Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family [Mass Market Paperback]

Marialisa Calta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2005

A wry and practical guide to the family meal.

Veteran food writer and columnist Marialisa Calta offers advice, strategies, and recipes from families across the country, addressing the peculiar challenges and delights of enjoying dinner as a family.

Part cookbook, part survival manual, part humor book, part voyeuristic peek into our neighbors' kitchens, Barbarians at the Plate is a field guide to an all-too-endangered species these days: the family meal.

Barbarians at the Plate covers:

- Last-minute meals
- Slow-cookers and other effort-saving appliances
- Barbecuing
- Making the most of leftovers
- Accommodating picky eaters
- Creating mealtime traditions
- Getting everyone to participate in cooking and clean-up
- Insights into the ways families survive and thrive around the dinner table

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stories of family dinners gone awry-from children crawling under the table and pretending to be kitties to finicky eaters who reject everything on the menu-pepper this down-to-earth handbook for weeknight family dinners. "When I started this project, I kept hearing about men who regularly cook weeknight dinners on a regular basis, and fully expected to find them. I didn't," writes Calta, who focuses on her target audience: women, some single, some married, who have a family to feed, at least one job and too little time. Easy recipes include Stroganoff-ish Leftover Roast Beef, complete with canned mushrooms and ketchup, Almost-Instant Mashed Potatoes, and 13 slow-cooker recipes, ranging from bland (Turkey Legs) to flavorful (Mexican Pork and Hominy Stew) with tips for freezing, pre-cooking and leftovers. Snobbery-free and realistic, Calta gives tips for civilizing take-out-add homemade salsa to take-out burritos, for example-and speeding up simple dishes like macaroni and cheese while still cooking from scratch. Calta places recipes into two sections: meals for planners, those who slow-cook, freeze and plan ahead; and strategies for last-minute cooks, those who stir-fry, grill and sauté. Tales of family dinners and tips for dinner conversation, healthy substitutes and recipe variations are scattered throughout the book. This disjointed organization can be confusing but, overall, this is a beginner-accessible cookbook that will encourage even the most time-crunched mother.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Marialisa Calta is a syndicated food writer whose column, "Food," appears in 100 newspapers across the country. Her articles on food, travel, and lifestyles have appeared in New York Times, Gourmet, Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, and Woman's Day. She is a co-author of The River Run Cookbook (with Jimmy and Maya Kennedy), and helped create the recipes for Al Roker's Big Bad Book of BBQ: 100 Easy Recipes for Backyard Barbecue by Al Roker. She lives with her husband and her two mostly civilized daughters.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Perigee Trade (June 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399531521
• ISBN-13: 978-0399531521
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,196,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the Modern American Family" (Perigee Books, 2005).

She began her career as a newspaper reporter, working for the now-defunct alternative weekly, The Seattle Sun. After earning a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she worked at a number of publications, including the Associated Press and The Providence (RI) Journal.She has also taught journalism classes at the University of Vermont.

For the past 10 years, she has written "Food," a weekly column syndicated by United Media to more than 500 small newspapers nationwide. Her work on food, travel and lifestyles has appeared in The New York Times, Gourmet, Eating Well, The Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living, Smithsonian, People and Woman's Day. In 1994, she won the Bert Greene Memorial Award for Food Journalism given by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She is a contributing editor to Eating Well magazine and a commentator on Vermont Public Radio.

Her other books include "River Run: Southern Comfort From Vermont" (HarperCollins, 2001), which she co-wrote with Jimmy and Maya Kennedy and "Fresh From Vermont," published Vermont Life Magazine 1992, with text Chef David Miles of the New England Culinary Institute. NBC "Today" show personality Al Roker tapped Marialisa to help develop and test recipes for two cookbooks, "Al Roker's Big Bad Book of Barbecue" (Scribner, 2002) and "Al Roker's Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook" (Scribner, 2003).

A proud moment in her career came in the fall of 2001, when she was one of a small group of neighbors who helped launch the 2002 Men of Maple Corner Calendar, featuring the nearly-naked (but extremely intelligent!) men of the community (see www.MapleCorner.net). This fund-raising project ' featured on NBC's "Today" show and media throughout the world - went on to garner about $500,000 for the Maple Corner Community Center and other charities. Unfortunately, the calendar models retired after the 2003 edition.

She lives in Vermont with her husband and two daughters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbarians at the Plate, September 21, 2005

By 

Lori Kasbeer (Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are a person who only knows how to boil water, but wants to look like you can do so much more then this book is for you. Marialisa gives you a lot of easy recipes, which can be made on the go. And lays everything out in easy to read steps.

Feeding a family healthy meals, on the go, each night is a challenge. But Marialisa does all the hard work for you, laying it all out, she gives definitions to terms you may not be familiar with, she even gives you suggestions in how to be successful in your grocery shopping. She covers it all!!

You can not go wrong with this book. I will be honest at first I was a little hesitant because of the cover (not sure why, just me). But I am sooo glad I got this book, it is really helpful in keeping my family of three teenage boys feed.