I Get Free Stuff, October 19, 2006 — I've said before that I welcome free stuff and will gladly trade a mention on the site for free cookbooks, ingredient samples, and whatever other fun stuff pr folks are now gracing greasing writers with. Of course, I can't personally accept any of these "gifts" because it might compromise my journalistic integrity. I always leave the freebies in a special cardboard box dedicated just for the purpose of letting the interns in the mailroom get some compensation for working here at Tastingmenu International Publishing Headquarters.

That said, given that I'll whore myself for any scrap, it's all the better when that freebie is something I can genuinely get excited about. In this case it's the latest volume from the team of Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page - What to Drink with What You Eat. According to our team of crack researchers (as well as the cover of the book) it's The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers". In the genre of polling famous people in the food industry and compiling a book out of their anecdotes and life lessons, nobody does it better than Dornenburg and Page.

I was first introduced to their books when I grabbed Becoming a Chef off the shelf at the bookstore. These books really epitomize for me the best kind of reference books. They're typically not something you read cover-to-cover in sequence. They're more of a jump around kind of book. But rather than being just a dry reference, they have all sorts of anecdotes, stories, and context for the reference material. The beautiful pictures don't hurt either. Interviewing a bunch of folks and reprinting their comments can be the lazy man's way of putting together a book. But the amount of hard work that is put into their books is pretty evident given how packed they are with digestible goodies. As for What to Drink with What you Eat specifically, I'm especially enjoying it because it's a topic I find useful. Maybe you will too. They have a website too.