Fellow bloggers and foodies: I am excited to inform you that I am the co-author of a new book that will arrive in major bookstores any day now. The book is called What the Great Ate, and it provides a variety of fascinating and funny tales of what and how the "greats" of history ate. For example, my brother Mark and I share anecdotes like these:*Paul Newman interrupted a dinner date with Joanne Woodward during the 1950s, took his salad into the men's room, washed it clean of dressing and returned to the table determined to dress it himself with the right vinaigrette.
*Angelina Jolie ate Cambodian cockroaches and referred to them as a "high-protein snack food."
*Ronald Reagan reportedly went 70 years without eating a tomato.
*Basketball star Charles Barkley had such a prodigious appetite that he was nicknamed "The Leaning Tower of Pizza."
*At a New Jersey cafeteria, Jackie Gleason sometimes requested the pot roast -- with a scoop of ice cream.
*Catherine de Medici, the Italian-born wife of France's King Henri II, almost died of a gluttonous binge, and one of her favorite dishes (called "cibreo") was made from the gizzards, liver and testicles of a young
rooster.
*William Faulkner turned down a White House dinner invitation and had a simple explanation for doing so: "That's a long way to go just to eat."
To buy or learn more about What the Great Ate, visit our website.
