week, but last weekend I was ridiculously hungover on Saturday morning and decided that I didn't feel like going. So I went back to grocery-store beef for the first time in about 5 months and I could barely choke it down. It was disgusting. I almost puked afterwards. Lesson learned.

Honestly, one of the first things I do when I'm at someone's house is dig through their cookbooks. The three that I resort to at all times are:

[La Cucina] (http://www.amazon.com/Cucina-Regional-Cooking-Italy/dp/0847831477/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1464737488&sr=8-2-spell&keywords=La+Cusina)

[The Joy Of Cooking] (http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Cooking-Irma-S-Rombauer/dp/0743246268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464737648&sr=8-1&keywords=Joy+Of+Cooking)

[Mastering The Art of French Cooking] (http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Set/dp/0307593525/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464737689&sr=1-3&keywords=mastering+the+art+of+french+cooking)

Cooked food is absolutely easier to digest. As for the intestinal tract, my understanding is that it has shrunk since the invention of cooking, but you'd get a better answer from an evolutionary biologist. Richard Wrangham has an excellent book on the topic.

If he's at all serious, he needs this

Also, this is a very useful and fascinating book.

http://www.amazon.ca/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

Is what you want... For like $50 you get a lot!... It's called 'On Food and Cooking' by Harold Mcgee... It's totally amazing

On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee, 70€ auf Deutsch oder 26€ auf Englisch.

Keine Rezepte, ausser ein paar historische zum besseren Verständnis. Erklärt zu allen möglichen Zutaten und Techniken die Geschichte und was lebensmittelchemisch passiert verständlich. Am besten mal bei der englischen Ausgabe "Blick in's Buch" um sich ein Bild zu machen.

Harold McGee is like the master of knowledge of all things cooking.

If you found this interesting, check out his book On Food and Cooking

it’s basically an encyclopedia of the science behind cooking. One of my favorite books. And a James Beard award winner

I'll recommend McGee's On Food and Cooking. It's a good read, but not quite a textbook. It's complete enough to be, but not quite structured that way. On the other hand, it's also not priced like one.

Be sure to get the latest edition revised and updated in 2004:

http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347904066&sr=8-1&keywords=on+food+and+cooking

Steven Raichlen's was the first one I got and its wonderful and extensive. 4.5 stars on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Grill-Complete-Illustrated-Techniques/dp/0761120149/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1394495684&sr=8-5&keywords=grilling+cookbook

Edit: Actually, I linked to the wrong one. It was Raichlen's The BBQ Bible that I have. But this is his newer book and looks just as good.

Ratio by Michael Ruhlman (https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728) - My absolute favorite at home cook book, hits everything you're looking for I think. Has baking and cooking recipes

Baking by Hand (https://www.amazon.ca/Baking-Hand-Artisanal-Pastries-Without/dp/1624140009/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468117705&sr=1-1&keywords=baking+by+hand) - More technically complicated, but still great. One of my go to books when I'm looking to learn something new. Mostly breads, but some pastries too

How to Cook Everything (Vegetarian) by Mark Bittman (https://www.amazon.ca/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468117750&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything+vegetarian) - this is the dark horse, you'd be surprised how much he includes in these books. Pizza dough recipe is the bomb.

Radical suggestion: no bad snack foods. They don't sate you and are typically more expensive per-pound than something home-cooked. Replace with things like roasted potatoes, hummus and veggies, fruit, or a portion of a real meal. Plus, you'll get to work on your cooking! Opening a bag or a box does nothing for cooking skills.

Use meat as a condiment instead of a foundation of a meal, like an exception instead of a norm. Use rice and beans to bulk up the rest. Stir fry is a great way to add veggies, rice, and beans while reducing/removing meat. Try going vegetarian once a week; you'll be surprised with what solutions you come up with! Then up the frequency.

I typically have meat once a day, if at all. Plain oatmeal for breakfast. Rice, beans, veg, onion, garlic, and whatever meat (if any) I prepped for lunch this week. Eggs, potatoes, fish, fruit, veg, protein shakes, spaghetti, and peanut butter for the evening.

Full disclosure: I keep my grocery budget under $110 per month for myself shopping almost exclusively at Aldi and Giant Eagle for anything else (fresh ginger, tofu, frozen veggies typically). This does not include alcohol ($60 budgeted per month for bars, state stores, and wine shows; not always social) and restaurants ($50 budgeted per month, once or twice a week; always social).

How is your comfort in the kitchen? $5000 saved * 2 (current expenses) / 12 months = ~$833 per month. I hope you're feeding a family. In that case, implementing vegetarianism will be slower and harder but not impossible.

Links to explore:

• How to Cook Everything: I consult this each week and am trying to cook my way through it via my own odds and ends cross-referenced with the comprehensive index. Many, many recipes use the same ingredients and I typically buy one or two missing ingredients each week to complete the meal. Last week was eggplant curry with potatoes. There is also a vegetarian version that I plan to purchase when I'm done, but I can't speak to its quality.
  
• Budget Bytes: what I used before "How to Cook Everything". Similar deal: Beth is great about staples and taste, giving a price breakdown on each meal.
  
• /r/MealPrepSunday: I cook all lunches and portion them out so I don't have to worry about going out to lunch when I forget to prepare a meal.
  
• /r/slowcooking: I used a rice cooker with a slow-cooking function at the start of my frugal journey. I only use it to prepare rice now because I love using the range to cook. :)
  
• Frugalwoods' Rice, Bean, Mushroom, and Chili Lunch: I use Sriracha with red pepper flakes and yellow onion instead. Surprisingly tasty for how bland it seems.
  
• ERE Wiki Cookbook. Never used, but seems solid in practice.

Since I finally finished all the 101 essential recipes in the back of How to Cook Everything, I cracked open my Cook's Illustrated cookbook the other day (I received both as Christmas gifts waaaaay back in 2011, btw...). I'm loving all the little tips and tricks scattered about the book, like for example, apparently avocados ripen more evenly in the refrigerator and ginger lasts longest unwrapped in the fridge, as opposed to wrapped in plastic in the fridge or stored on the counter—who knew?

Kindle version of How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food. Plus some toys for your cats.

tl;dr: Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is the best cookbook to get as a beginner, because we expect international and vegetarian recipes along with the old meat and potatoes standards. More subjective reasoning follows below.

I think one of the most important things when selecting a universal cookbook early on is the quality, yet simplicity of the recipes, and how well things are explained. If you make something, as a beginner, you need to know it is going to turn out good, so when you return to the same cookbook later, you are confident the next recipe will be as high of quality. It is also nice to get compliments from others on your cooking, and a well made cookbook can assure this.

Julia Child's cookbooks are certainly of a very high quality, but French cuisine is not suited for beginners, or even novices, IMO. The Joy of Cooking has an enduring legacy brought from its quality of recipes and consistency, and is great for those mainstay dishes that haven't changed in 100 years (Silver Palate Cookbook, Fannie Farmer Cookbook are others in the Joy of Cooking realm). The problem is, tastes have changed since Joy of Cooking came out. It managed to incorporate the introduction of a few international food crazes into its pages, namely Italian and French. The Chinese it incorporates (eg. Chow Mein, etc) are nothing like what we expect from Chinese food today. Let alone Thai, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, Mediterranean, and so on. We Americans today have a much more different palate (fresh/local, international, vegetarian, etc) than what the Joy of Cooking incorporated, even in its most updated versions.

Therefore, I nominate a new Joy of Cooking, for modern times. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It hits every one of my barometers for a perfect cookbook. Delicious, easy recipes, of high quality. It is very dense in terms of number of recipes per page (not one recipe, with its photo on the facing page), yet easy to read, because one recipe is accompanied by 3-5+ variations to greatly modify it (eg. rice pilaf recipe, becomes Mexican rice, becomes whole grain pilaf, etc). Everything, from technique, to selecting vegetables/meats/etc., to improvising basics a la Alton Brown is covered. The recipes cover a wide gamut, from vegetarian/vegan, to international cuisines across the globe, to the mainstay standards (with interesting variations to improve/change them). And EVERY single recipe I have made for someone else has garnered wonderful compliments, and has been the best I have made to date.

How to Cook Everything

There' an iPhone app with the recipes that will build shopping lists for you as well. My GF is a catering manager for a large venue here in NYC; she's a food snob by profession. But she always loves the beef stir fry from Mark's book, despite the fact that it's 5 or so easily obtained ingredients. Maybe she just likes the inevitable sex. We may never know.

I think the Joy of Cooking is a great reference once you get the basics down. I also think online recipes can be hit or miss. As a beginner, having ONE good book is better than the entirety of the internet IMHO. There's just too much information coming at you.

That being said, I made this recipe every 2 weeks for about half a year. Every time I'd vary the spices a bit, to experiment. It's really simple, refrigerates well, and tastes pretty good.

Buy a (very) basic cookbook and have at it. One of those "how to cook pretty much everything in one or two simple ways" collections. I'm a big fan of "The New Best Recipe" which would be pricey new but can be had for cheap secondhand. "The Betty Crocker Cookbook" is another one that gets a lot of love too.

Read it the important bits. There's stuff in there about types of pans, about the difference between cumin and cardamom and cinnamon and cayenne, about how to hold a knife without cutting your fingers off and how to boil water without setting the stove on fire.

When you have read the important stuff and have begun to get a feel for what you need to do, select a simple recipe and make it. Start small. A pasta sauce maybe, a casserole.

Here's a piece of advice, too: Take notes. Write in the margins or get a notebook but keep track of whether you substituted oil for butter or if you needed less cooking time. It can save you some tears in the future, help you replicate happy accidents.

You might want to buy Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. Its a book about cooking techniques that I think is precisely the book you are looking for.

Also honorable mention for The Food Lab and The New Best Recipe books as well, those are more recipe based, but they have great info on techniques and ingredients. Both get into the science behind cooking and explain why they picked a specific recipe which helped me learn how to cook without recipes and be able to know when certain things are done(I now judge if something I am baking is done more by smell than time now) and how to save emulsions when to add salt and acids etc. The author of the food lab is also pretty active on the Serious Eats subreddit and will answer questions about his recipes.

Salt Fat Acid and Heat is also pretty good as well, I have not read this one personally though as the first part is waaaaaayyy too much personal narrative from the author for me and I turned off the audiobook after listening to her life story for 10 minutes, so get the print book so you can skip right to the cooking parts.

Im a big fan of Japanese Soul Cooking. It breaks down a lot of common food into the 'master recipes' like that permeate them, then expands on those with some really great, simple dishes.

We made tonkatsu this weekend for katsudon, and leftovers means a tasty tonkatsu bento for today! Tonkatsu was made with recipe from the Japanese Soul Cooking book which I highly recommend.

Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking - This is a fascinating popsci book on how the different pieces of food are cooked and work together. It's very understandable, and teaches you not only the stuff you need to "understand" cooking, but understand eating.

It's written for a audience of kitchen folks, cooks, etc, so it's very understandable.

That's the At Home version which is highly abbreviated for home cooking.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0982761015/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=14N2Q5DGXA1VKQ9XD196

Vs
http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

The cookbook is on sale for $461, and that burger takes 30+ hours to make, so uh, let me know how it turns out!

I love cookbooks, and have probably fifty in my collection.

The ones I keep going back to are:

• Anything by Yotam Ottolenghi - He's an Israeli-born chef in London, and his recipes are a great combination of creative, relatively easy, and unique. He has a knack for combining unusual flavors, and I've never disliked anything I've cooked from him. If you're relatively green, don't get Nopi (too advanced). His other three or four books are all great.
  
  
• Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless. Bayless has a PBS show and owns several restaurants in Chicago. He's a great chef and his recipes are accessible and fun.
  
  
• The Food Lab by u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt. I was skeptical at first, since Lopez-Alt's website is so comprehensive, but the book is absolutely beautiful and contains both recipes and explanations of technique and science.
  
  
• Modernist Cooking at Home - It's expensive and many of the recipes are challenging and/or require special equipment, but the book is truly groundbreaking and never fails to stoke my creativity. It's the home version of his 6-volume tome which many think is one of the most innovative cookbooks in the last 20 years.

He's got some big shoes to fill.

Cooking really isn't too hard once you understand the science of it. I would suggest getting a cookbook that explains why a recipe is cooked a certain way. For example, this one by Alton Brown. You could and probably should look up some of his stuff on youtube, too.
I'll give you a few basic tips to start -

• high heat generally means you want crispy or burnt on the outside and soft/underdone on the inside. It's really only used for searing and boiling
  
• low heat usually means you're cooking something slowly and will make things soft or soggy
  
• taste as you go, when possible
  
• if you're cooking something in oil, let the oil get hot first or the food will stick to the pan
  
• don't be afraid to use spices, herbs, salt, and pepper. Simple things I like are onion powder, garlic powder, and smoked paprika. You can also get Mrs. Dash blends.
  
  You can always subscribe to r/fitmeals, r/cooking, or r/food too.
  
  Learning to cook will take some time. For now, I'd recommend baking a lot. Roast veggies, bake some chicken breasts, stuff like that.
  Roasting veggies is really easy. Cube the veggies of your choice, coat in olive oil, salt, and pepper and bake at 375 for about 20 minutes or until tender.
  
  Good luck! And be proud of yourself for figuring this out before you actually have a problem. It will be so much easier to start since you're at a healthy weight.

Alton Brown is a huge geek and had a career in making film/tv before he became a cook and than a cooking show host. He actually filmed this music video for R.E.M. early in his career..

Yeah, huge geek. I highly suggest his books, too. I have his first one, I'm Just Here For The Food, and it contains my favorite recipe in the world. Get it, find the page with his Chicken with Garlic and Shallots, cook it in a slow cooker and omfgbbq, IT IS AWESOME. It's also insanely easy to make.

Once you've started down the road with Alton, there's a bunch of other books I can suggest. Feel free to drop me a line anytime.

Edit: Oh, and while watching the show, pay attention to any clock in the background. A good deal of the time they're set to 4:20.

If you love to read, then I completely back up those who recommended J Kenji Lopez-Alt's "The Food Lab". He also spends some time on /r/seriouseats, which I think is really great. Food Lab is great because it explains not only HOW to make a recipe, but the WHY a recipe works the way that it does, and allows you to expand your cooking skills. His is not the only book that does this, but I've read Salt Fat Acid Heat and The Science of Cooking and a good portion of the tome that is Modernist Cuisine, but Kenji's style of writing is exceptionally approachable.

But my actual suggestion to someone who wants to go from never cooking to cooking healthy meals at home is to watch the recipes on Food Wishes, because he shows you what each step of the recipe is supposed to look like, and his food blog is not filled with flowery stories, but helpful tips.

Another great online resource that I used when I started cooking about 5 years ago was The Kitchn. They offer up basic technique videos on how to cook proteins and vegetables that are really simple to follow for beginners.

My advice to you is this: don't feel like you need to dive immediately into recipes. First learn how to season and cook a chicken breast or steak consistently, and roast the different kinds of vegetables. Then just start jumping into recipes that you want to try. And don't be afraid to ask questions here :)

In case you're wondering, I believe that all of these "food cooking cut in half" pictures are from Modernist Cuisine: The Art of Science and Cooking by Nathan Myhrvold.

Don't forget that Coolio has a Cookbook. It's actually a fairly good cookbook.

All of that to deliver the “Cookin’ with Coolio” book I ordered on prime

As someone who owns the vastly underrated ['Cooking With Coolio'] (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1439117616) cookbook, this is pretty great news.

Coincidentally Coolio has a cookbook:

http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616

http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616

My brother got it for Christmas, it's got some really interesting sounding recipes and it's pretty funny too

This is probably my favorite cookbook ever, but I am not sure if it's a book that everyone would really enjoy reading. For me, the book is fascinating because it goes into an enormous amount of detail on ingredients, technique, and food science; at the same time, you kinda have to be a total need to read and enjoy such a sense book.

For something that everyone should read, I like to recommend Alton Brown's book "I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking"; it is basically the science and techniques from the first seasons of Good Eats, so I see it as kind of a Food Lab "lite", a great and very accessible way to introduce people to food and cooking,.

Hence http://www.amazon.com/Im-Just-Here-Food-Cooking/dp/1584790830/ref=sr_1_sc_1

Which is a misnomer; you may not use a corn product directly, but if you're eating beef or chicken, there's a good chance they're corn-fed, at least in the states. Most foods in the US, even basic components, somehow end up having corn or soy used in the production process. This is because they're easy to break down in to constituent parts, ie starch, sugar, protein, etc, due to their subsidized existence (Soy is the other half of the Corn crop rotation cycle for a lot of farmers). I'm not an expert on this by any means; I just read The Omnivore's Dilemma (have not watched Food Inc). I didn't even finish, I got so mad. But give it a read, you'll have serious rage before you're done with the first quarter of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1594132054?pc_redir=1397737524&robot_redir=1

By Ramen, do you mean the broth, or noodles? There are some simple recipes out there.

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Soul-Cooking-Tonkatsu-Kitchens/dp/1607743523

Open up the look inside, the base Ramen recipe is included in the preview. It's fairly simple to make

McGee's "On Food and Cooking" can get a bit dry and technical, but man is it encyclopedic. If you ever find yourself saying, "I wonder why water chestnuts stay crunchy when cooked?" that's where you could look it up. It has from a paragraph to multiple pages about every ingredient you can think of.

Ruhlman's "Ratio" is excellent for understanding the structural properties of ingredients (it mostly concerns baked goods and sauces) -- it doesn't cover flavors so much as techniques for achieving different textures by varying the ratios of ingredients.

I think On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is pretty much the standard authority.

To that I would add On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen. The scope of knowledge in this book is amazing: how different kinds of honey (some poisonous) result from what the bees polinate... how chewing gum was invented... why drinking alcohol mixed with a carbonated beverage gets you drunk faster... why cooking with iron is better for you than cooking with copper... where peppercorns come from, how they are harvested and how the varieties differ... why onions make you cry when you cut them... the science behind "toasting" something... can't recommend this enough to anyone fascinated by cooking!

On Food and Cooking is the ultimate answer to your question. It will give you the science and why behind why many foods do what they do. Its a tome, but a beautiful one.

I would suggest buying any of Steve Raichlen's books. The BBQ Bible and How To Grill helped me a lot. Great pics of both techniques and the food.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0761149430/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1373559052&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0761120149/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1373559108&sr=8-4&pi=SL75

I bought this book a few years ago when I was on a budget, and I quite liked it.Student's Vegetarian Cookbook

And do you know Mark Bittman? He also has a vegetarian book out that I like. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

I really like Vegan for Life. It has lots of up-to-date nutritional information, and no pseudoscience. If you want a great general cookbook, I love How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. It's just a great starter cookbook with lots of info on prep, etc.

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bitmann.
This book is like a textbook. It is split up into different food parts, and at the beginning of each of those parts is an introduction to the foods. At the beginning of the book it goes over different cooking techniques. At the end of the book there are menus that work well together. Also, every recipe has like 3 recipes that go with it, with little things you can change. This is literally like a cooking 101 book.
http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266279932&sr=8-1

I currently work 2 jobs and have my fingers in a lot of pies.

That being said, I still find the time to cook. Not as much as I like, but I do so quite regularly.

Aside from reading cook books, watching Good Eats, and America's Test Kitchen, I got the most experience from practice.

I also visit these subreddits.

http://www.reddit.com/r/cooking

http://www.reddit.com/r/askculinary

Book wise, I have quite a few books on both technique and the food itself.

A few of my favorites are:

On Food and Cooking by McGee - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684800012

Cooking for Geeks by Potter - http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-Hacks/dp/0596805888/

How to Cook Everything by Bittman - http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0764578650

and a multitude of others.

To be blunt, if boiling is how they usually prepare meat, it may be too late.


Try this book as a present.

The New Best Recipe by Cook's Illustrated

http://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-Cooks-Illustrated/dp/0936184744/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464479000&sr=1-1&keywords=cook%27s+illustrated+best+recipe

This cookbook is great. It's from America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated. All the dishes in the book have gone through something like 30-50 trials/iterations in the course of finding the single "best" version of the recipe - very appealing to my scientist side.

I'm finishing up Salt: A World History and then I'll take the weekend to go through Reaper Man in a single session. It's one of the few Terry Pratchett's I haven't read yet.

Well...OK, maybe I worded that poorly.

Food preservation was much more important for military applications than it was for everyday life. I.e., salt allowed provisions to last significantly longer, which meant that military excursions could last longer and go further (and cheaper!). Whereas from a civilian day-to-day standpoint its effects were significant but relatively smaller.

There's a reason in Rise of Nations Salt reduced the cost of infantry units.

I recommend this book: Salt: A World History.

in medieval and tudor times this would certainly be true, but by the victorian period the spice world had drastically changed!

depending on where you lived in the world there may be wild herbs available to forage. mint, fennel, dill probably, garlic for sure all grow wild in the UK, or could be cultivated in gardens. in more arid places like the middle east/northern africa/the mediterranean things like rosemary, oregano, bay would be available.

and during victorian times spices would have been more available to people in the UK and elsewhere in europe because of colonization of india (which started in the 1600s ish, and would have been well established 200 years ago in the early victorian period.).

in medieval and tudor times spices would have been very expensive for sure, but once the east india company and the spice trade really gets rolling they become much more available. a lot of victorian cookbooks mention spices quite frequently, so one can assume they were being used regularly!

and if you're interested in salt, which victorians would have certainly eaten a lot of and been buying quite regularly, mark kurlansky's book "salt" (it's just called salt) is a truly fascinating look at the micro-history of salt!!

I kinda feel like you lost the plot of this conversation:
You: "We need to pay taxes so the government can protect us from evil corporations."
Me: "But the government sends your taxes straight to the pockets of the evil corporations and directly creates the problems you're complaining about."
You: "Well, that's not the government's fault."

How do you square those two beliefs?

Still, you did ask for sources, so here's a few (plus an upvote):

1. This one is not primarily about the government's role in the food industry, but you can see the problems it creates woven throughout: The Ominivore's Dilemma
   
2. A podcast episode specifically about the Wholesome Meat Act, from the Tom Woods Show: Ep. 656 How the Wholesome Meat Act Gives Us Less Wholesome Meat
   
3. A book I highly recommend that attempts to explain, from a practical/pragmatic standpoint, why nearly everything the government does is either useless or outright counterproductive to its stated goals: The Machinery of Freedom

Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets. Here's my brief review.

Edit: I also really enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

"low-fat low-carb foods"? There pretty much is only carbs and fat. You could eat whey protein powders, but your body maxes out at about 40% protein, otherwise you'll just get rabbit starvation.

If cooking your fruits and vegetables works, then do that. Check out "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human", for some interesting evidence on how cooking can greatly increase the nutrient absorption of certain foods. For example, eating a raw banana you only absorb about 50% of the nutrients, cook that banana and you'll absorb about 99%.

If you have autoimmune issues, I'd also try elimination diets to see if certain foods are causing the problem. These may not be the same foods as are triggering your oral allergies, other foods can irritate the intestinal lining, creating a leaky gut, which will allow a lot of crap into the bloodstream which can in turn overwork the immune system. Also reduce your glycemic load, which puts tremendous stress on the immune system. There are lots of foods which people can be sensitive to, but doing a 30-day grain-free challenge is usually the best place to start, as it's far and away the most likely culprit.

For healthy eating, try coconuts: coconut oil, coconut butter, coconut milk, shredded coconut. It's all great stuff - can be used as a snack, and a very healthy source of energy.

On Food and Cooking is pretty much the bible.

Don't care if trolling, must employ orgo/chem knowledge: It's (near) impossible. Background is necessary: The only reason (or the most obvious) why your toast is not charring with it's exposure to the O2 in the atmosphere when you take it out the company of its loafing mates (pan pun ftw) is that the charring reaction (EXOTHERMIC combustion reactions) takes place at an exceedingly high (toasting) temperature. This high temp requirement is known as the activation energy (E^A) —or the energy differential between the reagents (predominantly starch and complex carbohydrates) and the transition states that these reagents will assume if all goes according to plan. The reason the reverse reaction does not happen is that the combustion reaction is exothermic (meaning that bond energy is leaving the reagents in the form of heat which exceeds the E^A) and exothermic reactions are usually irreversible (laws of thermodynamics, gibbs free energy, and the like would all be working against untoasting toast). After toasting, molecules on the outer surface of toast have released a considerable about of energy in the exothermic process of turning into products and therefore absolutely cannot have as much chemical energy… There is the sneaky-ass possibility that some starches and complex carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion in OUR GI systems have broken down in the exothermic reactions (or specifically decomposition reactions if the exothermic rxn is unimolecular) to chemicals that we can in fact digest— thereby increasing its caloric content while reducing its total chemical energy content. This is common and unsurprising in cooking—read this (written by a chemist). However we can be sure that the decomposition/energy loss of saccharides we could have digested in their glorious fully energized states is partially offsetting this.
All things considered (love that radio show) it doesn't offing matter. The caloric difference, if any, would be so minute only Heidi Klum could tell the difference. but damn is she toasty.

Ratio is really fucking awesome, if you're into the science side of it, I'd highly recommend this Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive texts. It hits the historical side, the scientific side, and the classic, traditional cuisine. That said, it's really fucking dense, not the kinda book you'll sit down and read cover to cover.

hopefully i don't sound too crass, but i would save your money. unless you want to do months of work as an unpaid, or basically unpaid, stage at a really amazing restaurant, or want to have credentials to back up the opening of your own place, the extra education wouldn't help much. i'd rather hear that you've read harold mcgee and larousse cover to cover.

Exactly. Higher pH denatures the proteins that are responsible for making it stick. Also, using older eggs will do the trick because older eggs naturally start to rise in pH.

If anyone is interested, there is a really great chapter about eggs in "On Food and Cooking," by Harold McGee that talks a lot about this kind of stuff. It's a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the science of cooking.

I had to read a book on the history of Salt for a history class in highschool. Fascinating subject, covered everything from how access to salt shaped societal and civilizational development to salt being used as a currency to how techniques for gathering/creating salt developed over time.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619 I recommend it.

Here's Block 1 for those who don't want to scroll:

Answers - first "box" (starred ones are ones I had to look up):

Why do whales jump? No-one knows exactly, though it's theorised that socialising is part of it, as its a far more common behaviour in pods than with lone whales.

Why are witches green? There are theories floating around that it's to link them with death/putrefaction or plants/herbs. Personally, I think it's mostly because of the popularity of the film version of The Wizard of Oz, where the green skin was chosen partly to indicate she's a bad guy in a kid's fantasy world, and partly because it helped demonstrate their new Technicolour technology.

Why are there mirrors above beds? Ask your parents when you're older. Or don't, since you'll probably work it out by yourself by then. If you mean on the wall behind beds, I've never really seen this as common, but mirrors help to give the impression that the room is larger than it actually is.

Why do I say uh? This is a phenomenon called "speech dysfluency". Again, no definitive answer but often explained as placeholders while you struggle to find the word you use next. If you mean "why uh as opposed to, say, quorpl", different languages have different dysfluencies. You say uh/um because you speak English or another language that uses the same sound for this purpose.

Why is sea salt better? It's not really, it just has a cachet to it these days as panning is a more labour-intensive process and the added expense means more exclusivity. Prior to industrialised salt-making, people wanted finer-grained salt. There's a REALLY interesting book on the subject by Mark Kurlansky, if you want to know more about the history of the stuff.

Why are there trees in the middle of fields? They provide shade for field-workers during breaks. Less relevant now with increasing mechanisation, so most are there these days because they've "always" been there, and getting rid of trees is a bitch of a job.

Why is there not a Pokemon MMO? The creator wanted (and still wants) to encourage people to play games with one another face to face. MMOs don't work like that.

Why is there laughing in TV shows? Because comedy shows with laugh tracks have historically outperformed those without them. People might bitch about them, the same way people bitch about trailers that give away too much of the story, but market research shows that you get more butts in seats regardless of the bitching, so that's the way they do it. I believe that the data on laugh tracks is coming back differently these days, which is why they're largely fading out.

Why are there doors on the freeway? Maintenance access. That or portals to alternate realities, depending on whether you've read 1Q84.

Why are there so many svchost.exe running? Failsafing. The svchost processes handle background services for the operating system. You have a lot of them because it means that if there's an error with one service (and hence one svchost process) it doesn't bring down the whole thing. There are other ways of handling this, but this is the way that Windows chose to go.

Why aren't there any countries in Antarctica? The Antarctic Treaty of (let me look it up) 1961 disallowed signatories from taking permanent territorial sovereignty of the continent. This hasn't stopped countries claiming chunks of land (including overlapping claims like the Argentine-British annoyance) but in practice access is shared for scientific research. Tat said, I expect that if it ever became economically worthwhile to actually start exploiting the resources in Antarctica, the Treaty would go up in a puff of smoke.

Why are there scary sounds in Minecraft? Because they add to a sense of danger, which gives a bit more of a thrill to players. It also gives another incentive to avoid Creepers, as the explosion scares the bejeezus out of me every time, even without the environmental damage.

Why is there kicking in my stomach? - you know those sticks you can buy that you pee on and get one line or two? You might want to go and get one of those. And then schedule an appointment with a doctor.

Why are there two slashes after http? Syntax - it separates the protocol being used (ftp being an alternative) from the address you're looking for.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Very entertaining read. I was surprised just how much salt has influenced world history.

Grass fed tastes like beef is supposed to taste. Corn fed tastes weird.

Corn fed beef being as healthy for you as grain is as disputed as climate change. Here's some reading for you. I'll boil it down; cows evolved eating grass and we've been feeding them corn which causes all sorts of digestion problems, so we shoot them full of antibiotics and hormones to help them grow more quickly.

It's like you only eating popcorn when you evolved for a varied diet of vegetables meat and some fruit then needing to take all sorts of drugs to stay 'healthy'. How healthy would you be? Wouldn't it be better in the long run to eat right?

Watch this TED talk from a farmer who raises chickens fed grubs and bugs instead of grain.

You might be interested in reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Also, The Omnivore's Dilemma, by the same author. Both books are similar, though I find the latter to be a little more preachy. In either case, there's great information about the politics and marketing of processed food, the Western Diet, and the rise of obesity. In Defense of Food was an eye opener for me.

Not sure the discipline of paleontology is really geared to answer that question... [EDIT] Most fossils I've tasted are tough, a bit salty and frankly too gritty to be on my foodie shortlist.

There's a few factors that goes into meat flavour and texture:

• Fast twitch vs slow twitch muscles determines how 'red' meat is - that is how much myoglobin it has. Birds that fly a lot have red breast meat when compared to birds that fly only in emergencies. For example, compare the breasts of pigeon (red) and chicken (white). This also works with fish: continuously fast moving fish meat tends to red, meaty flavours (eg tuna) vs most fish that have basically white flesh, but have a red triangle of muscle along the dorsal line like hamachi. Ambush hunters like the crocodile are immobile almost all the time, so their meat is more like chicken breast.
  
• Muscles that are continuously exercised are loaded with connective tissue and are tough. Muscles rarely exercised are tender. Compare shin, shank and shoulder cuts (tough) with fillet steak (tender).
  
• Cooking technique - fast and hot vs slow and cool(er). Tender cuts can be cooked hot and fast (grill, fry) and be excellent as long as the internal temperature stays below the mid 60s (°C) otherwise you are in well-done territory [EDIT] and that is the 'stringy' texture in OPs question. Tough cuts should be cooked for a long time to break connective fibres to gelatine making the meat juicy and soft. For tough cuts, temperature can go up into the 70s without necessarily making the meat dry. Think southern BBQ and sous vide ribs. Tender cuts are typically less flavourful/meaty than tough cuts. Chicken thighs need cooking longer than chicken breast, so getting a perfect roast chicken, with moist breast and tender thighs is hard.
  
• Impact of diet. What the animal eats can influence flavour heavily. Corn-fed and grass-fed cattle taste different, with grass-fed being a stronger, meatier taste. Free-range chickens are gamier than factory birds. Water fowl and crocodile tastes a bit 'fishy'. Pigeon and quail more gamey. Traditionally, pheasants and other birds were left to 'hang' (with guts in) in a cool but not refrigerated environment until the meat 'matures' and the tail feather fall out. This fermentation is the main reason for really gamey taste. Personally, I hate it and feel there are too many 'off' flavours. [EDIT] the really fishy smell of not-quite-fresh fish is TMA, caused by the (I think, bacterial) breakdown of proteins in the fish. I am not referring to this off-flavour when I mean fishy.
  
• Seasonality: Animals in areas with cold winters tend to lay down fat in autumn to help the animal survive to spring. There's a strong preference to eating those animals in autumn when the fat content (and thus flavour) is the highest. Higher fat content allows more cooking techniques to be used, and allows the meat to be cooked hotter while remaining moist and tender. Hunting seasons are mostly in the autumn.
  
  So, with Leaellynasaurus, we essentially have a wild turkey-like animal in a highly seasonal environment, eating plants in a non-aquatic environment. Hunt them near polar winter to maximise their yummy fat.
  
  As non-farmed animal, its major muscle groups on its rear legs got a huge workout - its legs would be best for braising and stewing and would be rich, meaty and a bit gamey. Its shoulders and forelimbs a lot less, and so would be more chicken-breast-like, but smaller in proportion. Some small, fried pieces like the Japaneae karaage might be nice.
  
  [EDIT] On reflection, the tail might produce both the greatest challenge when cooking Leaellynasaurus, but also the greatest opportunity. The tail - one of the largest dinosaur tails relative to body size - is full of connective tissue, making poorly cooked tail as chewy as tough jerky and less palatable. However, cooked 48-72 hours at 75°C sous vide, it would be like the best ox-tail stew - juicy, tender and incredibly rich in flavour. It could take some really strong herbs and spices to really up the richness into the stratosphere.
  
  This is just my best guess as a cook who's read the excellent On Food and Cooking. I'd say, give Leaellynasaura meat a try if you can, although finding a restaurant for such a delicacy is pretty hard these days.

This is probably the natural seaweed extract she is talking about:
Kombu
I worked in Japanese food for a long time and was surprised to learn that I had been basically flat-out lying when I told people there was no MSG in our sushi. Good sushi rice dressing is traditionally seasoned with a large piece of Kombu.
Also, people who say they are allergic to MSG are lying.
edit: read page 342 - Seaweed and the Original MSG

I do encourage you to learn about cooking no matter what you choose. These are the books that helped me most in my cooking career:

1. Professional cooking Often refereed to as 'the Gisslen'
   
   
2. Culinary Artistry
   
   
3. On food and Cooking
   
   The Gisslen and Culinary artistry are your starter books. On food and cooking is amazing but contains chemistry/biology and other scientific explanations of what your doing which is important but not for the actual act of learning to produce food.

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012 and

Chopping skills has to be high up on the list. I don't have a good book on this, but have seen several possible good ones on Amazon. There are lots of videos online as well. I'd learn and master all types of cuts on all types of items (meat, veggies, fruit, etc).

If you're wanting to be a chef (i.e. not just a cook), having some knowledge about why methods/recipes are a certain way would be good too (e.g. books like On Food and Cooking: http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012).

Not quite a direct answer to your question, but hopefully useful

I HIGHLY recommend this book. At least one person in my family has had a copy for the past 15 years and I've gotten an incredible amount of use from it. It's more akin to a book of techniques than a book of recipes and can really improve your grilling game. (and overall cooking game)

Welcome to the tribe of grillers and smokers!

Looks like the coals are still active, but you may just not have had enough for the conditions. Since you're cooking outside, you need to be aware of environmental factors, especially wind, ambient temperature, and humidity.

I would suggest switching to natural hardwood charcoal. It burns longer and cleaner than briquets. Ditch any liquid fuels you might be using, they aren't necessary and can make your food taste like petrol. If you haven't already, learn how start your charcoal with tinder. Charcoal chimneys are very helpful. (edit: looks like you already got this covered!)

I also can't recommend enough these books by Steven Raichlen, host of the PBS shows Barbecue University and Primal Grill. He has studied grilling and smoking methods from all over the world, and is very good at explaining techniques and concepts to people of all skill levels.

• The Barbecue! Bible
  
• How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques
  
  Finally, here are some subreddits with very helpful and friendly communities:
  
  
• /r/grilling
  
• /r/smoking
  
• /r/BBQ
  
  Hope this helps!

Try this for heathy cooking and his other book for more traditional dishes. Both are amazing.

My daughter decided to become a vegetarian when she was 4. We figured it was a phase she was going through, but she's 6 now and has stuck with it. Her reason is she doesn't want to kill animals. So we load her up with beans, nuts, lentils, tofu, fake ground beef, oats, quinoa and some dairy.

Also, this is a great cookbook:

Mark Bittman's "how to eat everything vegetarian"

This book brought me from making inedible soups (literally I would have to throw them out) to making awesome soup. https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

There's a page about how to freestyle your own soup. The basic is start with a fat (like olive oil) and add aromatics (like garlic), and cook until it smells good. Then add vegetables and liquid (I'm forgetting which order the author recommended but it would probably be fine either way). He has lots of suggestions for how to get wild with different ingredients, and there's even an exciting page about how adding cabbage at different points in the cooking process can change the soup.

Also, treat yourself to an immersion blender. Makes vegan soups taste like they are full of butter and cream. (Also super handy for salad dressing recipes!)

I am in the same position you are in. Love cooking, no formal training, but love the science, theory and art behind it all. I have a few books that I find to be indispensable.

• How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian by Mark Bittman are two of my favorite recipe books. Loads of pretty simple recipes, lots of suggestions for modifications, and easy to modify yourself. Covers a bit of technique and flavor tips, but mostly recipes.
  
  
• CookWise by Shirley Corriher (the food science guru for Good Eats!) - great book that goes much more into the theory and science behind food and cooking. Lots of detailed info broken up nicely and then provides recipes to highlight the information discussed. Definitely a science book with experiments (recipes) added in to try yourself.
  
  
• Professional Baking and Professional Cooking by Wayne Gissen - Both of these books are written like textbooks for a cooking class. Filled with tons of conversion charts, techniques, processes, and detailed food science info. Has recipes, but definitely packed with tons of useful info.
  
  
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters - this is not much on theory and more recipes, but after using many of the recipes in this book and reading between the lines a great deal, this taught me a lot about how great food doesn't require tons of ingredients. Many foods and flavors highlight themselves when used and prepared very simply and this really shifted my perspective from overworking and overpreparing dishes to keeping things simple and letting the food speak for itself.
  
  And mentioned in other threads, Cooking for Geeks is a great book too, On Food and Cooking is WONDERFUL and What Einstein Told His Chef is a great read as well. Modernist Cuisine is REALLY cool but makes me cry when I see the price.

1. I typically spend about $200/mo. on groceries, almost all at Costco, but I eat a lot, so YMMV. To be on the safe side, put down $250/mo. for groceries when you're doing your budget.
   
   
2. When I was sharing groceries and cooking duties with roommates, we'd cook dinner and eat leftovers at lunch. I usually grabbed lunch from Stamp on the days I had class, and one of my roommates would pack some leftovers to reheat.
   
   
3. Costco is the shit for groceries, everything's pretty high-quality and fresh, and cheap as hell. I don't know what I'd do without their freezer-ready packs of chicken and ground beef/turkey. Also, they sell 1lb resealable bags of precooked bacon... mmm, bacon....
   
   
4. If you've never really cooked before, buy How to Cook Everything. It's a really great book, complete with all kinds of recipes, and there are sections in the beginning that you can learn a lot from - knife skills, differences between cuts of meat, tips for grocery shopping, the tools and spices you should stock your kitchen with, etc... It's a really invaluable book IMO. Find some recipes you like and rotate between them.
   
   
5. The biggest tip for grocery shopping is to know what you're going to cook for the week beforehand, so you know what to get and how much. This will cut down on waste and save you money.
   
   Here's a really easy recipe that I've been making this semester with ingredients you can get all at Costco that's pretty versatile. I call it "clusterfuck rice":
   
   Ingredients
   
   

• .5lb pre-cooked bacon, chopped
  
• 1 pack ground turkey (~1.7lb, 80/20 lean)
  
• 1 pack chicken breast (~1.3lb), cubed
  
• 3 cups rice dry
  
• Your choice of produce (try any combination of onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, green beans, broccoli, carrots, snap peas, asparagus)
  
• Seasoning (curry powder-pepper-salt, paprika-garlic powder-cayenne-salt, cumin-paprika-garlic powder-cayenne-salt are ones I like)
  
  
  Directions
  
  

1. Slice and dice produce, sautee in a large pot
   
2. Start boiling 3.5-4 cups of water (adjust for amount and type of rice as needed)
   
3. Lightly brown chicken in another pan (don't cook all the way through), add to pot and stir
   
4. Lightly brown turkey and toss in bacon towards the end, add to pot and stir
   
5. Add dry rice to pot and stir thoroughly
   
6. When water boils, add seasonings to pot, and slowly add all the water
   
7. Turn heat back up to medium-high, stir consistently, waiting until water comes to a boil again
   
8. Once water boils, turn heat down to medium-low, cover pot, stir every 5-10 minutes for 30-60 minutes.
   
   
   Macros:
   
   

• ~5000 kcal
  
• ~150g fat
  
• ~500g carb
  
• ~400g protein
  
  This lasts me about 4 meals usually, but I'm a weightlifter and eat a ton, so if you're splitting food with roommates, this should feed the whole apartment for dinner and whoever wants to take leftovers for lunch.
  

I can tell you about the preheat thing anyway.

1: food safety. Ovens take time to heat, so your food will be sitting in the danger zone a long time if you put it in when you first start the oven.

2: If your food is heating up as the oven heats up, by the time the oven is to temperature and browning the outside of your food, the food is well and truly overcooked. Food usually needs to be cooked to an internal temperature of somewhere between 140 and 180 Fahrenheit. Now if 150 is your target temp, imagine what your food will be like if it's 350!

As for a go-to book for learning everything about cooking, here you go:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Recipes-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

The first... 20 or so pages answer all your basic cooking questions, then you have like 900 pages of in-depth, detailed recipes, explaining the techniques, variations, and expectations of, well, everything.

To be totally honest though, I just google my questions as they come up at this point.

If you're going to cook, you'll need some basic tools. A saute pan, a large saucepan and a smaller saucepan should be good to start, along with a mixing bowl or two, a sheet pan, a casserole dish, a washable (plastic) cutting board, a couple of wooden spoons and some tongs. You'll need a couple of knives too - an 8" chefs knife and a smaller paring knife will take care of just about every job in the kitchen. Crazy gadgets aren't necessary for a beginner (and the more experienced you get the more you'll find they probably aren't necessary at all). Most everything you need can be procured at thrift stores or tag sales if you're on a tight budget. Stay away from older Teflon non-stick pans; if you feel more comfortable with non-stick over stainless, try to get anodized instead. To prevent accidents, keep your knives sharp.

Memorize or print this out: Safe Minimum Temperatures

Definitely always have salt, pepper and olive oil on hand. You probably don't need one of those all-in-one spice racks with every herb known to man in it; you'd be surprised how little of them you end up using. Fresh herbs are nearly always better, anyway. The main dried ingredients I keep on hand now are cumin, red pepper flakes, (about 6 varieties of) chili powder, onion powder and garlic powder.

Grab a couple of cookbooks (How To Cook Anything and The Joy of Cooking are awesome and include lots of different types of cuisine) and just try something you like. Start with recipes that don't have a lot of ingredients or steps. Start with recipes you know you like. If you don't understand what they mean when they tell you to do something, Youtube is definitely your friend.

Taste often. Don't feel like you have to stick to the book 100%. If something needs more pepper, a dash of hot sauce, a pat of butter, put it in. You are the one who has to eat it, so make it yours. Remember, you can always add more of something, but it's pretty tough to add less. Don't feel bad if it doesn't come out perfectly the first time, or the second. It seems daunting at first, but if you keep at it, it gets much easier.

Edited to add: http://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners

Bittman says you can sub up to 20% dark rye for wheat flour without problems related to a lack of gluten. His How to Cook Everything is a great reference for questions like yours. From a flavor viewpoint, I would use orange zest as an element with rye pancakes, probably in lieu of the raisins or chocolate just so you don't get too many things going on at once.

I really like this book. It goes through a lot of variations on how to cook different dishes, and it explains why one might be better than another (this method is faster, this one is cheaper, this one is easier, etc). It also breaks down a lot of the basics of food prep, picking the best meat/produce, etc. It includes recipes, but it goes through the scientific process that they use to come up with the recipes, allowing you to adjust them to suit your needs.

Once you master a set of basic skills, as well as understanding how things "should" be, everything becomes way more fun and easy. How to dice an onion or anything. How to keep a clean work area. What "brown" actually looks like. How thick is "thickened", and what the hell is a roux.

Also, being a total Geek, The New Best Recipes cookbook has been a major help. It tells you both why you're doing it, as well as how to cook basic items, and then take that skill to other recipes.

> Molecular Gastronomy

It helps to not call it that. It's misleading and doesn't describe what's being done. Most in the industry shy away from that phrase. Modernist cuisine is more accepted these days.

As for modernist chefs, others have mentioned Blumenthal. I'll list a few for you to look into:

• Ferran Adria is the grandfather of the entire movement, and is extremely open with sharing his knowledge with the world. He's done some lectures for the Harvard food and science lecture series. You can find videos on youtube from past years. (From my recommended list for you, I think all but Daniel Humm have done the lecture series at some point.)
  
• Grant Achatz is known for it as well. His creations are definitely a little more out there and conceptual, but utterly stunning to experience. One of the most fun meals I've ever had. If you're ever in Chicago, a meal at Alinea is worth going for if you've got the cash. Do make sure to swing by Aviary (also by Achatz) for drinks and bites, whether you go to Alinea or not. Drinks are each very unique and all good across the board. Don't miss out on the bites. (FWIW Chicago seems to be a city that's open to experimentation, so there's a few other places that do modernist food in town that aren't bad.)
  
• Jose Andres worked under Adria for a bit, but has been doing his own thing in the US. He pays homage to his roots, and does some great tapas. He's got a few locations across the States, so might be worth seeking out. I've only been to The Bazaar in LA/BevHills. Let me know if you want to know more about the food there, since I personally believe there are some things that you must get there, along with some that are good but not as interesting.
  
• Daniel Humm's Eleven Madison Park is also amazing, and worthy alternative to Alinea if NYC is easier. There's definitely differences, but worth seeking out. I haven't been, but I've heard very good things and it's on my list for the next trip to NYC.
  
• Wylie Dufresne of wd~50 is also interesting (NYC but closing soon IIRC due to location issues; may reopen or do other stuff at some point). He uses modernist techniques in an almost invisible way, where something may seem, smell, or taste normal, but it's actually made using something else entirely.
  
  I'm obviously missing a ton of chefs. Due to the history of El Bulli/Adria, there's a lot of modernist cuisine in various places in Spain. The above is by no means comprehensive, but just what I'm remembering off the top of my head as an American.
  
  But on modernist cuisine, the real exceptional chefs are the ones that use them as tools in their trade, instead of doing modernist techniques just for the sake of them. I've had way too many meals where they'd have a component of a dish where they probably thought it'd be cool and hip, but ended up adding absolutely nothing to the dish (Foams are a big problem here).
  
  For modernist cuisine, it really helps to go out to eat and experience it for yourself. Trying to execute without having experienced it is like trying to play Beethoven without any experience hearing it played by others before. This will actually likely be a small price to pay, given the $$$$$ you'll be sinking into equipment. When dining, feel free to ask questions. Waiters at most of these fine dining-ish establishments will know their shit, and will go ask the cooks/chef if they don't know the answer off-hand.
  
  There's also a lot of reading to be done, and you'll end up with just techniques to apply. But with it, you'll be able to do amazing things. For books, The Bible here is Modernist Cuisine, the 50-lb, 6 volume, 2400 page behemoth (at $500, again cheap compared to equipment). You can sometimes find it in libraries if the price tag is an issue. Don't skip to the recipes. Read each one cover to cover (and possibly in order), because learning the science behind everything is more important than following recipes.
  
  You won't find much video, because modernist stuff just isn't food-porn friendly. You tend to not have food sizzling on a hot pan and such. A lot of modernist cuisine is done with extreme restraint and focus, and frequently the results are way more interesting in the mouth than visually.
  
  But really, modernist cuisine is a means to an end. They're using it as a tool to create an experience that likely isn't possible using traditional means. But, the important thing is the experience, and not how it was technically achieved.

Source.

Beautiful pictures of things cut in half in there. Just google for more examples.

There's a real simple burger recipe in one of the books I have. Coolio calls it the "Ghetto Burger". I basically take a smallish onion, beat it to a pulp with the slap chop, 1tbsp of Lawry's, and 1tsp garlic powder. Usually add that all to 1.5lbs or so of ground meat (Venison). Coat each of the patties in grape seed oil (cause fuck the olive oil industry) and grill as per normal.

Mollie Katzen's The New Moosewood Cookbook. Great little pictures of ingredients/recipes.

The Joy of Cooking. It's got a great baseline of knowledge and can provide a good context when you start cooking.

The Mennonite cookbook More with Less. This one will broaden your horizons and you'll find yourself cooking outside of your typical cuisines.

Any of the Moosewood Cookbooks are awesome picks. They were all copies that were originally hand written/drawn and look awesome inside, and from what I remember the recipes were all vegetarian.

Alton Brown

I'd love a copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I've been really interested in food and and how it effects us and how our diets can be better lately. I'm actively working on mine and this book has been on my list for a while. (I am happy with either hardcover or paperback, my only request is used books be in good shape)

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal

I grew up in farm country in the 60's in an area where there were no corporate farms. The small farms never thrived. It was always hard, dirty work with little money. The fundamental problem with agriculture in general is that when the crops are good, the selling price for them is low and when the crops are bad, the price is high. On top of that is a wholesale distribution system that tends to maximize it's profit at the expense of the farmer.

I suggest you read The Omnivore's dilemma and Mother Earth News magazine

Only tangentially related, but I'm reading Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the first section is about corn (from seed to food product). There is mention of the pros/cons of regular corn vs. the Monsanto seed, but there's a ton more (depressing) stuff about the entire industry as well.

Read The Omnivore's Dilemma but the upshot is that you should eat more plants than animals and stay away from processed stuff.

Michael Pollan.

I don't think I can recommend his book The Omnivore's Dilemma highly enough.

I'm a bit of a cookbook junkie, so I have a bunch to recommend. I'm interpreting this as "good cookbooks from cuisines in Asia" so there are some that are native and others that are from specific restaurants in the US, but I would consider these legit both in terms of the food and the recipes/techniques. Here are a few of my favorites:


Pan-Asian

• Asian Dumplings - the masterpiece on all things dumpling
  
• Asian American - Dale Talde's (Top Chef) book with lots of Asian cultures' food in the US
  
• Asian Pickles - pickles and fermented foods from throughout Asia
  
• Lucky Rice - recipes from the Asian festival of the same name
  
• The Asian Grandmother's Cookbook - traditional cooking passed down to American cooks
  
  Burmese
  
  
• Burma:Rivers of Flavor - good focus on difference in Burmese cuisine from other regional
  
  Cambodian
  
  
• Num Pang - Cambodian sandwich restaurant in NYC
  
• Cambodian Cooking - GREAT book on Cambodian cuisine, supporting refugees
  
  Chinese
  
  
• Ken Hom Complete Chinese Cookbook - great primer for cooking Chinese food using ingredients commonly available in US
  
• China Moon - classic SF Chinese restaurant food
  
• Feeding the Dragon - modern culinary journey through all of China
  
• Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking - omnibus focused on the home chef
  
• Breath of a Wok - focus on wok technique at home
  
• Every Grain of Rice - wonderful Sichuan food for home cooks
  
  Indian
  
  
• Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking - actually, any of her cookbooks are wonderful for Indian cooking
  
• Savour Mumbai - looks at Indian cuisine as a melting pot in Mumbai
  
• The Indian Family Cookbook - modern South Indian food
  
• Indian Harvest - Vikas Khanna's family cookbook
  
• Made in India - classic Indian food, from street to home
  
  Indonesia
  
  
• The Food of Indonesia - everything you need for a rijstaffel!
  
  Japanese
  
  
• Japanese Farm Food - authentic rural Japanese cooking
  
• Preserving the Japanese Way - how to make awesome Japanese pickled vegetables
  
• Sushi Chef - not strictly speaking a cookbook, but "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" book in English
  
• The Japanese Grill - authentic hibachi and Japanese grill recipes
  
• Japanese Comfort Food - lots of traditional Japanese recipes
  
• Nanban - Japanese "soul food"
  
• Tokyo Cult Recipes - hip modern urban food from Tokyo
  
• Yum Yum Bento Boxes - updated modern take on bento boxes
  
• Ivan Ramen - traditional ramen for a Western audience
  
• Izakaya - traditional Japanese pub food & small plates
  
• Nikkei - emigrant Japanese food culture in South America
  
• Donabe - traditional Japanese hot pot recipes
  
• Kyotofu - very unique Japanese dessert cookbook
  
  Korean
  
  
• K Food - modern take on Korean street food
  
• Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking - great resource for Korean cooking in a non-pro kitchen
  
• Traditional Food - omnibus of four regions of Korean food
  
• Koreatown - authentic, approachable guide to Korean food in a US context
  
• Smoke & Pickles - Edward Lee's fusion of his Korean heritage and southern barbeque
  
• The Kimchi Cookbook - many, many recipes for kimchi...
  
  Malaysian
  
  
• Malaysian Cooking - good overview of Malay cooking
  
  Middle Eastern
  
  
• The New Persian Kitchen - modern Iranian food
  
• Ottolenghi - Israeli-Palestinian collaboration
  
• Persiana - dynamic modern recipes from throughout the Middle East
  
• Zahav - modern Israeli food
  
• Sweet Middle East - traditional and modern desserts
  
  Philippine
  
  
• Filipino Homestyle Dishes - good intro to classic Filipino dishes
  
  Russian
  
  
• Mamushka - focus on Ukraine
  
  Sri Lankan
  
  
• Hidden Kitchens of Sri Lanka - beautiful photo-cookbook on Sri Lankan cuisine
  
  Taiwanese
  
  
• The Food of Taiwan - um... food... from Taiwan
  
  Thailand
  
  
• Nong's Thai Kitchen - she beat Bobby Flay in pad thai
  
• Pok Pok - Portland's most AWESOME Asian restaurant
  
  Turkish
  
  
• Istanbul:Recipes from the Heart of Turkey - lovely focus on urban Turkish food
  
• Anatolia - wonderful approachable approach to Turkish cuisine
  
• Essential Turkish Cuisine - focus on history and evolution of Turkish food
  
  Vietnamese
  
  
• The Slanted Door - great Vietnamese restaurant cookbook
  
• Vietnamese Market Cookbook - focus on simple Vietnamese from fresh ingredients
  
• Into the Vietnamese Kitchen - traditional Vietnamese home cooking
  
• The Banh Mi Cookbook - the greatest sandwich in the world!
  
• Vietnamese Home Cooking - another great overview
  
  (edit: screwed up a couple links)

I have a book that has a recipe for Japanese hamburger and yes it does have you cooking the onion and garlic until sweet. This recipe also says to soak panko in milk and add that to the meat mixture along with an egg and soy sauce. I haven't made this particular recipe from the book, but everything else I've made has been really good. The book is Japanese Soul Cooking.

I agree that "How To Cook Everything" is a good reference guide for complete beginners and those with gaps in cooking knowledge.

It might be a bit over your head at this point, but if you truly want to understand cooking and what's happening when you do it try "On Food And Cooking" by Harold McGee.

For Asian you might like...

"Every Grain Of Rice" by Fuchsia Dunlop (or any of her books)

"Japanese Soul Cooking" by Tadashi Ono

"Ivan Ramen..." by Ivan Orkin (Good for ramen and other japanese-ish food.)

"Momofuku" by David Chang (Really good mix of general Asian flavors)

Other books that might interest you:

"Irish Pantry" by Noel McMeel

"The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern" - Matt Lee and Ted Lee

"Real Cajun" by Donald Link

"Authentic Mexican" by Rick Bayless

"Fabio's Italian Kitchen" by Fabio Viviani

For Vegetarian try anything by Alice Waters or David Tanis.

Second the nomination of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

Good Eats fans with an interest in the science might like Shirley O. Corriher's Cookwise, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed. She was The Science Lady on the Good Eats show.

On Food and Cooking by McGee is the standard and was one of the earliest cookbooks to apply science to cooking. The latest version is excellent. It reads at times like a textbook but I swear that I've learned something useful from every single chapter in that book. I mostly use this as a reference now but well worth skimming if you enjoy science + cooking.

Japanese Soul Cooking: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1607743523?pc_redir=1414099212&robot_redir=1

I like Japanese cooking regardless, so the answer is yes I guess? It's always been just the idea though, I've never followed an anime's recipe specifically.


I will say, while I can't speak for how truly accurate it might be (not being Japanese), I love this cookbook. Recommended for anyone who is interested in the food, especially the sort of food you'll probably get if you ever ask someone "what should I eat when I'm in Japan?"

Unfortunately, despite being a bit of a foodie and a decent amateur cook, the best recipes I've made have been the most basic ones. I can make a pretty mean karaage and katsudon. My oyakodon always turns out strange, I don't think I cook the chicken quite right. And as much as I love stir fries, I don't have a gas stove so they're always just an approximation.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

Also add On Food and Cooking The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

Really great book going into detail about the science of cooking

On Food and Cooking is basically required reading.

It's fairly specific, but Japanese Cooking: a Simple Art has a ton of great info on Japanese food philosophy, seasonal dishes, and a bunch of knife and other techniques you don't get from many western texts.

Yep! I'm about to order Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

The code is good until Nov 28 at 11:59pm PST.

Note: links are to amazon though any library or used book will do.

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander

On War by Von Clausewitz

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky

Improving Performance: How to Manage the Whitespace in the Organization Chart by Geary Rummler

Books by Edward T. Hall

Books by Edward Tufte


Books by Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action by Donald Schön

let me know if you want more....

On Food and Cooking is a great way to learn what pairings and what flavors work together. Hope this helps!!

Speaking of McGee, what about his book On Food And Cooking

I would say to get How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman. While it's not vegan, it has tons of vegan recipes, and for most recipes with eggs or dairy he lists a substitution. It also has great starter info like how to cook beans, grains, tofu, tempeh, etc.

What this man speaks is true! In fact it is called How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. I own both and would agree it is an essential book series; it is written in a very minimalist approach to food. Check out the New York Times Bitten blog for a taste of his style.

Not to get all preachy, but a correct vegetarian diet shouldn't require supplements. I swear I'm not trying to be snarky here, but that supplement money would be much better spent on Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, worth every penny of the $20 bucks. And very approachable recipes, no fancy ingredients or techniques required.

[How to Cook Everything Vegetarian] (http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836)
This is pretty comprehensive. Bittman sets up a base for each recipe and then gives you 5 or 6 variations on it. Very straightforward and informative!

My meat eating husband and I have a very similar situation. He makes dinner once a week, sometimes he gets creative but usually it's fried egg sandwiches! If you like cooking and are interested in learning some Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is really great and will help you with tons of general cooking basics too. A go-to favorite of ours is this Black Bean Posole

It has been asked before, so do poke around a bit. But as always I'll recommend Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything as the best place to start. IMO he does a better job covering some of the really basic stuff like how to shop, easiest way to prepare x food, variants on x food, charts for flavors/combinations, etc. Really it's a great primer on HOW to cook and afterwards it's a handy reference.

I think Food Lab/Serious Eats is a better second cookbook because it's a bit less concerned with teaching the basics of a particular food, but a bit better at providing recipes that don't need tweaking. Bittman recipes are super simple but he really pushes you to adapt it to your taste, which in the end makes you a better cook. Food Lab is really into the science/method which is great, but IMO more complex than you need at the very beginning. The perfect burger, Kenji all day long, but WTF to do with that butcher cut you bought on sale, I prefer Bittman.

For a third cookbook, the Flavor Bible is also great.

>The next best thing to having Mark Bittman in the kitchen with you

Mark Bittman's highly acclaimed, bestselling book How to Cook Everything is an indispensable guide for any modern cook. With How to Cook Everything The Basics he reveals how truly easy it is to learn fundamental techniques and recipes. From dicing vegetables and roasting meat, to cooking building-block meals that include salads, soups, poultry, meats, fish, sides, and desserts, Bittman explains what every home cook, particularly novices, should know.

1,000 beautiful and instructive photographs throughout the book reveal key preparation details that make every dish inviting and accessible. With clear and straightforward directions, Bittman's practical tips and variation ideas, and visual cues that accompany each of the 185 recipes, cooking with How to Cook Everything The Basics is like having Bittman in the kitchen with you.

This is the essential teaching cookbook, with 1,000 photos illustrating every technique and recipe; the result is a comprehensive reference that’s both visually stunning and utterly practical.
Special Basics features scattered throughout simplify broad subjects with sections like “Think of Vegetables in Groups,” “How to Cook Any Grain,” and “5 Rules for Buying and Storing Seafood.”
600 demonstration photos each build on a step from the recipe to teach a core lesson, like “Cracking an Egg,” “Using Pasta Water,” “Recognizing Doneness,” and “Crimping the Pie Shut.”
Detailed notes appear in blue type near selected images. Here Mark highlights what to look for during a particular step and offers handy advice and other helpful asides.
Tips and variations let cooks hone their skills and be creative.


http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411914327&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is a good start along with The Joy of Cooking

You need to pick up a copy of How to Cook Everything. It has loads of practical advice and techniques in a user-friendly format.

Pot
Frying Pan
Strainer
Baking Dish
Can Opener
Wooden Spoon
Mixing Spoon
Microwave
Turner
Cutting Board
Chef's Knife
Paring Knife
*Measuring Spoons/Measuring Cups

I also highly recommend How to Cook Everything. It is a great resource and actually discusses this exact topic. He gives basic and advanced cooking instruction and tips. Great book.

I see some good advice people have already given you.

Here's mine:

1. Read recipes just for the sake of reading them: If you take pleasure in cooking, then reading recipes will be fun as well. Even if you don't make them, it gives you some general knowledge about cooking and different processes. It's a bit like picking up another language by watching movies or listening to music. Every bit helps. I have some cookbooks on my nightstand.
   
   
2. Books and resources I highly recommend:
   
   Buzzfeed's food section - lots of good advice and recipes there, amazing walkthroughs and tutorials, too, for all levels
   
   Epicurious's Quick and Easy Section
   
   Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals Jamie Oliver has a book and series out, showing you how to make an entire meal in 30 minutes. Sure, I think it might take you about an hour instead of 30 minutes, if you're new to cooking, but this series is geared towards simplicity and speed, while not making any compromises when it comes to cooking. The food IS delicious indeed. It's also full of great food hacks, useful even for advanced cooks. Get the book, I recommend it. (He also has another one, Jamie's 15 minute meals, with even simpler ones)
   
   Nigel Slater's Real Food and/or Appetite Two great books which show you how to cook simple, basic things at home, with a great twist. Bonus points: The guy is an amazing writer.
   
   Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything This one is a classic. Get it.
   
   Mark Bittman also has a famous series on youtube for the NYT here Check it out
   
   
   
3. Clean your workspace and prep your meal before you begin cooking. It will save you lots of time and frustration.
   
   
4. Clean as you go along. Nothing is more frustrating than cluttering your kitchen with dirty bowls and utensils until you have no space to move around. You spill something? Wipe it now.
   
   
5. Taste your food as you cook it. Goes without saying that you don't taste things like raw chicken until it's cooked, but taste and adjust seasonings always.
   
   
6. Master the basics first. I'd recommend mastering simple things like cooking eggs, grilled cheese, soups, pasta first. Then move on to more complex things, like doughs, etc.
   
   
7. Don't be afraid of herbs and spices. Read up on what the basic classic combinations are, then go crazy and experiment. You'll get the hang of it soon enough.
   
   
8. Eat what you've made, even if it isn't great, and think about how you can improve it next time. Is the bread too tough? Maybe you've added more flour than needed. Too bland? Add more salt next time, etc.
   
   
9. If you go into baking, be extremely careful with substitutions. Baking is an exact science, unlike cooking (mostly), so it's not very forgiving to swapping ingredients at leisure.
   
   
10. Weigh your ingredients (esp. when baking)
    
    
11. ENJOY and share your food with the people you love
    

I also agree with the idea of going to the library or bookshops to browse before you buy. But for many years, my absolute go to cookbook has been Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. If I could only have one cookbook, this would be it. I like simple approaches to cooking, and Mark writes in a way that makes even the most daunting recipes approachable. For the same reason, I'm a big fan of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks. They're written in the same way. If you ever get a chance to watch his early BBC series the Naked Chef it's wonderful. Technnology abounds however, and I find myself going more and more often to the wonderful and free New York Times Cooking app on my iPhone. Good Luck!

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is a great cookbook.

It's sorted by ingredient in addition to dish type, so you can seek out recipes using whatever meats/vegetables/etc are cheap for you. As well, the book lays out "base" recipes and then provides options for customization.

How to Cook Everything and made the best French Toast I have ever had.

How to Cook Everything, which is the best reference cookbook in the world, IMO

Amost Vegetarian, in which I find a ton of practical and useful recipes

Le Cordon Bleu At Home. If you follow all the recipes in order from beginning to end, you'll be a very knowledgeable home chef at the end of it. Some of them are very time consuming and quite difficult, but I found the lessons indispensable.

I love the Jerk Seasoning blend from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. In the book he recommends adding fresh garlic and ginger prior to use, but I don't have time for that shit so I just use the supermarket powdered versions. I triple his recipe and make it about once every three weeks.

Cooking with it: put 1-2 tablespoons per pound of bite-sized chicken in a plastic bag, shake, and let marinate for 3 to 24 hours. Pan fry with butter, then deglaze with chicken stock, or wine, or whatever, add more butter, and BAM. You have amazing jerk chicken with an amazing sauce. Or toss it in rice. Or toss it on veggies (great with broccoli). Or eat it plain. Whatever!

• 1 tsp (or a tiny bit less) ground nutmeg
  
  
• 1 tbs ground black pepper
  
  
• 1 tbs cayenne
  
  
• 1 tbs powdered garlic
  
  
• 2 tbs powdered allspice
  
  
• 2 tbs ground ginger
  
  
• 2 tbs dried thyme (it says to use a mortar and pestle on the thyme, but it works fine if you don't)
  
  
• 3 tbs paprika
  
  
• 3 tbs sugar
  
  
• 6 tbs salt
  
  This makes about 1 & 1/3 cups of seasoning, keep it in a mason jar or a zip lock bag. Lasts for weeks and is suuuuper easy to cook with.

You poor thing. I laughed so hard reading this. Bless him for trying.

Tell him tastes are subjective. Tell him that something he can eat and love... Might not be a hit with everyone.

Then, buy this book for him. Tell him you want to encourage him learning to cook new and different things. Tell him it was recommended by a chef.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Recipes-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

I applaud your giving his terrible cooking a chance. You are very sweet and must really care about him. Help him learn to cook, subtly. And watch Good Eats with him. He will learn a lot, and stop sucking at cooking to boot.

You want Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It won't turn you into a French Chef in a week, but you'll be learning how to cook, quarter your own whole chicken, make proper stock, sauces and staples, and do anything else that needs doing in your initial forays into cooking.

The old one has over 350 reviews, and it's a five star cookbook, but it's the 10th anniversary newest edition that you want to buy.

The New Best Recipe is by far the most useful book I use in the kitchen. It's big, over 1000 pages, but the recipes are simple, everyday food, meaning you will pull this book out everyday.

It's done by the people who put out Cook's Illustrated magazine and everything I have made from the book has been flawless.

Cooks Illustrated cookbook, this is one of my favorite books.

This is my favorite cook book for basic/general recipes!

There is, however, a book about DTG

There's actually a surprisingly fascinating book on the history of salt as an economy.

In addition to the response below, it was very common to have shallow pools near the ocean, such that high tide would fill the pools, then the water would evaporate during low tide and the salt would be harvested. (edit: whoops, I read the other comment quickly and missed that it touched on this as well. However, this was not only done at warm climates; the book outlines a harvesting operation on the coast of France)

It also discussed how important salt was to meat economies, for example the ability to salt cod when it was caught in the northern Atlantic Ocean, for transport all across Europe.

I read that in Roman times that salt was such a valuable commodity, that trying get enough salt to salt Carthage would have been such a massive economic undertaking that it probably never happened. It was more probably propaganda by the Romans as a warning never to fuck with them.

This was the book I found this tidbit of information in.

Also in the Roman times, pikes in the form that we know today, did not exist. The closest they had in that time period, was the Macedonian Sarissa.

History Nazi ftw?

There was a really well written book about salt and its' various uses, https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619, not exactly an essential to a prepper's library, but an interesting read.

Well, animals enjoy salt licks so people could see where they congregated and examine the area. Also salt changes vegetation patterns.

There is a great nonfiction book about human's relationship with salt by Mark Kurlansky. You could find that in the library and it would probably answer any other questions.

Slightly relevant and very fascinating is this book about salt: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

I think you would thoroughly enjoy the book ['Salt: A World History' by Mark Kurlansky] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142001619/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_JvsOAbCM36WBA)

www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

Found a special passage on you in here.

Michael Pollan's [The Omnivore's Dilemma] (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1324994963&sr=8-4)
[Freakonomics] (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324995084&sr=1-1)
Nathaniel Philbrick In the Heart of the Sea

Agree with others on Erik Larson, Mary Roach and Bill Bryson.

Corn subsidies and a minimum wage that isn't liveable. Have a watch of Food Inc. and a read (or listen to) The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

I think he gets the extreme importance of king corn.

When i read his book "The omnivores dilema",

http://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History/dp/0143038583http://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History/dp/0143038583


he spends a LOT of time going over corn's gigantic use levels in his books. from the difference between field corn and sweet corn to its use in tremendous amount of products and fast food to its use in additives. And then he also delves into feedlots and the massive corn use there.

he's very aware of the massive use of it currently.

you are right in that he seems stymied by what to do about that fact (If one considers current huge corn usage levels to be a "problem")

edit: It looks like that book is a little older though, so I might be assuming he still holds the same opinions that he did when he wrote that in 2007. He could possibly be more strident about things now and Im just not aware of his updated position.

I don’t know what the availability of ingredients will be like where you live, but Yotam Ottolenghis books are beautiful and a real lesson in new flavours and textures. I have this at home and feel inspired to cook every time I flick through it https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jerusalem-Yotam-Ottolenghi/dp/0091943744

Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking is wonderful and covers lots of basics and classics, although it doesn’t have photographs so could be a bit dry for him https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Boxed/dp/0307593525

If you’re raising the next Heston Blumenthal, this book will really help him understand how to combine flavours. It’s not a recipe book though, more of a guide on how to think of your own flavour combinations https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flavour-Thesaurus-Niki-Segnit/dp/0747599777

And finally, how about a personalised recipe book for him to make his own - something like this https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/473998816/free-personalized-recipe-book-wooden?ref=shop_home_feat_1

Hope he has a great birthday!

Catching Fire is a much more in-depth discussion of the topic by Richard Wrangham, who is mentioned in the article.

fungus_amungus gives a good overview why it works below.

Buy the book ON FOOD AND COOKING the science and lore of the kitchen by Harold McGee. It is fascinating

I haven't. I've got a bunch of science-y cookbooks.

Edit: Here is the best book I've found. It's a really heavy read, though: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

My other favorite, go to book is America's Test Kitchen Best American Classics. I also do recipe testing for ATK - regular recipes and gluten free.

Oh, and don't forget Michael Ruhlman's Ratio:The Simple Codes Behind The Craft of Everyday Cooking. This is the most amazing book. It's short and to the point as well. You begin to understand how a simple tweak to a recipe can create an entirely different dish.


I love how a great Mindcrack thread became a cooking thread. My 2 favorite things in life.

The book you want is [On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen] (http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=pd_sim_b_11) by Harold McGee, which is a classic for a reason! Start with that one, devour it, learn it, live it, love it.

Once you've done that, pick up a copy of The Science of Good Cooking from the hardworking angels at Cook's Illustrated and then a copy of The Flavor Bible as mentioned by /u/pjdias below.

The McGee Bible is probably the best food-science oriented cookbook ever written.

This Book is basically the same content but condensed and made more accessible, so its a good starting point if you don't want a huge doorstop of a book to page through.

Good Eats by Alton Brown is a pretty awesome how-to show that combines food science and comedy. poke around for full episodes if you can find them, its worth it.

as for podcast format...not sure if I've encountered a good one in strictly audio. maybe just look for books on tape?

Julia Child is great, but that really isn't the best resource. Have a look at these three books. Together they will tell you more than almost any other resources about French cuisine, recipes, technique, history, everything.

Larousse Gastronomique
http://www.amazon.com/New-Larousse-Gastronomique-Hamlyn/dp/0600620425/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

The Escoffier Cookbook
http://www.amazon.com/Escoffier-Cookbook-Guide-Fine-Cookery/dp/0517506629/ref=pd_sim_b_4

On Food and Cooking
http://www.amazon.com/On-Food-Cooking-Science-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=pd_sim_b_6

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (link goes to Amazon.com).

I exaggerated, though - it's only 896 pages. ;)

I dig you're enthusiasm but you're asking a broad question!

I'd recommend the following books to help answer your questions:

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of The Kitchen

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684800012

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking through Science

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393081087

On Food & Cooking is essentially an encyclopedia. An absolute must-have.

This:

​

https://www.amazon.ca/Food-Cooking-Harold-McGee/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549488177&sr=8-2&keywords=on+cooking

​

This is the most phenomenal cooking book I have ever read. It basically breaks down the science and history of almost every single food - there's chapters dedicated to eggs, milk, hundreds of pages on bread, etc.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

Whether it is actually better or not, that's highly debatable and according to taste. But the cuisine in London/ UK is not neglectable and has a very rich background.

One of the most influential chefs in the world such as Heston Blumenthal (which is largely inspired by Harold McGee, an American), Marco Pierre White (he partly wrote modern cuisine, also an awesome person to hear) and Michel Roux (both senior as junior) have worked their careers in the UK. Each of them have defined a part of cooking/ cuisine in their way.

Not to forget the Commonwealth as well indeed, which brought a lot to the UK.

Really been watching too much MasterChef UK/ Australia and to one of my cooking teachers who really loves to read about history/ science of food. Then again, it's awesome to hear and to know as food is a way of sharing love, express your creativity and bonds and is such an important aspect of our lives/ society/ culture.

Some books which are awesome and I also have in my collection are:

• The Fat Duck Cookbook (don't imagine creating a dish of it, it's more about the insight and the science behind the dishes as they are easily a couple of pages)
  
• On food and cooking
  
• The Devil in the Kitchen
  
• Kitchen Confidential
  
  Honestly, couldn't forget the latter of course.

The New Best Recipe by Cook's Illustrated Magazine

They test each recipe many times until they get it perfect.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-All-New/dp/0936184744/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280507588&sr=1-1

Unless you have $500 to drop on Modernist Cuisine, On Food and Cooking is as good as it gets.

oooh thanks!

Is he the dude who wrote the stupidly expensive science of cooking books? (seems not but similar concept...) If I at somepoint in my life I happen to have £400 free and accessible I think they'd be a very interesting read!

It's from the book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

Freakonomics blogpost

Amazon OOP page for book

The mac and cheese recipe from Modernist Cusiine is supposed to be phenomenal.

>As for the mac & cheese: it was both the best and the easiest I've ever made. No gloppy sauce, remarkably intense cheese flavor (you get the "flavor release" concept when you eat it), and the pasta absorbs it thoroughly.

Basically, the difficulty in mac and cheese is that you want the cheese to be both creamy/melty and delicious. The problem is, there isn't much overlap there. Cheeses that melt really well aren't delicious (Velveeta) and cheeses that are delicious don't remain creamy when melted (Cheddar, Gouda, etc).

The typical solution to this is to take good cheese, and then use some roux to add to the melted cheese to make it creamy. This works (as is evident in her recipe). However, it's not perfect. You need a fair amount of roux which dilutes the flavor of the cheese.

Nathan Myhyrvold and his team avoid using the roux by creating an emulsification of the cheese by melting it with beer, iota carrageenan and sodium citrate. That pretty much turns whatever cheese blend you are using into something that melts like Velveeta. They use similar techniques to make home made cheeze whiz out of real cheese.

The end product people are describing as steps beyond any other mac and cheese they've ever had in terms of the cheese flavor. There is also a 'flavor release' that everyone mentions that makes sense when you try it.

I'd give you first hand impressions but Amazon hasn't shipped my book yet :(

If you have a limitless budget, Modernist Cuisine is great. It's a 5 book collection and the photography is beautiful. The first book is about history and fundamentals. The whole series is incredibly thorough, bordering on obsessive.

Cooking does have similar parrallels to science. I graduated with a degree in molecular biology and cooking is definitely a favorite hobby of mine. however, the concept of learning the theory of cooking has only been relatively recent because it has been largely looked down on as "women's work" for a long time.

plus I dare you to read modernist cuisine and not get a science boner

Also chemistry is basically applied physics as well so if you're going with that argument then chemistry must not be a science in your eyes either.

I would get you this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

It's a pretty large book (6 volumes, ~300 pages each) and thus the chapter on food safety is itself pretty extensive.

Long story short, there are ways to calculate the remaining proportion of bacteria relative to initial amounts. A 6.5D reduction means there are 1/10^6.5 times the amount of bacteria in the item after cooking, a number which is considered safe.

FDA cooking temperatures and times disregard that, and instead specify temperatures that are way too high, leading to dry and bland meats.

Screenshot of a relevant graph. The grey line is the 6.5D threshold.

If you want, the book is available on Amazon or on more "shady" websites.

If you would like to learn about the science behind cooking and a lot of neat pictures to learn just about everything about cooking I would recommend Modernist Cuisine. You can probably pick up a copy of the whole set for pretty cheap used. It covers pretty much everything you can imagine.

http://modernistcuisine.com/


http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Home-Nathan-Myhrvold/dp/0982761015

Also, I would mention that Modernist Cuisine at Home is an awesome book. It has some awesome recipes and the techniques they use have helped me in other areas of my cooking.

Also, does your husband have a sous vide? If not, I would ABSOLUTELY start with a sous vide. It's not as gimmicky as some of the other molecular gastronomy things and it has so many applications that it will become a staple in his kitchen as it has mine. I personally love the Anova Sous Vide, I have two of them. If you want to find out more about sous vide (used by Heston at Fat Duck and Thomas Keller at the French Laundry) check out /r/sousvide. Lots of great ideas and techniques just in that sub alone. Hit me up if you have any more questions.

Yes they should!

Hnnng, JB0212's came 5 days earlier than expected.... Leaving work earlier to wait for the FedEx guy is justifiable, right?

I'm also totally going to find out if my local B&N has this amazing cookbook

I freak out about things all if the time. Once I got my bag stolen and it contained all of my credit cards and my debut card, and even my ssn. I freaked out. I had no method of calming down, besides trying to reason with my emotions and tell them it isn't the end if the world, because it isn't. It never works though so I end up just riding it out. Sometimes that's all you can do.

I find this cookbook random, hilarious, and awesome.

I graduate soon too, and I totally understand. My dad tells me "you will always be paying bills, it's a fact of life, so don't sweat it." I think he's right. Bills will always be there. After your school bills it will be a mortgage or a car...it's always something. So don't worry and be happy, there are a lot of other things in life to be happy about. :) it isn't the end of the world. It may seem overwhelming right now but it'll work itself out when it happens. Just remember no one is going to come break your kneecaps over it or anything.
If it's less about bills and more about just life after college in general, then sorry for misunderstanding. But seriously, if it isn't life threatening, don't sweat it. :) at least, try not to.

Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff.

Cookin' with Coolio has some solid cooking advice.

"Everything I cook tastes better than yo' momma's nipples."

I'm pretty sure he had a cookbook long ago

Edit: Published in 2009 apparently.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439117616/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_PA7YBb2DDYHYB

You wouldn't be incorrect

Can cook it yourself with this awesome book.

Pretty funny read too.

I always had fun showing people this book when I worked at Borders. Surprisingly quite a few of them bought it. I just don't think they thought it was an actual cookbook, but it is, written in some rather saucy language to boot.

If you're serious, y'all need a copy of "Cooking with Coolio". It is as awesome as it sounds. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616

You could go with the Moosewood Cookbook (which is mostly veg). here's the wiki page on it.

Other than that, he needs to learn technique, like shinerhead said. A pan seared chicken breast served over a salad doesn't sound hard, but making it taste good does. he'll have to learn about nutrition too. Maybe you could get him Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking too. Along with Alton Brown, it's gotten me the most interested in food.

> They too have the fresh cut fries. Delicious, delicious heart attack bait right there.

Well, if Alton Brown is to be believed, those kind of fries are actually healthier than mainstream, McFried fare. Properly cooked, thick cut fries, absorb less cooking oil per ounce than the slim ones do. (Especially if the oil pull out is timed correctly, which is more likely at a mom & pop or small chain than the conglomerated, undertraining places most people eat fried food at any more...)

This is how I did it a few years ago.

Read alton brown's book, I'm just here for the food

http://www.amazon.com/Im-Just-Here-Food-Cooking/dp/1584790830

Which will teach you the basics and what you're trying to accomplish by using different cooking methods. It greatly increased my confidence in the kitchen. Also check out his good eats series.

Also I think a decent meat thermometer
Is a great purchase as it takes the guess work out of when meat is done cooking, is supremely useful for beginners, and something you'll be able to use forever.


http://www.thermoworks.com/products/thermapen/

The thermapen is the one I got but expensive but worth it.

Subscribe to a bunch of cooking subreddits.

And I'm gonna suggest something different now instead of buying a set list of things you need to cook anything.

Instead, I suggest finding something you really enjoy eating like something you're an expert on eating at restaurants, I chose burgers, you can do pizza, or spaghetti, hot wings whatever. Then go on seriouseats.com and find the appropriate recipe. Idea is to choose something you have an idea of how it's supposed to taste and like enough to cook a few different versions of. Then you buy the few things you need to cook that thing. A cast iron pot, a metal spatula whatever. And you learn how to do things/buy equipment as needed for various recipes related to it. For example you may learn how to sautée and Carmelize onions for a burger recipe.

Cook with someone else, it's way more fun, is a great date idea, doesn't matter if it's the blind leading the blind or someone that you can learn a lot from. It'll make you more comfortable in the kitchen.

Finally, you'll have to pay your dues for a little bit, I used to hate cooking, everything takes way longer then it should, you make a big mess, things don't work out like you planned, but pretty soon you make things that turn out great every once in a while. You still mess up occasionally, but you'll start learning why things don't turn out well and you'll start being able to save things if you make a mistake. Now that I'm pretty good at it I sort of enjoy it.

Probably the cheapest and healthiest cooking is a high heat saute of vegetables and a protein. Buy a Lodge 10-12" cast iron pan, a sharp knife and cutting board, and a good cooking oil and you will be good to go.

Cut up most veggies into small bite sized bits and toss in a pre-heated pan with less than a Tbs of oil. Make sure to season with a bit of iodized salt and don't stir too often.

But yeah, like /u/Khatib said, check out Alton Brown's book I'm Just Here for the Food. It will explain the techniques of cooking with heat. Master the Saute and you are all set!

Alton Brown: I'm Just Here for the Food. I read it cover to cover like I would any other book.
http://www.amazon.com/Im-Just-Here-Food-Cooking/dp/1584790830
I've got a copy of the Larousse Gastronomique, it's amazing.

Probably this

Gonna hijack a top comment here to give a plug for one of the most useful books I've ever owned, Gear For Your Kitchen. When I moved into my first real home after college and decided to make my kitchen a priority, Alton's book helped me to choose what kitchen tools to focus on and what to skimp on or what to avoid entirely.

Alton Brown has a rule - no uni-taskers!

His book on kitchen utensils fucking rocks!
http://www.amazon.com/Alton-Browns-Gear-Your-Kitchen/dp/1584796960

I fell in love with his cooking show after borrowing this book from a friend. Good stuff!

>Dude here.

Ditto.

> bride multitasking her way to a mental breakdown and groom just trying not to get yelled at.

Bingo.

>we are there to not fuck things up.

At first I was told my responsibility was to show up (mostly) sober and dressed.

> I'd wager he wants to be more involved too but doesn't know how.

See: and groom just trying not to get yelled at.

I like the idea of the weekly meeting, but getting closer I think that time frame would probably have to be shortened a bit. I know it was hard for her to get me involved, but like you suggest she found the things I was comfortable with and put those with me. Thankfully it wasn't anything I could really screw up either.

It started with something very basic: stuffing and sealing the various envelopes. From there she added picking up specific items from certain stores (texted to me so I could check numbers and such). I am at the point of building/painting pieces needed for the reception, printing stuff, and even helping to register (partial thanks to Alton).

It's all stuff that I am more than capable of dealing with on my own, but when you add in the complications of budgets and schedules and all that other stuff (like making sure she is happy) it can be overwhelming at times.

>I'd go Death on the Nile

Second, but just because I like the style.

This was read by Michael Pollan who wrote a book (The Omnivore's Dilemma) which is a pretty good narrative and comparison in what actually happens in industrial food (from the grain, to the meat, to the table), organic industry, sustainable farming and hunting/gathering your own food. It's well researched and very well written.

Another book that's also similar in topic, but specific to the history and current operations of industrial foods is Salt, Sugar, Fat. I would recommend both.

Edit: I think a lot of people are missing the point of the video. It's not about industrial food = bad. It's about having a relationship with the food that you eat, to treat it as an experience rather than calories. Seriously, try cooking! It's very rewarding when you happen to make something delicious and enjoy it by yourself or with others.

This is stated almost exactly in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Why the news flash (not even new at the time!) didn't reach the public discourse when this book hit the bestseller lists seven years ago--that's beyond me.

You should read this, but tl;dr, we (the taxpayer) are subsidizing food and food-creation processes that are unsustainable.

One doesn't need to be an animal rights activist to believe that killing (especially in job lots) should be done in as painless and efficient a manner as we are capable of. We owe that not only to the animals we've raised as part of our food supply but also to ourselves since we are the ones who have to live with what we've done (and are doing).

If you haven't already read it, take a look at Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma for elaboration.

Michael Pollan rocks, I'm in the process of finishing up Omnivore's Dilemma and I'm going for In Defense of Food next. You should check out OD too.

Don't blame Carter.

The large farm bill changes that built our corn empire happened under the Nixon administration, not Carter. Earl Butz (who was interviewed in the film) was one of the principle people who changed reimbursement metrics to be based on bushels/acre yield. He was appointed Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon and continued the position under Ford. For more information, please read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma.

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz

For Thai I recommend Pok Pok by Andy Ricker https://www.amazon.com/Pok-Stories-Roadside-Restaurants-Thailand/dp/1607742888

Fuschia Dunlop is a good source for Chinese food. Her published recipe for Kung Pao Chicken is pretty killer. Eileen Yin-Fi Lo is also a well respected Chinese recipe author, check out My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen.

For Thai Food, Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is pretty interesting (and the restaurants are pretty awesome). There's also a tome, simply called Thai Food from David Thompson, as an outsider, looks complete and exhaustive (it's also daunting to me, but nice to have).

Hot Sour Salty Sweet also features Thai (as well as other SE Asian flavors). And I really like Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges as a more upscale cookbook.

Also, I find this little, unsung book to be a great resource. It has fairly simple recipes that can yield some nice flavors, great for weeknight dishes.

And, Momofuku is a fun contemporary twist with some good basics, but it's not a beginner book by any stretch!

Finally, The Slanted Door is on my wishlist. Looks divine.

Any of the America's Test Kitchen cookbooks are fantastic for people learning how to cook. My boyfriend, like you, was a sandwich-pasta-burrito guy before these cookbooks. Now he can turn out a mean baked ziti and a pan of brownies :)

They've tested recipes extensively to find the easiest ways to create the most delicious, flavorful, fail-free versions of favorite foods. For each recipe, they describe the most common pitfalls of a recipe and how they avoid them, provide helpful illustrations, and make suggestions for the best cookware and ingredients to purchase (if you don't already have them). They most often do not recommend the most expensive option ;)

I recommend the Skillet cookbook and the New Best Recipe for starters.

There is a cookbook called The New Best Recipe that has lots of amazing recipes. Also, they tell you all the different versions of each recipe they tried and why their certain recipe works best.

I highly recommend "The New Best Recipe". It applies a laboratory method to cooking and, backed by America's Test Kitchen, they almost always vet their recipes thoroughly. It's also fun to read when you're not cooking, so that's a major plus.

But to get the best grip on everything, try "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking".

These two tomes will have you a pro about the kitchen in no time.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0936184744/

The New Best Recipe is one I don't see recommended as often, but explains the process they went through to get the recipe they ended up with. Everything I've made from it has been delicious, and it explains things very clearly.

Sure, no problem! Here are some of my favorite resources.

The web site SeriousEats.com has a lot of good posts. Specifically, I like this guy's work. He puts in the research to really refine techniques. Some of this is cooking is "elaborate," but not overly so:
http://www.seriouseats.com/user/profile/Goodeaterkenji

And, he has a really good cook book:
http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab

https://www.chefsteps.com/ is amazing. You want elaborate? This is the place. there's even a term for it: modernist cuisine. These guys have a lot of free content, but there's also a premium membership (one time purchase) which gets you access to a vast amount of videos, with more being made all the time.

Here is a related cookbook, which is stellar:
http://modernistcuisine.com/books/modernist-cuisine-at-home/

The above book is the "at home" version. This is the FULL version, including recipes that require lab equipment like centrifuges! You want elaborate? This is the pinnacle of elaborate cooking. Yes, it is like $500!
https://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

Into BBQ or grilling? Meathead's your man and his site is full of no-BS guides. He also has a cookbook but just the site will keep you busy for a long time:
http://amazingribs.com/

If you want to get started in fancier cooking I strongly recommend getting a sous vide apparatus, such as this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Sansaire-Sous-Immersion-Circulator-Black/dp/B00KSFAB74

Sous vide is an entirely new (to you!) way to cook and you can do things with it that are not possible in other ways. All of the "modernist" cooking guides out there use it heavily. There are many options for the hardware at all price points... Anova gear sometimes goes on sale for $100-150.

Here's a specific easy modernist recipe you can try. It benefits from, but does not require, a sous vide machine... they tell you how to make do without one. If you think this looks fun, ChefSteps will be your new addiction.

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/sous-vide-salmon--2

Over $400 on Amazon

It might not sound like it makes sense what BaconGiveMeALardon said, but it's true. If you can get your hands on Modernist Cuisine then you can read more about cooking with woks. To sum it up, you need a lot of heat all the time. The Veggies on the bottom cook really fast, as soon as they are in contact with the metal. If you aren't careful, you can burn the food easily. That's why wok cookers always toss the food in the air, that way the hot steam also cooks the veggies higher up while at the same time not letting those on the bottom burn. Here's a pic I found from the book detailing the way a wok cooks food. You have to basically heat up the skillet to around 750 °C / 1400 F, and for that you need a flame 25 times more powerful than a typical home appliance can offer.

For a long time I tried to figure out a way to get wok cooking done at home. I thought of buying a portable wok cooking system hooked up to a propane tank. That was too much of a hassle, though. I will have to enjoy woked meals in restaurants, I suppose.

I have not listened to this particular episode of This American Life. I pretty much know little to nothing about this Nathan Myhrvold. With that said however, I do want to point out that this particular guy's downfalls may not necessarily contribute to the actual content of these books. From a strictly culinary point of view, his books have been endorsed/advertised by the likes of Ferran Adria, David Chang, Wylie Dufresne, and Harold McGee (yes, the same person that everyone has offered as an alternative to this book). These are chefs that a lot of "foodies" highly regard so their opinions might attest to the quality of these books? Also, this may be a stretch but Heigegger's morally questionable life decisions does not necessarily detract from how great some of his philosophical works were.

Nathan Myhrvold (Microsoft CTO turned food scientist) just came out with his self published Modernist Cuisine.

Each copy uses 4 pounds of ink.

You might want to pick it up if you have $500 laying around.

It should be molecular gastronomariffic.

Do you mean Modernist Cuisine? That came out in 2011.

• Buy Modernist Cuisine ($507).
  
• Resell on eBay for 10% off.
  
• Profit.

http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

Another book set you might consider is:
Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine.

Wikipedia Link

Amazon Link

The modernist cuisine cookbook series. I don't even ever expect to own this, but it is sooo tempting.

Any of the Thomas Keller books, French Laundry, Ad Hoc at Home, Bouchon, and Bouchon Bakery. The only one you'd probably want to avoid is Under Pressure.

Also, Heston at Home and In Search of Perfection are great books.

If you're into southern food, check out Sean Brock's Heritage and Ed Lee's Smoke & Pickles.

Finally, I'd suggest Modernist Cuisine at Home if you're up for splurging.

this is the tome you want to elevate your meals to the Next Level. Mind you, it requires a sous vide machine & vacuum sealer.

You can never go wrong when you cook with Coolio

He's not the only rapper to have his own cookbook remember this jem? http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616

I remember when Coolio got all pissed off at Weird Al for doing Amish Paradise. He got all offended and said it degraded the song that said something he felt strongly about. Odd, seeing how its basically a straight rip-off from Stevie.

sort of relevant - http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Coolio-Star-Meals-Price/dp/1439117616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321458851&sr=8-1

My brother gave me the best christmas present

Cookin' With Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price

Well there’s always Cookin With Coolio if you’ve always wanted to measure things in “dime bags of salt.” Great for kids and the whole family.

I've patiently awaited the opportunity to share this.

Moosewood Cookbook

Check out your library or more nefarious channels to get a copy of Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. Not all is vegan, but vegetarian.
Her recipes are fantastic and stress fresh ingredients.

I like Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For the Food.

I realize that this doesn't exactly answer your question, but rather than focus on specific recipes, I would suggest that you learn all you can about the various cooking methods. Alton Brown does a nice job disucssing this in his first book, I'm Just Here for the Food. It's a fairly easy read for the basic cook. When you have an understanding of the science behind cooking, or why different foods react the way they do to different cooking methods, you've given your cooking skills a tremendous boost. Other resources I highly recommend are the publications of Cooks Illustrated and anything by Harold McGee.

DM me your mailing address. I’ll send you the cookbook that got me into cooking. https://www.amazon.com/Im-Just-Here-Food-Cooking/dp/1584790830
It’s the “why” not just the “do”. Once you understand, you can start to create/experiment.

Alton Brown changed my life.

I'm Just Here for the Food. Between that and The Bread Baker's Apprentice I can pretend to be a pretty decent cook.

Thanks to /u/compto35 for the link!

No, but Food + Heat = Cooking is Alton's book. It's basically the show in book form and exactly like what OP is looking for.

There is a subreddit /r/fitmeals that has lots of recipes already. I've subscribed to get ideas and recipes from there.

As for leftover veggies, I make stir-fry and risotto with them. There are lots of base recipes out there that show you the basics of making these dishes that you can build upon and add other ingredients to customize.

Oh and I also like the book by Alton Brown, 'I'm just here for the Food: Heat + Food = Cooking.' it really walks you through basics of creating meals.

What you should really do is get comfortable with the basics. How to properly season a piece of beef or fish, and how to actually cook it well.

Do this by trying things out - get a sense of how the meat should look / feel when it's time to flip it, rotate it, let it rest, etc.... Once you have that down, it's just fun to experiment with new things.

This book was actually really interesting, if for no other reason than Alton Brown is informative. Best of luck to you.

Alton Brown has a book called "gear for your kitchen" that is packed full of practical advice for selecting appropriate tools for a kitchen - I personally think it's a great resource. You can probably find it at your local library, or here's an amazon link.

My wife picked it up as a gift for me a few years ago and I read it cover to cover. I still pull it out when I'm in the market for a new device because he goes over what features are desirable/worth paying for and what features are shiny gimmicks.

And I forgot roasting pan. That's another one I use a lot, and you can find them cheap at restaurant-supply stores. And a steamer insert for your stockpot, if you like steamed veggies.

And I should add all I learned about kitchen gear, I learned from Alton Brown. His book, Gear for your Kitchen is awesome - it runs through all of the major things you might want, for all tasks from cooking, to baking, to small appliances. He believes in using cheap alternatives to pricey stuff (like using a block of a certain kind of tile from a home store as opposed to an expensive pizza stone).

I would recommend Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen. He's a huge fan of multitasking kitchen instruments and he really goes through what you need and what you don't. Probably not "minimalist" standards by any means, but it might help you.

Our family does a white elephant exchange where none of the gifts are allowed to be purchased (must find stuff lying around in your house). This year I ended up with a bunch of wire hangars. My husband? Signed copy of "Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen". The giver said, "I found this in a dumpster, saw it was in good condition, but I didn't know who Alton Brown was."

Seriously? Fuck ramen.

Learning how to cook will serve you well for the rest of your life. Better nutrition, less money, better taste, and everybody loves good food.

Get a copy of The Joy of Cooking for a compendium of awesome and some Alton, Brown, Books, to learn what equipment you need and how to cook.

(Commas to annoy Nazi's and show there are multiple links)

I'm a mathematics major working in computer science who reads anything that isn't nailed down and is very active in the SCA (historical re-enactment).

I basically stumbled onto this without looking for it. I got bits and pieces from books about other topics entirely and had an epiphany.

Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs And Steel" is about the history of warfare and spends a few chapters talking about how agriculture is a very important weapon of war. It compares and contrasts the ability of nomadic and agrarian peoples to store calories and how that in turn dictates the range of their raiding bands. An army, after all, runs on its stomach and logistics is critical. In doing this it spent some time talking about how nomadic people's collect food and a few pages noting that women do most of that. Which was the exact opposite of what I'd thought to be the case because - like everyone else - I'd been immersed in popular culture that worships hunting and assumes men have always played the economic roles they play today.

That prompted me to dig deeper into that leading to reading various studies about how aboriginals spend their time to validate Diamond's claims and they confirmed him. The Grandmother Hypothesis and studies showing health and survivability of primitive children are not correlated with having a father but strongly correlated with having a maternal grandmother pretty much nailed it and completely shifted my view.

What got me thinking about the definitions of hunting and gathering was that there doesn't appear to be a solid agreed upon scientific definition for them. I'd look specifically for examples of women hunting out of curiosity and when I'd find them ... I would disagree with the papers. Sure, Mardu women bring home a lot of meat. Their environment is chock full of lizards. Lizards everywhere. You can't swing a basket without having it fill up with lizards. Is that "hunting"? ... No ... I don't think so. And this author counts fishing as hunting(in a tribe where men do it a lot) while that author counts it as gathering(in a tribe where women do it a lot) and that author puts it in a third category entirely ... there is some obvious bullshittery going on here but I myself couldn't decide if its hunting or gathering.

Then I read The Omnivores Dilemma and it has a chapter on mushroom hunting. The author described in great detail the massive difference between harvesting domesticated plants ... plants that want us to take their fruits ... and hunting wild plants that don't want to be found by us. He ardently defended the term "hunting" over "gathering" for seeking out wild truffles by describing the difficulty he experienced in doing it.

That made it click. The difference between hunting and gathering is the likelihood of failure. Once I applied that definition to it it became very easy to classify a given activity as hunting or gathering.

SCA life, as well, makes you realize that the past is a different time with different social dynamics. Being in a space with lots of people who practice traditional crafts and seeing how their work is respected contrasts hugely with modern life. In modern life we look at a sweater knitted by your grandma as a crappy horrible gift that you only wear when visiting grandma to make her feel good. In the SCA there are people who spend entire events chatting by a fire while spinning thread or weaving clothe and they are immensely popular with a queue of people a mile long who want some of their output to make garb with. Their work is highly valued and grants them high social status. I'd be perfectly happy with the "traditional" division of labor if women's work paid as well and had the same social status it had before we mechanized it.

Edit It took about two years between starting to think about it in GG&S and having the epihphany while reading Omnivores Dilemma. Another important book in the middle was Mismeasure of Man. Its about the junk science people engage in when trying to justify the current social order. By focusing on historical divisions that are no longer sensitive subjects (like today in america we think of a person of English descent and a person of Irish descent simply as White whereas once this was a bitter divide with english people comparing irish people to animals and insisting they were inherently less intelligent etc) it is able to highlight just how stupid people can be when trying to "scientifically prove" that the dominant social group is dominant because of inherent superiority. The reason I remember the Mardu paper so clearly is that I read it right after Mismeasure and having just read Mismeasure the political agenda of the Mardu paper author was painfully obvious. It was clear the author was pushing a feminist agenda by trying to get women in on the mantle of hunting. See! Women hunt too! Look at these women hunting! I could see how I wanted to jump on that train and shout, "Women hunt too!" but I was also painfully aware how if I did I'd look as silly as the people who Wanted To Believe papers dissected in Mismeasure because the argument wouldn't convince anyone who didn't want it to be true already. The things we honor, idealize, and romanticize about hunting ... simply don't apply to picking lizards up off the ground and eating them. That they are made of meat is a technicality. I couldn't articulate why it wasn't really hunting yet, but I knew I wasn't happy with calling it hunting and felt drawing attention to the Hunting Women of the Mardu was a bad political argument.

Off the top of my head:

The Psychopath Test is a wittily written personal study of detecting, treating and (possibly) rehabilitating psychopaths.

The Freakonomics books are written by both an economist and a journalist (so easy to read) and contain slightly left-of-centre economic theories with easy to follow research. These are excellent.

The Omnivores Dilemma is both engaging and though provoking. It's All about the production of food in the modern age. In particular, four different meals.

The Code Book is one of my all-time favourites. As the title suggests it's about all forms of cryptography. If you have a mathematical bent I also like Singh's book about Fermat's Enigma).

A bit longer, but all are solid suggestions, and although I could add two dozen more, I'm sure others will take up the cause.

• What the dog saw, by Malcolm Gladwell
  
  
• Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre
  
  
• 
  God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
  
  
• The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris
  
  
• The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein
  
  
• Super Freakonomics, by Levitt & Dubner
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
  
  
• The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin
  
  
• The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel
  
  
  

On an industrial scale, probably yes. On a small scale, it's more productive than ag farms.

Also, typically only outputs are considered - inputs like fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are considered to be free, or that their enviromental impact (externalities like soil erosion, nitrate leaching, stream poisoning, etc) do not exist.

You may want to read The omnivore's dilemma. There's a chapter on farming the permaculture way, and how the efficiency, acre per acre, is better than the neighboring industrial farms.

Many people would have to return to the land, for it to be so. It's not a 'sexy' profession, and modern man is disconnected from what sustents him, but one way or the other, it'll happen.

In my view, there is a huge disconnect between people and food in general (not just meat-eaters). A majority of people just do not realize what it takes to get food on the table and the process that goes into it. Our ease of access to food has a lot to do with it. Worse, because of the need to meet such a high demand for consistent food, we've been accustomed to eating the metaphorical pink slime that is/was chicken mcnuggets-type foods.

I think it's contradictory when people get squeamish during dissections or seeing a butcher/farmer do their work, but have no problem engulfing a whopper, some ribs, or a steak. Just my view.

A book I found really interesting was Omnivore's Dilemma and the typical documentaries like Food Inc are a good watch as well as long as you remember to not take everything they say fact or the norm and look past the sensationalism.

Thai

http://www.amazon.com/Thai-Food-David-Thompson/dp/1580084621

http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Thai-Food-Classic-Recipes/dp/1607745232

http://www.amazon.com/Pok-Stories-Roadside-Restaurants-Thailand/dp/1607742888

Andy Ricker's Pok Pok: Food and Stories from the Streets, Homes, and Roadside Restaurants of Thailand is a very accessible book that is well regarded as a good take on Thai cuisine.

Andrea Nguyen is a similarly excellent resource on Vietnamese food and cooking.

If you like to learn about the science behind your food, I strongly recommend On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

It's like an encyclopedia full of fascinating facts about food or cooking techniques, and it even manages to be a good read as well.

I think it's that they've got fancy machines to completely dry and pasteurize it.

I don't think it's preservatives, as an example, golden grains website says their ingredients are:
>DURUM SEMOLINA, NIACIN, FERROUS SULFATE (IRON), THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID.

I'm pretty sure the iron and B vitamins are there as nutritional fortification, not as preservatives.

this guy has a bunch to say about it, including:
>Commercial durum pasta is put through a more rigorous process of rapid, high-temperature pre-drying, followed by extended drying and resting steps. As Harold McGee explains in On Food and Cooking, the high-temperature method prevents discoloration and “cross-links some of the gluten protein and produces a firmer, less sticky cooked noodle.”

I've got that McGee book but I'm too lazy to go get it and find/read that chapter at the moment - I might later though, since now you've got me wondering about it too,

Harold McGee has you covered.
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

Best of luck.

Don't forget to get your copy of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

The heat and movement of air will remove far more moisture than is created by combustion.

More humid air, which moves, will remove more moisture from a surface than dry, still air. It is the venting specifically which causes this increased air movement, and thus the removal of more moisture from the surface of the food.

My main source for all cooking related science is On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, which is about the science behind all the chemical reactions behind cooking, the biochemical makeup of foods, and chemically speaking why the procedures we follow in cooking work the way they do. It also covers quite a bit of culinary history.

The Flavor Bible is a good one, but you might also want to check out Harold McGee's On Food And Cooking. It's pretty much the food science bible.

Are you talking aboutOn Food and Cooking?Also a great book!

if you (or anyone) would like to know more, best book ever: http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

edit: for instance (I think this link will work), http://books.google.com/books?id=bKVCtH4AjwgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA148#v=onepage

• nap cuddle blanket
  
  
• Fenix Flashlight
  
  
• On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

Jaques Pépin's Complete Techniques

and On Food and Cooking (not really a cookbook, but I think it's the most important book for anyone who is serious about food)

You'd be surprised; milk is exceedingly resilient to heat. You can literally cook all the water out of it without the proteins denaturing.

At higher heats it becomes easier for the milk to spoil, but there still generally needs to be an acid.

If you're interested in food science at all.

ya, they only talk about proteins in that the capsaicin bonds to the specific protein TRPV1 that makes your neurons sense spicy or hot; now tasty is another thing entirely :)



Harold McGee writes some cool shit on food science. It's how I learned to cook in the first place. Here's my favorite.

Gotta go with On Food and Cooking by McGee.

>Still no progress. Am leaving either tomorrow or Thursday for the Carolinas on a documentation trip. Hopefully I can get an interview up there while I'm out. I probably won't. Also, I told off a company for writing me off prematurely.

good luck!

>Pursuant to 1, obviously going nowhere. That said, I've done more travel this year than I have since 2003.

I live with my aunt and uncle. Living at home is pretty much normal for kids our age. Out of my 5 closest friends, only 2 live on their own. One is in Iraq the other is in Med School.

>3 Start paying off my massive debts.

I hear you there. Good luck I hope your father's cancer goes into remission. My dad died of a stroke in 2003. A parent's death is never ever good for mental health/financial stability.

>I'm down to 194.2 naked from a max at 252. I'm also just back from a 6 mile walk, which is what I'm up to now each day.

Keep up the good fucking work. I went from 230-169 over two years. Most of it was not eating so much. The last 20lbs was from dedicated exercise. You can do it if I can. Its all about willpower. I used Sparkpeople.com to track my calories. You really don't need as much food as you think you do. Swimming is the best exercise for sculpting body muscles and losing weight fast.

>5 Learn to cook.
Get On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of Food Its an entertaining read which allows you to understand the foundation of cooking so you can wing your own recipes based on your knowledge of the underlying chemistry.

you might enjoy investing in this book

This is a great place to start:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684800012/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510944820&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=mcgee+on+food+and+cooking&dpPl=1&dpID=51qudKbLmaL&ref=plSrch

This is a great book on the science of cooking/baking: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684800012/ref=aw_d_dsc_books

Sry...don't find a lot of time to post. And as far as finding ur post... I went looking for it. I cook a lot of proteins and I wanted to see what reddit had to say about chicken breast. It can be very unforgiving, but when done correctly it is an amazing meat. NOW, to address you concerns about nutrition. Yes, brining does increase the sodium level a bit, but lets face it, chicken needs a little help and when you brine its just les salt you will need to add when you season. If you have high blood pressure you may want to watch you sodium intake. Here is a site that attemps to tackel the "how much sodium does a brine add?" Question ( http://www.salon.com/2010/03/23/brining_meats_sodium_add_calculation/) . As far as brining subtracting any nutritional value; I would say, no, it does not measurably reduce nutrition. In my opinion overall; brining a chicken breast as part of my meal is far more delicious and healthy than ordering fast food (and less sodium). If creating a chicken breast meal that makes you want to continue cooking keeps you from ordering take out its a win. As far as my experience... I am just a home cook that grew up in a home that didnt know how to cook. At some point a the family of one of my friends started inviting me to dine with them at some very expensive restaurants. IT BLEW MY MIND!... I had no idea food could be that good. From that point on I made my mission to give food the respect it deserves. I read took the scientific approach, ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684800012/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/189-1398983-1145564) read the cooking bible over and over and watch guys like alton brown ( http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKr1rByVVCI).

Highly recommend these two books:

How to Grill

Weber's Way to Grill

As someone with too many cookbooks for her own good, here are some of my favorites.

I am not a vegetarian, but Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is the book that made me love vegetables. She doesn't approach vegetarian cooking in the way lots of people do, where you just substitute or omit meat from a dish, but creates recipes that center around and bring out the best from vegetables.

Gourmet Today is a huge book culled from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine. It's a good all-around resource with (as the title implies) a modern American bent to its recipes.

Steven Raichlen's How to Grill transformed me from a charcoal-shy indoors-only kind of cook into an aspiring grillmaster last summer. He lays the basics out in a very straightforward manner with lots of pictures and excellent recipes. It includes the basics of smoking as well.

I like reading cookbooks that blend recipes with a broader scope of information related to them, so I enjoy anything by Jennifer McLagan (I started with Odd Bits). She writes about ingredients that are less typical or even looked down upon, making the case that these are overlooked culinary treasures. Her chapter introductions include tidbits like history, cultural impact, and science behind the ingredients. The recipes are great but tend to be highly-involved.

For specific cuisines, a couple of my favorites are Bill Neal's Southern Cooking (the recipe for Shrimp & Grits is mind-blowingly good), The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, and Madame Wong's Long-Life Chinese Cookbook.

TL;DR: the first three are what I'd consider must-haves, the remainder are interesting and might broaden your culinary horizons.

Zo te zien is De Dikke Vegetariër de vertaling van het boek How to Cook Everything Vegatarian. DDV is wel nog de eerste druk, het gelinkte boek (ook op Bol te koop) is de nieuwe versie. Als je kijkt naar de "100 Essential Recipes" achterin bij de index lijkt 50%+ ook wel vegan, en de reviews laten het klinken alsof bij de gene die niet vegan zijn er staat hoe je ze makkelijk vegan kan maken.

Mocht de andere commenter niet meer reageren over DDV, dit is de productpagina van de 1e druk op Amazon (en dus het origineel van de DDV). Helaas geen inkijkexamplaar, maar misschien heb je wat aan de recensies.

It's the prefabbed meat substitute and fermented nut cheese section of the store that is too expensive.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

https://www.amazon.com/BOSH-Recipes-Amazing-Plants-highest-selling-ebook/dp/B0722J1XDB

https://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Vengeance-Delicious-Animal-Free-Recipes/dp/1569243581

Not all of these are student friendly - but there are plenty that are and plenty others that can be adapted simply.

http://smittenkitchen.com/recipes/#Vegetarian

http://smittenkitchen.com/recipes/#Vegan

Also, if you can't find a number of staples in this book then I couldn't help you:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

Leek and potato soup. Rice pilaf. Veggie chili. Seriously, there's a whole world of possibilities. I recommend getting How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and going to town.

I am going to suggest this book (AKA the book that for me started it all). It's an older book, but still pretty good.

Also you can go poking around and find cookbooks (there is a good sized vegetarian cookbook section at my local used bookstore... so many cookbooks) including some more basic ones. Though I have to suggest this one it was a Christmas gift from my sister, and it goes through not just recipes but techniques and the like.

As a meat eater who only wanted to add more diversity in vegetables to his diet I'm going to recommend a book. It is seriously one of the best books I've ever bought. I'm not giving up meat, but this is bar none one of the best vegetarian recipe books I've ever found for simplicity and not being preachy.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483379943&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything+vegetarian

Don't discount your problem, it's a big one. We can't survive as vegetarians/vegans if we're unhappy. I can tell you for certain though the longer you are a vegetarian the less you crave meat. I've been vegetarian for 10 years, and have absolutely no interest in meat anymore. Here's my suggestion, don't go cold tofurkey (see what I did there?) Try to cut a different meat out of your diet every two weeks or even every month. As you do that, also try to slowly phase non-meat dishes into your diet. I think you'll find that by taking it step by step it isn't as hard as you'd expect.

Moving onto the cooking part of your question, I recommend just giving it a try. There are few better feelings than eating a meal that you cooked. You savor the flavors that much more because you cooked it. Again, it will be tough at first, but if you can trust me, cooking can quickly become a fulfilling part of your life. You can also transition into this as you transition out of meat. Instead of immediately jumping to cooking every night, you can cook maybe once a week. If you for instance choose to cut chicken out of your diet first, eat with your parents unless they're eating chicken and on that night prepare something yourself. There are a ton of good cookbooks that teach you some basic skills instead of just telling you recipies. Others on here can suggest some, but my personal recommendation is How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

In short, I know it's tough. Don't discredit how tough it will be. However, I have faith that with a bit of time and a bit of work you'll be so very happy you made the leap.

Not sure I follow your math there ... but sure! Unfortunately a lot of our recipes are in books, not online. Lots of time checking the clearance section in bookstores. If you're looking to buy a book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian is a great place to start, especially if you're not an avid cook already.

But there are a few online, so here goes!

• This week we're trying kimchi burritos. Look very promising, though I acknowledge that kimchi is a polarizing ingredient.
  
• Poblano and mushroom tacos.
  
• Shakshuka. SO GOOD!
  
• Fennel chickpea couscous.
  
• Chipotle pesto.

To save money on food you need to:

• Plan your meals in advance, perhaps a week at a time but at least a few days in advance. This not only avoids impulse buys but also allows you to make the most of the food you have bought for example - day 1 roast chicken for dinner (maybe to share with a date?), day 2 chicken sandwiches for lunch, chicken pot pie for dinner, day 3 chicken soup for lunch, chicken risotto for dinner, day 4 left over chicken soup for lunch. A whole chicken used properly is so much cheaper than chicken breasts. Take at look at The Kitchen Revolution, this is the website for a book which very elegantly deals with weekly food planning.
  
  
• Eat seasonally - fresh tomatoes are ridiculous cheap in the summer, silly in the winter. You can usually tell what is in season because it is cheap!
  
  
• Eat mostly vegetarian, using meat as a flavour enhancer rather than the main item on the plate. In my chicken dinner example, although the chicken would be the main item for the first couple of meals, by the time you are getting your last few meals out of it, you will be adding a small portion of meat to enhance your risotto or soup. Other wise beans are the thing. See Mark Bittman's excellent How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for really simple yet delicious guide to well almost everything you could want to eat (except meat), it has a particularly good chapter on legumes including lentils. He has a very relaxed style of writing which I think is very easy to follow.
  
  Good luck!

It's not that hard if you're not one of these reddit hivemind 'bacon is teh sex' type of people. Just be open minded. Be willing to try new foods that you've never heard of (e.g. tempeh).

I've been sort of vegetarian for 4 years, I guess. Since I am doing it for health reasons, I am willing to eat meat when I feel like it. I'll eat a delicious piece of meat if it is a special occasion. Fish more often than anything else, but definitely minimal red meat (once every 4-6mo maybe).

In terms of diet, research the nutrients that you need. A full amino acid protein profile takes thought (rice+beans, soybeans are the only vegetarian source with all the necessary AA) and this is especially important if you lift weights (I usually overload on skim milk). Maybe talk to a nutritionist if you worry about these things, but you will pick it up with time. Do not eat too many processed foods in an attempt to maintain your vegetarianism.

One big pro for me: it forces me to work on my cooking skills. It is easy to prepare meat to be pretty good. It takes a bit more thought for me to make a delicious vegetarian meal.

This cookbook is good. So is this one.

> Fast-Braised Tofu with Tempeh
http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374357118&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything+vegetarian

Page 651 with the "look inside" feature.

So I just got done with a 4.25 mile run (35 minutes 4 seconds so I'm not exactly the Flash yet) and I became a vegetarian back in March, so I'm still relatively new to it, not exactly a distance runner but I regularly put in over 12 miles a week.

First: This is a very good book http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Vegetarian-Meatless/dp/0764524836

Second: The biggest thing you'll realize about being a vegetarian is that after you're done eating, you don't feel bloated or weighed down like you normally would after eating an enormous steak or something like that. Obviously this helps with running (like in the morning if you just eat some cereal with milk, a banana and some juice)

Third: People say eat a lot of nuts and peanuts. I can't do that or I will die (allergies), so I eat a lot of soy, eggs, eggplant, mushrooms, stuff like that.

Fourth: I really hate diet supplement stuff for workouts but I buy like four protein shakes a week from Ensure to offset what I might not get from meat. I get the Ensure ones instead of something like "MUSCLE MILK" because I'm not some juicehead muscle dude.

Fifth: Whenever possible, go whole grain/whole wheat when eating pasta/bread. There's a really good vegetarian/vegan-friendly pizza place near me that offers a lot of whole wheat stuff, so I always get whole wheat pizza crust. So good.

A lot of the time, people ask why I became a vegetarian. Really, the answer is "I felt like it." It started as a challenge (can I go the whole month of April without eating meat? Yes, I could, so now why should I stop?) Also I'm 6'4"~6'5" and about 200 lbs and I'd like to get down to 190 lbs or ideally 180, hence all the running.

TL;DR - sorry but there is no TL;DR, you have to read the whole thing!

Another great cookbook is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and all its variations.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0764578650/

Here are the 2 books I cut my teeth on learning how to cook:
The best one for a new cook, cooking for a family would be "Cheap Fast Good" it gives you: Quick meals, healthy meals, bulk cooking (cook the basics like chicken, beef, etc now, freeze in meal portions, and defrost for use in recipes later), grocery shopping tips (if you have to start doing that), and lots of other cool stuff. I really can't more highly recommend another book for a brand new cook who wants simple family friendly but still healthy meals
http://www.amazon.com/Cheap-Fast-Good-Beverly-Mills/dp/0761131760/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370293256&sr=1-1&keywords=cheap+fast+food

Once you've got the basics down and you want to start impressing guests and even yourself try getting Mark BIttman's "How to Cook Everything". This is my food bible. I go to it a couple times a week for stuff. It is worth the price http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370293332&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+cook+everything

This book is awesome! How to Cook Everything or anything by Mark Bittman.

My pleasure! Photography is expensive, but cooking is a hobby that's easy to get into in measures. I would recommend How to Cook Everything by Bittman as an excellent, excellent first (or even only) book. Check it out next time you're in a bookstore with a decent cooking section - FYI, the newer red cover is updated and (generally) better than the older yellow cover. It's the sort of book you can spend a little time on a Saturday perusing, make a trip to the grocery store, come home, and try something new. And then leave on your shelf for a few more weeks. But if you keep doing that long enough, you'll get pretty decent at cooking. =)

Not an off gridder, but I've found this cookbook to be very comprehensive and I've been happy with everything I've made from it.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Recipes-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

I have the vegetarian version of this book
and it is absolutely wonderful. It doesn't have a lot of pictures, but many of the recipes are simple and it does a very thorough job of explaining... well... everything about cooking such as what to look for in a knife, how to store vegetables, what to keep in your pantry, how to fold an omelette, etc. It is massive and a bit difficult to work with (since things get a bit messy in the kitchen), but I highly recommend it as a place to start. I also think it is a book that grows with you as your skill grows because while the basic recipes are simple, he also has quite a few variations on things that are more complex.

My husband and I used to eat out a lot too and are just starting to dabble in cooking. It's a fun thing for us to do together.

You may want to try http://foodgawker.com/ or http://www.tastespotting.com/ to get some ideas.

I really like http://www.cookingforengineers.com/ too. It's like the scientific method applied to cooking. :)

A good all purpose cookbook is America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. It's relatively cheap, and it has a little bit of everything. There is a lot of information about technique and ingredients, as well as what a well-stocked kitchen should have. Many people recommend How to Cook Everything, but I have never used it, so I can't give an informed opinion.

Mark Bittman wrote some great basic cookbooks with good recipes. But also youtube, cooking channel and watch how they do things. If you follow a recipe in detail, things will usually work out!

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Recipes-Anniversary/dp/0764578650/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MDHHKXHAQWFZT21RQRTS

The recipe is from How to Cook Everything. It makes about one cup of sauce:

Put three egg yolks, two tablespoons of water and a pinch of salt in a
small saucepan over very low heat. Cook, whisking constantly, until
light, foamy and slightly thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. (If at any point
the yolks begin to curdle, immediately remove from the heat and
continue to whisk for a minute before returning the pan to the stove).

Remove from the heat and stir in 6 tablespoons of not too cold butter, one tablespoon at a time. Return to the heat and continue to whisk until the sauce is thick and bright yellow. Whisk in lemon juice to taste. Some like to add a bit of cayenne too.

Egg begins to curdle around 70°C / 160°F, so you must stay below this temperature — just slightly too hot to touch. This presents a potential problem: salmonella bacteria can survive a while at 70°C. If you don't want to risk it, On Food and Cooking claims that you can increase the curdling temperature to up to 90°C / 195°F by adding the acid (lemon) before heating. I haven't tried this.

Or, just get salmonella-free eggs.

The sauce isn't technically paleo because it contains dairy, but I think most of you are OK with butter.

Personal bias, but I would pick a good cooking technique or cookbook. For example Complete Techniques is a very good technique book if you don't have it. Otherwise Joy of Cooking or How to Cook Everything are both good cookbooks to have.

How to cook everything, and Ratio are great first cookbooks, covers equipment, theory, and basic recipes.

Alton Brown's old show Good Eats is decent too if you can handle the grainy video quality of the feeds out there.

Video series or anything? I really learned a ton reading The Professional Chef, which is a textbook in a lot of culinary schools I hear. I have the eTextbook version that has a lot of video links and interactivity.

If you're into the science behind cooking I'd also really recommend The Food Lab, I have the hard back version and it's also just a beautiful book.

I also have Cooking and Sauces by Peterson, also textbook quality books.

And of course, the ever popular Better Homes & Gardens Ring-Bound Cookbook, How to Cook Everything, and The Joy of Cooking are staples on my bookshelf as well. Great for reference or a quick look to find a particular recipe just to see how others do it.

I also browse a lot of websites and watch a lot on YouTube. I'll save recipes I find online using the Evernote Web Clipper and tag them so I can find them easily in the future. This works great because I can pull them up on my iPad while I'm cooking.

When a recipe calls for a method, tool, or ingredient I'm not very familiar with I'll usually just search it on YouTube and get some ideas about how to use it. That's worked really well for me so far.

My fellow Americans and trading partners, I've been cooking for myself for several years. On a tip from the internet (reddit, possibly) I bought a used copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. In the interest of full disclosure I am in no way affiliated with Mark B. although I did like the interview he did on NPR where they asked him about the book then quizzed him on Batman trivia. Solid source for basic cooking. I recommend taking an American staple like pie or fresh steak, then try new things, going from simple to complex. Make mistakes then improvise on what you learn. Latest project: buttered lobster curry over boiled potatoes with pepper. Get at me.

When I moved off-campus back in college, Mom gave me a copy of The Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. Covers a lot of basic cooking information; has some decent recipes.

I personally think this is better though.

If you're really on a budget, your local library may have these and more. Allrecipes is a good resource as well.

Bittman is the man when it comes to simplicity. When you're ready, go pick up a copy of How to Cook Everything

And here's his
Roast chicken recipe. I like the version where you roast veggies (carrot, potato, celery, maybe some parsnip) in a 450 ° oven for 15 minutes, then toss chicken parts on top, do 15 minutes more, then baste w/ juices, then 15 minutes more. 10 minutes of chopping and prep and 45 minutes of cooking time = dynamite chicken

This book is a great primer.

Or How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.
It's the most comprehensive book I can think of for anyone just starting out. It's certainly not the most compelling read, but I still go to it for referencing certain techniques I've never tried before. It's should be a cornerstone to the rookie cook's library.

bacon is a good start! this book (and youtube!) taught me how to cook: http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

This:
http://www.amazon.com/Cook-Everything-Completely-Revised-Anniversary/dp/0764578650

Any Bittman really. Any time I find myself staring at an ingredient, having no idea what to do (eggplant, turnips, even chicken) he gives a great, simple starter recipe. Get creative from there.

Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen is a fantastic second step. Once you are like "okay, I got down roasted veggies," ATK will class it up for you, with some really great explanations of why they chose to do the recipe they did.

Meh. His cooking style is very "American" in a way that I don't always like. It's very meat and potatoes and bland palate. I'm a fan of Mark Bittman and his How to Cook Everything. He teaches the essence of many different cooking styles distilled down to recipes that can be cooked at home.

Alton Brown's cookbooks are quite good, so I'll add my voice to those recommending them.

If you don't need color glossy photos, "The New Best Recipe" from the folks at Cook's Illustrated magazine has great recipes and thorough instructions.

When you someday move beyond the basics, I'd also throw in a plug for Michael Ruhlman's "Ratio" and Jacques Pepin's "Complete Techniques". Ruhlman's book breaks some recipes (like doughs, batters, and custards) down to their basic components and will help you understand how to modify or even improvise with some kinds of recipes, and Pepin's book has great illustrations that can help get you through some of the techniques mentioned by not described by cookbooks. Pepin's Techniques might even prove useful to you now as a reference, depending on what other cookbooks you're working with.

My favorite cookbook is The New Best Recipe, a compilation of over 1,000 recipes from America's Test Kitchen. I love it because they give in-depth descriptions of all the different things they tried in order to perfect every recipe, and so not only do you get a great recipe but you can learn all about why it is great. Most recipes have one or two additional variations included. They cover different products and techniques, and all sorts of information that is useful for both new and competent cooks. It is so interesting that I sometimes read it just for fun.

The chapters cover everything from appetizers to different types of main courses, but also includes lots of chapters on baked goods -- breads, cookies, cakes, pies, crisps, puddings, and more. I would highly recommend it to anyone, and everything I've made from it so far has been delicious!

I'd recommend the Cook's Illustrated "Best Recipe" book. A few nice features:

• the philosophy of CI strikes me as very reddit-friendly
  
  
• each recipe is prefaced by an article explaining the many dozens of ways they tried to perfect this recipe, typically explaining why steps that seem odd (e.g. combine wet ingredients, then dry, then mix all together? Add lemon to the sauce, then wait?) are actually essential
  
  
• the recipes are all fantastic

I'd get him this one. America's Test Kitchen makes the best cookbook I have ever used.

The New Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated is positively fantastic. It's my bible for how to cook everything. The biggest thing to me is each recipe has an in-depth explanation for how they came up with the recipe, how they tested it, what works, and why.

This book is fabulous! In it they tell you a couple of methods they tried while making a recipe and why they decided a method worked best. This is the goto book I would purchase for anyone beginning to cook or looking to improve their cooking. Feel free to msg me if you want further details about the book. https://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-Cooks-Illustrated/dp/0936184744

I highly recommend any cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. They also have a segment on NPR & PBS.

Definitely. If you are interested in the science of cooking:

• McGee, On Food and Cooking
  
• Lopez-Alt, The Food Lab

I agree with JoC and would go further to recommend haunting used book stores and estate sales to find an edition from the late 40s and early 50s - much more technique, no prepared foods, and less hardware.

Also On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen-ebook/dp/B000PAAH1W/ref=pd_sim_351_3/147-8869483-3702847?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000PAAH1W&pd_rd_r=2daf29d1-5605-11e9-a162-3f617eb13ec8&pd_rd_w=4kHF0&pd_rd_wg=W6Our&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=V2VT6H04D5VJAJXTNWFJ&psc=1&refRID=V2VT6H04D5VJAJXTNWFJ

As many people have observed, there's a lot of science in cooking. If you really want to understand it, though, I suggest Harold McGee's master tome: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. If you think Alton Brown is a nerd, or even more Shirley Corriher, then you'll love Harold McGee. He's the god of food science.

Dude. I fucking LOVE salt. There is this guy, Mark Kurlansky, who has written a world history about salt. He also wrote a similar book about cod (the fish). It isn't really a cooking book, per se, but it is one of the most fascinating things I've ever read. I picked it up and I think I read the entire thing in two sittings. Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407437929&sr=8-1&keywords=salt+a+world+history

Actually, if I didn't already give my copy away (I'll have to check when I get home) I'll mail you my copy. Great fucking book.

I'm currently reading Salt: A World History, and it seems to be along the lines of what you're looking for.

Salt is probably the most important of the luxury resources throughout history, so it's very accurate that it's the best one. There's an interesting read on it.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. A surprisingly fun read and interesting read.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage. Another fun read. Touches on some great topics, like the "which came first: beer or bread" debate, but doesn't go into topics as deeply as I would have liked.

I haven't read these two yet, but it's on my list:

Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage

From http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

“salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.”

and https://www.seasalt.com/salt-101/history-of-salt/ which talks about the historical values of salt, for example the salt-routes.

Check out Jon Ronson! I've only read two of his books, The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea, but they were both really good.

Here are a couple daily show interviews about the books if you want to get a feel for them. They're super entertaining. He's also had a couple segments on This American Life about similar subject matter.

On a different note, Salt is also way more interesting than it has any right to be.

There are others but oh god I really need to be studying for my exams.

I haven't read this book, so I can't answer your question, but if you are interested enough, here's a history of salt.

Salt: A World History https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142001619/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fOeiAbXBEG424. Probably no short answers to this question.

I haven't read At Home, so I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but based on the description on amazon it sounds like he uses everyday objects as starting points to discuss historical events. There are a number of similar books such as Salt and A History of the World in 6 Glasses. This genre is frequently referred to as "microhistory".

I feel like Dr. Stone should shine a bigger spot light on Salt production.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/

This book seems surprisingly interesting. Thank you!

If I may recommend, Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

You really should buy The Medical Detectives. It's a great read and it's got several fascinating food-related stories/articles! You may also enjoy Salt which is a historical look at the world's most in-demand rock.

No, the correct answer from any historian would be that salt was used in the preservation of foods an the treatment of wounds, vitally important for armies. I recommend at least a casual perusal of salt.

I really like history books that don't at first seem to be history books, but are explorations of societies sometimes seen through the lens of a single important concept or product. For instance, Mark Kurlansky has several books such as Salt; A World History, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, The Basque History of the World, Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea that teach more history, and more important history than is usually taught in US public schools.

History need not be rote memorization of dates and figures. It can, and should be a fun exploration of ideas and how those ideas shaped civilizations. It can also be an exploration of what did not make it into the history books as Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament or his Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels attest.

I don't wish to come across as too glib about this, but I feel like the average person might well retain more useful knowledge reading a book like A History of the World in 6 Glasses than if they sat through a semester of freshman history as taught by most boring, lame generic high schools. I feel like often the best way to understand history is to come at it tangentially. Want to understand the US Constitution? Study the Iroquois confederacy. Want to understand the French? Study cuisine and wine. Want to understand China? Study international trade. And so it goes. Sometimes the best history lessons come about from just following another interest such as astronomy or math or cooking. Follow the path until curiosity is sated. Knowledge will accumulate that way. ;-)

Mark Kurlanksy talks about them in his book "Salt: A World History". Damn good stuff http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

There is a whole book about the history of salt. It's been awhile since I read it but it's really good imo.

Amazon Linky

I highly recommend reading Salt: A world history. This is one of the many accidental discoveries that happened due to the hunt for salt. Another interesting one is the discovery of natural gas in china that they ended up piping through bamboo and using for cooking etc.

Food is a universal motivator. What if you had students research historical cooking? And after a week or two, you have each student bring in a recipe they've prepared from historical period/culture of their choice? And also give a presentation or write a short paper about how the food came about, or how it influence history and culture.

I've recently been trying recipes from this blog about recreating ancient Roman cuisine. Not exactly an academic source, but does cite the passages from Roman writings that inspire his exploits.

The book Salt: A World History would also be a great source, and is very easy-to-read and IMHO quite interesting. Many parts of it would make good excerpts for reading in class and introducing ideas. The same author has similar books on Cod and Oysters.

I'm no expert, I'm just stealing this idea because it's an assignment that I was given in High School, and was one of the most memorable and fun.

Salt: a world history.
My favorite book on world history, all told revolving around salt. It's caused many wars, is responsible for colonization, and has influenced where cities and countries drew their boarders.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0142001619

There are plenty of books out there now that touch on this topic, but you should start with The Omnivore's Dilemma if this is a subject that is interesting to you. Really good read.

Edit: link

• Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick
  
• 1491 by Charles C Mann
  
• Omnivore's Dilemma and Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
  
  I found these books very educational. They definitely have changed my worldview on the history of agriculture, human ecology, and economics.
  They really make you think that if Anglo-Western style capitalism or agriculture were non-existent, the world would be just fine.
  
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Mayflower-Story-Courage-Community-War/dp/0143111973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321693822&sr=8-1
  
  http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321693987&sr=1-1
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321694010&sr=1-1
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Botany-Desire-Plants-Eye-View-World/dp/0375760393/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321694049&sr=1-1

Read this book.

A lot of the better-researched/possible in the next 5 years stuff will have "speculative fiction" tacked on as a label instead of sci-fi. Just an observation.

In terms of very readable science nonfiction, you might try The Poisoner's Handbook, which is told in anecdotes about murder cases and the development of modern forensics in New York or Mary Roach's humorous essay collections in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and others. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan was also quite readable and well-researched (about agrobusiness), but his other books get overly preachy, I think.

The Best Science and Nature anthologies are a good starting point when you're looking for new authors you click with too.

Thanks!

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Cronon, William.
  
  
• Selling 'Em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. Hogan, David Gerard.
  
  
• Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Levenstein, Harvey.
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan, Michael.
  
  
• Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Shiva, Vandana et al.
  
  
• The Jungle. Sinclair, Upton.
  
  
• Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States. Soluri, John.
  
  
• The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Stoll, Steven.
  
  
• Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Warman, Arturo.
  
  Very cool to see the actual course listing information. I'd forgotten what it was like to flip through an actual paper course catalog with that kind of stuff in it. Thank god for the internet.
  
  Also, you helped me figure out what book I was trying to remember in this comment! It was The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. IIRC, it was an awesome concept and 75% of it was an absolutely fantastic read, but one of the sections (maybe the third one?) was bit uninspired. Still overall worth the read, for sure, just be prepared to slog through one section. (And don't skip it, because what it discusses is still relevant to the final section, even if it's not as entertaining as the rest of the book.) It's worth it in particular for anybody living in an industrialized "modern" nation; it provides some of the come-to-Jesus moments that we all need to hear periodically. It's not on the level of Fast Food Nation in that regard (which is required reading for every American and Canadian, as far as I'm concerned), but still.
  
  EDIT: And that helped me remember another book I've heard recommended, also by Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
  
  You're on a roll, friend.

pick up a copy of "the omnivore's dilemma"... you'll dig it and it will help answer a lot of your questions.

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292624352&sr=8-1

I agree that we probably are coming from different sets of values, but I believe there is enough of an overlap for us to make headway. But there's only so much I can try to communicate through typed comments on reddit, so this will be my last post.

> but this is still based on a meat-inclusive diet so my point still stands that meat eating has been historically important to humanity.

The fact that it was historically important in no way justifies the continued eating of meat.

If we're talking about people in third world environments, of course I'm not going to deny them a potential food source. If this is about starvation, then it's about food. What you've been reading in my comments has more to do with the ethics of eating meat when there's so much more available to you (i.e. in the first world such as the US).

I think we're on the same page on managed commons. I just wish that the standards they're forced to follow were based on what's ecologically feasible than what the companies controlling food production/catching/distribution think makes a large enough profit. (I'm a capitalist as long as business practices are transparent.) (On another note, you might be interested in Dan Barber's TED talk for an idea on sustainable fishing practices. It's the sort of thing I think we're going to have to move towards.)

Clearly, our views on the nature of both human and animal rights are different. If you'd like to get a better look into the reasoning behind my thinking, these two books really made me change the way I view how humans produce and consume food. Give them a read if you're interested. They'll make much more articulate arguments than I'm capable of making.

Also, if you get a chance, I highly recommend this book if you're interested in global poverty. It blew my mind.

I can recommend Michael Pollan's books:

• The Omnivore's Dilemma
  
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
  
  He talks about why a lot of current nutritional science is flawed (poor data, biased funding, etc...) and concludes that while humans can survive and thrive on a wide variety of diets, the modern western diet is not one of them. His advice boils down to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
  
  It's a good read because he's not really trying to push any one particular diet. The books are more concerned with how and why the western diet and modern nutritional science got to be the way they are.

I pretty much only read non-fiction, so I'm all about books that are educational but also interesting :) I'm not sure what your educational background is, so depending on how interested you are in particular subjects, I have many recommendations.

Naked Statistics and Nate Silver's Book are both good!

Feeling Good is THE book on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is good, as is Eating Animals (granted, Eating Animals is aimed at a particular type of eating)

Guns, Germs and Steel is very good.

I also very much enjoyed The Immortal Live of Henrietta Lacks, as well as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman :)

edit to add: Chris Hadfield's Book which I haven't received yet but it's going to be amazing.

A good (out of print) book that discusses some this is Altered Harvests.

Why the US subsidizes corn:

In the mid 1960s, seed corn (called maize in Europe) producers used Texas Male Sterile Cytoplasm because it meant that the tassles (male flowers at the top of the corn plant - the ear of corn is the female flower) did not need to be cut off. Because all the hybrid corn seed used TMSC, any disease that affects one plant affected every plant. So by 1970, all of the hybrid seed corn (about 80% of all corn planted in the US) in the US used TMSC. A blight spread across the US and if the weather didn't break, it was a couple weeks from destroying 80% of the US corn crop - instead of the 20% that it actually destroyed.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the government had no problem dealing with protesting hippies and anti war protesters. They knew how to handle them by hiring thugs to beat them up. But the riots, protests and marches by farmers and housewives? That freaked the Nixon administration like LSD in their coffee. By the next growing season there were massive subsidies that made corn extremely cheap, as well as programs to plant every inch of dirt: where farmers were planting fence to fence, now they were paid to dig up fences and plant road to road.

With such massive subsidies for corn, it became a very cheap item to use for producing other products. Companies like Archer Daniels Midland thrived on the subsidies. Products like High Fructose Corn Syrup would never have spread across the market without those subsidies.

Pollan's book Omnivore's Dilemma describe how everything in the supermarket is made from corn these days. With probably only the oil and fish at the supermarket not using some form of corn during their production.

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498103306&sr=8-1&keywords=kenji+lopez

https://www.amazon.com/Flavor-Bible-Essential-Creativity-Imaginative/dp/0316118400/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498103333&sr=8-1&keywords=flavor+bible

And this is a good primer for traditional French techniques, which most kitchens use extensively

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Set/dp/0307593525/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1498103367&sr=8-2&keywords=french+cooking

(but ALWAYS defer to the Food Lab, they use science)

https://www.amazon.com/Im-Just-Here-Food-Version/dp/158479559X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1498103412&sr=8-4&keywords=alton+brown

If you go through these four books, then you'll be pretty set in basic knowledge.

You can buy the Kindle version from Amazon for about $15. If you've got time to wait for a physical book to arrive, don't order this version: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Set/dp/0307593525/ref=la_B000AQ0XXS_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417219641&sr=1-1

because the book and the print are small and it is impossible to keep the book open.

I suggest this version:http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Anniversary/dp/0375413405/ref=la_B000AQ0XXS_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417219641&sr=1-2

which is much larger and easier to read. In fact, the 'look inside this book' feature at Amazon lets you see most of the cassoulet recipe.
Just click 'look inside' then search for cassoulet.

Every kitchen needs a copy. Buy the two-volume version. You will learn to be a much better cook! Suggest it as gift if someone asks what you'd like. Amazon:

https://smile.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Set/dp/0307593525/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506372021&sr=8-2&keywords=mastering+the+art+of+french+cooking

The book is intense, I would definitely recommend getting the two volume addition: http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Volume/dp/0307593525/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346545498&sr=8-2&keywords=the+art+of+french+cooking

In the second volume, the Potage, Creme D'Asperges Vertes (Cream of French Green Asparagus Soup) is absolutely amazing.

If you're really interested in this topic, it's an entire book. Surprisingly light read, really interesting, but possibly some flawed arguments in it (over plays the effect cooking fires had on our evolution).

you expend a lot of energy to break down food in your digestive system, ex: chewing, your gut rumbling around. Additionally, the food is only in the digestive tract for a finite amount of time, and the rate of nutritional uptake would be faster for a pre-blended steak than an unblended one. The same mass of peanut butter vs raw peanuts would give you different net energy gains.

I learned a lot of this from the book, Catching Fire: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

I think so. Every other animal is ambivalent to it or terrified of it.

Also, you might want to check out "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human". I haven't actually read it yet, but it's on my list :)

just feel like this is the right time to plug my favorite book, "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the kitchen" by Harold McGee.
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465150176&sr=8-1&keywords=on+food+and+cooking

it'll change how you see the world of food.

Just FYI, you only need this much of any amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012

Or read this book. Amazing science up in here.

And also get and read this book,

On Food and Cooking: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0684800012

You'll see Alton Brown occasionally holding this book during his shows. It is NOT a cookbook, it is a manual on WHY cooking does what it does.

Instincts are developed by time in the kitchen.

Also, if the stock you're making is hot enough to boil, it's too hot, especially if it's a meat based stock. Once you get the bones above a certain temp, the pores in the bones close up and effective flavor extraction ends. That's why you slowly bring it to a boil, then lightly simmer while skimming.

You need to do some research. I suggest watching every episode of Good Eats, with Alton Brown, that you can. It's corny, but it's a great primer on the basics of a hugely wide variety of foods, food science, techniques, and cuisines over 14 seasons of the show.

Additionally, if you are inclined towards the technical side of things, On Food and Cooking; The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is a fantastic reference manual.

its NOT subjective. it is a finer piece of meat... you just cook it to a degree where your average supermarket grade steak tastes the same as an expensive well aged cut. temperature and chemical change... aka science.

http://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311274459&sr=1-1

the above book is essentially the textbook for all chefs enrolled in culinary school.

I recently read Heat by Bill Buford--absolutely awesome, couldn't put it down. Also, this is actually on my to-read list but On Food and Cooking is supposed to be really very informative.

If this kind of stuff really interests you, you should read On Food And Cooking by Harold McGee. Amazing book about the history and scientific principals that drive modern cooking.

This book may interest you

My personal favorite non-fiction books that sound incredibly boring, but are actually really interesting:

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky It's a book about salt! The history of salt, the cultural significance of salt, salt production through the ages, all about salt. It's amazing.

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky It's the history of Cod! The author spends a good portion of the book talking about how Cod is both incredibly bland and tasteless, but also how western culture loves that bland fish and all of the interesting political movements for Cod.

And for a more serious topic: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. This is multiple personal accounts of the Chernobyl disaster, all deeply interesting, and deeply sad. I'm only an episode into the Chernobyl HBO series, but I'm pretty sure that show is following some of characters from this book. It's a high quality book that I think is worth everyone's time, it doesn't go super in depth with the technology, just the human aspect.

Play Oregon Trail and discuss your decisions.


https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990



And for more horrors on migration, look up

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=salt&qid=1565746099&s=books&sr=1-1

Salt: A World History Paperback

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

So, scattered across the world, there are salt deposits. These are normally form where the ocean water gets trapped and then evaporates, like a tidal region by the sea. However there are also large salt formations left from really ancient oceans that have evaporated entirely, like the salt flats in the southwest part of the US.

There is a great book called Salt which discusses this in great detail. His thesis is that these salt formations lead to the first groups of humans which stopped being nomadic and settled in one place. It is definitely worth the read.

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Here’s your primer for the world of Destiny!

I recently read a book called Salt: A World History. It was mentioned in it,, that soy sauce was initially developed in China and not Japan. Is there any solid proof to this?

yup.

We take for granted how important salt is since it so ubiquitous.

Salt: A World History

Salt shaped cities and societies and industries.

Supposedly salt is so rare in the rain forests that certain natives have evolved to not sweat.

Mark Kurlansky wrote one a few years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1374257107&sr=8-3&keywords=salt

I read his book on Cod, which was surprisingly interesting, if not a bit exhaustive.

Someone already suggested it, but I'd like to restate House of Leaves. Though perhaps it's not a good vacation book because it will suck you in and it's kind of a dark book.

The Xanth and Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony are really quick reads; they're corny as shit fantasy for teenage boys, but they got me through some rough years so I'll always have a spot for them. Also on the fantasy side, check out Hyperion.

On the nonfiction side: Stiff and Salt were both awesome. I've read a bunch of other books by the author of Stiff, and they're all worth it--she's very accessible and funny, but also serious and respectful of the topics.

A really interesting history of Salt that I read a couple year's back is Kurlansky's (sp?) "Salt: A World History". It's pretty long, but I found it intriguing!

Edit: Here's an Amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

Edit 2: He also has a couple of good books on Cod and Oysters!

The Omnivore's Dilemama. Salt. Both are great reads.

If you'd like to read about it, this book is awesome

Curing meat was secondary factor. For most lower class and the poor, salt was simply too expensive to be used to cure meat.

The real reason is this; you would die if you don't eat salt. For example, your nervous system and brain would cease to function if you don't have sodium. Go read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential
Muscle contraction also depend on the sodium channel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_contraction#Skeletal_muscle_contractions

Russia was trying to make rebel's life miserable. It's easy in our age of abundant to forget how precious salt used to be.

Throughout history, salt was a very precious commodity. A lot of societies had salt tax as an important source of government revenue(look up Gandhi's Salt March). You either have to mine it or made it from evaporation of sea water then transport it long distance, making it super expensive.

If you still interested, go read this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344753543&sr=1-1&keywords=salt

The intro to this book is all about how this guy had bought a lovely chunk of salt as a decorative piece, took it home, and kept finding pools of salt water that had leeched from it. He tried everything to keep it dry, but every time there was some humidity in the room, or it rained outside, or he just wasn't paying attention—bam, more salt water. He thought it was so intriguing he began researching the history of salt.
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

I love documentaries, personally. :) I read a book that reads a lot like a documentary on salt... fascinating. I need to go buy all the artisan salts now.

Bogus Science: Or, Some People Really Believe These Things by John Grant

Currently re-reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Salt: A World History

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619

41% off right now

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-World-History-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0142001619/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479226705&sr=8-2&keywords=salt+book

The book Salt: A World History was pretty good, actually. I recommend it.

I loved People's History, Salt, The Cheese and the Worms, the Edmond Morris series on TR, Common Women, and Gender and Jim Crow.

I have a book about the world history of Salt.

If you are going to critique us, please at least get the facts right.

Deep Green Resistance is an organization founded on radical feminist principles, which includes standing up for the safety of women. The sex industry is both an industrial form of sexual violence against women as well as a being a product that normalizes sexual violence against women, so of course we are anti-porn.

Denouncing porn as a form of violence against women is only a small part of what we do however. We stand against all forms of oppression including racism, imperialism, and patriarchy.

As for diet choices, DGR does not tell anyone what they should eat. It is industrial agriculture that is the problem, not meat eating or veganism or any other form of individual diet. We stand firmly against industrial agriculture, which includes animal feed lots and mono-crop agriculture. To learn more about the problem of agriculture we suggest books such as Against the Grain by Richard Manning and Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Ghost in the Wires - The story of famed hacker Kevin Mitnick

Any Mary Roach Book if you like Science

In the Heart of the Sea - The true story behind Moby Dick

The Omnivore's Dilemma - A great walk through our food landscape

Gang Leader for a Day - Behavioral Economist embeds with a Chicago Gang

Shadow Divers - My first audiobook. It's a thriller about a scuba discovery of a Nazi Submarine on the Eastern US coast.

The Devil In The White City - A story about a serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

• "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond
  
• "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan
  
• "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" by Steven Pinker
  
  Isaac Asimov wrote quite a few books on physics, some more textbook-y than others.

• The Singularity Is Near
  
• Questioning Technology
  
• The Omnivores Dilemma - not technology per se...

Dan Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness. I recommend this book to everyone I know. It has changed me for the better in so many ways.

It's cliche but, Michael Pollans In Defense of Food.

Lastly, Janet Fitch White Oleander.

> The problem is 1) quantity produced

And that is the crux of the whole argument. Meat is mass produced. If you can get past the ethical implications of killing a living animal to eat when it is not essential to survival, we still consume way too much for our planet to handle. Meat is so cheap because we have found little hacks to raise more animals than is naturally possible and we subsidize and externalize the true cost of factory farming because most people aren't willing to pay $15/lb because they are so far removed from what they are eating.

I think you would really enjoy The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan if you haven't already read it. He is pretty much where you are on the spectrum from SAD and vegan. He addresses and expands on a lot of the points in your post.

This message is going to get buried, but I hope by chance you read it. Two books on food changed my life and helped me eat a very healthy diet and lose weight and keep it off permanently:

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266444146&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/End-Overeating-Insatiable-American-Appetite/dp/1605297852/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266444075&sr=8-1

If you don't want to read much, skip below to #7 and the helpful resources.

Food ("nutrition") sets your performance ("fitness") ceiling. It will define what you can achieve in the gym. If you want better performance, you'll have to eat better first. Period.

1. Forget calories. They're a giant red herring. In response to your question, others have brought up "calories in, calories out." This is such an oversimplification that's it's basically wrong. 500 doughnut calories =\= 500 sweet potato calories, NOT EVEN CLOSE. The sugar and other refined carbohydrates in a doughnut will break down to glucose very quickly, then spike your blood sugar. Next, insulin response rushes in and causes a few things, the blood sugar gets pulled into cells for use but also gets pulled into fat stores. Insulin promotes development of fat tissue. To simplify: some of the 500 doughnut calories end up used for energy very quickly after you eat it, the rest ends up stored as fat, but you'll absorb all 500 one way or another. Sweet potatoes don't spike your blood sugar because they're digested very slowly. You get a slow steady stream of carbohydrates (blood sugar) to use all day, especially during that workout. So long, in fact that you'll likely end up flushing some of the carbs 500 carbs in that sweet potato down the toilet because it won't stay in your body long enough to fully digest it (thank you dietary fiber.) To simplify, you'll absorb some and what you do absorb, you'll use to your benefit to crush WODs.
   
   
2. Focus instead on macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats). Which brings me to my next point...
   
   
3. You're going to have to "track." That means you're going to have to get a scale and weigh your food as you plate it for your meal.
   
   
4. Meal prep. Get a plan together. Then cook up some food and weigh off into containers. This will help stay on track. This is important because:
   
   
5. It takes about 2 weeks for all the hormonal changes to happen to your body when your start to eat better. That means no cheat meals. Cheat meals are for when you've reached your goals. They bog down your progress. Stay away as long as possible.
   
   
6. Regarding food, you should be buying groceries (veggies and fruit), meat, fish and some dairy. If it comes in packaging, you should probably avoid it (except obvious things like milk has to come in a gallon, duh). MOST IMPORTANTLY: NO REFINED CARBOHYDRATES. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS. If it's made with bleached, white flour (often labeled "enriched"), sugar, high fructose corn syrup, rice syrup, agave nectar, rice syrup, and all the other misleading terms, then you simply don't eat it.
   
   
7. If you don't believe me about the above, don't take my word for it, go on YouTube and watch videos with the elite CrossFit athletes and watch what they eat and what their coaches (Ben Bergeron, coach to Katrin davidsdottir and a few other big names) has a bunch of nutrition related videos) tell them to eat. Mimic what they do. They don't eat that way because they're elite, they're elite because they eat that way (and train according obviously).
   
   Helpful resources:
   http://journal.crossfit.com/2012/03/nutrition.tpl
   
   In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143114964/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_q7qAH63DLB7ov
   
   Enter The Zone: A Dietary Road map https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060391502/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_GVpEDeq7jqJIA
   
   The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143038583/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jYyDDbGSYE54S
   
   Edit: spelling typos

[Health And Fitness: Running] The BibRave Podcast | Episode 27: Weirdest. Half Marathon. Ever

SFW

iTunes

Episode Summary
In Episode 27, Tim and Julia chat about a recent track Half Marathon they both ran. Yup - 52.5 laps, in the rain and cold, and it was awesome (at least Tim thought so. Julia however...).

Then they move to their second favorite subject, food! Tim and Julia talk about foods they are willing to spend more money on for quality, some of the differences between high/low quality foods, and they close with a bunch of useful takeaways on how they shop, plan their meals, and set themselves up to make good decisions. As often as possible... 😇

Episode Show Notes:

• The Bill Aronson Track Half (and the BATH reviews on BibRave)
  

• Run Oregon's BATH report
  
• Tim's 3rd place finish at the 20176 BATH
  
• Racing Weight
  
• Omnivore's Dilemma (not specifically discussed, but very relevant)
  
  Podcast Summary
  The BibRave Podcast is a show about all things running and racing! We cover a random assortment of topics, (almost) all of which relate in some way to running, runners, health, fitness, nutrition, races, and GEAR! If you like what you hear, please subscribe in iTunes and tell your runner buddies about us. Thanks for listening!
  
  Twitter //
  Instagram //
  Facebook

Things to Buy
http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Years-Hanna-Schissler/dp/0691058202

http://www.amazon.com/Redneck-Manifesto-Hillbillies-Americas-Scapegoats/dp/0684838648

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/039332169X/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change/dp/0385340214

http://www.amazon.com/Andromeda-Strain-Michael-Crichton/dp/006170315X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225932164&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Primates-Classroom-Evolutionary-Perspective-Childrens/dp/0870236113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589323&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Paleolithic-Prescription-Program-Exercise-Design/dp/0060916354/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589224&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Exiles-Eden-Psychotherapy-Evolutionary-Perspective/dp/0393700739/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589294&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589183&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/YOU-Updated-Expanded-Insiders-Healthier/dp/0061473677/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263303625&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/YOU-Updated-Expanded-Insiders-Healthier/dp/0061473677/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263303625&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297305735&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/New-Sugar-Busters-Cut-Trim/dp/0345469585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297305615&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297305420&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Skinny-Bastard-Kick-Ass-Getting/product-reviews/0762435402/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Everyone-Darwins-Theory-Change/dp/0385340214

http://www.amazon.com/Food-Rules-Eaters-Michael-Pollan/dp/014311638X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297305420&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Primates-Classroom-Evolutionary-Perspective-Childrens/dp/0870236113/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589323&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Exiles-Eden-Psychotherapy-Evolutionary-Perspective/dp/0393700739/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589294&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Paleolithic-Prescription-Program-Exercise-Design/dp/0060916354/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589224&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261589183&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange-Land-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441788386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258348123&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Full-Plate-Diet-Great-Healthy/dp/1885167717/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266199288&sr=1-13

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-War-Scott-Adams/dp/0740747886/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_9

http://www.amazon.com/Full-Plate-Diet-Great-Healthy/dp/1885167717/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266199288&sr=1-13

http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/

http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Years-Hanna-Schissler/dp/0691058202

http://www.amazon.com/Redneck-Manifesto-Hillbillies-Americas-Scapegoats/dp/0684838648

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/039332169X/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

http://www.amazon.com/Andromeda-Strain-Michael-Crichton/dp/006170315X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225932164&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Atheist-Manifesto-Against-Christianity-Judaism/dp/1559708204

http://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Family-Health-Book/dp/1603200770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267299889&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Body-Sculpting-Bible-Men-Revised/dp/1578262380/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298573232&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Health-Big-Book-Exercises/dp/1605295507
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594866279/ref=asc_df_15948662791442125?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=pg-1583-01-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=1594866279

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345498461/ref=asc_df_03454984611442018?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=pg-1583-01-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=0345498461

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Runners-Handbook-13-Week-Walk-Run/dp/1553650875/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298575384&sr=8-1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574581891694514228.html

http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Wild-Plants-Foods-Adventure/dp/1423601505

http://www.amazon.com/Shoppers-Guide-Organic-Food/dp/1857028406/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308213453&sr=1-16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_consciousness_writing

http://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/#fast-food-nation-by-eric-schlosser

http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange-Land-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441788386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258348123&sr=8-1

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/continuous-positive-airway-pressure-cpap-for-obstructive-sleep-apnea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye

http://www.amazon.com/Catch-22-Joseph-Heller/dp/0684833395

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-2nd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp/0976805421/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253993543&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Aero-Speed-Hyperformance-Jump-Rope/dp/B00017XHO8

http://www.invisibleshoe.com/#ecwid:category=135066&mode=product&product=278983

http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe621670756c0575741d&m=fe7215707561047d7315&ls=fde817797d6d037977177974&l=fe9215717260007a70&s=fe2d13707d600478751c72&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe2e167375640d75711576&r=0

http://www.amazon.com/Element-Surprise-Navy-Seals-Vietnam/dp/0804105812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304634342&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Lone-Survivor-Eyewitness-Account-Operation/dp/0316067598

http://www.amazon.com/Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Memoir-Death/dp/0375701214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312848167&sr=8-1

Political
Iraq Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Tawhid_Wal-Jihad

http://www.ontheissues.org/Drugs.htm#Barack_Obama

Congress Related

http://thomas.loc.gov/home/r110query.html

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_110_1.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/

http://www.issuedictionary.com/Barack_Obama.cgi

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r110:75:./temp/~r110y7HfAa::

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists
/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237

http://allafrica.com/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/??

Health & Exercise
Green Tea

http://www.teatrekker.com/store/tea/green/green+-+japan.php

http://www.o-cha.com/brew.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_2080066_steep-loose-leaf-tea.html

http://cooksshophere.com/products/tea/green_tea.htm

http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=146

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea

http://blackdragonteabar.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

http://blackdragonteabar.blogspot.com/

https://www.itoen.com/leaf/index.cfm

http://www.maiko.ne.jp/english/

http://www.mellowmonk.com/buyGreenTea.htm
http://www.o-cha.com/home.php

http://www.denstea.com/

http://www.theteaavenue.com/chgrtea.html

http://www.teafrog.com/teas/finum-tea-brewing-basket.html

Have you read a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma ? If not, i think it would help you in this project. In it there is a section that talks about Polyface farm, a poly culture farm that employs natural symbiotic relationships (between chickens, grass, and cows, for example) that a farmer can use to keep soil healthy, spend less of animal feed, and essentially use the land to its greatest potential. I highly recommend it.

Yes, it's very "cheap" to feed livestock corn when we are spending billions of dollars every year subsidizing it. At least it looks cheap. This is a problem that has more external costs than are really accounted for. Cows fed on grains like corn shed harmful strains of E. Coli on a very large magnitude. The environmental impact of our livestock practices is phenomenal. Yes it would monetarily cost a bit more to produce crops and livestock in a responsible and sustainable way, but it would cut down on external costs that aren't normally taken into account when we purchase a burger at a local restaurant.

It discusses how much ethanol should cost to give the same cost per mile, but that's an old article. I merely posted it to make the point that their is less energy in ethanol, so you would have to use more of it to get the same desired effect. Honestly with how politicized ethanol has become I shy away from it (as a research subject). Personally I see it as a way to use the excess ridiculous amounts of corn we produce every year and to try and sway political support. But it's a skewed argument if you don't take into account the amount of money we spend on ag subsidies to produce the corn which is then mixed in with gasoline. It's a convoluted subject.

Not true. Our subsidies actually push the price of corn below the amount it actually takes to produce corn. No one can compete with that. If we didn't subsidize our agriculture than all farmers would be more or less on an even playing field (more or less depending on space for crops, technology of farm equipment etc.). Here is a video of an interview with a gentlemen who conducted a study on the very subject.

I'm not saying we should forgo advancement, but stripping away their ability to feed themselves (as a country) is not going to promote advancement. And since we are in a global economy, the price we set for corn has an effect all over the globe. Not just Mexico. No one can compete with artificial prices that are lower than production costs.

McDonald's is just an example. What I'm saying is our food isn't as cheap as we are led to believe. The vast majority of boxed/prepared foods in the middle isles of the grocery store have some form of corn in them. Here is a list of all the different kinds of corn products we make with corn. So all of these types of food look cheap, but we pay for them not only at the counter, but through our taxes and through the external costs associated with our agricultural and livestock practices. I guess why I brought up McDonald's is because it seems extremely cheap to go get a burger, fries, and drink for like $3 (dollar menu). But every part of that meal is saturated in corn products in one form or another. If you are interested in this subject I would recommend reading The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He attempts to trace the origins of the food we eat and continually finds himself drawing a line back to some corn field in the mid west.

I would be all for agricultural policies that work to feed malnourished people across the globe, or to build sustainable practices that enrich rather than deplete the land, but the current system mostly works to make more money. That's not always a bad thing, but the costs of our current system far outweigh any benefits to our society as a whole.

I know my comments are going to get buried under all the other ones. I think that's a good sign because you have obviously tapped into a very real and significant issue.

I was a picky eater, by most standards I still am. I didn't try a green pepper until I was 26 because my mom worked a full time job and I was alone at home with nothing but a microwave. When I met my gf/wife I lived on Domino's (they had a special named after me :( ) and bagged salad.

15 years later I now eat a lot more variety and make sure to include veggies with every dinner/breakfast for a more balanced diet. I can eat most anything raw but cooked veggies send me heading for the hills (there is a video of my trying cooked broccoli trying not to wretch).

Here's my point...I came around because as I read and learned more I knew I was basically poisoning myself with crap processed food that was high in fat and salt (BLISS POINTS!) I eat a lot better now and if my wife who is a SAHM puts food in front of me I damn well eat it. ;)

In reference to kids try this. Go out and catch a possum then strap it into a high chair and try to feed it mushed peas for a while. Kids are already hard enough to feed without a united front (not to mention the concerns with in utero...crap in crap out). My kids will eat anything because we don't make faces or act up in front of them if we don't like it. Hell my wife is Vegan but still makes meat for all of us and she doesn't say jack shit about it.

My point is I think your concern is valid. I think if she at least showed signs of being open to change you'd probably feel differently. I too had a great metabolism at 25...not so much now at 40. Plus again all that processed food is basically a death sentence.

These books are good reading IMHO:
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072518&sr=8-1&keywords=sugar+salt+fat

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072547&sr=8-1&keywords=omnivores+dilemma

http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072565&sr=8-1&keywords=fast+food+nation

• The big name in the genre is Peter Singer's [Animal Liberation] (http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Liberation-Peter-Singer/dp/0060011572). Singer has had a number of titles to follow this original, and they are all worth reading in their own right.
  
  
• Another would be Michael Polan's [Omnivore's Dilema] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History/dp/0143038583/ref=pd_sim_14_4?ie=UTF8&dpID=51QJJGnAsaL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR103%2C160_&refRID=0JY11DAZ0RT4P0PPBND5). Though not specifically about veganism, it endorses the lifestyle enough to warrant a read.
  
  
• I personally liked [Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of our Fellow Creatures] (http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Wise-Thoughts-Emotions-Creatures-ebook/dp/B00985DZQ4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450016974&sr=1-1&keywords=animal+wise) by Virginia Morell.
  
  
  
• I haven't read it, but I've been suggested [Eating Animals] (http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/0316069884/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=51flAsKFoAL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=0JY11DAZ0RT4P0PPBND5) by Jonathan Safran Foer.
  
  There are a number of books on the topic of Evolution or Evolutionary Psychology that will provide a greater understanding of how connected and similar we really are.
  
  
  Hopefully this is something to start this thread off in a positive direction.

I think it is everywhere in our food: King Corn and The Omnivore's Dilemma

edited for clarity

Exactly. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's not an exaggeration to say it completely changed the way I eat. I didn't give up meat but I will only eat grass-fed, free range meat (hormone free, etc.). And I do eat a LOT less of it.

Factory farming and the USDA's complicity therein is a national disgrace. No other country has commoditized its food chain like the U.S.

That article might have been an excerpt from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

There is some great fundamental technique in those pages.

If she likes classic cooking, you can get a nice hardcover set of both of Julia Childs "The Art of French Cooking" cookbooks for around $60, i believe. That plus a great cast iron pan and maybe some spices that are a bit of a splurge (think saffron and vanilla bean) would be a great cooking themed gift!

Although some of his research is being questioned by other anthropologists, Richard Wrangham has a whole book devoted to this, and is a very interesting read.

May everyone who mentioned cooking score an upvote...

Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

Cooking our food allows the human body to be able to take in and use the highest amount of energy as opposed to raw foods. In fact most animals are healthier on a cooked food diet because they in turn have a greater return on the energy received. The extra energy and resources have provided for increased brain growth and this builds up over time (evolutionary time).

It is also foolish to say you can narrow it down to one aspect, but this is pretty big.

So is Fire.

Here's a pretty good book on a pretty solid hypothesis.