Sacred Food: Cooking for Spiritual Nourishment Review

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(More customer reviews)In Sacred Food: Cooking For Spiritual Nourishment, award-winning food writer Elisabeth Luard takes the reader on a fascinating and inspiring survey of dishes traditionally served at significant and celebatory moments ranging from birth, puberty, courtship, and betrothal, to marriage, death, burial, and remembrance. Along the way Luard illuminates how and why we celebrate such human milestones with food. Superb images showcase a wealth of recipes and myriad cultures from Mexico, Japan, Spain, Italy, and Indonesia, to North American, the Middle East, Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain. From Mushroom Piroshki for an Eastern European birth basket, to Kerala Coconut Curry prepared for an Indian wedding feast, Sacred Food offers more than 40 sumptuous recipes to delight, educate, and please the palate. Sacred Foods is highly recommended for culinary gourmets and students of the cultural role food plays in human societies around the world.

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Celebrating the power of food to nourish souls and its vital part in religious ceremonies and secular celebrations, this cookbook offers insights into food that go far beyond recipes. It explores the dishes that are traditionally served at significant moments in human life—birth, puberty, courtship, betrothal and marriage, death, burial, and remembrance—and explains why and how we celebrate with food. More than 40 recipes include pan de muertos, prepared for the Mexican Day of the Dead; piroshki from Slovakia, to celebrate the birth of a baby; cassava with chili and peanuts, to mark an African girl's coming-of-age; and honey cake, prepared for a Turkish wedding feast. The vibrant ceremonies and dishes are lavishly illustrated with color photographs, bringing to life a wealth of recipes and myriad cultures including those of Mexico, Japan, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, North America, the Middle East, Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain.

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The Well-Decorated Cake Review

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(More customer reviews)FINALLY, of all the cake decorating books I own, a new one comes along that could almost make ALL the others obsolete -- it's that good.
A recent review of Collette Peters' "Cakes To Dream On" (a book which claims in its subtitle to be a "A Master Class in Decorating") says, and I quote: "While I concede that this book is stunning to look at, Colette Peters does not want you to learn how to make these cakes. The cake decorating instructions are vague and absurdly simplistic in the extreme; general discussion of technique ... is either absent or useless in its brevity... This is another narcissistic venture by Colette Peters."
Well, Ms. Garrett, on the other hand, is REALLY offering you 'a master class in decorating'. Unlike Ms. Peters, Ms. Garrett DOES want you to learn how to make these cakes and DOES want to help you do so. I am overcome with admiration for her for that fact alone. She'd have every right in the world to be narcissistic and stuck-up, to jealously guard all her professional skills and secrets ... and yet she's not and she doesn't. She gives the real deal in this book and it's worth every penny and more of its purchase price.
Books like Ms. Peters' various books which may in truth, despite claims to the contrary, serve only as inspiration rather than instruction, still meet a very real need -- and I don't mean to imply otherwise. However, what's so admirable about "The Well-Decorated Cake" is that in it, Ms. Garrett -- a seriously skilled decorator -- offers BOTH: real, hard-core instruction on sophisticated, professional techniques, AND inspiration and ideas galore thanks to the numerous photos of completed cakes.
Would this book be appropriate for absolute beginners? I'm not entirely sure -- it aims high and assumes at least a working familiarity with the fundamental components involved. Still, it spells out any number of details carefully and thoroughly -- far more carefully and thoroughly than any number of books and/or articles I've read in my years of researching this subject. She teaches professionals and it shows.
By the way, I purchased the paperback edition and am more than pleased with its quality. The paper is heavy and smooth and the font crisp and clear. Add to that truly superb photographs in abundance and lovely line drawings and diagrams.
This book is, undeniably, a winner. Congratulations, Ms. Garrett, and THANK YOU!
P.S. (April 2006) I see Ms. Garrett is coming out this September with another book on cake decorating (Professional Cake Decorating, Wiley publisher) intended for professional students. Betcha it'll be really comprehensive and solid. Keep your eyes open!

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As a Master Cake Designer and featured instructor at the prestigious Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, Toba Garrett has taught top industry professionals her decorating secrets. Now, using the same easy-to-follow style that worked so well in her acclaimed book, Creative Cookies, she brings her artistic vision and professional tips to you in this fully illustrated home cake-decorating course. From selecting the proper equipment to the basics of buttercream, easy techniques for creating piping flowers and ornamentation to advanced drapery and border designs, everything you need to become a better cake designer is included. You'll find time-saving templates, a picture gallery of spectacular cakes, and a generous selection of Toba's own recipes. The author lives in New York, NY.

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