Caveman Chemistry Bringing Science Back Into Cooking

Caveman Chemistry is about getting back to the basics of food preparation, starting so basic even a caveman could get it, while rising to the heights of fine comfort-food dining. It's your guide to recapturing the magic of those lost meals and making new memories full of flavor for yourself and your family. Along the way, we'll be sampling - and preserving - the rich and storied history of my own family's cooking, from Mom's Spaghetti and Meatballs to Grandma Hoffman's Buttermilk Pancakes to Cousin Mel's Chocolate Éclair Torte to Aunt Mary's Watermelon Pickles, with over 600 family recipes in-between.

Half a million years ago our ancestors learned to make fire from scratch. They crafted intricate tools from stone and brewed mind-altering elixirs from honey. Their descendants transformed clay into pottery, wool into clothing, and ashes into cleansers. In ceramic crucibles they won metal from rock, the metals lead to colored glazes and glass. Buildings of brick and mortar enshrined books of parchment and paper. Kings and queens demanded ever more colorful clothing and accessories in order to out-class clod-hoppers and call-girls. Kingdoms rose and fell by the power of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. And the demands of everyday folk for glass and paper and soap stimulated the first round of chemical industrialization. From sulfuric acid to sodium carbonate. From aniline dyes to analgesic drugs. From blasting powder to fertilizers and plastics. In a phrase, From Caveman to Chemist. Your guides on this journey are the four alchemical elements; Fire, Earth, Air and Water. These archetypical characters deliver first-hand accounts of the births of their respective technologies. The spirit of Fire, for example, was born in the first creature to cultivate the flame. This spirit passed from one person to another, from one generation to another, from one millennium to another, arriving at last in the pages of this book. The spirit of Earth taught folks to make tools of stone, the spirit of Air imparted knowledge of units and the spirit of Water began with the invention of spirits. Having traveled the world from age to age, who can say where they will find their next home? Perhaps they will find one in you.

The Science of Cooking The first textbook that teaches biology and chemistry through the enjoyable and rewarding means of cooking The Science of Cooking is a textbook designed for nonscience majors or liberal studies science courses, that covers a range of scientific principles of food, cooking, and the science of taste and smell. It is accompanied by a companion website for students and adopting faculty. It details over 30 guided inquiry activities covering science basics and food-focused topics, and also includes a series of laboratory experiments that can be conducted in a traditional laboratory format, experiments that can be conducted in a large class format, and take-home experiments that can be completed with minimal equipment at the student’s home. Examples of these engaging and applicable experiments include fermentation, cheese and ice cream making, baking the best cookies, how to brown food faster, and analyzing food components. They are especially useful as a tool for teaching hypothesis design and the scientific process. The early chapters of the text serve as an introduction to necessary biology and chemistry fundamentals, such as molecular structure, chemical bonding, and cell theory, while food-based chapters cover: Dairy products (milk, ice cream, foams, and cheeses) Fruits and vegetables Meat and fish Bread Spices and herbs Beer and wine Chocolate and candies The Science of Cooking presents chemistry and biology concepts in an easy-to-understand way that demystifies many basic scientific principles. For those interested in learning more science behind cooking, this book delves into curious scientific applications and topics. This unique approach offers an excellent way for chemistry, biology, or biochemistry departments to bring new students of all levels and majors into their classrooms.

My Paleo Patisserie gathers all the rich heritage, exquisite elegance, and rustic beauty of traditional patisserie baking and seamlessly melds it with the gluten-free and Paleo-inspired diet. Drawing on over two decades of experience in traditional and modern patisserie baking, Jenni Hulet brings the spirit of patisserie baking alive in this lavishly photographed collection of recipes. Each section of My Paleo Patisserie introduces and adapts the fundamental elements and techniques of traditional patisserie baking for the grain-free baker. With dozens of beloved culinary standards and hundreds of potential recipe combinations, My Paleo Patisserie is an indispensable resource of creative grain-free confectionery.

Jill Winger, creator of the award-winning blog The Prairie Homestead, introduces her debut The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, including 100+ delicious, wholesome recipes made with fresh ingredients to bring the flavors and spirit of homestead cooking to any kitchen table. With a foreword by bestselling author Joel Salatin The Pioneer Woman Cooks meets 100 Days of Real Food, on the Wyoming prairie. While Jill produces much of her own food on her Wyoming ranch, you don’t have to grow all—or even any—of your own food to cook and eat like a homesteader. Jill teaches people how to make delicious traditional American comfort food recipes with whole ingredients and shows that you don’t have to use obscure items to enjoy this lifestyle. And as a busy mother of three, Jill knows how to make recipes easy and delicious for all ages. "Jill takes you on an insightful and delicious journey of becoming a homesteader. This book is packed with so much easy to follow, practical, hands-on information about steps you can take towards integrating homesteading into your life. It is packed full of exciting and mouth-watering recipes and heartwarming stories of her unique adventure into homesteading. These recipes are ones I know I will be using regularly in my kitchen." - Eve Kilcher These 109 recipes include her family’s favorites, with maple-glazed pork chops, butternut Alfredo pasta, and browned butter skillet corn. Jill also shares 17 bonus recipes for homemade sauces, salt rubs, sour cream, and the like—staples that many people are surprised to learn you can make yourself. Beyond these recipes, The Prairie Homestead Cookbook shares the tools and tips Jill has learned from life on the homestead, like how to churn your own butter, feed a family on a budget, and experience all the fulfilling satisfaction of a DIY lifestyle.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year From an obesity and neuroscience researcher with a knack for engaging, humorous storytelling, The Hungry Brain uses cutting-edge science to answer the questions: why do we overeat, and what can we do about it? No one wants to overeat. And certainly no one wants to overeat for years, become overweight, and end up with a high risk of diabetes or heart disease--yet two thirds of Americans do precisely that. Even though we know better, we often eat too much. Why does our behavior betray our own intentions to be lean and healthy? The problem, argues obesity and neuroscience researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, is not necessarily a lack of willpower or an incorrect understanding of what to eat. Rather, our appetites and food choices are led astray by ancient, instinctive brain circuits that play by the rules of a survival game that no longer exists. And these circuits don’t care about how you look in a bathing suit next summer. To make the case, The Hungry Brain takes readers on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge neuroscience that has never before been available to a general audience. The Hungry Brain delivers profound insights into why the brain undermines our weight goals and transforms these insights into practical guidelines for eating well and staying slim. Along the way, it explores how the human brain works, revealing how this mysterious organ makes us who we are.

In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome