BeigeJournal

Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World, by Gina Mallet. McClelland & Stewart, 2004.

This is a wonderful book about food by Toronto-based journalist and food critic Gina Mallet. She grew up in post-war England, which gave her experience with bad food, certainly, but her family’s efforts, at home and while traveling, to eat well also brought her into contact with much better food, at a time before corporate farming, health scares, and government regulation.

Her experiences as a youth are quite interesting to me, as I’m not too familiar with life in the UK at that time. Things have changed in Europe, certainly. She writes quite a bit about the history of French cuisine, and a great deal about how attitudes toward and the production of eggs, meat, cheese, and fruit have changed. She writes extensively about how cheeses have been strongly effected by regulations, in the EU as well as the USA, restricting the use of raw milk.

The book contains some recipes here and there, and is written with a positively inspirational tone of joy of food. After reading the egg chapter I was inspired to make my first omelet. I’ve started exploring the cheese section of my favorite store for interesting cheeses (Drunken Goat Cheese, anyone?). I highly recommend the book.