The First Chapbook for Foodies: Recipes and Repasts Literature and Lore

I received this as a birthday gift, and couldn't put it down. I've since bought several copies to give to friends. It is filled with marvelous writing, good humor, some fascinating recipes, and lots of unexpected morsels, like Cary Grant's delightful obsession with English muffins, a poetic dinner invitation from Ben Jonson, Noel Coward's little ditty about the wonders of eating pork, Ben Franklin on digestion woes, Freud on food and dreams, and a truly exotic recounting by 19th-century explorer Richard Burton about dining in Mecca. There are excerpts about food from great literature -- Homer, Chaucer, Joyce, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens -- and just wonderful thinking about food from such insightful writers on the subject as James Beard, MFK Fisher, John Thorne, and Raymond Sokolov. It's a lot of fun from start to finish, though I do suggest, as Jeff Silverman, who compiled the collection, stresses, if you ever decide to try making a blanc mange, make sure that you don't dye it green. Silverman's own celebration of chocolate is a full meal in itself.