Eating for Beginners : An Education in the Pleasures of Food From Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid

The Author Details The Year She Spent Discovering How To Be An Eater And A Parent In Today's Complicated Food World. Includes Recipes. In The Beginning -- We Eat What We Are -- What Is Cheese? -- School For Chefs -- Meet The Farmer -- Lucky Me, Lucky You -- Into The Frying Pan -- One Fish, Two Fish -- Night Shift -- Rich In Imperfections -- Away In A Manger -- Farm To Cleaver -- Out To Sea -- Sweetness And Light. Melanie Rehak. A memoir of a year spent working at a Brooklyn restaurant—and on a series of farms—to get the lowdown on organic, local, ethical cooking. Includes recipes! Food was always important to Melanie Rehak. She studied the experts on healthy nutrition, from Michael Pollan to Eric Schlosser to Wendell Berry, cooking, preparing, and sourcing what she thought were the best ingredients. So when her son turned out to be an impossible eater, dedicated to a diet of yogurt and peanut butter, she realized she needed to know more than just the basics of thoughtful eating—she needed to become a pro. Thus began a year-long quest to understand food: what we eat, how it’s produced, how it’s prepared, and what really matters when it comes to socially aware, environmentally friendly, and healthy eating. By working at Applewood, a locally sourced Brooklyn restaurant, and volunteering her time to farming, milking, cheese making, and fishing, she learned the ins-and-outs of how to shop, cook, and eat right—all while discovering some delicious recipes along the way. Wry, wise, and warm, Eating for Beginners is a delicious and informative journey into two of life’s greatest and most complicated pleasures: food and motherhood. A memoir of a year spent working at a Brooklyn restaurant—and on a series of farms—to get the lowdown on organic, local, ethical cooking. Includes recipes! Food was always important to Melanie Rehak—cooking, preparing, and sourcing what she thought were the best ingredients. She studied the experts on healthy nutrition, from Michael Pollan to Eric Schlosser to Wendell Berry. So when her son turned out to be an impossible eater, dedicated to a diet of yogurt and peanut butter, she realized she needed to know more than just the basics of thoughtful eating. She needed to become a pro. Thus began a year-long quest to understand food: what we eat, how it's produced, how it's prepared, and what really matters when it comes to socially aware, environmentally friendly, and healthy eating. By working at Applewood, a locally sourced Brooklyn restaurant, and volunteering her time to farming, milking, cheese making, and fishing, she learned the... Recounts the author's amateur forays into farming and cooking after becoming a parent, describing how she joined the staff of a locally supplied restaurant and learned how to balance responsible eating with real-world dynamics. By the Edgar Award- and Aga Eating for Beginners Rehak, Melanie Houghton Mifflin HarcourtPublication 2010/07/08Number of 275Binding HARDCOVERLibrary of 2009047467 The acclaimed author of GIRL SLEUTH takes us inside the local food movement