Through the Kitchen Window or Great Wines of America

Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking

Author: Arlene Voski Avakian

These days any woman knows that the sensual pleasures of food and cooking are all too often obscured by the increasing demands of careers, families, battles over body image, and the desire for a life outside the "traditional" domain of the kitchen. Through the Kitchen Window offers a fresh look at food and cooking, arguing that food is a cultural declaration, an expression of hidden hungers, a symbol of our intimate connections to one another. Including memories of Latina, Geechee, Chinese and Indian kitchens, this book reveals everything from the painful struggles to overcome an eating disorder to the tantalizing delights of cornbread and barbecue eaten from a lover's hands, and challenges assumptions about women, food, and the true satisfaction of cooking.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction, with letters from Ruth Hubbard	1
	My mother/her kitchen	13
	Sand plum jelly	17
	Rice culture	19
	A beet recipe	24
	Zarouhe's Easter gift	30
	Gravy	40
	Song of my mother	42
	Vermont kitchen	47
	The sweet and vinegary taste	53
	"Family liked 1956" : my mother's recipes	55
	Follow the food	65
	Grandmother's pickles : creating a space	75
	Mother I hardly knew you	83
	Hedge nutrition, hunger, and Irish identity	89
	"Laying on hands" through cooking : black women's majesty and mystery in their own kitchens	95
	My grandmother's hands	104
	What's that smell in the kitchen?	111
	The cook, the maid, and the lady	112
	What my tongue knows	117
	But really, there are no recipes ...	134
	Layers of pleasure : Capirotada	148
	The parable of the lamb	155
	Fast, free delivery	162
	On becoming a Cuban Jewish cook : a memoir with recipes	169
	The staff of life	183
	Home cookin'	185
	Greene	191
	New directions	203
	Making do with food stamp dinners	206
	Thoughts for food	213
	Boiled chicken feet and hundred-year-old eggs : poor Chinese feasting	217
	Convalescence	226
	Appetite lost, appetite found	228
	A kitchen of one's own	238
	Getting hungry	246
	The power of the pepper : from slave food to spirit food	255
	Hunger	260
	Food and belonging : at "home" in "alien-kitchens"	263
	A lesbian appetite	276
	Kitchens	296
	Sacred food	299
	Corn-grinding song	303

Books about: Benjamin Franklin or Building More Effective Unions

Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages

Author: Paul Lukacs

The stories behind America's finest wines, and the people and places that have made them so admired today.

American wine—once an object of ridicule—now holds its own against the world's best. But which wines are America's finest? Who makes them? In The Great Wines of America, Paul Lukacs selects forty wines that have helped elevate American wine to unprecedented heights. Each chapter contains the specific wine's history, the vintner's vision for it, a map of its terroir, and a list of successful vintages.

Not too long ago, American wine was an object of ridicule. When compared to the great growths of Europe, it played in the minor leagues—if it even played the same game. All that has changed. At the start of the twenty-first century, the finest American wines hold their own with the best made anywhere. But which wines are these? And who are the people responsible for them? Because American vineyards are largely devoid of tradition, American vintners have had to make choices unknown to their Old World counterparts. These involve which grapes to grow, where best to plant the vines, and, most important, how to create rather than merely emulate truly distinctive wines. The Great Wines of America tells the story of how those choices, made successfully, have elevated American wine to unprecedented heights of quality and renown. 40 maps, 40 photographs.