Next best thing to cooking and eating good food is ...

... reading about cooking and eating good food.

My reading for pleasure includes a good portion of food and cooking writing. Not cookbooks, although I peruse those, too, and have a collection of nearly 100 cookbooks. We're talking books about food and cooking as culture. Here are a few examples, including my most recent and current readings:

* "My Life in France", Julia Child's story told with her great-nephew Alex Prud'homme. I just finished this warm and enlightening book in which the mother of good American cooking tells how she immersed herself in French culture, including its cuisine, and came up with her permanently relevant "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and masterful PBS television series, "The French Chef". (Special thanks to friend and colleague Diane Luber for lending me her copy of "My Life in France".)

* "Heat", by Bill Buford. This is my current reading, a revealing tale of Buford's year or more around super chef Mario Batali and his Babbo restaurant, including Buford on the trail of the Mario mystique in Italy and elsewhere. The book title's subtext tells it all: "An amateur's adventure as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany." (A second nod of thanks to Diane Luber.)

* "Down and Out in Paris and London", by George Orwell. I haven't read this, but it was recommended by Chef Tony Marano, one of my professors at the California Culinary Academy. Especially compelling, it seems, are the tales from Paris breadlines and the lives of workers in restaurant kitchens.

* "Beef: And Other Bovine Matters", by John Torode. This offering showed up attached to a recipe for seared beef tenderloin with thyme in my daily Epicurious.com New Recipes feed. The book description shows it leans heavily on recipes but also appears to contain a good deal of the history of beef, breeds, butchering and other background. Torode was born in Australia and now runs restaurants in London.

* Just about anything by M.F.K. Fisher. Here's a list of her works. Most compelling titles: "How to Cook a Wolf", her only novel "Not Now but Now" and "The Story of Wine in California".

* Anthony Bourdain is overexposed, methinks, but he is a talented writer. Try "A Cook's Tour", in which Bourdain sets out to find the perfect meal and travels the world.

This list is sadly incomplete, like a tomato sauce with only tomatoes. There are many more, and I will add to the list in this blog as time allows.

(Photo credits: George Orwell -- top right -- from levity.com. M.F.K. Fisher -- lower left -- from her official Website)

Culinary school: Daily quiz, yes; Anthony Bourdain, no

The changing room was vacant for a few minutes as I donned my uniform for the first day of classes at the California Culinary Academy today. I buttoned my jacket to the top, put on my commis and stood in front of the mirror.

I inhaled and exhaled two times -- normal breathing -- then took a third deep breath and let it out slowly. I walked out the door to my first class. Not quite Neil Armstrong's "one small step ... one giant leap ... ". Yet it was my own small but brave stride into a new, exciting world.

Chef John Meidinger and Chef Tony Marano greeted me and my classmates, and we plunged in. Even the fits-and-starts preliminaries -- a book or two missing from the book bags, a tool or two missing from the knife kits, the necessary building tour including how to get out and where to go in case of fire -- were moments we embraced. Each turn had a newness that kept us enthused beginning to end, the way a good meal does, from amuse bouche to dessert and coffee.

Day 1 brought the news that Day 2 and every day after it will mean a quiz in the Safety and Sanitation class, taught by Chef John.

Culinary Foundations I is being taught by Chef Tony in a demonstration kitchen where we will learn the bare-bones basics of terminology, kitchen organization, proper use of tools, basic food science principles -- finally, a mention of actual food! -- and foundational sauces and stocks.

Chef Tony wants a 250-word essay by next week reflecting on the inspiration each of us has gotten from reading a book on cooking. Mine will be on Julia Child's "My Life in France," which I have nearly finished reading. One caveat from Chef Tony: "I've had it with Anthony Bourdain, up to here," he said, slashing his hand across his throat. " Anything else is fine."

Second day of classes begins in 15 hours. I cannot wait.

(Anthony Bourdain photo credit: www.toliveandeatinla.com)

It should be Julia first, then Julie

A full biographical film on the life of Julia Child would have, should have, could have been more appealing than the two-story combo now in theaters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Julie & Julia, mostly for its entertainment value but also for what seemed to be a fact-based portrayal of how Julia Child got her start and how she became the "mother" of modern American cooking and the entire movement to higher quality cooking and eating.

(The Food Network, Anthony Bourdain and Top Chef, among many others, can thank Julia for raising awareness of good food well prepared, allowing American society to accept such an inundation of programming devoted to cooking and eating.)

What the movie paid only passing attention to were the behind-the-scenes details of not only Julia Child's professional life but of Julie Powell's. A for-instance: No one washed a pot, a pan or a dish during the film's 124 minutes. Not that such a scene would have added a lot, but let's be realistic: When the cooking and eating are done, cleanup awaits.

I have read parts of Julia Child's biography and all of "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell, and the essence of both is captured by the film.

I simply would have enjoyed more, much more, of Julia Child's life.