Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi explores the history and cultural importance of our most beloved tastes, paying homage to the ingredients that give us daily pleasure, while providing a thoughtful wake-up call to the homogenization that is threatening the diversity of our food supply.

Food is one of the greatest pleasures of human life. Our response to sweet, salty, bitter or sour is deeply personal, combining our individual biological characteristics, personal preferences and emotional connections. Bread, Wine, Chocolate illuminates not only what it means to recognize the importance of the foods we love, but also what it means to lose them. Sethi reveals how the foods we enjoy are endangered by genetic erosion—a slow and steady loss of diversity in what we grow and eat. In America today, food often looks and tastes the same, whether at a San Francisco farmers market or at a Midwestern potluck. Shockingly, 95% of the world’s calories now come from only 30 species. Though supermarkets seem to be stocked with endless options, the differences between products are superficial, primarily in flavor and brand.

Sethi draws on interviews with scientists, farmers, chefs, vintners, beer brewers, coffee roasters and others with firsthand knowledge of our food to reveal the multiple and interconnected reasons for this loss, and its consequences for our health, traditions and culture. She travels to Ethiopian coffee forests, British yeast culture labs, and Ecuadoran cocoa plantations, collecting fascinating stories that will inspire readers to eat more consciously and purposefully, better understand familiar and new foods, and learn what it takes to save the tastes that connect us with the world around us.

This book includes a broad range of ales, gruits, bragots, and other styles that have undeservingly taken a backseat to the IPA. Recipes inspired by traditions around the globe include sahti, gotlandsdricka, oak bark and mushroom ale, wassail, pawpaw wheat, chicha de muko, and even Neolithic “stone” beers.

With Zimmerman’s guidance, readers will learn about the many ways to go beyond the pale ale, utilizing alternatives to standard grains, hops, and commercial yeasts to defy the strictures of style and design their own brews.

Now every homebrewer can make better beer simply by knowing the basic science behind the components of beer and fermentation.

Learn how to buy, build, and use all of the equipment involved in homebrewing with a minimum of hassle and expense with The Brewer's Handbook.

When brewing was discovered more than 8,000 years ago, it was hailed as a gift from the gods. Today, beer is enjoyed all over the world, available in infinite styles … yet brewing is still seen as a mysterious process. In reality, everyone can create unique beers in their own home, and this comprehensive, step-by-step guide will show you how.

For every brewing project (beer, cider, mead, sake, or any other fermented drink), there’s an easy way and a hard way, a method useful to the curious novice or the hardcore veteran. Brewing Everything walks you through the process for each delicious beverage from start to finish, beginning with easier shortcuts until you get the hang of it, and then upgrading to the harder stuff after you’ve brewed a thing or two.

Inside you’ll find more than 50 recipes, including:

• Hazy Double IPA
• Sea Salt Gose
• Roasted Pumpkin Stout
• Cherry Apple Rosé
• Dandelion Wine
• Forest Floor Gruit
• Junmai Sake
• Sourdough Soda

With step-by-step instructions, color photographs, and methods for every level of experience, Brewing Everything is the ultimate guide to all things homebrew.

This is not your father's venison cookbook. Buck, Buck, Moose is the first comprehensive, lushly photographed, full-color guide to working with and cooking all forms of venison, including deer, elk, moose, antelope and caribou.

Buck, Buck, Moose will take you around the world, from nose to tail. The book features more than 100 recipes ranging from traditional dishes from six continents to original recipes never before seen. You'll also get thorough instructions on how to butcher, age, and store your venison, as well as how to use virtually every part of the animal. Buck, Buck, Moose also includes a lengthy section on curing venison and making sausage.

Peppered throughout are stories of the hunt and essays on why venison holds such a special place in human society. Venison is far more than mere food. It is, in many ways, what made us human.

Using detailed, step-by-step photography of every stage of the process, author Adam Danforth shows you exactly how to humanely slaughter and butcher cattle for beef. From creating the right pre-slaughter conditions to killing, skinning, keeping cold, breaking the meat down, and creating cuts of meat you'll recognize from the market, Danforth walks you through every step, leaving nothing to chance. He also covers food safety, freezing and packaging, and tools and equipment. This comprehensive reference is the only guide you need to successfully, safely, and humanely slaughter and butcher your own animal.

Butchering Deer starts with the history of hunting deer for meat, the nutritional content of venison, and deer anatomy for better shot placement. He then extensively covers all phases of field dressing and butchering, from eviscerating the animal and skinning hides to how to cut each piece of meat (chuck, rib, short loin, loin end, rump, round, shank, flank, plate, brisket, shoulder, shank, and even bacon and ham).

From creating the right pre-slaughter conditions to killing, skinning, keeping cold, breaking the meat down, and creating cuts of meat you'll recognize from the market, Danforth walks you through every step, leaving nothing to chance. He also covers food safety, freezing and packaging, and tools and equipment.

Welcome to the world of produce preservation. In Can It & Ferment It, blogger and preservation enthusiast Stephanie Thurow brings the canning and fermenting communities together by offering recipes that work for both canning and fermenting. For a first-timer to the advanced preservationist, Can It & Ferment It shows canners and fermenters alike how they can have the best of both worlds.

Thurow explains the differences between the canning and fermentation processes, emphasizes the importance of using local and organic produce, describes canning and fermenting terminology and the supplies needed for both methods, and offers more than 75 fun and easy recipes for every season. Readers will learn how to preserve each fruit or vegetable in two different ways; each can be enjoyed water bath-canned or as a healthy, probiotic-rich ferment.

Recipes in this helpful guide include strawberry chutney, the perfect garlic dill pickle, spring onion kimchi, cinnamon-honey apple butter, and more!