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Twain's Feast: Searching For America's Lost Foods In The Footsteps Of Samuel Clemens (2010)

by Andrew Beahrs(Favorite Author)
3.78 of 5 Votes: 4
ISBN
1594202591 (ISBN13: 9781594202599)
languge
English
genre
History & Biography
publisher
Penguin Press HC, The
review 1: An interesting idea: Take a food list written by Twain and use it as the basis of a history of american food, showing where it came from and how it's changed since Twain's time.The problem is our narrator is bland at best and generally kind of annoying. He comes across as the host of a not very interesting food network show.When the focus is on Twain and his life and times, the book can be pretty entertaining. As soon as it swings back to our narrator I'd find myself thinking 'this jerk again!'.To be fair, I did like the two meals he made, one at the beginning and one at the end, using recipes he'd come across while researching Twain, but all the stuff featuring him in-between fell pretty flat.My recommendation: read all the Twain stuff, skim the rest.
review 2:... more> Beahrs writing and personal touches offer a fresh perspective on Twain. This book made my mouth water, and filled my heart with nostalgia for times I never knew. With Twain's menu as a guide, Beahrs leads his readers on an exploration of historical American foods, leaving us salivating at the opposite end and newly aware of the drastic changes since that time to our own food landscape. The book is well researched and fun to read. Favorite Quotes/Passages: "...you only have to brine a turkey once to realize that the days of devising intricate Thanksgiving Day roasting strategies, of planning your day around flipping and basting, are done. The debate is over; the code has been cracked. You submerge the bird overnight in a salt-and-sugar solution, with whole garlic cloves and plenty of fresh thyme. In the morning you dry it and smear the breast with butter. You roast it in a hot oven until it's as bronze as an ancient hoard. Salivating desperately, you force yourself to let it rest while the juices distribute. At last you cut through the skin and find that brining has turned the turkey into a loving bird, a forgiving bird-moist, flavorful, and full of compassion for cooks with aunts and uncles who should really have stayed in Boca Raton or Pismo Beach or Scottsdale but instead are walking up the front steps right now. On Thanksgiving brining is the cooks's best friend." p. 218"The cranberry wet harvest, when workers flood the bogs and use the water-reel harvesters to flail berries from the vines, is one of the most beautiful harvests in the world. On a cloudless New England October day, the floating cranberries-swept by floating booms into a dense mat-make a study in color, standing out against the blue water as clearly as a clutch of eggs on sunlit grass. In aerial shots they seem solid enough to tiptoe across. What's more, protecting a cranberry bog's watershed requires three or four acres of forest for every one cultivated; at harvest time the pines are stubbornly green, the elms and maples orange and yellow and a vibrant red color that mirrors the fruit gathered on the flood." p. 242 less
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Reviews (see all)
Sparks
It was good but it really is a memoir or travel log with some Twain facts thrown in.
lilbookworm
Very, very much enjoyed. It even almost made me hungry. Top job, old chap.
Lorin
this is what i want to write books about one day.
vikram
Reading for book club. My suggestion.
shana
Lost the book.
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