cookbook

After Fidel Castro nationalized Cuba’s farms and businesses, thousands fled, leaving factories, farms and assets that now add up to eight-billion in claims from Exxon to Walt Disney. On today's show, the complicated task of settling decades old suits and how these kinds of Cold War hangovers could affect US/Cuba reconciliation.   

Then, we shift into holiday gear. Cookbooks are a wonderful gift for the foodies in your life, but sifting through the thousands of new selections can be daunting. We'll hear about 2015's best from AP food editor J.M. Hirsch.

Local, fish to fork and farm-to-table eating is a robust trend among celebrity chefs and in urban centers. For others, it's a way of life. On today’s Word of Mouth, best-selling memoirist and passionate eater Kate Christensen moves from Brooklyn to New England and discovers how to cook a moose and other lessons of eating close to home. Also today, does a crunchier-sounding potato chip taste better? Scientists are exploring how the senses are heightened by working together. 

Studies show that growing up below the poverty line can have serious health implications, but can it have a lasting effect on the brain? On today’s show we continue NHPR’s series The First Decade by examining scarcity and how it can hijack a person’s neural pathways, affecting a child’s decision making later in life.

Then, a look at a technological issue that is threatening the livelihoods of farmers across the U.S. how the increasingly computerized nature of automobiles – and a far-reaching  copyright law –  is preventing farmers from maintaining their own equipment.

According to Wells-Fargo, the e-cigarette market is an estimated 2.5 billion dollar industry and is projected to reach 10 billion dollars in the next 3 years. On Today’s show, we uncover the surprisingly complex vaping scene.

Then, from gum drop bread to the rib sticker, we get nostalgic for the locally-produced-independently-published cookbook. Plus, a look at the beer industry’s dangerous love affair with pumpkin-spice.

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Step into any grocery store or café these days and you’re bound to be offered something pumpkin-y or apple-ish flavored, filled, or shaped. Add to that displays of cascading squashes, pumpkins, pears and apples, and you may notice the onset of fall food overload. Here to help us get a fresh perspective on fall’s rich bounty with tips and recipes for seasonal produce is J.M. Hirsch - food editor for the Associated Press and author of several cookbooks, most recently, “Beating the Lunchbox Blues.” J.M. will be at Gibson's Bookstore in Downtown Concord on Wednesday, October 23rd at 7:oo pm.

There is something mysterious about root vegetables…that show of budding, flowering and forming fruit… ripe for the plucking plays out underground. you see the leaves, and maybe the broad shoulders of a beet, but you don’t know what you’ve got until pulling it out of the ground. Once exposed, we know what to do with a potato or carrot, but little about the furtive burdock root, salsify or malanga.  Diane Morgan digs deep into the secrets of this nutritious family of foods that are low in calories and easy on the wallet.

The nation is mourning pop star Whitney Houston with heartfelt tributes at last night’s Grammy awards, fan testimonials and revivals of her old hits. “I Will Always Love You” is currently the number one download on iTunes sales. As the curiosity for the triumphs and the unsavory details of her life are revealed, we can only hope to glimpse more of Whitney’s humanity, and her struggles in and out of the spotlight. That’s the kind of affection that drives Frank Decaro.

However you celebrate the holidays, we are now in deep. Hannukah begins at sundown tonight. There are five more shopping days and umpteen things to do until christmas…the holiday parties, the food shopping, the secret santa gifts, school plays and pick-ups. Time seems to compress as our wish to enjoy each other in this dark season expands.