I must like food a lot. Our bookshelves aren’t organized beyond his and her zones, but if I spent an afternoon organizing the books, the food books would occupy a large territory. And that’s not including the shelves of cookbooks in the kitchen. So, what are my favorites?

Kitchen Confidential gave birth to a genre of books that looked at life in the kitchen. Bourdain is the grandfather of the Food Network-type programs of rocker-chefs and Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. Before Bourdain, you didn’t really think that much about how your steak got on its plate and by whom and what drugs they were taking while preparing it. Now, I don’t order fish on Mondays. Bourdain’s writing owes a lot to Hunter Thompson and 60’s beat writers – sometimes it’s great, other times it’s annoying. But Bourdain’s book and his continuing television series always capture his enormous love of life.

Other food books in my collection include In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (My review is here) and My Life in France (My review is here.). I love Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love is a fun and full of food enthusiasm (review here).

Why am I a foodie? Because of Congers Lake and my grandfather.