Ten Bumbling Chefs

Many children ask to have their birthday dinners at teppanyaki (hibachi) restaurants where they can watch the Japanese chef give a show while preparing the meal. Though predictable, these shows never fail to entertain. What better gift to present to the birthday boy or girl than a copy of Ten Bumbling Chefs: Big blunders at the teppanyaki grill? Children love going to the teppanyaki grill (often called a "hibachi" grill in the U.S.) for family celebrations and to watch the chef toss food, juggle utensils, and build flaming creations. But visitors to THIS teppanyaki grill will observe a host of mishaps: dripping oil, spilled sauce, hurled shrimp, and a blazing onion volcano that sets off the fire suppression system and calls the fire department. The head chef, Jill, is very frustrated by the blunders of her bumbling junior chefs. Will any of them learn the skills necessary to give a great performance and prepare tasty Japanese cuisine for the restaurant's guests? Grab your hashi (chopsticks) and come along on this rhyming adventure to find out! Young children will love the book's rhyming, repeating verse but kids of all ages, and their parents, will enjoy the humorous illustrations of the over-the-top blunders of the chefs. This will be a fun read-together picture book, reminding families of their own exciting experiences at teppanyaki (hibachi) restaurants.

In how many Hindi films has the hero been afflicted by the Big C (cancer)? Who played a double role in Sholay? Which early Dev Anand movie had the song ‘Usne phenka leg break to maine mara chhakka?’ From Geet Gaata Chal (songs that became movies) to Nishabd (ten silent scenes of Amitabh Bachchan), every page in this bumper book is going to engross and entertain you.

"...the book is fun, but it is more than fun. It's a meditation on a collision of cultures, and it will make you think." – Dr. Allen Matusow, Professor at Rice University "a good read full of humorous antidotes of the author’s encounters with oil-rich Arabs in the Middle East and Houston." – Fred Hofheinz, Former Mayor City of Houston Bumbling with the Arabs All the Way to the Bank chronicles the true story of two young, naïve Houston real estate go-getters as they rub elbows with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the Middle East. In 1980, Ben Koshkin and his business partner bumbled into a real estate deal and ended up with a Kuwaiti billionaire as a partner. Through this partnership, Koshkin befriended the undersecretary to the oil minister of Kuwait. For four years, if the undersecretary didn't sign the contract, Kuwait didn't sell the oil. Throughout the eighties, Koshkin and his partner closed over 250 million dollars' worth of business with the Arabs and experienced firsthand a culture the United States still doesn't fully understand. After every trip to the Middle East, men in dark suits, sporting sunglasses and short haircuts, would line up outside their Houston office to ask questions about their business overseas and the people they met on their trips. Bumbling with the Arabs All the Way to the Bank documents experiences and encounters most people will never come close to experiencing in a hundred lifetimes. At times, these stories were hard for even Ben Koshkin to believe-and he lived them! "Bumbling is outstanding, different, educational, and highly entertaining." – Clayton Lee, Clayton Lee Counseling "Having heard the stories from [Ben Koshkin] all these years, it was nice to have them come to life on paper. [His] writing style and how the book was structured made this an easy read that kept my attention throughout. Our perception of life and people in the Middle East is certainly different from reality." – Brad Dill, BD Realty Advisors “If I knew what my son was doing, I would never have survived to live this long.” – Naomi Koshkin Friedman, Ben’s 101-year-old mother

"Kitchen Confidential" meets "Heat" in the first behind-the-scenes portrait of the world's best restaurant and the aspiring chefs who toil to make it so exceptional. Elected best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine an unprecedented five times, El Bulli is the laboratory of Ferran Adria, the maverick creator of molecular gastronomy. Behind each of the thirty or more courses that make up a meal at El Bulli is a small army of young cooks who do the work of executing Adria's vision in exchange for nothing more than the chance to learn at his hands. Granted unprecedented access to this guild system, Lisa Abend follows the thirty-five stagiaries of the 2009 season as they struggle to master the grueling hours, cutting-edge techniques, and interpersonal tensions that come with working at the most revered restaurant on earth.

The period 1830–1832 witnessed a remarkable series of cultural and political milestones in France. In 1830, a revolution overturned one monarchy, only to replace it with another. In 1831, Charles Philippon's caricature of Louis-Philippe, the new monarch, as a pear achieved extraordinary popularity. Drawn on walls from one end of France to another, the pear caricature became a national obsession. In that same year, George Sand moved from the provinces to Paris and challenged gender stereotypes by adopting men's clothes and writing fiction in a man's voice. During 1830–1832, Stendhal and Balzac developed the techniques of the realist novel that still dominate much of the world's fiction. Sandy Petrey explores the factors accounting for such consequential innovations in so short a time, so restricted a space. In Petrey's view, these disparate events betoken a common recognition of society's capacity to make and unmake what it recognizes as real.Petrey's first two chapters explore the popularity of the pear caricature. The remaining chapters focus on Balzac, Stendhal, and Sand, addressing these writers' concern with society's power to define and transform the identity of its members. For Petrey their work continually recalls the hybrid character of Philippon's pear, both totally unlike the king and the king's spitting image. While the French government declared the July Revolution a nonevent and the July Monarchy an incontrovertible fact, French fiction concentrated on society's power to declare an individual a nonperson or to make presence out of absence, plenitude out of emptiness.

It's not unusual to work two jobs in this day and age, but sorcerer and former triad soldier Rupert Wong's life is more complicated than most. By day, he makes human hors d'oeuvres for a dynasty of ghouls; by night, he pushes pencils for the Ten Chinese Hells. Of course, it never seems to be enough to buy him a new car—or his restless, flesh-eating-ghost girlfriend passage from the reincarnation cycle—until opportunity comes smashing through his window. In Kuala Lumpur, where deities from a handful of major faiths tip-toe around each other and damned souls number in the millions, it's important to tread carefully. Now the Dragon King of the South wants to throw Rupert right in it. The ocean god's daughter and her once-mortal husband have been murdered, leaving a single clue: bloodied feathers from the Greek furies. It's a clue that could start a war between pantheons, and Rupert's stuck in the middle. Success promises wealth, power and freedom, and failure... doesn't.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many high-profile chefs in New Orleans pledged to help their city rebound from the flooding. Several formed their own charitable organizations, including the John Besh Foundation, to help revitalize the region and its restaurant scene. A year and a half after the disaster when the total number of open restaurants eclipsed the pre-Katrina count, it was embraced as a sign that the city itself had survived, and these chefs arguably became the de facto heroes of the city's recovery. Meanwhile, food justice organizations tried to tap into the city's legendary food culture to fundraise, marketing high-end dining events that centered these celebrity chefs. Jeanne K. Firth documents the growth of celebrity humanitarianism, viewing the phenomenon through the lens of feminist ethnography to understand how elite philanthropy is raced, classed, and gendered. Firth finds that cultures of sexism in the restaurant industry also infuse chef-led philanthropic initiatives. As she examines this particular flavor of elite, celebrity-based philanthropy, Firth illuminates the troubled relationships between consumerism, food justice movements, and public-private partnerships in development and humanitarian aid.

JAMES STEWART:BEHIND THE SCENES OF A WONDERFUL LIFE