Christopher Kimball threw down the proverbial glove and issued a “Wiki vs. Test Kitchen Challenge” on October 15th. I publicly accepted within hours, but after 3 weeks, we still haven’t heard back. I left blog comments, @tweets, and submitted a private message via Cook’s Illustrated. I’ve seen no additional announcements, and though others accepted publicly, none came from a Wiki. Further, it’s clear that his post was in response to The New York Times and TIME Magazine articles about recipe Wikis that featured Foodista and quote both of us.

Dueling Pistols image courtesy of Nfutvol

Though the idea of this challenge seems to have fallen by the wayside, the resulting discussion has been fascinating. I’ve observed a lot of confusion about how the Web works and what a Wiki is vs. a blog, a search engine, or other types of web technologies. This is the first in a series of posts where I will share some of what I’ve learned from 13 years of building large scale websites and a prior career in cooking.

So what exactly is a Wiki? Well, the whole concept is less than 10 years old and there are a number of definitions, but they all share these elements:

• Is accessed via a Web browser
• Facilitates easy creation and publishing of web pages
• Enables large numbers of people to edit the SAME page
• Links between pages
• Reports on who edited what pages and when

Print has been a medium used to convey knowledge for thousands of years, including recipes. Indeed, some of the earliest surviving cookbooks date back to the Romans, including De re coquinaria, from circa the 4th century. Gutenberg later used technology to create a new medium: mechanical printing. Replacing legions of scribe monks, his press had a major impact on the business of the printed word when it massively reduced the cost of each additional copy produced. Cookbooks quickly grew to be a significant part of the overall printing industry. Over time, more mechanization continued to lower costs to the point where hundreds of pages can be had for pennies.

Still, printing has a number of limitations relative to a Wiki. Here are a few points of comparison:

Print

• Cannot be changed once produced
• Expensive:
  • Additional cost to every copy
  • Cost increasing, especially when considering the environmental impact
• Slow to produce and distribute
• Invisible editorial process
• Disconnected, getting more information/context is difficult

Wikis

• Pages are continuously improved
• Inexpensive and getting cheaper, cost of each copy is close to zero
• Fast to produce, publishing is instant
• Open and transparent editorial process
• Connected, more detail is just a click away

This is not meant to be an attack on print, in fact I have a large and treasured cookbook collection. However, I feel it is also important to point out some of cost/benefit issues missing from the debate.

Upcoming Post: Quality and Accuracy in Wikis

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Great Stuffing Debate!
• Wine from Scratch: Wine in the Kitchen
• The 2,000 Pound Rib Feast
• Tonight Chef and Mixologist Kathy Casey at Nightschool
• How I Slaughtered a Chicken

Categories:	Author • Cookbooks • Cooking tips • Events • Technique • books	2 Comments
Tags:

Raise your hand if you’ve ever entered a bookstore intending to buy a literary work and left with a cookbook or two. It’s ok. It happens to all of us.

Vegan Soul Kitchen came out in March of this year, and I had been lusting for it since hearing an interview with Bryant Terry, the author, on The Splendid Table in April. Therefore, when Amazon gently recommended it to me- on sale- as I bought my fall textbooks, I happily added it to my virtual shopping cart.

The recipes are modernized, veganized versions of the traditional African American and Southern recipes Terry enjoyed growing up in Memphis. When one thinks of Southern cooking, “vegan” is not the first word that comes to mind. Even the vegetables tend to be battered, deep fried and flavored with bacon or lard. Terry proves that one can enjoy Southern and African American cooking without sacrificing lifestyle or nutrition. “To be clear, though, I am not presenting this as a ‘healthy cookbook,’” Terry writes in the introduction, “Vegan Soul Kitchen is a real food cookbook for anyone with a soul that likes tasty eats.”

The recipes range from drinks to sides to entrees to desserts, with an entire section devoted to watermelon. One theme throughout is a focus on sustainability. As an example, Terry encourages readers to compost the matter remaining after making the stock for the Tempeh, Shitake Mushroom and Cornmeal Dumpling Stew I prepared last night. I picked up all of the vegetables for the stew (except the mushrooms for the stock) at the farmer’s market yesterday: every ingredient called for in the recipe is in season at the same time. In fact, the concept of the book grew out of the director of CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) asking Terry to create recipes for CSA members.

The book is peppered with pop culture references; for example, Terry titles his vegetable section “So Fresh and So Green Green.” (Outkast, anyone?) He also includes a soundtrack for each dish, drawn from an eclectic variety of musical genres. The songs accompanying my stew were “Chicken an’ Dumplins” by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and “Shroom Music (Champion Bound)” by Quasimoto (neither of which I had in my iTunes library).

However, the only music I needed was the sound of a hearty, delicious meal simmering on my stove.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Friday Fun Links
• Young Winos
• The 2,000 Pound Rib Feast
• Kabocha and Ginger Squash Soup
• Tonight Chef and Mixologist Kathy Casey at Nightschool

Categories:	Cookbooks • Meatless Monday • Uncategorized • books • vegan	1 Comment
Tags:

Greetings my wine-guzzling friends. As I mentioned in my first post, I’m starting over with wine and you’re all (all two of you) invited along for the ride. I’ll be exploring wine for the first time, all over again with a new attitude and fresh perspective inspired by my recent trip to Italy, one of the largest and oldest wine producing regions in the world.

It’s my belief that the key to learning about wine is more than just analyzing grapes and comparing flavor profiles. Instead, we need to look deeper into the different regions, cultures, and lifestyles behind the bottle; because in many parts of the world, wine truly is a style of life. Not just a life with style.

For example, in Italy wine is an everyday constant. It’s ingrained in the people and embedded in the culture. This is more apparent right now with harvest than any other time of year, as growers and winemakers work to bring in their grapes just as their families have done for generations before them.

One evening in Italy, my wife and I sat down for a home cooked meal with our tour guide Paolo and his friend Valerio. Valerio is a winemaker. Just like his father before him, and his father before him. He never considered doing anything else. It’s what he knows and loves. He can speak for hours on the subject of Grignolino (a red Italian wine grape variety) and it’s magical ability to cure hangovers!

Our local wine culture doesn’t quite have the history that Italy does, but there are still plenty of opportunities to learn more about wine from the perspective of the people and places that produce it.

My recommendation, before you crack open that next bottle of wine; look at the label and then get online to find out more about the winery that made it and the region the grapes came from. That info alone should provide more talking points around the dinner table than how the wine tastes like blackberries and smells like a cigar box.

For a little more historical perspective on wine lookup A History Of The World In Six Glasses, which explores the significant role that wine along with five other beverages (beer, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola) have played in the world’s history. Interesting stuff. Cheers!

** Marcus Pape has worked in media and design for over 10 years with an extensive background in all forms of visual communication. As a proclaimed vinophile Marcus hopes to leverage his abilities to inspire interest in wine, recently launching WineCHATr.com – an online resource for the growing wine community, where both popular wine bloggers and businesses come together to connect and share information on wine.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Young Winos
• Wine from Scratch: Wine in the Kitchen
• The World’s Most Perfect Food and Wine Pairings (Part One): Champagne and Popcorn
• Waiting by the River at Dawn
• Vegan Soul Kitchen

Categories:	Italian • Travel • books • wine	Leave a Comment
Tags:

Are you food obsessed? Do you always turn to the food section in the newspaper? Are you always found hidden amongst the cookbook section in a bookstore? And when you do buy a cookbook you don’t just skim it, do you? You devour it. Lucky for you, there is a lot to savor when it comes to food lit! With the long Labor Day weekend approaching, you’re bound to have some free time to feed your inner chef a little brain food. Here are 10 great food books we recommend.

1. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
2. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn
3. Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, by Bill Buford
4. A Homemade Life, Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, by Molly Wizenberg
5. Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky
6. Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, by Ruth Reichl
7. French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle
8. My Life in France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme
9. Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, by Thomas McNamee
10. The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – and Perplexing – City, by David Lebovitz

Possibly Related Posts:

• Tonight Chef and Mixologist Kathy Casey at Nightschool
• Waiting by the River at Dawn
• Vegan Soul Kitchen
• Wine from Scratch: A History Behind The Bottle
• Next Up for Drinking Lessons Robert Hess

Categories:	Author • Cookbooks • books	2 Comments
Tags:	authors • books • food authors • food lit • food memoires • food reads • food stories • food writers