Fredrick Douglas Opie, associate professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Studies Program at Marist College, discusses his book, *Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America*. Opie’s culinary history is a portrait of the social and religious relationship between African Americans and their cuisine. It begins with the Atlantic slave trade and concludes with the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Clinician and laboratory researcher Richard McNally challenges the ready acceptance of a notion he says goes beyond common sense, and contends that traumatic experiences are indeed unforgettable and the evidence for repressed memories is surprisingly weak. Are horrific experiences indelibly fixed in a victim's memory? Or does the mind protect itself by banishing traumatic memories from consciousness? How victims remember trauma is the most controversial issue in psychology today, spilling out of consulting rooms and laboratories to capture headlines, rupture families, provoke legislative change, and influence criminal trials and civil suits. This lecture is presented in collaboration with Boston Theatre Works to coincide with the world premiere of *Conspiracy of Memory*, a timely new drama by local playwright Steven Bogart that explores issues of aging, forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption.
Celebrity foodies Joanne Chang and Corby Kummer, along with national food-sustainability expert Helene York, explore the relationship between our love affair with food and our desire to protect the planet.
Harold McGee, food scientist and "Curious Cook" at _The New York Times_ talks about how to cook well, even when the recipe you're following isn't perfect. McGee is joined in conversation by Rialto's award-winning chef/owner Jody Adams. *Keys to Good Cooking* directly addresses the cook at work in the kitchen and in need of quick and reliable guidance. Cookbooks past and present frequently contradict one another about the best ways to prepare foods, and many contain erroneous information and advice. *Keys to Good Cooking* distills the modern scientific understanding of cooking and translates it into immediately useful information. Looking at ingredients from the mundane to the exotic, McGee takes you from market to table, teaching, for example, how to spot the most delectable asparagus (choose thick spears); how to best prepare the vegetable (peel, dont snap, the fibrous ends; broiling is one effective cooking method for asparagus and other flat-lying vegetables); and how to present it (coat with butter or oil after cooking to avoid a wrinkled surface). This book will be a requisite countertop resource for all home chefs, as McGee's insights on kitchen safety in particular--reboil refrigerated meat or fish stocks every few days; (they're so perishable that they can spoil even in the refrigerator); don't put ice cubes or frozen gel packs on a burn; (extreme cold can cause additional skin damage)--will save even the most knowledgeable home chefs from culinary disaster. A companion volume to recipe books, a touchstone that helps cooks spot flawed recipes and make the best of them, *Keys to Good Cooking* will be of use to cooks of all kinds: to beginners who want to learn the basics, to weekend cooks who want a quick refresher in the basics, and to accomplished cooks who want to rethink a dish from the bottom up.
Chris Kimball and the cast of America's Test Kitchen discuss healthy and delicious ways to feed your family, and their new book, *The Americas Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook*. *The Healthy Family Cookbook* is an all-purpose cookbook that delivers more than 800 foolproof recipes for healthier everyday cooking--including breakfast dishes, kid-friendly favorites, meat and pasta entres, vegetarian dishes, healthy makeovers of family classics, desserts, and more. Each recipe also includes calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, protein, fiber, and sodium counts. *The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook* takes a good, hard look at eating healthfully--incorporating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains into recipes on a daily basis, and reducing calories from fat whenever possible while still maximizing taste. But unlike other "healthy recipe" cookbooks that simply substitute brown rice for white, or fat-free mayonnaise for regular, every one of our recipes have been specifically developed for the ingredients used, to maximize both taste and health.
Journalist Paula Butturini talks about her new memoir *Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy*. Paula and John met in Italy, fell in love, and four years later, married in Rome. But less than a month after the wedding, tragedy struck. They had transferred from their Italian paradise to Warsaw and while reporting on an uprising in Romania, John was shot and nearly killed by sniper fire. Although he recovered from his physical wounds in less than a year, the process of healing had just begun. Unable to regain his equilibrium, he sank into a deep sadness that reverberated throughout their relationship. It was the abrupt end of what they'd known together, and the beginning of a new phase of life neither had planned for. All of a sudden, Paula was forced to reexamine her marriage, her husband, and herself. Paula began to reconsider all of her previous assumptions about healing. She discovered that sometimes patience can be a vice, anger a virtue. That sometimes it is vital to make demands of the sick, that they show signs of getting better. And she rediscovered the importance of the most fundamental of human rituals: the daily sharing of food around the family table.
AUDIO ONLY: Michael Pollan talks with Bethanne Patrick about his book, *In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto*.
Image: [Mercedes/Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrencefarmersmarket/2529145266)
Chef-extraordinaire Chris Kimball and the cast of America's Test Kitchen discuss the new *The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook*. With the 2010 season, *America's Test Kitchen*, the beloved public television show, will have been on the air for 10 years, offering up fool-proof recipes, tips on what equipment and ingredients to buy, and solutions to the most vexing of kitchen-related mishaps. The cast looks back on the years so far with the entire cast, mentions a little about the upcoming season, and talks about the new definitive cookbook, featuring every recipe to have appeared on the show. *The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook* brings back all the great recipes from previous seasons, and gives an inside look at what we can look forward to in 2010. Recipes include Blueberry Muffins, Crisp Skinned Roast Chicken, Baked Ziti, Ciabatta, Roast Beef Tenderloin, Old-Fashioned Burgers, Grill Roasted Turkey Breast, Hearty Italian Meat Sauce, Mexican Pulled Pork, Fresh Berry Gratin, Super Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, and many more.
Journalist and food writer Kim Severson discusses her new memoir,* Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life*. Somewhere between the lessons her mother taught her as a child and the ones she is now trying to teach her own daughter, Kim Severson stumbled. She lost sight of what mattered, of who she was and who she wanted to be, and of how she wanted to live her life. It took a series of women cooks to reteach her the life lessons she forgot--and some she had never learned in the first place. Some as small as a spoonful, and others so big they saved her life, the best lessons she found were delivered in the kitchen. *Spoon Fed* weaves together the stories of eight important cooks with the lessons they taught her--lessons that seemed to come right when she needed them most. We follow Kim's journey from an awkward adolescent to an adult who channeled her passions into failing relationships, alcohol, and professional ambition, almost losing herself in the process. Finally as Severson finds sobriety and starts a family of her own, we see her mature into a strong, successful woman, as we learn alongside her.
Joseph Dabney discusses his new book, *The Food, Folklore and Art of Lowcountry Cooking.* The book's subtitle is: A Celebration of the Foods, History, and Romance Handed Down from England, Africa, the Caribbean, France, Germany and Scotland. Dabney takes readers on a prideful tour of Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah and offers authentic regional voices, old-time photographs, and fascinating sidebars.
