My friend Chip Brantley, who knows a lot about food – and other stuff – just published his first book, The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot. First off, pluots are delicious. They have been our fruit of the summer, and Nina is really into them. And I know for a fact that Chip put a ton of work into researching this book. Years of research into the life and times of one little fruit. Pluots are hybrids of apricots and plums. But it’s amazing the intrigue that went into making these things happen. Chip’s book is not simply a study of the science of fruit breeding; it’s a story of the interests and competing parties involved in creating a product like the pluot (think John McPhee’s Oranges). Go here to read a lot more about this fascinating book.

And Chip has also started an invaluable website about food and cooking it – Cookthink. Sign up for their ‘root source’ updates. I get these emails that continually remind me that I understand very little about what I eat. And their recipe generator is incredibly intuitive; it’s really different than Epicurious or whatever else I’ve seen online.