Looking for worthwhile reads for food lovers that riff on your favourite topic? No need to say thanks!
If Meghan Markle’s fairytale still resosonates with you, lose yourself in Farm from Home. The real-life story of New York fashion insider Amanda Brooks and her exodus from New York City to her husband’s farm in rural England, it’s a charming tribute to the joy of doing a 180. Bonus: delicious recipes based on the seasons and entertaining how-tos.
A BITE-SIZED HISTORY OF FRANCE: GASTRONOMIC TALES OF REVOLUTION, WAR, AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Husband-and-wife authors Hénault and Jeni Mitchell dish up the history of France through food. Everything from Marie Antoinette’s notorious “let them eat cake” ( the authors maintain she never said it) to the role of sugura in Nantes’ rum-soaked vanilla cake (due to France’s slave-based sugar-cane plantations in the Caribbean) to Napoleon’s adage of “an army marches on its stomach” and an omen involving crepes and his failed Moscow invasion. He flipped four perfect crepes ( good luck is ensured!) then the fifth fell into the flames and the rest is history. A total treat for Francophiles. Bonus: you will never be at a loss for dinner party conversation again.
For both the wine lover and the mystery buff, The Lost Vintage tells the story of a woman who returns to her family’s ancestral vineyard in Burgundy in the midst of preparing to pass the notoriously difficult Master of Wine examination, from which she will become one of only a few hundred certified wine experts in the world. In a story more tangled up than grape vines, Kate unexpectedly uncovers a lost diary, a past love, an unknown relative, and a secret her family has been keeping since World War II — what happened to six highly valuable bottles of wine that seem to be missing from the cellar’s collection? Bonus: this book pairs rather nicely with a glass of your favourite wine.
Available at fine bookstores everywhere.
