Chez Panisse Fruit Notecards
Author: Patricia Jordan
20 blank folded cards (5 images repeating 4 times), 20 envelopes
New interesting textbook: 50 Greek Recipes or Beyond the First Visit
Take Big Bites: Adventures around the World and across the Table
Author: Linda Ellerbe
The celebrated journalist, producer, and bestselling author takes us on a remarkable culinary journey through "a life lived interestingly, if not especially intelligently."
Linda Ellerbee's first two books were instant classics: And So It Goes, a hilarious, unblinking look at television journalism that spent months as a bestseller; and Move On, a wry, intimate look at a woman in her time that became a milestone in autobiographical writing. Now she takes us both farther afield and closer to home in a memoir of travel, food, and personal (mis)adventure that brims with warmth, wit, uncommon honesty, inspired storytelling . . . and a few recipes as well.
In Vietnam, preconceptions collide with the soup. . . . In France, lust flares with the pâté and dies with the dessert. . . .In Bolivia, a very young missionary finds her food flavored with hypocrisy . . . while at the bottom of the Grand Canyon an older woman discovers gorp is good, fear is your friend, and Thai chicken tastes best when you're soaked by rain and the Colorado River.
From Italy to Afghanistan, from Mexico to Massachusetts, Ellerbee leads us on a journey of revelation, humor, and heart. "What can you say about Linda Ellerbee?" Ted Koppel once wrote. "The woman is raucous and irreverent and writes like a dream." Take Big Bites proves it again.
Publishers Weekly
Claiming to be neither food writer nor chef, longtime TV newswoman Ellerbee calls herself "a recovering journalist who's traveled and eaten her way around the planet and lived to tell some tales." She fantasizes about doing something she thinks is unattainable, namely, writing for food and travel magazines ("Imagine being paid to eat, travel and write about that, instead of the bombing down the block"). But she does better than that, writing a witty, easy-to-read book about food that's also a blend of autobiography, travelogue and self-help. While weaving interesting yarns about visits to such places as the Appalachian Trail, Bolivia and Vietnam, Ellerbee makes both humorous and poignant observations about ethnic food ("ph [Vietnam's national breakfast dish] beats the devil out of a bowl of Wheaties"); the task of trying to age gracefully; her relationships with friends and family; and the motley strangers she's met in her travels. Ellerbee also modestly admits to rarely eating in three-star restaurants and proceeds to describe a dish at one: "a little thingy of fried potato topped with a doodle of mashed potato and a dabble of olives and dried tuna roe.... Does this description sufficiently explain why I'm not a food critic?" As an extra bonus for foodies, each chapter ends with a relevant recipe or two. Agent, Mel Berger at William Morris. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In a brash and breezy style, Texas native Ellerbee-who has known success and controversy as a journalist, television producer, and author (And So It Goes; Move On)-writes about her adventures around the globe from childhood to the present. She takes us to Bolivia in the 1960s as she attempts the role of a Christian missionary and then to France in the 1970s as she honeymoons. In 2002, we land in Afghanistan. Other points on Ellerbee's compass include Texas (of course), the Appalachian Trail, Italy, Turkey, Vietnam, England, Mexico, New York, and Greece; her accompanying recipes range from Frito Pie to tzatziki. When it comes to food, Ellerbee, never a shrinking violet, is more glutton than gourmet: she admits to gorging on Beluga caviar (courtesy of the late Malcolm Forbes) and hot sauce meant for 21. But her book is less about cooking and more about living large; the food simply provides a colorful ribbon to tie up the entertaining package. A good addition for public libraries.-Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., NV Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Television host Ellerbee roams around the world and through her memories, one meal at a time. Ellerbee (Girl Reporter Blows Lid Off Town, 2000, etc.) is known in the industry as a straight-shooter, and the voice that got her fired from NBC is back with a vengeance in the third volume of her memoirs. Warm and brisk, utterly conversational, way beyond sassy, Ellerbee is afire to share the lessons she's picked up and the dishes she's consumed in her first 60 years of making an impact. During her Texas childhood, she was convinced that her mother's fudge pie played a large part in her popularity. In a newly opened Vietnam, she conceived a passion for Pho, and in Bolivia (her first foreign tour-as a teenage missionary), she learned to love street food. There is no real discernible pattern to these extended meditations, although there are themes. Recollections of her very young folk-singing days are followed by an account of cruising on Malcolm Forbes's yacht, that then followed by a piece about feeding the hungry in inner-city Baltimore. A revelation about the surprising comforts of cruise ships is placed next to her account of reporting from Afghanistan-post-Taliban, pre-stability. Ellerbee's injustice radar still has a hair-trigger-targets include the wealth of the church in the poorest of nations, and any society that seeks to restrict women in any way. Many of her essays are about the difficulties of growing older. Though the pieces can be sharp and sappy by turns, sometimes in the same paragraph, Ellerbee's charisma and immediacy operate like a tractor, drawing the reader smack into the heart of how it is to be a cancer survivor, to lose your parents, to be alone-or to raft down theColorado, watch your children marry, or whip up a Frito Pie. All in all, a great ride with a homegrown American original.
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