America’s best-known chefs—in a stellar gathering—recall the dishes that warm their hearts in a collection benefiting one of the nation’s leading antihunger organizations.
Cooking from the Heart features one hundred of the country’s most beloved and well-known chefs, who each contribute not only a superb dish—whether a holiday tradition, comfort food, cross-cultural innovation, or family classic—but also the story of why that dish means the world to them. The chefs speak as parents, children, partners, neighbors, husbands, wives, and friends. Cooking from the Heart is a joyous collection of recipes in which love is always the first ingredient. Here are Ming Tsai and his family wrapping potstickers on the Ping-Pong table in his grandmother’s house; Gale Gand and her son making pie crusts with a rolling pin that’s been in their family for five generations; Seth Bixby Daugherty improvising a mulberry crisp on a cross-country peace march; Marcel Desaulnier recounting the Christmas his mother sent him her chocolates and cookies while he was serving in Vietnam; and Lidia Bastianich crushing herbs under her infant grandchildren’s noses to awaken their senses to rich aromas. From Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s grandmother’s Alsatian Lamb Stew to Rick Bayless’s hometown Orchard Peach Cobbler, from Sara Moulton's Grilled Fish discovered on a magical trip to Greece to Emeril Lagasse’s favorite Bolognese Sauce for Sundays with friends, Cooking from the Heart presents an inexhaustible range of recipes you’ll want to make your own. These are stories to cherish; they will remind you of—and even inspire—your own family’s mealtimes and traditions.
Greetings and thanks for welcoming me into your home. Since I write books for both young readers and adults, I've cooked up two long-winded paragraphs.
Kids first: So, I'm the author of some four dozen books for children of all ages. The fall of 2011 brings four new titles: MY DOG! A Kid's Guide to Keeping a Happy & Healthy Dog (the idea go-to dog guide for families); a pop-up book with Robert Sabuda, Chanukah Lights, which just received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly: "A stunning achievement"; The Hound Dog's Haiku and Other Poems for Dog Lovers, illustrated with Mary Azarian's woodcuts; and Night of the Pumpkinheads, illustrated entirely with extraordinary jack-o'-lanterns.
Other favorites are The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Poems for Birders; Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (which I both wrote and illustrated with some 400 photographs); A Drive in the Country; Don't Shoot!; A School for Pompey Walker, and Elijah's Angel. (And, yes, there's the Britiish Michael--no "J."--Rosen whose many books are often confused with mine.) For over 35 years, ever since working as a counselor, water-safety instructor, and art teacher at local community centers, I've been engaged with young children, their parents and teachers. As a visiting author, in-service speaker, and workshop leader, I frequently travel to schools and conferences around the nation, sharing stories, poems, creativity, and humor.
Several of my books here show my work as editor/anthologist or illustrator. It has been my privilege to have enlisted hundreds of other authors and artists to create 15 philanthropic books that aid in the fight to end childhood hunger through Share Our Strength's national efforts, or that offer care to less fortunate companion animals through The Company of Animals Fund, a granting program I administered for a dozen years.
Now, for adults. I can start by saying I'm a poet. I went to Columbia from 1979-1981, and received my MFA there. Poems are now collected in three volumes, which are all featured here at Amazon. Moving home to Ohio, I worked as an illustrator (while in NYC, I began selling spot illustrations to The New Yorker and Gourmet magazines); one of my first real clients was The Thurber House, the soon-to-be-restored home of Columbus's native son, James Thurber. For almost twenty years, I helped to restore the home, develop the programs there, and edit much of Thurber's uncollected work. (Those volumes are also featured here.) It was there, I began to edit short story anthologies, commission great writers to contribute to books about dogs, horses, and even VW Beetles. That's also where I started Mirth of a Nation, a three-volume humor biennial that constitutes almost 2,000 pages of the best contemporary humor.
Most recently, I've been working in humorous nonfiction. No Dribbling the Squid features profiles of 70-some of the world's most wayward competitions. (You can see the Web site and Facebook pages, as well.) And, most recently, there's Any Body's Guess: Quirky Quizzes About What Makes You Tick.
Otherwise, my Website has a good deal about my life on the 100-acre farm I share in Central Ohio. Thanks again for reading along with me.
www.fidosopher.com
for lots more about MY DOG!, including recipes, training tips, cool projects, games, and so forth: www.workman.com/mydog
