{"id":1261,"date":"2014-07-15T21:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2014-07-15T21:32:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T01:32:00","slug":"book-review-cooked-by-michael-pollan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1261","title":{"rendered":"Book review:  Cooked by Michael Pollan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/15811496-cooked\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1350939053m\/15811496.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/15811496-cooked\">Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/2121.Michael_Pollan\">Michael Pollan<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/997518841\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is not the sort of book I normally read, but my husband recommended it, and his judgment on what I would like is usually impeccable. Michael Pollan divides the origin of cooking into four areas based on the four traditional elements: fire (barbecue\/roasting), water (braises &amp; stews), air (bread\/baking), and earth (pickling\/fermentation). In each section, he speculates as to the origin of the technique and follows experts in that particular area while practicing his cooking skills in that particular area.<br \/>\nI am not much of a cook, but I do like to bake, and I found the book to be interesting, informative and thought-provoking. The author discusses the proliferation of pre-packaged foods and its impact on American society, and suggests that a return to home-made meals would do more to improve the fabric of society than merely adding nutritional benefits. It&#8217;s an interesting theory and a nice hook. I found the discussion about techniques and his experiences with learning new skills and the evolution of cooking in those four elements to be particularly interesting and entertaining.<br \/>\nEven if this type of book is outside your comfort zone, I highly recommend giving it a try. It is filled with interesting information and thoughtful experiences. The author also includes recipes (one for each element) at the end of the book to try. I can vouch for the sugo recipe (it&#8217;s the only one we&#8217;ve tried so far).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/1396812-may\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is not the sort of book I normally read, but my husband recommended it, and his judgment on what I would like is usually impeccable. Michael Pollan divides the origin of cooking into four areas based on the four [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40],"tags":[336,215,214,216],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-cooked","tag-essays","tag-michael-pollan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-kl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}