Life is Meals

 Life is Meals
 A Food Lover's Book of Days 
James and Kay Salter started writing down recipes and notes about guests they had invited for meals and what was served, gradually the notebook was filled and others started, the content of entries were wider in scope taking in interesting things they had read and anniversaries of food events and of people. In 1999 they started thinking about turning this miscellany of notes and jottings into a book, and by 2006 this volume was published. 
There is an entry for each day of the year and takes us from a "Dinner with Lord Byron" on 3 January, through notes on toothpicks on 20 February, the day a patent was awarded for a machine to make them, to a recipe for Polpettone Alla Toscana on 4 April and a menu for a New Years eve dinner. Via buttermilk, Chinese food, Diamond Jim Brady, the Seige of Paris, Egyptian dinner parties, Casanova, forks and Pompeii, to name a very few of the topics covered. 
Light and delightfully written it is also beautiful to handle. This 2010 paperback edition by Knopf is on good paper and with dozens of wonderful illustrations by Fabrice Moireau.
Great to have ready to dip into whenever there is a spare moment, over a cup of tea ? ;  the hardest thing is to stop being greedy and to put the book down after one or two helpings.
Ref: ISBN 978-0-375-71139-8

Max Dingle                                                                          February 2015
www.maxdingleart.com