Removes much of the guesswork and stress—and the possibility of unpleasant surprises—from cooking.
A detailed guide to sourcing recipes, shopping for ingredients, and preparing to cook for novice home chefs.
The experience of growing up with a mother who relied upon what LeJeune calls the “B-A-R-F” method—boil, assemble, reheat, fry—made the author determined to make delicious, well-crafted meals for her own kids. But, as a working mom, she totally understands why people feel like they don’t have time to cook. As an IT professional, she excels at turning complex projects into simple systems, and with this book, she describes how she does just that in the kitchen. The process begins with a color-coded key for marking up recipes. For example, she uses a black pen to draw a circle or a box around all the ingredients and a yellow highlighter to mark these ingredients as they appear in the recipe instructions. After introducing the first step in her system, LeJeune launches into cranky commentary about kids who won’t learn to cook and the young adults who rely on Instant Pots. This feels unnecessary; she does have a point, though, when she suggests that no beginner is going to learn how to cook a meal from a three-minute video. Her list of favorite sources for great recipes is useful, and her suggestions of sources to avoid is interesting (she is no fan of The Joy of Cooking). When she circles back to the system that is the basic premise of this book, she describes her approach to shopping for food and preparing to cook. The annotated recipes she’s collected streamline the weekly trip to the grocery store; they help ensure she knows how much she needs of every ingredient and the precise nature of each ingredient—for example, if she simply adds “spinach” to her list, it could be fresh or frozen. The mise in the title refers to mise en place, the French technique of having all ingredients prepped and portioned before cooking begins. Anyone who has ever watched a cooking demo has an idea of what this looks like, but LeJeune ends her book by providing extremely detailed, step-by-step examples of how she “mises it” as she prepares several dishes, including Butter Chicken and Apple Pie.
Removes much of the guesswork and stress—and the possibility of unpleasant surprises—from cooking.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-914152-0
Page Count: 140
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
