This book is filled with page after page of absolutely gorgeous fascinating photography of folks from all over the world selling all sorts of foods I've never seen before -- an Asian woman selling rambutan (they're red & spikey), a butcher in Palermo standing behind an assortment of animal parts, a spice vendor in Cairo, his fingers covered with turmeric (that one's a two-full-page spread). This book lets you take a worldwide (every corner of the world) vacation, strolling down the alleys of markets, almost able to smell the spices in Beijing and the freshly baked bread in Paris. The photographs are supplemented by very readable text -- historical information on regional foods, "recipes" that will inspire you to experiment rather than provide you with a step by step, measure by measure formula. Beautiful gift for a food lover or a world traveler (or world traveler wannabe).

This book is wonderful. I have had a fascination with food markets for quite a while and finally there is a book to document their colors and vibrance which reflect that of the societies they serve. The book is divided into six sections: Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the U.S.A. Information is given on the types of food common to each area of the world, including recipes (which are written in paragraph rather than cookbook style). I have not tried any of the recipes yet but they look delicious. Most impressive is the photography, which is fortunate for this is largely a picture book. It would make a great coffee table book, as well as a nice gift. I would recommend "Food Markets of the World" highly if you are interested in food (and who isn't!), cooking, and international cultures. If you are a fan of National Geographic Magazine this is right up your alley. The price seems very reasonable to me considering it is a hardcover book with page after page of beautiful color photographs. Get it!

_From My Mother's Kitchen is half cookbook, half stories about the author's childhood. The kosher-style recipes come out tasting good and aren't too difficult (try "May's Sour Cream Coffee Cake"), although some of them take longer than this generation of cooks is willing to spend. But the real reason to have this book is for the "reminiscences". It's impossible to read the essay about pickles without eating one, and "The Joy of Being Sick in Bed" almost make me wish I had the sniffles. The same way Anne Fadiman's _Ex Libris_ is a love story about books, this is a love story about the unnofficial ceremonies surrounding food.

This is more than a cookbook.It is a fascinating family history,full of lovely little stories about Mimi growing up in Brooklyn. You can almost see the sights and smell the smells as Mimi takes us back in time to the days of her youth.

Can some one help me?
Do authentic german recipe use soy sauce?
Page 143 on steak seasoning(steakwurze).

I had never tried cooking German food before I bought this book. The other German cookbooks I have all make it seem so difficult. Now though, I have many recipes I want to try! The ones I've tried so far have been easy to follow, used mostly basic ingredients that are easy to find, and turned out tasting authentic. I find the book to be well-researched, well-written and informative, and easy to understand. It not only gives recipes, but information on when, where, and in what circumstances different foods may be served. There are everyday recipes and also some to be used for special occasions. This is an all-around great cookbook for anyone wanting to try German food.

This cookbook is one of the few that actually makes German cooking intelligible for an American. The recipes are fully "translated" by which I mean the measurements and such are ones that we use in the USA. Other German cookbooks do not have this. The author does a wonderful job in explaining how the food is served and cooked. This is the best German cookbook I have ever seen.

Whoops! I purchased this book, but was sent another one, Visions of Sugarplums, 1992. It's not a bad book, but I was disappointed that I didn't get the one I ordered. I think I'd rate Sheraton's book at least a 4, probably a 5. Donna Gibson

This book is perfect for anyone wanting to make Christmas a little more exciting and varied. Recipes from all over the world are included. Some are traditional and well known favorites while others are truly unique. Most ingredients are fairly simple to obtain, despite the sometimes exotic nature of the recipe.

Reading this book is also a good way to learn about Christmas customs and beliefs in other countries.

Truly an international and festive culinary adventure for everyone. I recommend this book very highly.

"Forget the milk and honey. Just take me to your bialys," food writer Mimi Sheraton imagines herself saying when she arrives in Israel. Her assignment: to write about food and restaurants for a travel magazine. Her secret mission: to continue her research on the onion roll commonly known as the bialy. Israel is only one of many stops on Sheraton's journey to discover the truth about bialys -- the real recipe, the orginal way of eating it.

In page-turningly graceful prose, Sheraton tracks the social history of the bialy (kuchen in Yiddish). Sheraton's first stop is Bialystok, Poland, the birthplace of bialys. Her obsessive search for bakers and ingredients adds humor to the horror of a place infamous for being the only town in the world to have pogroms after the Holocaust. "I felt as though I had just been in a surreal dream, wandering in a strange gray city, cold and wet and clutching an onion roll that no one recognized," Sheraton says with mock-seriousness.

An underground network of bialy contacts leads Sheraton to Jewish communities around the world. She meets the famous lawyer Samuel Pisar, who dreamed of bialys from his shelf in Auschwitz. She also meets the man who invented bialys, and others who simply ate bialys -- "Rich Jews ate kuchen with meals, and for poor Jews kuchen were the meal." Each has a story to tell -- the uprising in the Bialystok ghetto, torture by the Russians, the struggles of settlers in Palestine -- all of it refracted through memories of freshly baked kuchen.

Through Sheraton's sleuthing we discover that cheese, butter, and especially halvah (sesame seed snacks) garnished the original bialy -- which was packed with poppy seeds and embossed with slivers of fresh, roasted onions. We also learn about the bizarre ritual sacrifice of unbaked dough at Kossar's bialy joint in New York. If that isn't enough, you also get the recipe.

Diane Mehta

As a child when I asked my Grandfather where the family was from - he told me a town called Bialystock. When I asked him where it was he told me "well sometimes it was in Poland, othertimes it was in Russia." Before reading this book I knew there was some sort of connection between the Bialy and that town, and this book opened some doors for me.

Mimi Sheraton has opened a time machine, sparked by her curiosity about a humble breakfast treat. By starting out with a simple question about a roll, she goes on a quest and opens a the lost world of pre-Holocaust Poland in the process. Her book takes you to every corner of the world (Poland, France, Israel, Texas, Austalia and of course NYC) in search of a lost world. This is more than abook about bread, and perhaps one of the best history books I have recently - and a great exploration of what it means to be Jewish, and in a bigger sense explores what it means to be human.

While it's a short book (I read it in one night) Mimi packs in the details. When you are done reading it you wish you were taking notes. This book would make a great gift, and is worth sharing with your friends and family.

Sheraton comes out with two statements that are on the surface contradictory: the best bialys (and the customs used to eat them) were from Bialystok, but the bialys she most enjoys are from the places she is most familiar (ie, Kossar's). For instance, even though every Bialystoker she encounters states that you absolutely do not split the roll open, she states that she still continues to do this because she finds it awkward not to. Fair enough. However, other variations of the bialy, such as the amount of onion used and the generosity of poppy seeds on top, she seems to feel are intolerable. And that's fine, too, because what she is really saying- and what just about everyone she interviews is saying- is that the bialy you love best is the bialy you grew up with. When all is said and done, it isn't about the specific recipe or food as much as it is about the past. The food you grew up with is one of the strongest links to your past. This is what Sheraton is really writing about; when the Bialystokers talk about how much they miss the bialy they grew up with and how inferior the modern versions are, what they are really mourning is the loss of the home they lived in. That the exact method of producing the bialy has been lost is just one more testament to the world that was destroyed in the Holocaust.

My mother went to visit my sister in New York recently, and I asked her to bring back some bialys. Surely the bialys in New York would be better than the bialys I eat here in Boston. Not even close. My bialy has definite merits over its New York counterpart (abundant onions and poppyseeds, huge and fat, not flat), but it wasn't simply that. My bialys are the ones I've grown accustomed to eating and remind me of the neighborhood I buy them in and the people I eat them with. I cannot imagine losing all of that, and every passage of this book that spoke about those losses brought tears to my eyes.

Read this book and fall in love with an old bread and a lost world.

Have a cold, wanna feel better? Feeling fine, but wanna feel warm inside? Feeling warm inside, but wanna feel soothed and relaxed? Then it's time for -- The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup!

In The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup, you'll find 11 chapters of soup recipes from the US, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-saharan Africa, Asia, and more!

This book has so many great recipes from so many wonderful places that you'll impress your friends and family and feel like you've taken a mini trip around the world!

This book is not one filled with glitz and glammor, but one that is jam-packed with recipes, stories, tips, translations, famous quotes, and my favorite -- recipes for perogies and Armenian Yogurt and Meatball soup.

Finally, you'll learn the truth -- "Is it really penicillin?"