alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

After determining to use up an entire head of napa cabbage before it went bad (seriously, have you ever accomplished this impossible kitchen challenge?), I decided to cheat a little and make a batch of kimchi using instructions that I found on my go-to food blog, Kitchn. It turned out to be quite edible and tasted like it should even though I modified the basic recipe a bit (I always use capers instead of anchovies, for one).

My next problem then became: What am I going to do with all this kimchi?? I make asian food several times a week but kimchi is not always a welcome guest, ya know? Hence my need for this cookbook.

Besides having recipes for different types of kimchi (both traditional and modern types, which are noted in the book... I'm a more modern kinda gal), there are varied recipes for how to include kimchi in your meals. Like the kimchi recipes, the meal recipes include both traditional and modernized Korean-fusion dishes.

I copied down about 60% of the stuff in the book for later reference, so in that regard I think it is a good cookbook. A lot of cookbooks are quite beautiful, but I wouldn't make even half the stuff (side eye at you, Phaidon), and I am talented, versatile, and adventurous in the kitchen. So when I can eat everything in the book (I'm gluten-free), AND I can get the ingredients (I live in Brazil), AND I can afford the ingredients (I am a teacher in Brazil), AND I am interested in making more than half the recipes, I think it's a good collection.

Handy and quick, but only has the most commonly available herbs and roots available in North America. If you are looking for many Asian or South American herbs, look elsewhere. For example, this book lists yerba mate but not lemongrass, ginsing but not lotus root. It would be nice of it had some basic tea mixes, but it doesn't.

This collection is okay, but nothing I haven't seen before in other raw-foods cookbooks. This is not a raw-foods cookbook, but a lot of those paleo-gluten free-raw foods recipes cross-pollenate.

Heavy reliance on nuts here, which puts most of the recipes out of my price range for everyday meals. Plus, I don't know about you, but eating a lot of nuts just doesn't make me feel great. This is a Swedish cookbook, so there are lots of northern hemisphere greens, fruits, and seafood (4/7 recipes are shellfish, FYI if you are allergic like I am) that are unavailable or too expensive south of the equator.

Also, side-eye at the coconut fish which "an indigenous people in India" inspired--what people?

One other thing to think about: a lot of people who are interested in "clean" eating are also interested in sustainable food sources and the size of the carbon footprint involved in obtaining their food. This book does not address this at all. It calls for mangos, avocado, pineapple, and cashews (warm climate) as well as hazelnuts, blueberries, asparagus and king crabs (cold climate). So no matter where you live, half the recipes are calling for ingredients that come from half a world away.

If you are looking to ease into the raw-foods, juicing, weird-soups thing, and you have a huge budget for groceries, I think this book is a pretty good place to start. I wouldn't say this is practical for using on a daily basis, with a large group around the table, or little ones.

This series is so creative and the writing is sharp.

This is a fun and colorful cookbook that features ALL kinds of food, not just Israeli. The bright photos and interesting stories make this book one you will want to get a physical copy to browse.

I should have paid more attention to the subtitle: A WORLD of Israeli cooking. Many of the recipes come from Persia and Yemen, which was a fun surprise for me. How often to you see recipes from Yemen? Solomonov is careful to mention when a recipe is Persian or Palestinian. I guess he wants to show that he is not a Zionist. Even cooking is political, ey?

There were some genuinely weird recipes that are not my cup of mint tea (eg, Duck and foie gras kebabs), a lot that I couldn't eat because of gluten (enjoy some challah for me, sigh), and a lot that I would be interested to try on a day that I felt like experimenting. I would need a genuinely awesome Middle Eastern market to find essential ingredients like dried Persian lemons, black garlic, and syrups. I have yet to find a good one in São Paulo. SOS!!! I haven't eaten feta in 3 years!!! A girl can dream though.

This collection of stories blew me away. The author Ken Liu is the translator of [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)|Liu Cixin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1415428227s/20518872.jpg|25696480], a Chinese sci-fi book that gained readership in the West after winning the Hugo Award and after Obama cited it as a book that stuck with him. I couldn't get much further than the first couple chapters in that book. But I bring this up because it needs to be said that Ken Liu is an author in his own right, and Western audiences will probably find his stories more approachable than his translations. I am very pro-translation and have embarked on a goal of reading at least one book from every country in the world over the next decade, but Liu understands that we Westerners may need a bit more of a history lesson woven into the story than our Eastern counterparts.

The majority of the stories feature a relational dynamic between an Easterner and a Westerner: in the happier stories, they exchange language, culture, and history, but in the more melancholy stories there are misunderstandings, isolation, and resentment. Either way, the differences are explained carefully and gracefully.

Most of the stories here are set in an alternate reality (What if Japan hadn't lost in WWII?) or the future (What if you could never turn Siri/Alexa off and she spied on you all day, wrapping you ever tighter in a web of capitalism?). These stories are pessimistic and are Black Mirror's view of technology—really though, is there anyone who doesn't have a looming sense of dread of the future with technology megacorps acting in step with dictatorial governments?

The final story, "The Man Who Ended History," is about people who time-travel to Unit 731 in Harbin, China, in order to be eye-witnesses of the tragic atrocities that happened there during WWII. I was unaware of this piece of history before reading the story. Japan operated multiple Auschwitz-style human experiment prisons in China, primarily using Chinese prisoners as test subjects. Unit 731 was used to test chemical and biological weapons, diseases (STDs), and frostbite. Through a plea deal made with the US, no Japanese was ever charged with war crimes related to Unit 731, in exchange for the data from the results of their experiments. It's sickening to realize that the US military used the results of this torture to advance its own weapons technology. The story broaches some interesting topics that we are still grappling with today: How viable is eye-witness testimony? Who gets to control history? Should we dig up the past in order to bring some sort of "justice" or just let sleeping dogs lie? Are words enough of an apology or are reparations necessary? etc. What a wonderful way to use fiction.

I like Jen Hatmaker. She is funny and honest, and sometimes she is being honest just to be funny. For the Love is for Jen Hatmaker fans. It doesn’t really give you a good scope of what her life is about and it asks you to have a lot of insider knowledge about her already. For example, she makes a couple jokes that reference Ethiopia but she never mentions that two of her kids are adopted from Ethiopia.... although she does mention in passing that one of her kids is adopted. So there are little things like that where she and her editor assume the only reason you picked up the book was because you were already a fan.

The other reason why this book is not good for initiates is because it is a collection of what I would consider to be blog posts. Sorry Jen, I know you call them essays, but these are 80% funny comments about your life and 18% two-word motivational sentences. Still a fan here, but it is a stretch to call these essays. They are not even connected to each other other than they all feature Jen. She is capable of writing in a more profound way, but none of that is showcased here.

The other 2% from my above percentage equation are quotes from Quiet and Daring Greatly and I sincerely hope that readers go search out those books for themselves instead of relying on Jen for the highlights. They are not hard or boring books.

The best part of the book for me: “If your theology is not true for a poor single mother in Haiti, your theology is not true anywhere.” Meaning, if what we teach about God’s blessings, how prayer works, women’s role, or our “calling” cannot also apply to that woman, then our understanding of these things didn’t come from God. I really liked Jen’s rant about how finding and having a “calling” is a privileged white person invention.

This book is aimed directly at middle class white American Christian moms of young children. I know that is a very specific group of people, but it was abundantly clear to me that if you are in that group and in need of a good pep talk, this book will speak to you. If you are not in that group, it is still funny but most of the advice doesn’t apply and the humor won’t hit north so well.

I am drooling just pouring through the pages. Simple recipes, ingredients that are easy to find, and most of the recipes use the same spices-- none of that "buy it and use it once" nonsense. This does have plenty of meat dishes but also TONS of options for vegetarians and vegans. Yum yum yum

They were not goths. They were not bullied. It wasn't video games or Stephen King or Alice Cooper. They did not go bowling the morning of the murders. Cassie Bernall was not killed for defending her faith in God. Eric Harris was a textbook psychopath and Dylan Klebold was sucked into Eric's orbit—that is it.

I loved this retelling of Jane Eyre sooo much! Imagine if Jane Eyre wasn’t a pushover and instead she pushed back. Fun and fierce.

Also, the language felt naturally of that era. You know how sometimes you read a historical fiction and the language mixes contemporary expressions with old-fashioned words? This book was good at not doing that.