Half Scratch Magic or Strong Wine

Half-Scratch Magic: 200 Ways to Pull Dinner Out of a Hat Using a Can of Soup or Other Tasty Shortcuts

Author: Linda West Eckhardt

Chinese Tomato Shrimp Soup. Enchiladas Vera Cruz. Spicy Gingered Asian Slaw with Salmon. No one needs to know these dishes began with a can of soup, a store-bought roast chicken, and deli cole slaw. With this book, cooks can discover the quick trick of pairing freshly prepared purchased items and pantry staples to produced such specialties. It is chock-full of more than 200 great spur-of-the-moment recipes for hors d'oeuvres, entrees, biscuits and breads, and desserts fashioned from ready-made, boxed, or frozen ingredients. Packed with smart shortcuts for busy cooks, this practical, inspiring book brilliantly redefines home cooking.

Author Biography: LINDA WEST ECKHARDT is a cookbook author and contributor to Cooking LIght. She is author if Bread in Half the Time, winner of the 1991 IACP Julia Child Award for the Best Cookbook of the Year, and the coauthor, with her daughter KATHERINE WEST DEFOYD, of Entertaining 101 and Stylish One-Dish Dinners. The authors live in Maplewood and South Orange, New Jersey.

Publishers Weekly

While some quick-and-easy style cookbooks suffer from a lack of imagination (creamed corn poured over vegetables to create a dubious veggie bake) or worse, a lack of scruples (a can of V-8 poured into a bowl and presented as "gazpacho"), this volume offers hearty, delicious recipes, most of which require 30 minutes or less in the kitchen, and all of which use jars or cans of ingredients that are probably already in the pantry. The recipe for Grilled Lamb Chops on Sweet-and-Sour Red Pepper Chutney, for example, asks for little more than some lamb chops, a food processor and a jar of red peppers, but turns out to be an elegant and slightly exotic dinner party dish. Similarly, Couscous, Chicken, Grapes, and Arugula Salad demands only rudimentary skills-think mixing and boiling water-but still makes for a fresh-tasting lunch or light supper. The authors, a mother and daughter team, are both accomplished cooks, with James Beard and Julia Child awards between them. But despite their high-flown credentials, they clearly understand that elegance need not require hours in front of the stove, and convenience need not sacrifice taste. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Interesting book: Competición por Diseño:el Poder de Arquitectura Organizativa

Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy

Author: Brian McGinty

Bold, flamboyant, extravagant, devious, visionary, Agoston Haraszthy (1812-1869) is one of the most fascinating—and elusive—figures in the history of American agriculture. Apart from his pioneer efforts to establish a world-class wine industry in California, he holds other important distinctions: he was the first Hungarian to permanently settle in the United States, author of only the second Hungarian-language book about the United States, founder of one of the earliest towns in Wisconsin, and owner and operator of the first steamboat to engage in regularly scheduled traffic on the upper Mississippi River.

Lured by the discovery of gold to cross the plains to California in 1849, Haraszthy became the first sheriff of San Diego, a member of the California legislature, and the first assayer of the United States Mint in San Francisco. Long fascinated with the possibility of growing fine European grapes in America, he moved in 1856 to northern California's Sonoma Valley, where he built the first stone wineries in California, introduced more than 300 varieties of European grapes, and planted (or helped his neighbors plant) more than a thousand acres of choice wine vineyards. He made a well-publicized wine tour of Europe in 1862, wrote the first notable book on California wine growing, and built his Sonoma estate into what was widely advertised as “the largest vineyard in the world.”

In this book, the first full-length biography of one of nineteenth-century America's most interesting and influential immigrants, the author examines Haraszthy's amazing life, dispels many of the myths that have gathered around him, and makes a careful assessment of hiscontributions to American immigration and agricultural history.

Booknews

A biography of one of America's most interesting and influential immigrants, assessing his contributions to American immigration and agricultural history. Haraszthy was a pioneer in developing California's vineyards, founder of one of the earliest towns in Wisconsin, owner and operator of the first steamboat to engage in regular traffic on the upper Mississippi River, the first sheriff of San Diego, and the first Hungarian to permanently settle in the US. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

What People Are Saying

James L. Rawls
The definitive biography of 'the father of California viti-culture,' an intriguing and compelling book, at once scholarly and entertaining. Haraszthy's checkered career intersects with topics central to an understanding of 19th-century California.