Cooking Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

Author Mark Kurlansky pleasantly surprised the world with this engaging best-seller that garnered rave reviews from critics and casual readers alike. His subject for this whimsical biography is the codfish, a species remarkable for its influence on humanity. Cod, Kurlansky argues, has driven economic, political, cultural and military thinking for centuries in the lands surrounding the Atlantic Ocean. Nations like England and Germany have waged wars for cod. Vikings survived on frozen cod during their expeditions to the present America. And, it turns out, European explorers were driven toward North America in pursuit of this humble fish. Kurlansky fills this biography with fascinating anecdotes that show cod surfacing time and again throughout history. The book also serves as a wake-up call, alerting us that the species has nearly been fished out. Richard M. Davidson delivers a reading that is often amusing and always enlightening.

Mark Kurlansky (Author), Richard Davidson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Kitchen Confidential

Most diners believe that their sublime sliver of seared foie gras, topped with an ethereal buckwheat blini and a drizzle of piquant huckleberry sauce, was created by a culinary artist of the highest order, a sensitive, highly refined executive chef. The truth is more brutal. More likely, writes Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of "wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts, and psychopaths," in all likelihood pierced or tattooed and incapable of uttering a sentence without an expletive or a foreign phrase. Such is the muscular view of the culinary trenches from one who's been groveling in them, with obvious sadomasochistic pleasure, for more than 20 years. CIA-trained Bourdain, currently the executive chef of the celebrated Les Halles, wrote two culinary mysteries before his first (and infamous) New Yorker essay launched this frank confessional about the lusty and larcenous real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is obscenely eloquent, unapologetically opinionated, and a damn fine storyteller--a Jack Kerouac of the kitchen. Those without the stomach for this kind of joyride should note his opening caveat: "There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it." --Sumi Hahn

Anthony Bourdain (Author), Anthony Bourdain (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Parent's Guide to Intuitive Eating: How to Raise Kids Who Love to Eat Healthy

Most children are born with the innate ability to eat the appropriate amount of food to satisfy their hunger and support appropriate growth. Despite this, parents are still anxious and confused about how much and what to feed their children. In addition, many children are labeled as “picky eaters” or develop behaviors such as hiding and sneaking food. There is also a growing epidemic of dieting behaviors and eating disorders beginning at alarmingly young ages. In her book, Intuitive Eating for Children, Dr. Yami provides a fresh approach to feeding your child beginning at pregnancy and continuing through the teen years. As a board-certified pediatrician, mother and health coach she aims to reassure, support and guide parents by teaching the principles of intuitive eating for children. In this book you will learn: -How exploring your own body image and relationship with food will help support your goal of raising an intuitive eater -The 5 pillars of raising a healthy eater -How to apply intuitive eating principles to children through all the stages of development -Lifestyle habits that support healthy eating and body image -What foods to offer your child at different stages of development -Trouble shooting and problem solving for common concerns such as picky eating, overeating or dieting behaviors and how to help a child re-learn their eating intuition -How to create and foster a healthy body image in your children If you want to raise a confident eater from the start, this book is for you!

Yami Cazorla-Lancaster (Author), Yami Cazorla-Lancaster (Narrator)

Audiobook

In Tuscany

From the bestselling author whose memoirs Under the Sun and Bella Tuscany have captured the voluptuousness of Italian life comes a lavishly illustrated ode to the joys of Tuscany’s people, food, landscapes, and art. In Tuscany celebrates the abundant pleasures of life in Italy as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves. Combining all-new essays by Frances Mayes and a chapter by her husband, poet Edward Mayes, with more than 200 full-color photos by photographer Bob Krist, each of this book’s five sections highlights a signature aspect of Tuscan life: La Piazza–the locus of Italian village life. With photgraphs of the shop signs, the outdoor markets, medieval streets, people, their pets and their cars, and snippets of conversations overheard, Mayes reveals the life of the Piazza in her town of Cortona as well as out-of-the-way places such as Volterra, Asciano, Monte San Savino, and Castelmuzio. La Festa–the celebration. Essays and photos of feasts and celebrations, such as the Christmas dinner for twenty-seven at a neighbor’s house and a donkey race around the church at Montepulciano Stazione, illustrate how the Tuscans celebrate the seasons–their open ways of friendship, their connection to nature, and most of all, their sense of abundance. Il Campo–the field. Here Edward Mayes evokes the deep sense of the shift of seasons as he picks olives before he and Frances head off to the olive oil mill and enjoy the first bruscette with new oil. La Cucina–the kitchen. An intimate view of the all-important role of the kitchen in Tuscan culture, including photographs of her own kitchen and gardens, menus from great local cooks, the elements of the Tuscan table, dishes with cultural and culinary notes on each, and, of course, delectable recipes. La Bellezza–the beauty. From the quality of the light falling on sublime landscapes in different seasons and Tuscan faces in moments of laughter to a silhouette of cypress trees in the early evening and a wild bird perched on a neigbor’s head, In Tuscany features views of beauty that reveal the singular splendor of one of the world’s best-loved and most artistic regions.

Edward Mayes, Frances Mayes (Author), Edward Mayes, Frances Mayes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tales from the Tummy Trilogy

What Calvin Trillin likes to write about is eating rather than food. Known to his fans as a "happy eater," he is also a highly-respected journalist and a nimble humorist. It is this unique combination of talents that makes The Tummy Trilogy such a wonderfully entertaining collection. Includes American Fried; Alice, Let’s Eat; and Third Helpings. In the 1970’s, when Trillin was writing the "American Journal" feature for the New Yorker, he spent a great deal of time on the road, diligently questing after the best cooking in every city, town, and village he passed through. When approaching local people, his technique was simple, and simply brilliant: "Don’t take me to the place you took your parents on their 25th wedding anniversary; take me to the place you went the night you came home after 14 months in Korea." With this kind of attitude, whether he is writing about taking his own multi-course picnic on a no-frills flight to Miami, describing the perils of post eating, indulging in the pleasures of pigging-out in Hong Kong, or giving us the definitive history of the origin of the Buffalo chicken wing, the results are marvelously funny and will be a very special treat for people who love eating and relish good prose.

Calvin Trillin (Author), Calvin Trillin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Much Depends on Dinner: The extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and t

Best-selling author Margaret Visser holds a doctorate in classics and appears frequently on television and radio shows. Much Depends on Dinner was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Publisher's Weekly. As the subtitle suggests, here she uses the framework of a simple meal to show us how our food has defined who we are and how we live. Dr. Visser begins by showing how corn has shaped the history of man. In further chapters, she considers the economics of salt, the medicinal properties of butter, and offers similarly fascinating information about chicken, lettuce, olive oil and lemon juice. The final chapter ends on a sweet note with ice cream and the nostalgia it creates. As it gathers information from the villages of ancient hunters and the corridors of modern science, Dr. Visser's perceptive book examines food through a wider lens than today's nutritional microscope. It isn't meant to change our eating habits, but it leaves us with a taste for the history and mythology of everyday foods. Narrator Suzanne Toren captures Dr. Visser's enthusiasm for her subject.

Margaret Visser (Author), Suzanne Toren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cooking Audiobooks in Non-Fiction