Reviews for The Essential Italian Cookbook: 50 Classic Recipes, With Step-By-Step Photographs

The average rating for The Essential Italian Cookbook: 50 Classic Recipes, With Step-By-Step Photographs based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-11-23 00:00:00 Sara Woodbury 3 � stars. This book was published in 1903. The author, Andy Adams, was born in 1859 in Indiana, grew up on a livestock farm there, and eventually became a cowboy in Texas in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. He knew cattle drives from personal experience, and after leaving the horseback life, moved to Colorado and began writing fiction about what he knew best: cowboys and cattle. I�ve seen it claimed in reviews here on Goodreads that Larry McMurtry used this book as a source for his Lonesome Dove series on novels, or that Lonesome Dove was a �retelling� of this. I reckon the truth of the matter is a little different. McMurtry was very likely familiar with the book. It is called in some circles (for example, the Penguin Classics� circle) a �classic�, and was very popular and well known in the early part of the last century. It could have even given McMurtry the idea of writing a novel about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana (in this case the drive terminates in Fort Benton Montana, near a Blackfoot Indian Agency � the cattle are to feed the Indians). That�s about where the similarity ends. Well, there are other things in common, I admit. Besides the herd of driven animals being a cattle herd, the people doing the driving are �cowboys�, and their method of locomotion is �horses�. They have �ropes� with which they are able to �lasso� their charges. They have a �wagon� and a �cook� that travel along with them. They do cross a lot of �rivers� on the way. The cattle occasionally �stampede�, which is generally a �pain-in-the-ass� to the cowboys. But there are a few differences. The main one is that Log of a Cowboy is far more �realistic� than is Lonesome Dove � but not in a good way. The introduction by Richard Etulain (quite informative) informs us (told you) that the book was confused with non-fiction repeatedly by both critics and readers. And it�s easy to see why. For one thing, it reads like non-fiction. There is nothing about the cattle drive that is not entirely believable in it. (There actually are some things about the cowboys that seem downright ridiculous and very fictional, but we�ll get to that.) The title indicates the book is a cowboy�s �log�. So think about reading a ship�s log. Think how that might be a good source of information about a ship�s journey. Also think about how exciting that log might be. Yup, that�s about how exciting a log of a cowboy might be too � and this one is just that exciting. (Think about sawing those logs � zzzzzzzzz; or falling off them � now that might be a little bit exciting.) And the stories that these cowboys tell around the camp fire in the evenings? Wow, talk about long, drawn out affairs that are maybe as interesting and rousing as � hmm �maybe one of those logs with ants crawling on it? Okay, so the book isn�t exciting. But as I said, it does give what one would suppose is a pretty realistic notion of the nuts and bolts of a late nineteenth century cattle drive, a long one from Texas to Montana. We learn that the remuda (horse herd) included roughly ten horses for each rider. This indicates how often the cowboys had to change mounts in stressful situations, and how they had to plan for horses to be out-of-commission for a variety of reasons, such as losing a shoe, or becoming slightly injured. Those pain-in-the-ass stampedes? They happen fairly often in Lonesome Dove, often play a minor role in the plot, and generally get resolved in a paragraph or two (describing what might have had to be done over a period of time perhaps stretching into several hours). In Log no stampede described is resolved in a paragraph. With no trouble at all I was able to find a description of a stampede which goes on for eight pages before all the cows, horses and cowboys are back together. So one does learn that stampedes were a real bother on a cattle drive, and the source of an awful lot of the hard work needed of the cowhands. In a similar manner, though Lonesome Dove has a couple descriptions of very harrowing, even deadly, river crossings, aside from the tragic/dramatic bits, they also are completed without a whole lot of narrative. Log tells of more than one river crossing involving cattle getting �bogged� in soft bottoms or even quicksand, where page after page is devoted to a description of every detail of getting these cattle �unstuck� and across the river. Again, this is interesting, but you quickly lose sight of the fact that you�re reading a novel. The turn-of-the century sensibilities are on display here, and though not numerous, these bits of the narrative are more than a little irritating. The word �nigger� is used more than once, indeed one of the horses has that as a name; the Native Americans mentioned near the end of the story (�Indians� of course) are described mostly disdainfully; and the casual killing of a mother bear and both her cubs �was unanimously voted the most exciting bit of sport and powder burning we had experienced on our trip.� Well, times were different. And those fictional cowboys? The most noticeable thing is the way they talk. They all seem to talk as Andy Adams, the literary story teller, might be imagined to talk. I�ll give an extended quote here, from the first page I opened to. All the talk is along these lines. �You certainly never experienced the tender passion,� said Fox Quarternight to our horse wrangler, as he lighted his pipe with a brand from the fire. �Now I have. That�s the reason why I sympathize with these old beaus of the bride. Of course I was too old to stand any show on her string, and I reckon the fellow who got her ain�t so powerful much, except his veneering and being a stranger, which was a big advantage. To be sure, if she took a smile to this stranger, no other fellow could check her with a three-quarter rope and a snubbing post. I�ve seen girls walk right by a dozen good fellows and fawn over some scrub. My experience teaches me that when there�s a woman in it, it�s haphazard pot luck with no telling which way the cat will hop. You can�t play any system, and merit cuts little figure in general results.� Lonesome Dove dialogue it surely ain�t. To me the really interesting question about this long jumble of cowboy references (�snubbing post�, �three-quarter rope�) and rather formal grammatical structure, laced with presumably turn of the century phrases (�on her string��, �which way the cat will hop�, �cuts little figure�) is: could this be the way at least some cowboys really did talk in those days? I suppose it�s possible, but I have no idea how one would find the answer to that question. So, the talk, although striking my ear as certainly not what I would expect from the mouth of a cowpuncher, could be just as accurate as the descriptions of the cattle drive details. But one thing I�m pretty sure of is that the descriptions of the cowhands� visits to the infrequent towns along the trail leaves out something. To hear Adams tell it, the main attractions of having a day (and night) in places like Dodge City or Ogallala was gambling and (maybe) a bit of something to drink. A brothel? Never mentioned. So here, at any rate, we do know that this is a fictional account, even though the �fiction� is perhaps forced by an early twentieth century publisher�s prudery (or maybe the author�s prudery, who knows). I did enjoy this book enough to finish it, even though sometimes I felt like I was being pulled along behind a horse with a rope around my neck. If you�re looking for a real novel of 19th century cattle drives, look elsewhere. If you want the real low-down on what these drives were like, this will likely be satisfactory.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-07-07 00:00:00 Douglas Dilling 1881. Sixteen years after the Civil War whose very mention can still inflame hearts. A twenty-year-old's first cattle drive from the Rio Grande to Montana. Over 3,000 head of cattle. Five months. Stampedes. Rustlers. Hustlers. Indians. Whores and gunfights. Yes, Miss Kitty, there was a real "Long Branch Saloon" in Dodge City. If you are a snowflake or a pajama boy, you will need several days of therapy in a safe room after experiencing this manly narrative from back in the day.