Beach reads for foodies

Foodies, people pleasantly preoccupied with all things food-related, stick to their obsessions, even on vacation.

The perfect foodie beach rental has a well-equipped kitchen, access to markets selling fresh fruit, produce, and fish, and proximity to restaurants where accomplished city chefs have established outposts.

Likewise, the perfect foodie beach bag contains prime kitchen lit: books on food history, essays on sustainability, food-centric fiction (call it foodtion), and sentimental food memoirs, or foodoirs.

Foodoirs are celebrity confessionals or tell-alls. In more sentimental varieties of the foodoir, the author embarks on an emotional journey, returning to his or her ancestor's roots (and perhaps, by extension, root vegetables). Many have recipes, too.

Foodtion, on the other hand, might include mysteries, but romance novels are more numerous. Usually, a protagonist learns the hard way that the surest path to happiness is through his/her lover's taste buds. Feminist versions end with the protagonist remaining single but enriched.

Alternatively, the protagonist may journey to France or Italy (Spain/Morocco/Indonesia/Argentina, where will it end?) in search of new and enticing ingredients (double entendre intended.)

I can vouch for the fact that such fairy tales can come true: In the fall of 2007, I rented a house in Umbria with some foodie friends. We had a series of cooking lessons. My friend, Dana, fell in love with the instructor, a former Sardinian sheepherder - and she's still in Umbria with him. Really.

Here are our recommended foodie beach reads for 2009.

Nonfiction, essays:

1. An Edible History of Humanity, by Tom Standage (Walker & Co.). The author of the best-selling A History of the World in 6 Glasses turns to food, examining how changes that were either caused, enabled, or influenced by food helped transform societies around the world.

2. Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter (Penguin Press). The author was raised in the country but yearns for city life. Wondering if she can raise her own chickens anywhere near museums, bars, and convenience stores, Carpenter struggles to strike a sustainable balance in her life.

3. The Food of a Younger Land, by Mark Kurlansky (Riverhead Books). The best-selling author of Cod and (separately) Salt takes a page from the lost files of the Works Progress Administration to see what folks ate during the Great Depression.