The Global Trash Trade

I've just finished posting our most recent interview, Alec Ash talking to Adam Minter about the global trash trade. Minter is an American who comes from a mid-western scrapyard background, but has spent the last nine years living in China. I haven't read his book yet, but I think a looking at those two countries and economies in the context of trash is fascinating. One line of the interview in particular jumped out at me: "Modern China was, in part, built on the developed world’s waste." Trash is a big story which reveals a lot about our own culture and history. I really recommend taking the time to read it.

The Christmas Story: Christianity's weakest link

I've got absolutely nothing against the Christmas story. In fact, at my wedding, which took place on July 2nd, when I was asked which Bible passage I wanted read out at our outdoor ceremony I had to admit that the one I loved best might seem a bit strange to guests at a summer wedding...

In spite of that -- or maybe even because of that -- I am completely fascinated by what early Christian historians say about the Christmas story. Was Jesus born in Bethlehem? Highly unlikely. Was he born in December? No mention of any date in the Bible. It may well have been April. Were there three wise men? the Bible doesn't actually say so -- in fact it says almost nothing about these men at all, who could have numbered anything from 2 to (according to one text) several hundred moving together as a small army.

If you enjoy celebrating Christmas (as a Christian, or, in my case, an eclectic pagan ancestor-loving atheist) I really encourage you to have a look at our Christmas interviews which look in a bit more detail at this stuff.

The first interview we did was with Brent Landau, an early Christian historian who knows a lot about the ancient texts from this period (get in touch with him if you need something translated from Syriac, an ancient Christian language related to Aramaic which probably won't feature on Google Translate for a while). His topic was The Real Christmas Story.

My colleague, Alec Ash, meanwhile, spoke to Bruce Forbes about Christmas History more generally. One of the books he chose is called 4000 Years of Christmas -- so I'll let you do the maths on exactly how much Christmas has to do with the birth of Jesus Christ...

Happy Yuletide!

The Best Cookbooks

We've had a great selection of cookery writers choosing their favourite cookbooks for us on the Five Books site, including Ruth Reichl, Nigel Slater, Ruth Rogers, Yotam Ottolenghi and Madhur Jeffrey. Have a look at all their cookbook choices on one page here.

A few highlights:

1. A book that came up again and again (chosen no less than 3 times): Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking

2. Was Nigella Lawson's best cookbook her first?

3. I can't vouch for the outcome of the recipes, but here's a book that's extremely tempting to busy people.

4. The book I intend to buy next, because I haven't got it and Nigel Slater is one of my favourite cookery writers. 

I have to confess I'm a little disappointed that no one we have asked to select their favourite cookbooks has yet picked one of my own favourites, Katie Stewart's Times Cookery Book, or what I consider The-Most-Useful-Cookery-Book-Ever.  Fortunately, Diane Seed, the author of the latter, has at least done an interview herself for us, on Mediterranean Cooking.