2024 Reading List with Lots of Books about Food

2024 was my year where I read six books about making or cooking food, and one about compost, which helps grow food.

In 2025, I need to read a few more books by Edward Carey, Silas House, creativity, and cooking.

My Yearly Plan

Each year, the plan is to read a book a week, and this year I managed two books a month. It’s not bad for thinking I was going to spend less time reading this year and more time learning on YouTube and other websites. I spent too much time watching creators to see what was going on in their lives, more than the ones teaching me things or letting me learn from them.

Again, from mid-November/Thanksgiving until the end of the year, I attempted to finish up a handful of books I was partway through, along with some shorter/more straightforward/easier-to-read books.

The short, easier-to-read ones are between 120 – 150 pages and smaller in size. So I can read them in a few days or a day, depending On how much time I have. The others are 250 – 400 pages and are more involved, and I need to pay more attention while reading them.

NOTE – I typically read a handful of books at once.

Reading more than a book at a time allows me to switch around depending on my mood. If I need light reading or have time to read through something a bit denser that needs more attention, I can.

My List of Books I Read in 2024

My list of books is in the order I read them.

  • Edith Holler – Edward Carey
  • The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Steal Like an Artist – 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Show Your Work -10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Keep Going – 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Start with Why – How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Simon Sinek
  • The Botany of Desire – A Plant’s-Eye View of the World – Michael Pollan
  • Crying in H Mart – A Memoir – Michelle Zavner
  • Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood – Marjane Satrapi
  • Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return – Marjane Satrapi
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson
  • Desert Oracle – Volume 1 – Ken Lake
  • Compost – Transform waste into new life – Charles Dowding
  • Never to Small – Creative, compact, and joyful ways to design and live – Never to Small Magazine
  • It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. – The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden
  • Dignity – Desert Oracle Books Joshua Tree, Calif. – Ken Lake
  • Everything is F*cked – A Book about Hope – Mark Manson
  • The Bean Book – 100 Recipes for Cooking with all Kinds of Beans – Steve Sando with Julia Newberry
  • Feck Perfuction – Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life – James Victore (re-read)
  • The Crossroads of Should and Must – Find and Follow Your Passion – Elle Luna (re-read)
  • Do Breath – Calm your mind. Find focus. Get stuff done. – Michael Townsend Williams
  • Finding the Mother Tree – Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest – Suzanne Simard
  • Diet for a Small Planet (50th Anniversary Edition) – Frances Moore Lappe
  • Do Smoke – A modern guide to cooking and curing. Jen Goss and Scott Davis (NOTE – I finished the last 26 pages on the morning of January 1st and was too tired to stay up on New Year’s Eve. )

Total Books Read

I finished the year strong and managed to read 24 books.

More Learning from YouTube

Again this year I continued watching more YouTube to learn about cooking, shooting videos, storytelling, starting a YouTube channel, starting a small farm, etc., and taking a few courses I purchased about editing with DaVinci Resolve.

My Reading Plans for 2025

Here’s to reading about a book every week to two weeks in 2025.

In 2025, I plan to continue to spend more time learning how to shoot, edit, and add special effects/graphics to videos to start my YouTube channel. It didn’t turn out that way last year, but I need to put more effort into it in 2025.

Please comment if you have read any of these books, what you thought of them, and if you have any suggestions.

My Curry Coconut Goat Stew

Last weekend I realized I had some goat in my freezer from over a year ago.

So figured I should get it out and thaw. While seeing if there was any freezer burn, which there was some. So once it was thawed, I cut any of it away and made it into small pieces.

When you have a frozen goat or lamb leg, cut it into smaller pieces for stew. Make sure you have them cut it into one-inch square pieces. Otherwise, they will make them like two inches or bigger. Which makes the stewing/cooking process more manageable, along with eating afterward.
White bowl with spoon in it along with small pieces of goat, heirloom large white Lima beans from Rancho Gordo, garlic, onions, carrots, celery, half a chopped up squash, curry, Spanish Smoked Paprika, Cayenne, Ancho chili powder, farro, salt, pepper

Asked Rancho Gordo for Bean Recommendation

The day before, I asked Rancho Gordo on Twitter ( @RanchoGordo ) which of their beans I should use. I have many Rancho Gordo beans with being part of the Bean club. I wanted to know which he thought would work best with a coconut milk goat curry. Steve’s (owner) response was to go with one of their white beans. Because of all the other strong curry and goat flavors.

After going through my stockpile of Rancho Gordo beans. I found I had two one-pound bags of their “Large White Lima Bean.” So that’s the one I chose.

I soaked a pound of those in a pot with water with a good pinch of salt and a tablespoon of curry powder for two or three hours. At this point, I have forgotten how long I soaked them. I think that helped make the dish by letting the salt and the curry powder work its way into the beans.

While eating the Lima beans, I noticed that the yellow color of the curry had penetrated the flesh of the beans.

Toward the end of the bean soaking while preparing the vegetables, etc. I put the beans on the stove to start cooking by getting the water to a rolling boil for about ten minutes. Once there, I turned them down to a low simmer.

Vegetable Preparation

Then I diced up three small onions because it was all I had.

Next, I chopped up a head of garlic. It wasn’t the extra flavorful farmers’ market garlic. But store-bought garlic, so I used the whole head to add the right amount of flavor. You can add more or else, depending on how you like it.

Once the onion and garlic were chopped. I added them to my cast iron pan to soften up a bit with some Spanish olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I added them to the pot of Large White Lima beans that I had simmering on the back of the stove.

After the garlic and onions were added to the simmering beans. I chopped up three small carrots and two stalks of celery. They were cut up into nice uniform pieces, so they cooked at the same rate. I then added them to the pot next.

I then moved on to taking the skin of a small squash. I used only half of it because the one I chose had more skin than squash flesh. I found it was becoming more work than I thought to get a little squash to add to the stew.

Adding Meat and Spices

Once the pot of beans, veggies were at a nice simmer. I added the goat meat pieces into my cast iron pan with more Spanish Olive oil. I did this to give it a good sear and caramelize the outside. Once done added that to the pot next.

NOTE – If you don’t eat meat, you can substitute tofu. If you wanted a milder meat, you could add chicken, beef, pork, and even fish. Or you could skip the meat altogether, and it still would be an excellent meal.

The next thing I needed to do was add the following spices.

  • Curry powder (2 Tbsp)
  • Cayenne chili powder (1 Tbsp)
  • Smoked Spanish Paprika (1 Tbsp)
  • Ancho chili powered (1 Tbsp)

Then some salt and fresh ground pepper. I also added a tablespoon or two of dried basil, oregano, and thyme.

Time to Let Simmer

Finally, I sat back and let it simmer for a few hours. Doing so, let the beans cook and soften along with the meat to more tender.

Of course, about every 20 or 30 minutes, I would get up and check it to make sure it wasn’t bubbling away too much. Added more water when needed, so everything was covered. I tend to leave the lid to my pot off open a bit to let the water evaporate.

Towards the end, I checked the spice and flavor levels to make sure they were where I wanted them. Knowing that as the sauce reduce down, it would get spicier.

Yes, you could use a veggie, chicken, etc., stock instead of water to add more flavor if you wanted. But I didn’t have any at the time.

Adding in Coconut Milk and Farro

Towards the end, I added a 13.5 oz can of coconut milk to let it blend in with everything. Once that was done, I then added 8 oz. of farro to help soak up some of the liquid to become a thicker, more stew-like consistency.

Once it was all done, I ladled some into a small bowl and had the perfect dinner. The only thing missing was a nice slice or two of toasted sourdough to crunch and dip into it.

Ingredients

Below is a general outline of the amounts of all the ingredients I used. Some might have been a bit more, and others a bit less. I tend not to measure and go by taste.

Vegetables

  • 1 head of garlic – finely chopped
  • 3 small onions – chopped
  • 3 small carrots – chopped in small pieces
  • 2 stalks of celery – chopped finely small pieces
  • Half a small squash – chopped, small pieces
  • 1 lb. – Rancho Gordo Large white Lima beans

Meat or other Protein

  • Goat cut into bite-size pieces

Spices, Etc.

  • 3 Tbsp – Curry powder
  • 1 Tbsp – Cayenne chili powder
  • 1 Tbsp – Smoked Spanish Paprika
  • 1 Tbsp – Ancho chili powered
  • 1 Tbps -Salt (more to taste)
  • 1 Tbsp -Pepper – fresh ground
  • 1 – 2 Tbsp – Dried Basil
  • 1 – 2 Tbsp – Dried Oregano
  • 1 – 2 Tbsp – Dried Thyme

Miscellaneous

  • 1 13.5 oz can – Coconut milk
  • 8 oz – Farro

Conclusion

Hope all this was helpful.

If you make it please tell me what you think in the comments. Or even leave me suggestions for other dishes to make or you have made.

Here’s to more home cooking.

Extra Learning

With having or, more importantly, making time during the pandemic, I decided to use my time to take some classes and learn more. It helped getting rid of my cable TV in the fall of 2019.

Many Different Classes

I attended a few Creative Mornings Field Trips. They were about drawing and art, along with two different ones on making tortillas (corn and wheat). Another one had to do with creative writing.

Other classes were Marcy’s Sutton’s “Front-End Accessibility Masterclass.” It was a great class on how to make accessible HTML and CSS along with improving it with JavaScript when building websites and applications.

Food Related Classes and Books

Another event about the food I enjoyed in 2020 was the 2020 Fall Southern Foodways Symposium: Future of the South. That ran on Saturdays in October (3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th) from 9:00 SM to noon central.

I have been learning about growing my own food, small scale farming, etc. I even purchased a fermenting class from a YouTube homesteaders channel I watch. It was a great class, and I’m looking forward to making more of my own ferments. I did a few ferments before I took the classes, but they didn’t turn out as well as I expected.

I’m looking forward to all the fresh veggies from the farmer’s market in the spring and during the summer too.

I read two books on fermenting too.

  • The Fermented Man – A year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution by Derek Dellinger
  • The Noma Guide to Fermentation: Including Koji, Kombuchas, Shoyus, Misos, Vinegars, Garums, Lacto-ferments, and Black Fruits and Vegetables by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber
  • Do Preserve – Make Your own Jams, Chutneys, Pickles, and Cordials by Anja Dunk, Jen Goss, and Mimi Beaven

I even spent time learning about food, more specifically beans.

  • The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Guide by Steve Sando and Julia Newberry
  • Cool Beans – The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World’s Most Versatile Plant-based Protein with 125 Recipes by Joe Yonan

Reading Creative and Comic Related Books

I have been reading many creative books, with many of them being graphic novels on making comics. Here are a few of those books.

  • Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine? – The Art f Making Zines and Mini-comics by Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson
  • Elements of Fire – A Comic Anthology of Color! edited by Taneka Stotts
  • Cartooning – Philosophy, and Practice by Ivan Brunetti
  • Glenn Ganges in The River at Night by Kevin Huizenga
  • Drawing Book of Faces by Ed Emberley

One Odd Book

I even read a book on bee-keeping, which will help me when I get my own plot of land to grow food.

  • Do Bee-keeping – The Secret to Happy Honeybees by Orren Fox

Here’s to More Diverse Learning

So as you can see, since the beginning of 2020 and into 2021, I have been all over the place attempting to learn new things.