A successful book that makes reducing food waste seem fun and easy.
A home cook shares her thrifty, ecologically conscious tips for reducing kitchen waste.
Americans have been known to waste an astonishing amount of food, pitching usable food scraps, salvageable kitchen disasters, and other edible items into trash bins by the ton. MacLeod (The Kitchen Paraphernalia Handbook, 2017, etc.) aims to help change that with this easy-to-use reference book, which she describes as “a food first-aid kit.” In it, she catalogs alternative, creative ways to use a bevy of common food items, from dried-out almond paste to surplus zucchini. This isn’t a cookbook, however; instead, it’s a handy guide for amateur chefs who might wonder about how to salvage a watery tomato sauce, what to do with leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, or whether limp lettuce can be revived. But although there are diverse suggestions here, readers will have to consult their favorite cookbooks or the internet for specific recipe instructions. Still, for a slim book, it’s remarkably comprehensive, and the author isn’t afraid to suggest uses for foods that many might ordinarily toss out. There’s guidance on what to do with fish heads, for instance (make fish stock or deep-fry the bones), the whey left after making homemade cheese or yogurt (use it as a substitute for whey powder in smoothies or as an alternative to buttermilk), and flat champagne (put it in waffle batter). Nor are the secondary uses limited to cooking: She notes that empty coffee pods can be used as seed starters; flat cola works as slug bait in a garden; and juiced lemon halves can clean copper pans. Even the vinegar used to descale a coffee pot, she asserts, can be used to freshen drains. After browsing through this book, readers will likely feel inspired—and perhaps even a bit guilty over all the food they’ve wasted in the past.
A successful book that makes reducing food waste seem fun and easy.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9974464-0-1
Page Count: 194
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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