Saturday, December 5, 2009

Hospitality Managers Guide to Wines Beers and Spirits or Oz Clarkes Pocket Wine Guide 2006

Hospitality Manager's Guide to Wines, Beers and Spirits

Author: Albert Schmid

Designed with the Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts student in mind, the Hospitality Manager's Guide to Wines, Beers, and Spirits explores a subject important to all who will be involved in the hospitality industry. Illustrated with numerous photographs, drawings and charts, and written in a lively and engaging style, this book is a comprehensive introduction to the history, science, and varieties of alcoholic beverages. Key Features:
• Includes an anecdotal history of alcoholic beverages and their cultural influences
• Comprehensive coverage of important alcoholic beverages all in one book
• Provides a unique organization of wine coverage by the type of grape
• Discusses the importance and variations of wine labels and bottle shapes
• Excellent introduction to the how's and why's of food and beverage pairing
• Easily understood chapter on the biochemical process of fermentation
• Addresses important cost control functions for beverage operations

• Illustrates marketing strategies for successful business operations Provides an overview of profit management techniques for beverage operations
• Complete and current coverage of alcohol safety and responsible service



Table of Contents:
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgment
Ch. 1A Brief History of Alcoholic Beverages1
Ch. 2Alcohol Safety21
Ch. 3Wine Labels and Bottle Shapes31
Ch. 4Getting to Know Wine: Tasting and Pairing41
Ch. 5The Vineyard55
Ch. 6Fermentation73
Ch. 7Light-Bodied White Wines81
Ch. 8Medium-Bodied White Wines91
Ch. 9Full-Bodied White Wines101
Ch. 10Light-Bodied Red Wines111
Ch. 11Medium-Bodied Red Wines121
Ch. 12Full-Bodied Red Wines135
Ch. 13Sparkling Wines, Dessert Wines, Fortified Wines, and Aperitifs149
Ch. 14Beer: Ale and Lager175
Ch. 15Distillation and Distilled Spirits195
Ch. 16Mixology219
Ch. 17Professional Alcohol Service231
Ch. 18Purchasing, Receiving, Storing, and Issuing249
Ch. 19Beverage Cost Control: Managing for Profit257
Ch. 20Marketing and Selling267
Glossary279
Index290

New interesting book: Drugs for Less or Chen Chiu The Original Acupuncture

Oz Clarke's Pocket Wine Guide 2006

Author: Oz Clark

Idispensable as ever, Oz Clarke's now-classic pocket wine guide has been thoroughly and meticulously revised and updated for 2006, with much-anticipated lists of favorite wines, top values, and producers and regions to watch, as well as with new vintage reports.

As user-friendly as it is complete, Oz Clarke's Pocket Wine Guide 2006 lists each wine, grape, winery, producer, and region alphabetically for easy reference. It is a perfect pocket reference for novices--and essential for the seasoned wine lover wanting the latest information.



Friday, December 4, 2009

Singing for Your Supper or The Kitchen Gardens at Heligan

Singing for Your Supper: Entertaining Ways to Be a Perfect Guest

Author: Edith Hazard

In this witty and practical successor to RISING TO THE OCCASION, Edith Hazard offers the answer to awkward gatherings--twenty-six games, gimmicks, performance pieces, and projects, that you can bring to dinner parties, cocktails, family outings, and weekends in the country or at the beach. SINGING FOR YOUR SUPPER is illustrated with drawings and diagrams, but it's more than just how-to instructions. This is a philosophy--a way of looking at your role and responsibility when you're invited out. A perfect guest, Hazard suggests, knows when and how to help the host keep things moving. It means giving something of yourself, something that contributes to the success of the event.

Publishers Weekly

With 6500 entries, Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia, edited by Dave Smith, chief archivist for 25 years at the Walt Disney Archives, it hardly seems possible that anything has been left out. Each of the 128 Donald Duck cartoons is described; the voices of the cartoon characters are identified; the tale of how Mortimer came to be called Mickey is related; and a selected bibliography is included, going back to 1942 books. There are b&w photos throughout, plus an eight-page color insert. (Hyperion, $29.95 576p ISBN 0-7868-6223-8)

BookList

Before television, everyone was forced to bring some sort of amusement or entertainment to a dinner or party. Now etiquette master Hazard revives the almost lost art of guesthood by describing and explaining the how-tos of parlor games and outdoor antics. The 26 forms of amusing others en masse are woven into a gracious, never-ending narrative that paints rather vivid pictures. Think reading a palm is the province only of gypsies? Is juggling restricted to urban street-corner mendicants? Or is the art of hanging a spoon best learned by the under-10 set? Wise and witty ways to enliven a party and indulge the child in all of us.



Book review: Images of Organization or The Smartest Investment Book Youll Ever Read

The Kitchen Gardens at Heligan: Lost Gardening Principles Rediscovered

Author: Tom Petherick

The Lost Gardens at Heligan sold more than 200,000 copies—and this new look at Britain’s most beloved garden examines one of its chief glories. Originally created to make the house they served self-sufficient, the still-productive kitchen gardens have since undergone a complete restoration under the guidance of Tom Petherick. He, with the help of a leading garden photographer, reveals how he went about his work, and how best to keep flowers, fruit, and vegetables: the entire output of a good garden. Packed with advice, hints, tips, and professional secrets, it is a must-have for any gardener.




Thursday, December 3, 2009

Seeds of Wealth or Tomato in America

Seeds of Wealth: Four Plants That Made Men Rich

Author: Henry Hobhous

Seeds of Wealth is a collection of four elegant essays focusing on the economic and cultural consequences of the exploitation of timber, tobacco, rubber, and the wine grape. These cash crops have had, for the past three centuries, a profound effect on our world. In this intriguing account, Hobhouse illustrates how timber deficiency sparked an industrial revolution, tobacco lead to a wealthy and young nation, the rubber tree created nations, and wine provided the head, heart, and pocketbook with wealth.

This book offers proof of how the seemingly irrelevant can have widespread unintended consequences. In presenting global history from his own perspective, Henry Hobhouse offers an overview of how nature has unwittingly contributed to the creation of human wealth and economic growth.

Nola Theiss - KLIATT

Five agricultural products?—?timber, wine grapes, rubber, and tobacco, along with coffee (added to this newest edition)?—?have had an enormous impact on the history of the world. Two (timber and tobacco) reflected the changing fortunes of Britain and the United States. Timber and its rampant use for construction and fuel probably added significantly to global warming. Rubber and winemaking were influential in other areas of the world, like Singapore and Ancient Rome, and coffee brings the Arab world into the picture, but all these products have had significant impact on the United States. The author notes that one thing they have in common, beyond the fact that each stimulated or was crucial in wars, was that they have been a boon for "tax gatherers." Hobhouse has also written a related book, Seeds of Change and, although a journalist by trade, he has become an authority on the impact of plants on the history of the world. Because this book is written in an extremely readable style, it would be a good addition to any school library. Students will use it as a reference in history, political science, economics and science classes. KLIATT Codes: JSA—Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Shoemaker & Hoard, 313p. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 12 to adult.



Table of Contents:
Timber : the essential carpet3
Wine : the grape's bid for immortality69
Rubber : wheels shod for speed125
Tobacco : more than a smoke189

Interesting textbook: Dirty Dining or Eggs

Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery

Author: Andrew F Smith

From the Americas to Australasia, from northern Europe to southern Africa, the tomato tickles the world's taste buds. Americans alone devour more than twelve million tons annually of this peculiar fruit, which has variously been considered poisonous, cutative, and aphrodisiacal.

In this first concerted study of the tomato in America, Andrew F. Smith separates myth from historical fact, beginning with the Salem, New Jersey, man who, in 1820, allegedly attracted spectators from hundreds of miles to watch him eat a tomato on the courthouse steps (the legend says they expected to see him die a painful death). Later, hucksters such as Dr. John Cook Bennett and the Amazing Archibald Miles peddled the tomato's purported medicinal benefits. The competition was so fierce that the Tomato Pill War broke out in 1838.

The Tomato in America traces the early cultivation of the tomato, its infiltration of American cooking practices, the early manufacture of preserved tomatoes and ketchup (soon hailed as "the national condiment of the United States"), and the "great tomato mania" of the 1820s and 1830s. The book also includes tomato recipes from the pre-Civil War period, covering everything from sauces, soups, and main dishes to desserts and sweets.

Now available for the first time in paperback, The Tomato in America provides a piquant and entertaining look at a versatile and storied figure in culinary history.

Library Journal

Did you think that tomatoes were not in this country before the 1880s? And did you think that this was because they were considered to be poisonous or aphrodisiacal? Since 1987, writer and lecturer Smith has been researching references to tomatoes. After examining 50,000 sources, which he says does not by any means exhaust the material, Smith traces the history of this most popular fruit/vegetable-one that is now grown by more home gardeners in this country than any other food. The evidence he presents, drawn from newspapers, letters, diaries, and cookbooks, refutes the popular myths and supports his thesis that the tomato was cultivated for culinary and medicinal uses from early Colonial times and was introduced to the American colonies on numerous separate occasions. Smith also includes a selection of recipes from early cookbooks and magazines. Chapters are supported by extensive references. The book concludes with a classified bibliography and a list of heirloom seed sources and tomato organizations. While lacking the narrative appeal and readability of other books about individual plants, this is a thorough and useful reference, making available masses of material not otherwise available. (Index not seen.)-Carol Cubberley, Univ. of Southern Mississippi