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More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

Bake and Destroy: Good Food for Bad Vegans by Natalie Slater Page Street Publishing, 192 pp., $19.99 (paper) The Vegan Divas Cookbook: Delicious Desserts, Plates, and Treats from the Famed New York City Bakery by Fernanda Capobianco HarperWave, 224 pp., $27.99 As vegan diets gain more and more traction in the general consciousness of American…

by Melanie Haupt

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by Richard Juhlin Skyhorse Publishing, 400 pp., $75 This book will have a very enthusiastic and passionate audience. It focuses on one small area in France and the local wine. Champagne is a highly desired commodity sold all over the world, and its fans tend to be mesmerized by the tiny bubbles and toasty aromas…

by Wes Marshall

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by Jerald and Glenda Horst Pelican Publishing, 240 pp., $26.95 Fish Volume 2 is the last in the Louisiana Seafood Bible series, and definitely one of the best. The authors are a husband-and-wife team, Jerald and Glenda Horst, from Southeastern Louisiana. Jerald is a retired professor of fisheries at LSU and Glenda is the daughter…

by Mick Vann

Civics 101

Friday 06 PUBLIC EDUCATION AND IMMIGRA­TION REFORM MARCH Gather at the south steps to give an F to Texas’ U.S. legislators. 10:45am-12:45pm. Texas State Capitol. www.educationaustin.org. INTERACTIVE VOTING Party hardy in support of voter registration. 7pm. The Gatsby, 708 E. Sixth. Free. www.facebook.com/events/ 633627230028389. Saturday 07 SOUTH AUSTIN COMBINED NEIGH­BOR­HOOD PLAN OPEN HOUSE City planning…

by Chronicle Staff

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by David Kinch with Christine Muhlke Ten Speed Press, 336 pp., $50 “When you find something you love to do, then Work can become the highest form of Play.” – David Kinch Usually, I’m not a fan of ponderous coffee-table food tomes written by chefs and full of multilayered recipes almost impossible to pull off…

by MM Pack

Headlines

› No regular City Council meeting this week, but Thursday afternoon (Dec. 5) they’ll meet as the Council Committee on Austin Energy: The agenda includes briefings on various AE programs and a proposed revised ordinance on disconnection/reconnection policies. See: “Council Preview: Only Reconnect.” › Some will also convene on Friday, Dec. 6 as the Central…

by Chronicle Staff

The Luv Doc: Open Relationships

Dear Luv Doc, What are your feelings on open relationships? My little brother has been dating a girl for more than a year and they are now both at different colleges. Over Thanksgiving, she told him that since they are so far apart they should have an open relationship. He asked me about it and…

by The Luv Doc

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by Nigel Slater Ten Speed Press, 544 pp., $40 Perhaps nothing is more universally entwined with the holiday season than cooking and sharing meals. And yet, for many of us, being in the kitchen is an everyday experience – one most often plagued with workweek shuffles but sparked occasionally by the elation of finding new…

by Jessi Cape

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by John Currence Andrews McMeel Publishing, 288 pp., $40 So many years have passed since I made the long trek to Oxford, Miss., for a Southern Foodways Symposium and was rewarded with a stellar meal at John Currence’s City Grocery restaurant. Currence has made quite a name for himself in the intervening years, opening more…

by Virginia B. Wood

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by Ben Sargent with Peter Kaminsky Clarkson Potter, 256 pp., $30 Don’t be fooled by the cover of Ben Sargent’s debut cookbook. Boy-next-door good looks and charm be damned, “he’ll stick a fuckin’ four pound lobstah on your fuckin’ ballsack.” While most men cling to their comic book alter egos of childhood past, Sargent’s irreverent…

by Anna Toon

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Andy Ricker, with JJ Goode Ten Speed Press, 304 pp., $35 Pok pok. It’s the resonant sound of a wooden pestle hitting a mortar, the cadence of authentic Thai food, and a sound Andy Ricker keys in on while cruising throughout northern Thailand. Ricker is a Vermonter whose early travels in Thailand secured his…

by Mick Vann

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by Nick Zukin and Michael C. Zusman Andrews McMeel Publishing, 272 pp., $27.99 For those lucky enough to grow up in a city with Jewish delicatessens, the memories of the fabulous sandwiches, bagels, preserved meats, and smoked fish readily available within are compelling. With the new crop of artisan cooks and chefs who are rediscovering…

by Kate Thornberry

Quote of the Week

“We can’t provide electricity for lights to light up the trees during Christmastime because the circuits are overloaded, and we get flooding on the sidewalks every time it rains.” – Alamo Drafthouse boss Tim League asks the Comprehensive Planning and Transportation Committee to renovate Sixth Street

by Chronicle Staff

Narco Cultura

This documentary about the Mexican drug wars and their relationship to populist narcocorrido music becomes a fascinating study of the cultural cycle of violence.

by Marc Savlov

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Dana Goodyear Riverhead Books, 272 pp., $27.95 We’ve come a long way, we Americans, in terms of our collective palate. Where we once viewed Perfection Salad (gelatin studded with fruit or meat) as the pinnacle of culinary sophistication, many self-styled foodies now seek out the nastiest, slimiest, most deconstructed versions of food legally (and…

by Melanie Haupt

More Cookbooks for Under the Tree

by the editors of Garden & Gun magazine HarperWave, 304 pp., $27.99 While some national magazines have fallen by the wayside as a result of the seismic changes in the publishing industry over the past few years, regional magazines such as our own Texas Monthly and South Carolina’s Garden & Gun are all the rage.…

by Virginia B. Wood

The Punk Singer

Kathleen Hanna, the ultra-charismatic co-founder of the third-wave feminist riot grrrl movement and full-on DIY icon is the subject of this documentary.

by Marc Savlov

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Ivan Orkin Ten Speed Press, 224 pp., $29.99 In one of the most oddly endearing and entertaining forewords of any cookbook I’ve read, David Chang says, as part of a “Hey Ivan!” note to the author, “What drew me to cooking ramen was – and I hate to use this term – the punk…

by Jessi Cape

Aadu Magaadra Bujji

Aadu Magaadra Bujji 2013, NR, 150 min. Directed by Krishnareddy Gangadhasuu, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Sudheer Babu Posani, Asmita Sood, Poonam Kaur. Not reviewed at press time. This is a Telugu-language romance and action film.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Francine Segan Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 208 pp., $35 Just about everyone loves pasta. In my household, with two picky kids, pasta has become a default dish that I know everyone will eat. For this reason though, it no longer seems special, and I often feel challenged to come up with a pasta dish…

by Rachel Feit

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Edward Behr Penguin Press, 432 pp., $35 What do canteloupes, green beans, Roque­fort, and sweetbreads have in common? Probably nothing, other than they’re all good things to eat and that Edward Behr has chosen them, along with 46 others, as topics in this alphabetical compendium of thoughtful essays, each about a single food. In…

by MM Pack

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson Mitchell Beazley, 400 pp., $55 The English reading public can now create a near-perfect wine library just on the printed works of Jancis Robinson, Master of Wine. Her latest is the seventh edition of The World Atlas of Wine, written in conjunction with internationally famous wine author Hugh Johnson.…

by Wes Marshall

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

Sir Henry Cole sent the first Christmas card. It was the Christmas season in 1843 and he was too busy to write the usual greetings. He asked his friend, the painter John Callcott Horsley, to design a card with an image and a brief greeting that he could mail out instead. In 2009, a quarter…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Exhibitionism

This view of an upper-crust world both morbid and lively should please die-hard and casual Gorey fans alike

by W. A. Brenner

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Olivia Dupin Fair Winds Press, 224 pp., $21.99 This is a celiac success story. A Culinary Institute of the Americas-trained chef with a successful career cooking for high-end, big-money clients in New York City, Olivia Dupin was diagnosed with celiac disease after 10 years of suffering from the extreme, seemingly unrelated symptoms. She wrote…

by Margaret Shugart

Day Trips

Carved Stone rocks. The company, housed in a tin barn and a cabinlike shop deep in the woods on the southern edge of Dripping Springs is known for its native Texas stone awards. If you have retired from state government or won an award since the late Nineties, chances are good you received one of…

by Gerald E. McLeod

Exhibitionism

With Christie’s classic, Austin Playhouse delivers a fun evening of good, old-fashioned whodunitry

by Adam Roberts

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Tara Mataraza Desmond Andrews McMeel Publishing, 240 pp., $24.99 Feuding mother-in-laws, bickering sisters, and combative uncles – if holiday planning has your apron in a bunch because choosing sides is as difficult as breaking bread, then ’tis seriously the season for a judicious spread of side dishes. After all, if a problem can’t be…

by Anna Toon

Hornography

With three teams carrying a single conference loss apiece into judgment day this weekend, No. 25 Texas and No. 8 Baylor (10-1, 7-1 in the Big 12) may or may not still have a Big 12 title to play for by Saturday afternoon’s 2:30pm kickoff in Waco. Neither controls their own destiny, and both need…

by Russ Espinoza

Santa’s Big Cookbook Bag

by Emily and Melissa Elsen Grand Central Publishing, 224 pp., $30 Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Shop in Brooklyn has quickly risen to national prominence since it was opened by sisters Emily and Melissa Elsen in 2010. The Elsens hail from North Dakota, where their family owned a small-town restaurant, and these sisters are very…

by Kate Thornberry

Soccer Watch

The draw for the 2014 World Cup Final groups is on Friday, Dec. 6 (live at 10:30am on ESPN2). Under FIFA’s “pot” system, the USA will be paired with one of the top-seeds, an unseeded European team (possibly Italy, Holland, England, or Portugal), and one from either Africa, South America, or possibly another European… In…

by Nick Barbaro

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