Juices and Smoothies
Author: Jan Castorina
Freshly-made juices, smoothies and shakes taste fantastic and are a great way to get the most out of your daily serving of fruit. Juices and Smoothies is chock full of recipes specially created to maximize the health benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables.
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From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant
Author: Michael S Sanders
From Here,You Can't See Paris is a sweet, leisurely exploration of the life of Les Arques (population 159), a hilltop village in a remote corner of France untouched by the modern era. It is a story of a dying village's struggle to survive, of a dead artist whose legacy began its rebirth, and of chef Jacques Ratier and his wife, Noëlle, whose bustling restaurant -- the village's sole business -- has helped ensure Les Arques's future.
Sanders set out to explore the inner workings of a French restaurant kitchen but ended up stumbling into a much richer world. Through the eyes of the Sanders family, one discovers the vibrant traditions of food, cooking, and rural living, and comes to know the village's history. Whether uncovering the darker secrets of making foie gras, hearing a chef confess his doubts about the Michelin star system, or absorbing the lore of the land around a farmhouse kitchen table after a boar hunt, life in Les Arques turns out to be anything but sleepy.
Publishers Weekly
With his wife and young daughter, Sanders spent a year in southwestern France, in the village of Les Arques, tracing the rhythm of rural life and the restaurant at the town's heart. As in his first book, The Yard: Building a Destroyer at the Bath Iron Works (which followed the construction of the USS Donald Cook at a shipyard struggling against modernization), Sanders explores a threatened way of life: before 1988 (the year citizens founded the Zadkine Museum), Les Arques struggled to barely survive. Inspired by Ossip Zadkine, the Russian sculptor who summered in the town until his death in 1967, the museum attracts resident students and tourists year-round. Now, the local restaurant, La R cr ation, not only feeds the locals, it draws an international clientele. Chef Jacques Ratier and his wife, Noelle, established what is locally called La R cr (French for "recess") in the town's abandoned schoolhouse in 1993 and this is Les Arques' sole business. Sanders affectionately observes the restaurant in action, from morning prep to full swing service. As he contemplates a bid for star status in the Michelin guide, Mr. Ratier personifies Les Arques' struggle to stay in the game. Sanders also investigates French country ways, devoting entire chapters to foie gras and truffles and explaining the history of a region where every house has a name and children grow up on four-course school lunches. He unveils a culture wholly at odds with fast-food America. The book's back matter offers advice for travelers, but Sanders's account is so lovely, and Les Arques so sensuous and ripe with magic, to visit seems vaguely sacrilegious. (Nov.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A French village, a good restaurant, and a year's worth of time to spend in both add stock to the lives of Sanders and his family. You'll find Les Arques on Michelin map #79, tucked away in the chaotic limestone landscape of southwest France, where one-lane roads, crumbling hilltop towns, and 12th-century Romanesque churches give medieval rhythms to the days. Les Arques, where Sanders (The Yard, 1999) spent his year, has 50 houses, 169 people (including those in the village and its surrounding lands), and one business. As agriculture becomes more tenuous economically and the population drops, Les Arques survives, Sanders figures, thanks to the French love of cultural heritage, first, and of good eating, second. As for heritage, not only are there Lascaux and a picaresque history, but also a museum and attendant art community honoring a celebrated local, Ossip Zadkine, France's most famous sculptor in the years after WWII (though "I certainly had no idea who he was when I arrived," admits Sanders, adding that he finds Zadkine's work "bad Picasso"). As for food, though the area may be poor, its graces include foie gras, lamb, saffron, truffles, and the vin de Cahors, and it's a test to find a bad restaurant. Sanders has no wish to make the village sound precious: the apocalyptic stink of duck poop, the politics of foie gras, and the stony exterior of the local population (Sanders finds his six-year-old daughter and the friendly family dog to be good ice-breakers) overcome any suggestion of quaint, selective neglect. The author renders the restaurant's workday as cannily as he does the village's moments of abrupt dislocation from the present, when the air suddenly seems to hold a thousandyears of history in it. A good and leathery year abroad, an honest and deeply enjoyed experience that avoids skimming off only the fruity bonbons while neglecting the ruck of daily life. Author tour
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