A memoir of a year spent working at a Brooklyn restaurant—and on a series of farms—to get the lowdown on organic, local, ethical cooking. Includes recipes! Food was always important to Melanie Rehak—cooking, preparing, and sourcing what she thought were the best ingredients. She studied the experts on healthy nutrition, from Michael Pollan to Eric Schlosser to Wendell Berry. So when her son turned out to be an impossible eater, dedicated to a diet of yogurt and peanut butter, she realized she needed to know more than just the basics of thoughtful eating. She needed to become a pro. Thus began a year-long quest to understand food: what we eat, how it's produced, how it's prepared, and what really matters when it comes to socially aware, environmentally friendly, and healthy eating. By working at Applewood, a locally sourced Brooklyn restaurant, and volunteering her time to farming, milking, cheese making, and fishing, she learned the...

A plucky “titian-haired" sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930. Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women's libbers) to enter the pantheon of American girlhood. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers' lives. Here, in a narrative with all the vivid energy and page-turning pace of Nancy's adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon?The brainchild of children's book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over as CEO after her father died. In this century-spanning story, Rehak traces their roles—and Nancy's—in forging the modern...