TLC Book Tours Review and GIVEAWAY! Hungry by Darlene Barnes

Hungry by Darlene Barnes

Hyperion, 2013

Format? paperback

Source? the publisher via TLC Book Tours

**FTC Disclaimer: The publisher provided me a complimentary copy of Hungry.  However, the review below and the opinions therein are my own and are offered without bias.

Why?  A cooking memoir with a twist...inside a fraternity house, and trying to win a bunch of boys over to better food...a no brainer for me.

What Now?  I've spent some time on Barnes old blog and new website and cannot wait to try out some of her recipes with my family...two who could very easily fit into the crowd at the fraternity house as far as their food expectations go.

GIVEAWAY!! - the publisher is graciously allowing me to give away one copy of Darlene Barnes book Hungry! :) Please leave your name, name of your blog and email address where you can be reached in the Comments section.  I'll announce a winner in one week! :)

Golden Lines

I was becoming like the women relatives I remembered from my childhood who would spend all day making Thanksgiving dinner and then get mad at the diners who were done in ten minutes, not nearly as thankful as they goddamn well should have been. (86)

I felt bad enough about the ranch mix, especially when I read the package and saw that it was clearly made by Clorox - the same foodcentric company that made bleach and cat litter - and I stopped cold. (133)

When Ramona made a great big noisy fuss, she usually got her way.  Great big noisy fusses were often necessary. 

- Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary (157)

With my incessant demands for something better than the garbage indifferently dropped off at most other "institutions," I was a tough customer. (159)

But I learned over time that it was actually really hard to find simple food.  I was an easier customer in the days before I began to ask questions about where our products were coming from, what was in them, and why. (160)

The power of the big food manufacturers was such that when I served a cake with buttercream frosting, surprisingly consisting of butter and cream, the guys were confused by the taste. (205)

Don't let anyone die and don't let Darlene quit. 

- PARTING WORDS OF ADVICE FROM OUTGOING FRATERNITY PRESIDENT KEV TO INCOMING PRESIDENT GAVIN

(233)

"It's dirty work.  It's exhausting.  It doesn't pay enough.  I don't need to do this." And just as the words were out of my mouth, one of the guys ran down the stairs and out the back door yelling, "Bye, Darlene, love you Darlene!" And there was nothing more to say. (234)

Short and Sweet Summary

After a move to Seattle with her husband, Darlene Barnes accepts a job working as a cook for a fraternity house.  She feeds the fraternity brothers as she fed her own two boys while they were growing up at home and also the same way she herself grew up in Louisiana, fresh, homegrown, sustainable, and farm raised.  As can be expected, her "customers" many of whom are accustomed to processed, powdery cheese meals, are  not always pleased with her choices and do not always create a pleasant working environment nor do the vendors who've never met anyone quite like Darlene.  Darlene is a tough cookie though; she can take their grumbling, and better yet, she can dish it right back! 

What I Liked

Oh my goodness the recipes!!  These are like dreams come true for me...basic recipes but all use fresh and organic produce, meats, etc.  These recipes are designed to please a house full of young men, who mostly are looking for traditional meals.  Recipes I WILL be making soon include:

Interview Pot Roast

Korean Marinade for Flank Steak

various salad dressings

soups

Black Bottom Pie and Parker House Rolls

Salsa and Pimiento Cheese

Deviled Eggs

Blueberry Cornbread

Creamy Penne with Chicken and Smoked Sausage

Darlene's humor and down to earth attitude - she doesn't present life as a fraternity cook as one of an all loving grandmother existence...quite the contrary, she likes some of the guys and dislikes others...her efforts are not always appreciated, and that's not ok.  Her job is not an easy one, and she threatens to quit many times...for very good reasons.  But, Darlene is real...as real as it gets.  

Darlene does become a motherly like substitute for some of the guys, but she's not even close to the June Cleaver image so many people think of when they think of a woman in the kitchen.  She's powerful, has a strong voice, speaks her mind, makes mistakes, and realizes that who she is and what she has to offer isn't for everyone.  And, that's ok.  But, she's not sorry...and don't get in her way. :)

Fraternity life - While Barnes book is not "about" fraternity life, it would have been impossible for her to write this book without including some details of life inside the house.  I think a lot of people will be surprised that the house is not party central 24/7, and that people do live there and carry out normal everyday tasks in between classes and yes, the parties.  Barnes observations ring very true to me from my own sorority and fraternity little sister experiences in college.  Another chip off the Animal House stereotype of Greek living.  Bravo!

The writing - I'm a composition professor - Barnes offers her story pure an unadulterated...with recipes and annotation at the end of each chapter on how and what she fed the guys.  She also includes notes that she writes to the guys, notes written to her, texts, and quotes from literary selections.  I read this book in a matter of hours...it's that engaging and that good.

What I Didn't Like

Darlene's first employers - a wealthy family for whom she is personal chef -  to me, they are the epitome of what's wrong with today's food culture...spoiled rotten consumers who expect even natural food to bow to their whims and demands.  Blueberries are not supposed to taste good in February, Doofus...and these are some the "power" people in our country.

Overall Recommendation

If you like fresh food, if you're the least bit interested in the fresh food movement that is thankfully spreading across America, you'll like this book.  Not only is it funny, spirited and fast moving, but it also is VERY helpful for those of us who are diligently trying to reclaim what once was ours and somehow slipped away.  What Barnes does very well is show us that the "fresh food movement" isn't something new.  For future generations, looking back to our pasts and how we grew, ate, prepared, and shared out own foods, is a good thing.

The Author

Twitter

Previous Blog - Hungry Boys

Current Website

Facebook

Other Stops on the Tour

Monday, August 5th:  Life, Love & Books

Wednesday, August 7th:  ::steph chows::

Thursday, August 8th:  Peppermint Ph.D.

Friday, August 9th:  Lit and Life

Monday, August 12th:  A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall

Thursday, August 15th:  Peeking Between the Pages

Monday, August 19th:  Book Club Classics!

Wednesday, August 21st:  Guiltless Reading

Thursday, August 22nd:  Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Monday, August 26th:  Bookchickdi

Wednesday, August 28th:  The Well Read Redhead

Tuesday, September 3rd:  Kahakai Kitchen

Thursday, September 5th:  BookNAround

Monday, September 9th:  girlichef

Saturday, September 14th:  Joyfully Retired

Book Review - Kitchen Counter Cooking School

Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

Viking, 2011

Net Galley Review Copy

Why?  I've read so many good reviews of this one, and it seemed right up my alley with the back to basics in cooking and eating more naturally

What Now?  I have purchased the hardback version of this book and into the glass shelves it will go...right next to Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Golden Lines

For most people, the only real stumbling block is fear of failure.  In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.  Julia Child

By failing to understand what's involved in certain kinds of basic food preparation, American consumers have been duped.  p. 24

We all have different sensory thresholds and different taste memories.  Ultimately it's about finding out what we like, and trusting our own palates.  That's all that matters. p. 77

So who says you can't cook?  Not every meal has to be from scratch, nor does everything you consume have to be organic, locally sourced and pasture raised.  Try to find a comfortable place somewhere between Tuna Helper and Top Chef.  If you burn, scorch, drop, boil over, overcook, undercook, underseason, or otherwise put a meal together that is less than a success, in the end it doesn't matter.  It's just one meal.  You'll make another tomorrow.  p. 167

A friend of mine majored in chemistry in college and later went to work for a major food company.  To this day he refuses to eat ultraprocessed foods.  One reason is that the method to approve food additives requires that individual ingredients be tested and weighed in isolation, and as a result no one has any idea how they all interact together.

"When it comes to food additives, we're the mice," he said.  p. 200

Box of yellow cake mix : Sugar, enriched bleached wheat flour (flour niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), vegetable oil shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean oil propylene glycol mono - and diesters of fats, mono - and diglycerides), leavening (sodium bicarbonate, dicalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), contains 2% or less of: wheat starch, salt dextrose, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cellulose gum, artificial flavors, xanthum gum, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, colored with yellow 5 lake, red 40 lake.

vs. 

Cake mix from scratch: unbleached flour, sugar, milk, eggs, unsalted butter, vanilla, baking powder.

"Planning menus is the greatest skill that we've collectively lost," she said.  "That, and what to do with leftovers." p. 212

Smart shoppers plan meals and use thorough lists. p. 221

The key thing is to think of food as money.  You wouldn't toss a five dollar bill in the garbage, would you?  If you throw a head of lettuce and some dead cucumbers in the trash, it's exactly the same thing.  It adds up.

Summary

Ten ladies allow Kathleen Flinn to come into their homes, look into their pantries and refrigerators and share a everyday meal with them in order to help them learn about the basics of real cooking and the benefits of eating fresh rather than relying on packaged, processed food.  Those same ten ladies then take part in a free experimental cooking school with Kathleen and friends over the course of several weeks.  The ladies learned not just the basics of cooking but how to trust themselves, be more independent and fearless in the kitchen, and how to feed their families nutritious, palate pleasing food.

What I Liked

Realistic: Even though Kathleen is a professionally trained chef, she is able to look into the real world of real people, take their individual issues into consideration and make some recommendations that make sense for each particular person.  She also cuts the ladies some slack when they decide which recommendations to choose and which ones to let go of.

Even Kathleen herself didn't call herself a baker...until she found No Knead Artisan Bread.  After she and husband Mike taught the ladies the basics, most of them, in the end, continued with this practice and some even said they seldom bought store bought bread anymore.  I'm scared to death of bread dough...now, I might just have hope.

There are a variety of issues embedded in the cooking lessons:  social consciousness, finances, self sustainability, sustainability of the Earth, self-esteem, marriage, travel, friendship, the fast food industry, marketing, frugality, and health, just to name a few.

Within each chapter, as each lesson was taught, I also felt like I was experiencing the lesson.  Then, at the end of each chapter the "recipes" for the lessons are shared in standard recipe format.  I highlighted steps or comments throughout the lesson itself that I might want to revisit as I experiment with the recipes.  

The chapters on waste and food planning...here's where Kathleen's cruise that interrupted the lessons came in handy...Kathleen visited the ship's kitchens and talked with the chef about how he managed large amounts of food served in the middle of the ocean...planning menus, buying smart and using foods in rotation without waste are key when you're feeding hundreds of people daily and can't run to the grocery store for more butter.

The Chapter called "What's in the box?" brought home to me what I know about processed food...the amount of "stuff" we blindly put into our bodies everyday.  We've been convinced that the processed version is better, cuts down on time, and is cheaper.  But if we plan, buy smart and use time wisely, processed foods really aren't that much of a bargain...and they are very likely doing more harm than good in the long run.

Vegetarianism - one of the women participating in the experiment was a vegetarian, so the lesson on beef was understandably hard for her and she left early that night.  Kathleen respected her wishes and did not try to "change her mind" about the food she was comfortable eating.  Kathleen stressed and encouraged all the students to know where their food comes from, and if you choose to eat meat, try to find better options than the over-processed meat factories that seem to be producing most of the meat Americans eat these days.  

What I Didn't Like

There were a couple of times where I felt like Flinn almost got off track...At one point during the cooking school she was offered a job on a cruise ship and for various reasons (which I completely understood) she took the job and had to reschedule 2 weeks worth of lessons...That's certainly realistic, but then Flinn shifted the book from the cooking classes to the cruise and then brought us back to the school when she came back.  Another chapter described her Red Velvet Dinners...a money making cooking school that she organized - again, I understood why she needed to host these dinners for paying customers; the chapter just seemed to change the sequence of the lessons.

It wasn't that I didn't "like" these two distractions; I actually felt like these were other stories to develop and tell...in another book maybe?

Overall Recommendations

If you are a home cook who wants to go back to the basics of cooking or wants to cut back on the amount of fast-food/processed food your family eats, this book is so for you.  You might as well buy it though because you'll want to write in it, bookmark it and keep it handy for everyday use. 

**Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School from the publisher via Net Galley by my request.  All opinions are my own.

Weekend Cooking March 26 - PW's Chicken Pot Pie

Weekend Cooking is hosted at Beth Fish Reads

I'm slowly making my way through Pioneer Woman's Cookbook...and am still really happy with all the results.

I'm back this week with another Pioneer Woman recipe...Chicken Pot Pie...I've made lots of variations of chicken pot pie...from the boxed kind that bakes for 40 minutes to the VegAll/cream of chicken kind...PW's version is a little more time consuming but is worth the difference in taste. 

I start off with the freshest chicken I can find where we live...we actually know the Sandersons and they stand behind their product. 

I do not very often buy a whole cut up chicken, but PW said it was a good idea to use both light and dark meat for this recipe.

Then I scour my sink with soft scrub and bleach...I'm a germ freak when it comes to raw meat :(

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up my vegetables...no Veg-All in this recipe.

Yes, I really did chop up every little bitty piece of onion, celery and carrots for this pie :)

I separated the chicken from the broth...

and of course, separated bite sized pieces of chicken from the bones.

I saute'd the onion, carrots, celery and frozen peas in butter for just a few minutes.

added the chicken...and stirred...

...then added flour and stirred again. 

At this point I let the mixture so far cook for just a few minutes before adding any other ingredients.

I used 2 cups of the chicken broth saved from boiling the chicken and one boullion cube.

and then 1/4 cup white wine...

and yes, yes, yes, of course I had a sip ;)

1 cup of heavy cream is the last ingredient before the final cookdown for 4 minutes.

Thyme, salt and pepper meld all those tastes together...

before pouring the mixture into a baking dish...

Now, PW went into a lot of detail about how to make crust...and I did my best...but as you can see in the picture above...mine wasn't too pretty :)

It still tasted fine...but definitely needs work in the attractiveness category.

The specific ingredients are follows:

3 celery stalks

3 medium carrots, peeled

1 large yellow onion

4 tbsp butter

1/2 cup frozen peas

2 cups cooked chicken (light and dark pieces)

1 cup all purpose flour

2 cups chicken broth

1 chicken boullion cube

1/4 cup white wine

1 cup heavy cream

1 tsp ground thyme

1 tsp salt

black pepper

PW's Perfect Pie Crust

PW also has a Turkey Pot Pie recipe on her blog that is identical to this one, except, of course, it uses turkey.

Enjoy!

Weekend Cooking - Butterfinger Cake

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

I'm a little late as usual but I love this meme...

We've had quite a few pot-luck suppers at church lately so I thought I'd add one of my quick and easy stand-bys for my submission.

:)

This cake is really simple, but the pan is always licked clean and I feel good for making something homemade instead of buying a frozen pie.

Besides some eggs and oil (for the cake mix), this is all you need to make this delicious dessert :)

All you have to do first is prepare the cake mix per the directions on the package.

Then, smoosh up one Butterfinger.

Use as much child labor as you can in the smooshing process ;)

and pour one of the smooshed Butterfingers in the batter.

Mix the Butterfinger and the batter well and then pour it into a 13x9 pan sprayed with non-stick spray.

Follow the cake package again for baking instructions...I cooked mine for 35 minutes...

and then let the cake cool for 5 minutes.

Take a wooden spoon and poke holes at 1 inch intervals halfway through the cake.

Pour the can of condensed milk all over the top of the cake

And then pour the jar of caramel ice cream topping all over the cake...drooling yet??

And last but not least sprinke that other smooshed Butterfinger all over the top of the cake.

Chill cake for at least 30 minutes

Right before serving spread cool whip all over the cake...be sure to buy the extra creamy kind...I mean, really, right?

Once the cake is all covered with cool whip I like to sprinkle more Butterfinger...just so the folks at church know what it is they're cutting into.

Now, my little homemade cake is ready to go :)

MMMMMM!

Weekend Cooking - Barbeque Burgers

Weekend Cooking is Hosted by Beth @ Beth Fish Reads

There are a few recipes that bring back serious childhood memories for me: homemade biscuits with a slice of American cheese melted in the middle for breakfast, tenderized and fried venison and rice, ground chuck roast with carrots and potatoes, and the subject of this week's Weekend Cooking, Barbeque Burgers.

This is a quick meal that my mom used to make for us when we really didn't feel like hamburgers (the same ole same ole routine), but she needed a quick fix for supper or maybe even for a weekend lunch.
I had forgotten all about this simple recipe until my mom made it for my kids at her house.  They all were lickin their fingers, and a lightbulb went off in my head.
SCORE!

I start with a pan sprayed well with no-stick spray.

No-stick spray is one of those things I cannot live without.

Then I put my burger patties in, salt and pepper them and brown both sides.

After the burgers are browned on both sides, I drain off the grease.

And add the barbeque sauce...Kraft Honey flavored is my favorite store bought brand.

I actually use an entire small bottle of the barbeque sauce to coat all the burgers really well.

Then I put the lid on the pan and turn down the heat so that the burgers can soak up some of that flavor from the sauce as they finish cooking all the way through.

I flip the burgers again about half way through the "soaking" process...

About this time the smells are wafting through the house, and my kids start making these kind of faces and tummies start to growl...including my own!

This is what barbeque burgers look like when they are done.

I serve them with fries or with PW's Potato Skins, which are another family favorite.

The kids make the burgers however they want.

The Head of My Household eats his plain on a bun, several of us eat them on a bun with a little mayo, and my firstborn puts cheese on hers.

I don't understand the cheese part, but each to her own :)

Happy Cooking!