Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days, by James Salter
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I enjoyed this collection of 365 ruminations about food, one for each day of the year. The Salter’s touch upon everything from etiquette and the how-to of entertaining to recipes and culinary history. Some sections may be more immediately applicable than others, yet there is something in this book for every food lover. For instance, it will be some time before I’m able to put the Salter’s advice about giving a dinner party to use (our apartment is too small), but I loved their chart that outlines which cheeses go best with which fruits - nectarines with brie, figs with Stilton, grapes with Camembert, etc. Entries about food-related lore and history range from the somewhat well-known to the obscure. Hence we learn about the origins of London coffeehouses at one moment, then about what was served for dinner on the Titanic before it sank into the North Atlantic in the next. Overall, “Life is Meals” is an eloquent collection of musings about food. Reading it will add much to your conversational repertoire.
