Smoking: Risk, Perception and Policy Review

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(More customer reviews)Paul Slovic writes a compelling foreword to this persuasive and evocative book describing the health risks to smokers and their own perceptions of them. In it, he rebutts economist Viscusi's thesis that smokers make the rational choice to light up, having weighed the risks and benefits already adequately communicated to them by public health agencies. Slovic, unlike Viscusi, does NOT hold the opinion that the money spent communicating the risk of smoking to the public could be better spent elsewhere, and the studies described in Smoking: Risk, Perception, and Policy--undertaken by distinguished scholars like Daniel Romer and Patrick Jamieson--substantiate his position. A fascinating read that unmasks smoking a cigarette as political and public health crime. Loving it!

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This book presents a counter-view, based on a survey of several thousand young persons and adults, probing attitudes, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions of risk associated with smoking. The authors agree that young smokers give little or no thought to health risks or the problems of addiction. The survey data contradicts the model of informed, rational choice and underscores the need for aggressive policies to counter tobacco firms' marketing and promotional efforts and to restrict youth access to tobacco.

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Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook: A Real Barbecue Champion Brings the Tasty Recipes and Juicy Stories of the Barbecue Circuit to Your Backyard Review

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(More customer reviews)Ray begins his book by talking about how all the other books on BBQ all start out talking about types of grills, grill tools, charcoal etc, and he's not going to start out his that way...Bravo! Good for him! Because most of us ALREADY know all about tools and grills. Insteay Lampe really wants to talk technique and taste. As he points out...cook on whatever you have...no one need feel they can't achieve great BBQ without spending hundreds of dollars on a high end grill or BBQ pit. Ray also tosses out the arguement of grilling vs. BBQ right off the bat and it's clear he has a bit of disdain for snooty types who think their way is the ONLY way. Again I say Bravo! It's this no-nonsene approach that really appealed to me about this book. Use what you can, it's all good and it WILL be good if you follow Ray's advice.
I've sampled a handfull of these recipes so far and here are some of my favorites: Smoked Turkey legs...they have a Renaissance Festival here every late Summer in Michigan and my favorite thing to eat is the giant, grilled, smoked turkey legs. I don't even like dark meat normally but these are delicious and with this recipe I can make them at home.
I like the rib recipes but my favorite was the backyard championship Ribs. Perfectly designed no matter what type of grill you are using. Boneless chicken is a staple in our home and the salsa grilled chicken breasts were also a big hit.
This book has quickly moved to the top of my list of favorites!

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Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization Review

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(More customer reviews)Tobacco is "certainly the most equivocal substance in daily human use," according to Iain Gately. His author photo shows him unequivocally smoking his cigar, and so you might expect that he would go easy on the weed in his book _Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization_ (Grove Press). For those who think that cigarettes are an unalloyed curse, some of his book will be difficult reading. No history of tobacco can ignore the many social and health costs connected to the drug, and Gately's does not. But American Indians were using it for centuries, and in the five centuries since the conquest of the Americas, tobacco has insinuated itself into every diverse culture; there must be a reason that the killer drug is regarded by millions as a pleasure and a comfort. In fact, there are lots of reasons which the plant has exploited, and so it has a rich and complex history. Gately has researched widely and told the history well.
Tobacco has been part of human culture for about 18,000 years. It was cultivated in the Andes region about six thousand years ago, and only eventually smoked. "That lungs had a dual function - could be used for stimulation in addition to respiration - is one of the American continent's most significant contributions to civilization." The gift of dried tobacco leaves to Columbus in the Bahamas got thrown overboard; no one knew why the natives were getting rid of their tobacco leaves this way. The British took to snuff, in imitation of the fashionable French, but also smoked with pipes like the ones North American Indians used. The British were slow to follow the French in cigarette usage, for they were regarded as "a miserable apology" for the more manly pleasure of cigars or pipes; Oscar Wilde enjoyed horrifying society in many ways, and chain-smoking his effeminate cigarettes was one of them. All the nations of the world showed disgust at the particularly American practice of chewing tobacco and thereupon expectorating tinted spittle. Charles Dickens wrote, "In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and the spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly." Modern advertising gets a good examination here; surprisingly, the Marlboro Man was originally no such thing; Philip Morris brought out Marlboros "Mild as May" in 1924, targeted for decent and respectable ladies.
Gately's book has not been edited to be turned into an American version, so American readers will note a disproportionate number of anecdotes and facts from Europe. (An appendix even tells how Her Majesty's subjects can grow the plant in England for their own use.) He has some limp support of tobacco as a guard against such illnesses as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and too often his disdain for the anti-smoking movement is obvious. However, this is a great subject. The effects of tobacco on bodies may be bad, and on society may be bad as well (slavery, for instance, was a New World tradition largely because of tobacco farms), and Gately tells the dark side of the stories well; this is not an apology or an advertisement for smoking, but more of a historical explanation. For anyone who smokes, or who is interested in a world-wide history centered on one particular plant and the uses to which addicted and habituated people have put it, _Tobacco_ tells an important story in an entertaining way.

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The BBQ Concession Trailer As a Home Based Business Opportunity (How To Make Serious Money With Your Own Mobile Food Business) Review

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(More customer reviews)The book probably saved me hours and hours of trying to find information on my own and did it all in an easy to read format. I would highly recommend it for anyone even thinking of possibly starting their own food business. It deals with many interesting aspects of the mobile food business even though mostly it is about concession trailer sales. It covers all the basics of putting together your own business and even deals with ways how you can build your own trailer from scratch!
We have used some of the recipes in the book and have been serving them to over 5000 people since last summer and had very good feedback the whole time. Everybody asks us how we make our special Barbecue sauce and they have no idea how it's made! We won't tell them either as it is better to keep it a business secret... The recipe comes straight from this book!

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Raichlen on Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs Review

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(More customer reviews)Raichlen's premise is that everyone should know how to barbeque a good rack of ribs. I thought that was a good premise, and I had to admit that such an ability was indeed lacking from my own repetoire. It's not that I haven't tried. I got a smoker three years ago. Despite many efforts, producing lip-smacking ribs remained a hit or miss affair. I still hadn't acquired the confidence or technique that guarantees good ribs time after time.
So I bought Raichlen's book, hoping that he would make good on his promise that he would teach me how to make good barbeque ribs without fail. When the book arrived (from Amazon), I went straight to his "The One Rib Recipe Everyone should know."
After a quick trip to the store to get a couple of missing ingredients needed for his dry rub and sauce, I got down to business. The results? My oh my oh my! Better than I have ever prepared on my best day. Better than I have ever eaten at any rib joint. The delicious aromas wafting from my smoker suggested that something wonderful was happening. The sauce, the dry rub, the recommended procedure for cooking them all came together to make perfection!
About the sauce, I've made several barbeque sauces before, but his was the first one I made that had a hearty dose of lemon zest and lemon juice. Did that ever work! Tangy and sweet and flavorful. His dry rub mixture was also excellent.
There are 99 other rib recipes in this book, and most of them look really intersting. But the centerpiece recipe, the "rib recipe that everyone should know", is worth the price of the book alone. It's enough to turn you into a backyard 'cue pro, the envy of mere amateur tong wielders.

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Serious Barbecue: Smoke, Char, Baste, and Brush Your Way to Great Outdoor Cooking Review

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(More customer reviews)I have read enough of this book, to be able to say; "I think it's a great book." I own a lot of barbecue related cookbooks and I have had the great good fortune, as the moderator of BBQForum.com, to have read over 700,000 posts to the forum by BBQ people. So I have been exposed to a lot of barbecue. This is one of the best books, about barbecue and outdoor cooking in general.
In 2005 I did a podcast interview with Adam and I have read his detailed posts to the forum. I have never actually meet Adam in person. However, I know a little bit about Adam. He knows how to cook and not only that, he knows what happens to food when it's cooking and can explain it to you.The book really focuses on layering flavors. So, when people taste food cooked the way he explains it, they are in for taste treats, one after another.
With all my 14 years of daily exposure to the wisdom of some of the top barbecue cooks in the country and all the cookbooks I have read, you would think I would have a good grasp of the situation. But, in reading this book I am learning a lot of new things.
I don't hand out these compliments lightly. This is not just a "low and slow pure barbecue" cookbook but he carries his knowledge of "pure barbecue" (he has won prestigious "pure barbecue" awards to back this up) into all levels of outdoor cooking. There is a lot of direct grilling and indirect smoking information. I don't care if you're an expert cook or a beginner, you will get a lot out of reading this book.


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Smoking Food for Pleasure or Profit: How to smoke fish, oysters, mussels, cheese, ham, bacon, sausage and salmon, complete with recipes and diagrams Review

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(More customer reviews)I would give this book negative stars if possible. This was written overseas and apparently the author just discovered liquid smoke. Every recipe in the book uses liquid smoke. I'm sorry but brushing cheese with liquid smoke and letting it set in the refrigerator in NOT smoked cheese. Big waste of time and money.

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A new, extended and revised edition of this long established essential guide, with weights and measures converted for US readers.If you would like to cure and smoke hams, fish, meats and cheeses, produce professional quality smoked food with ease using ordinary kitchen appliances, or even build your own kiln, then this is the book for you. Everything that you need to know about smoking food is in here right down to the last detail, including how to fillet fish and how to prepare it for the smoking process.It even covers production methods and recipes for using liquid smoke.22 pictures, diagrams & 10 recipes in one superbly laid out book, with large print so that you can read the book while you work.

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Don Holm's Book of Food Drying, Pickling & Smoke Curing Review

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(More customer reviews)The part about drying food was good and well balanced. The pickling section is only about pickling fish. Not a cucumber in sight. The smoking section has good background, but 90% of the recipes are for smoked fish. There are four of five pages devoted to non-fish items (birds, red meat, cheese, eggs, etc.) The jerkey section was good, and had many ways of making strip jerkey.
If you're buying this for the drying or jerkey sections, it's a good book. If you're buying this for the pickling section and hope to make vegetable pickles, look elsewhere. If you're buying this to smoke anything other than fish, there are better books out there, like Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design by Stanley Marianski. If you're really into fish - dried, pickled, or smoked, this book is perfect.

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The Art of Making Fermented Sausages Review

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(More customer reviews)Like other recent books by the Marianski's this one is self-published, through Outskirts Press, and it clearly has not benefited from the services of a professional editor or proofreader. The book is littered with grammar mistakes, typographical errors, and odd locutions. The way the text is organized, they end up covering the same subjects from multiple angles, with the result that they repeat themselves over and over. Sometimes the organization simply seems haphazard, with "notes" appearing at the end of a section which could be more accurately labeled "afterthoughts." The information presented is clear and accurate; just don't expect a gripping read.
This book is definitely a useful addition for any other meathead out there wanting to try and make fermented sausages at home. As a book dedicated to this subject, they go deeper into the issues of chemistry, microbiology, sanitation, and equipment (for smoking, fermenting, and drying) that all affect the quality of the finished product. The second part contains 50 detailed recipes, with precise measurements in grams, so that even a relative newcomer to this craft can proceed with confidence. This book usefully bridges the gap between simpler cookbooks and advanced textbooks such as Fidel Toldrá's Handbook of Fermented Meat and Poultry (which sells for $200). At $20, even with all its faults on its head, this book is a bargain.
To read my full review, go to my website.
Update, 7/8/09: Just heard from Stanley Marianski that they have revised this book and it's coming out from a new publisher (Bookmagic). If you decide to buy, this is the edition you want-it has an index!

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The majority of books written on making sausages do not tackle the subject of fermented sausages at all. The topic is limited to a statement that this is an advanced field of sausage making which is not recommended for an amateur sausage maker. Well, the main reason for writing this book was that the authors did not share this opinion. On the contrary, they believed that any hobbyist could make wonderful salami at home, if he only knew how. Highly technical papers were published in Food Technology journals which unfortunately were written in very difficult terms. Thus the idea of bridging the technology gap that existed between Meat Science and the requirements of the typical hobbyist was born. With more information obtainable every day, and commercial starter cultures available to the public, there is little reason to abstain from making quality salamis at home, regardless of the climate and outside conditions.

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The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock & Wild Game Review

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(More customer reviews)I debated whether to give this book a three star rating or a two star rating. The pictures are excellent and for that reason alone, I might have given it three stars. However, and this is the basic flaw of this book, there are not really enough of them just as there is not really enough information in a book that bill itself as "The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing and Sausage Making."
The chapters on butchering are fairly decent. Like I said, the pictures are really good even though not every step is pictured. Still, with this book alone, you could probably butcher an animal and do an acceptable job. The other chapters, the ones on curing and smoking, are completely inadequate and could only be considered overviews at best.
There is not even one actual recipe for curing meat. The curing section discusses curing in the most general and non-specific sense and contains no recipes. The smoking section goes give a diagram for constructing a smoker but again, it is just a guide and does not give any recipes or times or any specifics at all. The Section on sausages is also weak. While it does provide some recipes (really nothing that you couldn't get over the internet) it breezes over technique and is mostly a list of definitions. I doubt a novice could use any of these sections to cure or smoke meat and anyone with experience would probably not find much helpful in this book.

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Here's the ideal hands-on guidebook for self-sufficient farmers, ranchers, and hunters with step-by-step instructions on butchering beef, venison, pork, lamb, poultry, and goats. Time-tested advice on how to cure the meat by smoking or salting helps you preserve your harvest. A final section explains how to make sausages. Numerous mouth-watering recipes are included.

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Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Appalachian Cooking (10th Anniversary Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine is my favorite kind of a writing: Perhaps it's just an attention span that only slightly exceeds a chicken's, but I've always been partial to encyclopedias, chrestomathies, and motley books. The prime example in English might be Robert Burton's The Essential Anatomy of Melancholy (Dover Books on Literature & Drama), in a peripatetic group that includes everything from William Blake's epic poems to Ambrose Bierce's subversive dictionary to James Agee's queer account of Alabama sharecroppers. Like the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament, each seems to offer a continuously unique, surprising, and delightful encounter, and the reading as a whole is as various and inexhaustible as experience himself.
So it was with great satisfaction I opened, at random, Joseph Dabney's "cookbook" to find instructions for bear stew combined with an anecdote about a North Carolina woman breastfeeding a cub. Smokehouse Ham is hardly a manual for cooking but a living compilation of history, biography, opinion, and folklore, which animate each chapter's recipes. Personally, I can hear my own grandfather talking about hunting squirrels and rabbits in the North Georgia foothills to supply the family's table during the Depression, and in this way the volume invites a kind of mutual action, begging for me to pull out a pencil and write in the margins as the page inscribes me.
I should add a recommendation that will touch all similar bibliophiles. Characteristically, the book has a reassuring heft. My favorite books have all been physically substantial. They're like intimate companions. Often when I've fallen asleep reading late, I've woken the next morning to find the rectangular impression in the sheets beside me wholly comforting.

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Winner of the James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award!

Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine is a scrumptious slice of Smoky Mountain and Blue Ridge hill country foodlore handed down from Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Germany, and the Cherokee Nation. In addition to generous helpings of folklore, the text highlights and embraces the art of Appalachian cuisine from pioneer days to the present, providing insights that will fascinate readers everywhere. Divided into four sections - The Folklore, The Art, The Foods, The Blessings - the book is packed with authoritative folklore and authentic Appalachian recipes, as well as old-timey photographs in the Foxfire fashion: fireplace and wood-stove cooking, hog killing, bear hunting, shuck-bean strining, apple-butter partying, dinner on the grounds, and much more. The Folklore includes chapters on the people, seasons, and social life as it pertains to food. The Art includes chapters on growing, gardening, farming by the signs, food preparation, and food preservation. The more than 200 recipes are accompanied with stories of how the foods have been passed from generation to generation. And the Blessings include numerous hill country invocations. All in all, the book contains 61 fascinating chapters and almost one hundred sidebars on special topics. Among the 23 chapters of recipes:

Corn Bread: Mountain Staff of Life
From Catheads to Angel Biscuits
Moonshine: Mountain Water of Life
Hog-Killing Day: Mountain Celebration
Smokehouse Ham and Red-Eye Gravy.

The result of years of research and interviews, Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine will remind readers of the Foxfire series of an earlier generation.

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