The Cook, the Diner, and the Mind


Book Description

This is a psychology book for cooks about food. Not a cook book, but a psychology book. You will see how your brain deals with information from your senses, so you can understand that people actually find a soup called "muoma" creamier than a soup with the name "sitsee", how making up walks and rhymes makes it easy to remember things and why wine in an expensive looking bottle tastes, really tastes, better. You will see why some people like baking and some people are not, why people who enter their homes through the kitchen have a higher chance of being overweight. And much more. I have tried to explain things using examples of food and cooking whenever possible, and avoided explaining anything I could not explain in an amusing or interesting way . I will take you hundreds of thousands of years back, and show you that we are the cooking ape, creatures of the fire. Without cooking we would not exist. You will read how your brain constructs what we see, hear, smell, feel and taste, and how much we actually add to what we think we just perceive, and how this is very much the case when we eat. You will learn how to use your memory efficiently in the kitchen using simple tricks. I will show you different personalities in the kitchen, and what to do with that. We will dig into technique-based cooking and recipe-based cooking and how that affects you and your cooking. Hell, we'll even look at language and food names, pricing strategies, and how we can use that knowledge to our advantage.




Diners, Dudes, and Diets


Book Description

The phrase "dude food" likely brings to mind a range of images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal; crazed sports fans demolishing plates of radioactively hot wings; barbecued or bacon-wrapped . . . anything. But there is much more to the phenomenon of dude food than what's on the plate. Emily J. H. Contois's provocative book begins with the dude himself—a man who retains a degree of masculine privilege but doesn't meet traditional standards of economic and social success or manly self-control. In the Great Recession's aftermath, dude masculinity collided with food producers and marketers desperate to find new customers. The result was a wave of new diet sodas and yogurts marketed with dude-friendly stereotypes, a transformation of food media, and weight loss programs just for guys. In a work brimming with fresh insights about contemporary American food media and culture, Contois shows how the gendered world of food production and consumption has influenced the way we eat and how food itself is central to the contest over our identities.




Dopamine for Dinner


Book Description




The Perfect Meal


Book Description

The authors of The Perfect Meal examine all of the elements that contribute to the diners experience of a meal (primarily at a restaurant) and investigate how each of the diners senses contributes to their overall multisensory experience. The principal focus of the book is not on flavor perception, but on all of the non-food and beverage factors that have been shown to influence the diners overall experience. Examples are: the colour of the plate (visual) the shape of the glass (visual/tactile) the names used to describe the dishes (cognitive) the background music playing inside the restaurant (aural) Novel approaches to understanding the diners experience in the restaurant setting are explored from the perspectives of decision neuroscience, marketing, design, and psychology. 2015 Popular Science Prose Award Winner.




Gil's All Fright Diner


Book Description

Bloodier than Fried Green Tomatoes! Funnier than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre! Welcome to Gil's All Night Diner, where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never know what might be lurking in the freezer . . . Duke and Earl are just passing through Rockwood county in their pick-up truck when they stop at the Diner for a quick bite to eat. They aren't planning to stick around-until Loretta, the eatery's owner, offers them $100 to take care of her zombie problem. Given that Duke is a werewolf and Earl's a vampire, this looks right up their alley. But the shambling dead are just the tip of a particularly spiky iceberg. Seems someone's out to drive Loretta from the Diner, and more than willing to raise a little Hell on Earth if that's what it takes. Before Duke and Earl get to the bottom of the Diner's troubles, they'll run into such otherworldly complications as undead cattle, an amorous ghost, a jailbait sorceress, and the terrifying occult power of pig-latin. And maybe--just maybe--the End of the World, too. Gory, sexy, and flat-out hilarious, Gil's All Fright Diner will tickle your funnybone--before ripping it out of its socket! At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Catching Fire


Book Description

In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome




A Cowboy State of Mind


Book Description

A brand-new series of sweet, small town cowboy romance from USA Today bestselling author Jennie Marts. The Horse Whisperer meets Hope Floats when bubbly Bryn Callahan and brooding Zane Taylor protect an unwanted horse and end up with an animal rescue operation that they can only handle when they rely on each other. Scarred and battered loner Zane Taylor has a gift with animals, particularly horses, but he's at a total loss when it comes to knowing how to handle women. Even though he's sworn off love, he can't seem to stay away from Bryn Callahan. He's known for being a horse whisperer, but can't seem to find his voice at all where Bryn is concerned. Bryn Callahan has a heart for strays, but she is through trying to save damaged men. She vows to only date nice guys, which is a category that does not include Zane Taylor. Too bad he's the only one who sets her pulse racing every time she's around him. Starting a horse rescue ranch wasn't in Bryn's plan, but try telling that to the assembly of abandoned animals that have found their way to her doorstep. And when a chance encounter with a horse headed for slaughter brings Zane and Bryn together, they find themselves given a chance to save not just the horse, but maybe each other... Praise for Caught Up in a Cowboy: "Funny, complicated, and irresistible."—JODI THOMAS, New York Times bestselling author "An appealing story of love rediscovered...enjoy this tender tale."—Publishers Weekly "Full of exquisite heat and passion...an enthralling combination of intense moments, playful banter, and great depth of emotion."—Harlequin Junkie




Eat Me


Book Description

"Pancakes are a luxury, like smoking marijuana or having sex. That’s why I came up with the names Ho Cakes and Slutty Cakes. These are extra decadent, but in a way, every pancake is a Ho Cake.” Thus speaks Kenny Shopsin, legendary (and legendarily eccentric, ill-tempered, and lovable) chef and owner of the Greenwich Village restaurant (and institution), Shopsin’s, which has been in existence since 1971. Kenny has finally put together his 900-plus-item menu and his unique philosophy—imagine Elizabeth David crossed with Richard Pryor—to create Eat Me, the most profound and profane cookbook you’ll ever read. His rants—on everything from how the customer is not always right to the art of griddling; from how to run a small, ethical, and humane business to how we all should learn to cook in a Goodnight Moon world where everything you need is already in your own home and head—will leave you stunned or laughing or hungry. Or all of the above. With more than 120 recipes including such perfect comfort foods as High School Hot Turkey Sandwiches, Cuban Bean Polenta Melt, and Cornmeal-Fried Green Tomatoes with Comeback Sauce, plus the best soups, egg dishes, and hamburgers you’ve ever eaten, Eat Me is White Trash Cooking for the twenty-first century, as unforgettable and mind-boggling as its author.




Mind from Body


Book Description

In Mind from Body, Don Tucker, one of the most original thinkers about organic information processing, provides a fascinating analysis of how our brains have become what they are today and speculates intriguingly about what they could be tomorrow. He presents important research that explains how personal experience creates the emotional and motivational bases of each of our thoughts, even though we are usually not aware that it is happening. Tucker shows that in exploring how these bodily thought processes still determine how we react to the world andmake decisions, we can become more rational




Cook This, Not That!


Book Description

Millions of Americans have lost tens of millions of unwanted pounds with the simple restaurant and supermarket swaps in Eat This, Not That! Now, the team behind the bestselling series turns its nutritional savvy to the best place in the world for you to strip away extra pounds, take control of your health, and put money back in your own pocket: your own kitchen. Did you know the average dinner from a chain restaurant costs nearly $35 a person and contains more than 1,200 calories? That’s hard on your wallet and your waistline, and few people understand this better than David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding. Their response: Learn to cook all your favorite restaurant food at home—and watch the pounds disappear! Make no mistake—this is no rice-and-tofu cookbook. The genius of Cook This, Not That! is that it teaches you how to save hundreds—sometimes thousands—of calories by recreating America’s most popular restaurant dishes, including Outback Steakhouse’s Roasted Filet with Port Wine Sauce, Uno Chicago Grill’s Individual Deep Dish Pizza, and Chili’s Fire Grilled Chicken Fajita. Other priceless advice includes: • The 37 Ways to Cook a Chicken Breast, A Dozen 10-Minute Pasta Sauces, The Ultimate Sandwich Matrix, and other on-the-go cooking tips • Scorecards that allow you to easily compare the nutritional quality of the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in every meal you eat • The truth about how seemingly healthy foods, such as wheat bread, salmon, and low-fat snacks, may be secretly sabotaging your health