New Patent book

Family friend, cookbook author, and NPR favorite Greg Patent has a new food history/recipe book coming out, A Baker's Odyssey. I just caught this piece on the NPR: Books podcast. The article online has some recipes, but the audio piece is a discussion with Greg about his own background and the work for the book as he makes the Cheese Sambouseks in his home kitchen.

Greg has an interesting bio -- among other things, he lived his first 10 years in China, his pre-culinary career was as a zoology professor, and he used to tour as a spokesman for Cuisinart. His wife Dorothy Hinshaw Patent is also a writer. She mostly writes non-fiction books for children, and one of her books was a finalist in the 2003 Spur Awards (Western Writers of America) when I was doing work for them (and serving as a judge in another category). She politely sent her regrets about attending the WWA convention, as they would instead be attending the awards banquet for the James Beard Foundation the same week. Greg was nominated for and received the prestigious award for the best baking book of 2003 with Baking in America.

Our favorite pancake recipe is, incidentally, from Greg's 1996 book, New Cooking from the Old West.