Atlanta and Italy

Atlanta Cooks was not my first choice of cookbooks because of its horribly boring cover, but in the end it turned out to be one of my favorites. In the beginning, Melissa Libby, the author, states that the money gained from the sales of this book will be donated to Project Open Hand which is "an organization that brings nutritious and good-tasting meals to people who might otherwise go hungry." This operation started in 1988 and has been operating ever since. In the acknowledgements section, Melissa also mentions the photographers who assisted in capturing the recipes at their ripest. Atlanta Cooks originally started as a spiral-bound recipe collection but was later turned into a magnificent book. All the chefs that are included in this book have made a mark in Atlanta and most have won awards for their skill. Each chapter is a section for each chef and each page has only one recipe which makes it very neat and clear. This book was designed in such a neat way it reminded me of those perfect online blogs that I could never create. The pictures that the author included were very vivid and colorful which added to the books greatness. This book was probably intended for more of the upper-class rather because the proceeds would go to Project Open Hand and the recipes seemed to be very luxurious.

Another cookbook I looked through was Foods of the World: The Cooking of Italy by Waverley Root. On the cover this book had a nice bottle of wine in some kind of wine bottle holder, a small bottle of olive oil, and two mini tomatoes. You could clearly tell that this was going to be about Italy. As I read the introduction, it seemed to be quite lengthy and boring unlike the first book where it quickly grabbed my attention. However the recipes in the book were what hooked me. There was one article titled "The Art of Baking a Pizza" which showed clearly how to make a home-made Italian pizza. The only drawback to this book was that it made me extremely hungry. The chapters were divided into the regions of Italy of where the recipe originated. Although there was a lot history included with the recipes as well. For example, the first recipe starts twenty-eight pages into the first chapter. This book was designed for those who wanted to know and understand the history of food in Italy as well as the recipes designed to differentiate Italy from other countries.