>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> And I'm pleased to be here today to get to introduce the wonderful colleague, Bonnie Benwick, who's the deputy editor of the food section at the Washington Post. She's been at the Post for 25 years, and 9 of those have been in the food section. She started out in style, has worked in Outlook in the main news desk before getting to the section that she's always wanted to work for. And for the food section she writes a weekly dinner and minutes column, in addition to supervising all recipes, editing features, and managing photo shoots. And as if that weren't enough, this year she added one more project to her plate, editing this beautiful Washington Post cookbook full of readers' favorite recipes. It's the Washington Post's first cookbook, and I have to say, after reading through it, it will definitely wet your appetite. [Laughter] I was speaking with Bonnie recently about how I love to cook, but have trouble following recipes. It's just too much structure while cooking. But this morning I figured I should try to cook something from the cookbook, and after years of trial and error with soft-boiled eggs, I made a perfect soft-boiled egg. Thanks [applause] to a recipe in the Washington Post Cookbook, specifically for perfect soft-boiled eggs. So to tell us about recipes, easy and more complicated than that, I'm pleased to welcome Bonnie to the stage. [ Applause and Background Talking ] >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Good morning; almost good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming. I was wondering who was going to show up. I'm happy to see faces. I have a tendency to talk pretty fast with my hands, so I wrote things down. So hopefully that will slow me down. And first of all, I really do have to say it's an honor for me to be included among this year's National Book Festival authors. And so right off the bat, I'd like to thank Constance Carter of The Library of Congress, and Guy Lamonanera [phonetic] for getting me up here. Connie is here, and she's a force of nature. There she is. [Applause] Thanks, Connie. Not surprisingly, I remain an unabashed fan of the Post food section, having first picked it up when I moved to DC in 1979. As much as the Graham [phonetic] families and soon -- I don't know if you heard, Jeff Bezos, that whole thing about buying The Post, their Daily Miracle has covered milestones in history. I think the editors charged with chronicling developments in food safety, food trends, and what it takes to put nightly dinners on the table, have contributed in equally significant ways. The "For and About Women," that was the name of the section, the pages in The Post, was a precursor for the separate and so-named food section. It ran cooking tips and it ran sort of blurby recipes in brief. But it wasn't until The Post hired local radio shows host and home economics expert, Eleanor Lee as its first food editor, that the newspaper could really claim its own dedicated coverage. Allow me to thrill you with some of the highlights gleamed during my research for The Post Cookbook. On Sunday, August 17th, 1952 -- and I won't like go through every decade so don't worry, the top story in that "For and About Women" section was about a Paris chef who admitted that yes, women could cook as well as men. [Laughter] He touted his own wife's cooking and he went onto say that quote, "Cooking is no longer the proud profession it used to be." This was in 1952. Like if he had just been able to see that celebrity chef train coming around the bend, be different. The article was prefaced with a little label that said, "All they -" meaning women, "lack is muscle." [Laughter] I think he was referring to slugging and shoving stuff around in restaurant kitchens. I'm hoping. The end of the article included these instructions for chicken and champagne, which was a favorite of his. And I'm reading you word for word what the recipe was, which was kind of in paragraph form. "Take a roasting chicken to serve 4, about 3 pounds, after cleaning and emptying it -" when is the last time we all did that, "roast with a water glass of dry champagne and a piece of butter for about 45 minutes." You all know what a piece is. [Laughter] "When it's done, reduce the resulting bullion and mix in 4 egg yellows -- " I'm sure Connie's seen that, "and a pint of cream. Heat the sauce on fire, but do not boil it. Then pour it over the roast chicken, and -- " you know, this is just a nice meal I used to eat at home. He decorated it with several slices of truffle. [Laughter] That same section carried recipes for crisp waffles with strawberry butter sauce, and kabobs made from, drum roll, canned luncheon meat; [laughter] lots of green pepper. And, yay, you're on my side. I like that. Two years later Eleanor Lee shared news about the marvelous invention of tucked turkeys, which came out just in time for Thanksgiving. This was really progress. No more trussing and stuffing. Producers slit a flap of skin that pulled up over the legs, creating what she called "a Butterball effect." Where did that come from? And those were her words. On the same page, she offered her own recipe for pretzel stuffing, and I believe in the past couple years that pretzel thing has kind of come back around again. During the next 10 to 15 years, The Post would introduce voices that became really significant in the world of food. There was Julia Child's syndicated column, because she had produced mastering the art of French cooking in 1961. Noted ruminator Mark Ben [phonetic] of the New York Times got a start in the Washington Post pages. Barbara Q. Gurro [phonetic], Steven Rachlin [assumed spelling]. They engaged readers with technique and opened a dialogue with readers in question and answer form that has morphed into today's online discussion that we call "free range." Any free rangers here? It's Wednesdays -- thank you, it's Wednesdays from noon to 1 no matter where you live. Just come onto the washingtonpost.com/food website, and we'll have a conversation about whatever you like, stories in the section that week, how to prepare for an upcoming party, how to take care of all the glutton-free guests that find their way to your home. Trend wise readers learned of cooking for kids' classes way back in 1976, so we're still beating that thing, and of possibly carcinogenic levels in bacon that the FDA had deemed acceptable of the nitrosamines and nitrites. And in 1988, the food section reported that American microwave popcorn was all the rage in Japan. And Phyllis Richmond wrote about an American renaissance in Italian cuisine, based on her time spent at a conference on gastronomy. Bottled water that year had become the fastest growing beverage over the past decade, and its industry was seeking -- they were seeking to get standards of purity from the FDA, so like -- seems like a long time ago. You know, now that I've mentioned Phyllis, I have to say that even though she retired from The Post in 2000, she remains a behind-the-scenes force in the Washington food scene, and I was thrilled that she accepted my invitation to write a forward for the Washington Post Cookbook; seemed only fitting. She really put the section on the map in lots of ways. She continues to dine with critics, and has kept up friendships with some of the biggest names in restaurants in town and across the country. You know, The Post named its first food critic in 1969, its first restaurant critic. And that was long-term journalist, Donald Dresden. So Phyllis followed him up in 1977. She not only elevated The Post criticism, but her reportage about food appeared in several sections of The Post, the A section, the financial section, metro section. She has -- she's the reason why The Post food section is one of the few newspaper food sections in the country that include nutritional analysis at the end of all the recipes that we can do. [Applause] I know. Thank you for that. It has to do with kind of a funny story; and she's much better at telling it than I am. But it involved a recipe that was printed in The Post, and which several readers followed and immediately had explosions in their ovens. [Laughter] So we thought we'd better start testing them and we still do to this day. By the way, I'm happy to answer questions about our techniques and how we test recipes, and who tests recipes and stuff like that in the Q&A session. I'd also like to read her prose, because it's much better than my prose, which is the forward to the book. "Any good late-breaking recipes lately? That was a running joke between my boss, publisher Don Graham, and me in the early 1980s when I added food editor to my job as restaurant critic at the Washington Post. But it turned out to be not a joke. Food has increasingly been recognized as serious news, and recipes can impact our lives as definitively as any political event. I joined The Post when carbon paper and red meat ruled. Editing required actual cutting and pasting." I've actually been around that long. "Stories were banged out on typewriters, recipes were found laboriously in books and periodicals, and vegetables came on the side. Since then health concerns have restructured our meals. Vegetables and grains have been edging meat from center stage to the chorus. Recipes are expected to meet modern demands of convenience, sustainability, cost effectiveness, nutritional needs, safety, and of course visual appeal. It's no small order. Lifestyles changed our food, and vice versa. During my years at The Post, olive oil replaced butter, and even margarine in our hearts and in our recipes. Farmers started bringing their own crops to neighborhood markets. Thus we discovered new squashes and spring greens. Fresh herbs added pesto to our repertoire. And the size of our plates shrank to suit tapas and tasting menus. At last, Americans were serving more sensible portions." Though a tasting dinner that Phyllis would have to sit through could include 10 to 20 offerings. "Yet while health sciences have pointed us in better directions, mass production has brought new contaminants that have forced us to adjust to our cooking techniques." And I saw evidence of this again in story after story that appeared in the pages of the food section over the years. "Beef and poultry now require greater vigilance in their handling, not to mention longer cooking. Eggs carry dangers that had threatened to wipe homemade mayonnaise and Caesar's salad out of the kitchen, until recipes were revised to use cooked or pasteurized eggs. Washington has not been known for its local specialties. It's long been considered a city of transients, immigrants, diplomats, and sightseers. Actually, one might say this metropolitan area is renowned more for its eaters than its cooks. That's not to demean its food. Washington eaters are adventurous, and thus have supported infinitely varied food experiences. Our first sushi bar opened in the 1950s, and the Vietnamese restaurants blossoming in the 1970s preceding almost every other city's. Ethiopian cooking too headed straight to Washington for its first restaurants outside of Africa. Only in Washington would a food section article on crab cookery be followed by a phone call from a prominent senator asking where to buy fresh Dungeness crab, West Coast crab. What other subject would prompt a message at home, 'Call Ethel, with an unfamiliar phone number that leads to a conversation with Ethel Kennedy about the best venue for a rehearsal dinner?" We don't get those calls so much anymore. People just email. "Once Katherine Grant's French chef telephoned from the Caribbean to retrieve a fish recipe that he had clipped from our pages. In the olden days of the mid-20th Century when Washington was dismissed as a culinary hardship post, the buried treasure was waiting. Every country had something to contribute to the coming out party that was germinating. Herein is the story told in recipes of The Washington Post's discovery of America's cooking past, present and future." She's pretty good. We'll keep her. So back to my modern era highlights; I saw in the '70s that we wrote about US food companies who were just beginning to woo Hispanic Americans with mass-produced products. They put guava and mango flavors in baby food. That's when Campbell's canned soups and products introduced black beans into their pantheon of beans. And English muffin makers, the company that made Thomas's English Muffins, started baking Cuban breads. All the while stories of local cooks and chefs and regional specialties energized the food section. Readers could relate to them, and they responded with letters and online comments. In a single food section that I pulled from 1996, I found a feature on stuffed ham in Saint Mary's County, and there's kale involved in that. I don't know of how many of you know. Another one on Hayman sweet potatoes, which is an heirloom variety that's grown on Virginia's eastern shore -- and it's almost time for that harvest this year, the popularity of something called "culinary newsletters," which I haven't seen lately. And one topic that we're still asking today, our consuming passion for cookbooks, will we ever get enough of them? Now, I need a little crowd sourcing on that answer. >> Crowd: No. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: No. No. Thank you. That makes me send out a plea that which will be recorded here for posterity at the National Book Festival that wouldn't we like to see more cookbooks here at the National Book Festival? >> Crowd: Yes. [Applause] >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Yes. Everybody reads cookbooks, right? It's not just about the recipes. And in 2006 our colleagues who used to be across the river at washingtonpost.com gave birth to the Post's own recipe finder, which is an online collection of new and archived recipes. This made -- it broadened our reach to people who had lived in Washington and moved far away, didn't get the paper but still wanted to get the recipes. And it's made it so much easier for our readers to access archived material. And I can break some news with you -- first time I've actually said it out loud in front of a microphone, on that front today, this fall we're hoping before the holiday season a newly revamped recipe finder will launch. [Applause] I like all these claps. Hmm. Photos will be larger, there will be helpful information about ingredients techniques that's featured more prominently; like you can find it instead of reading through the head note. And then most importantly the reader comment function that we lost a couple of years ago in an alleged upgrade will be restored, and that will allow that kind of dynamic conversation to continue about, "Didn't that have a little too much salt for you?" Or, "I tried this with ground pork instead of ground beef, and it's much better." You know, we all like reading that kind of stuff. So we continue at The Post in the food section to run listings, really long listings for all the farmers' markets in the area, plus we give a map, we tell you how to get there, we tell you what the hours are, who some of the producers are, and we run a list of cooking classes that are given in the Washington area. Again, a great reader service. I checked in 2008 we listed 82 classes, and just yesterday it went online for 2013-14, and there were more than 200 listings. From 2009 to 2013, the food section blog does a single entity under the heading, "All We Can Eat." We were freed from the schedule of a weekly print edition, and we were able to comment and cover on breaking food stories, which is no longer a Don Graham punch line, and offer quirky bits that engaged the readers further. Now I'm going to tell you about the cookbook. The thing that surprises most readers who have come up to me in book signings and things so far seems to be, "Why didn't we have one before this?" I haven't been able to get a definitive answer thus far, but among the possible explanations the food section staffs used to produce 2 sections a week, and publish as many as 19 recipes per edition. And I can tell you that these days for between the 2 Thanksgiving issues that we do, we might publish a total of 20 or 22 recipes. So that was a lot to go through every week. Food editors poured their energy into expanding the breath of the section by adding wine column, beer column. We even have a barbecue column now. And after Phyllis they've tended to stay in place only an average of about 5 years, which makes them focus on the section and not really concentrate on a long-term book project after that. And really The Post history doesn't reach as far back -- food history doesn't reach as far back as say The New York Times. So the opportunity arose, thanks to a small publishing company, started by 2 former West Coast journalists. It's called "Time Capsule Press," and their books are based on repurposed newspaper content. Size and scope perimeters that they gave us were limited so it made us settle on this rubric that would satisfy our readers the most, Throughout the years, food section users would call or write Ernest letters and emails, "Could we dig out from deep archives this recipe that's just literally crumbled under their fingers and yellowed newsprint?" So we asked them by online, and in print, and in our chats to send us the recipes from The Post that they would like to see in the book. It got hundreds, and I mean hundreds, over 500 responses. People would send me little recipe cards they had transferred the recipes onto. They took PDF's of things that they had in their recipe boxes. They sent me links to things that other people had posted that they knew were Washington Post recipes. And then it just took me a while to sort of sift through and fill in the gaps so that each chapter heading in the cookbook had enough chicken, had enough meatless dishes, had enough holiday dishes. There are never enough cookie recipes, right? So after going through all that, that's what's sort of boiled down into this book. We had to test all the old recipes, and we retested the more modern ones. We took photographs of the food, and most of the photographs in the book were done probably on a seamless whiteboard that's about this big in a very under air-conditioned studio in the boughs of the Washington Post. In time we're hoping this first Post cookbook will become a Washington souvenir of sorts, as ubiquitous as those little Washington Monument paperweights and salt and pepper shakers. I'd be telling tales out of school if I mention that we have plans for e-cookbooks, most notably a cooking cookbook, which would be great. Today's food section staff might be smaller than it has been in the past 25 years or so, but our commitment remains at really the highest level. We love hearing from our readers daily. It keeps us humble. I can tell you that's because not all of the comments that we receive are positive. And it reminds us of our daily mission. So now I'd be happy to answer any questions I can about how the cookbook came together, or about contributions of former editors and reporters, what's in the section these days, and thank you very much. [ Applause ] Don't be shy. I'll speak faster, but I'm much better extemporaneously. Anybody? All right; she's on her way. [ Silence ] >> Can you talk about how you did test all the recipes, and is it multiple people that do it, and where do you do it? >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Very good question. She wanted to know where we're testing, how many people test. We've got a volunteer crew of testers, and I -- before several rounds of buyouts at the Washington Post over the past 5 or 6 years, I had a much larger population in the newsroom of people who volunteered to test recipes. We reimburse for ingredients, but there -- all the testing is done in a home kitchen. And I think that makes sense really. I can't be there to sort of look at everything they do, but I have this kind of annoying habit of peppering the recipe that I sent to each tester with a lot of all caps questions, the really obnoxious all caps questions like, "Did it really take 15 minutes [inaudible], and was the timing accurate?" And, you know, what we're interested in is the efficacy of the recipe. I'm always interested in what the tester -- whether the tester found that it was a good recipe or not. And based on those things it's whether or not we run it. The test -- all the recipes are tested at least once, and some are tested multiple times, like the dinner in minutes recipes that I do they sort of rewrite them in a real time format. I don't know if anybody even notices, but from start to finish I say, you know, "Here's your basic list of ingredients. Here's an apple, here's a lime, here's some Cotija cheese." And then through the body of the directions I tell you to do this first, and that second, and that third, "Cut this up while that's cooking," so that you really can make the thing in 30 minutes. I think food television there's a lot of -- you know, you think there's like swap-outs and people -- it doesn't really take 30 minutes. When I say it takes 30 minutes, it took me 30 minutes. And it might have -- I might have tested it 2 or 3 times to get it to cook in 30 minutes because we figured that's about how long you want to spend cooking when you get home at the end of the day. So we test in people's houses. I test a lot of the recipes. And for this book I had a couple of dedicated testers. One of them did like 30 recipes all on her own. So and she would bring the food in. We all -- we actually shoot photos of the food that we make. I was at a food editor's conference in Utah, just flew in last night and boy are my arms tired. And we had a food stylist who had spent 30 years doing mostly magazine work. And you could almost see the shoulders of the food editors shudder in the crowd when she said, "I've got a food styling tip for you. You know, a little spray of WD-40 on the top of a pizza will keep that cheese looking nice and melty." And we're all like, "We don't do that. We don't do that." We're now in a food era where we're taking pictures of not mashed potatoes looking like ice cream, but of the ice cream. So that's why you may see in our little tiny studio we take pictures of ice cream that looks a little bit drippy. But we're working on that. Does that answer? Thanks very much. >> Hi. One of my favorite things that you do every year is the Christmas cookies for several weeks. And that has got to be just -- I don't -- how do you even come up with all these different cookie recipes and can you talk a little bit about how you narrow all that down, because it's got to be fun. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: The annual cookie issue I'm going to tell you right now, it's December 4th this year. Does that work? [Applause] Every year people say, "Can you please do it earlier? I'm in a cookie exchange and I need to mail it overseas, and can you just shove it back into November?" The answer is no, we can't, but December 4th is the earliest that we've ever done the cookie issue, so that's what happens. And it is really for us the most wonderful time of the year. We've already tested and shot about 15 of the 25 recipes that we're featuring. And it's so much fun to work on. I mean, literally we've done themed issues where we got cookie recipes from all local home cooks and chefs. We've done recipes that were themed along the lines of ethnicity, and so we had different international cookies. I've got a really good Hungarian cookie recipe. I was at a breakfast a couple weeks ago, and I ate this cookie and I ran over to the woman, "Blah, blah, blah," you know. And most of the time people are willing, you know, happy to give it up. We also tried to do kind of a cookie project year, a DIY -- I would say 3-dimensional, but all cookies are 3-dimensional, right; but something that involves cookies and helps you make the thing. Like last year we made a little group of angels out of meringue, thanks to Josh Short, pastry chef at the Hay Adams. And in previous years we've done wreaths, and we've, you know, all kinds of stuff. So it's coming up with things like that that really if you think about it is kind of a good job to have. So December 4th, good cookies, at least 25 recipes in the issue every year. And we've done it for the -- we've done it since I think 2006. Yes. >> If you want to submit a recipe, your next greatest one, you really want to publish, you need my recipe, how do I get it to you? >> Bonnie S. Benwick: It's so simple. You email me at bonnie.benwick@washpost.com, or you call me -- >> So it's not going to fall into some kind of, you know, cyberspace, you never see it? >> Bonnie S. Benwick: You know, here's the thing, here's the thing, I'm letting you in on another big secret. There are 3-1/2 of us who work at the -- on the Post food section. Becky Crystal, who compiles those listings and does an awesome job, works -- spends her time between food -- really she spends more time on food since she runs the nutritional analysis of those recipes. And the rest of the time she's working for travel, but she answers the phone, she's helpful, she's courteous, she'll always listen to you, and give you good advice. She'll pass you directly over to me unless my hair's standing up because I'm on deadline. And you can email me. I mean, we actually answer all our emails, you know, friendly and not so friendly. There's -- lately I've been sort of semi-accosted by a reader. I would suspect he's on the older side, but I can't make assumptions really. Every time we use an acronym like CSA -- does anyone know what CSA means; 1, 2. Oh, well that's -- so what is he talking about? So he -- I use CSA -- and not I, but we edited CSA into a story, and several graphs later we mentioned and we spelled out community supported agriculture, which is what it is, but we didn't capitalize the C and the S and the A. So he didn't really get that. And he has taken me to task every time I've used similar acronyms like "BTS" in a back-to-school context. So now I'm just spelling everything out. I mean, we'll listen and we'll try to fix whatever it is you don't like, and if you've got a really good recipe that needs to be in there, at the end of my Dinner in Minutes column, it says, "If you have a quick, good recipe, send it into me." And we're, you know, honest about that. >> All right. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: We want to hear from you. >> You're on. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Thanks. >> Thank you very much. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Thanks. >> Over here. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Oh, hi. >> Hi. Thank you for your work. Big fan. I just had a question regarding different trends in DC right now, because we've gone from cupcakes to fro-yo, to seemingly doughnuts. And so I was wondering what you could see as being the next big DC trend in food. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Well, I -- it's a feat, some small feat that I'm standing here before you having survived the 14 weeks of eating doughnuts every Thursday for our recent doughnut war -- doughnut showdown. It was I have to say harder than the cupcake wars of 2008 when we ate 12 weeks of cupcakes. And it sounds like, "Oh, yes, that's a tough job." But I'm telling you, it was a little grim, coming in and facing some doughnuts from some not so great places. I think doughnuts is here to stay for a while. I think the chicken and waffle thing is actually good. We have a story -- I'm also advancing this section, coming up on October 2nd about the amount of cauliflower everywhere, because it's really -- it seems to have replaced Brussels sprouts and kale as the new it vegetable. It's in restaurants and it's a vegetable that people like cooking at home, so we're going to tell you about that plus give recipes. So that's a pretty good one. I think small plates are kind of here to stay. And I think you may be seeing more variety in ethnic restaurants. There hasn't been a lot of Filipino food, but I think that's going to sort of come on. There are rumblings out there. And as much as we're living in a more vegetable-focused and vegetarian interest society these days, there seems to be a lot of places opening that are doing really good smoked and grilled meats over a spit roast, a cap noose [phonetic], things like that. >> Thank you. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Thanks. >> I have more of a comment -- >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Okay. >> -- than a question, but I just wanted to say that I love the Washington Post, but the main reason I subscribe to the hardcopy is for the food section. >> And [applause] I've been kind of sad to see how slim it's gotten, but I'm glad that it still exists, because I've seen the other sections some of them disappear totally so. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Yes; looking at the -- how long have you been reading the print edition? >> I must have recipes going back a few decades, so. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Yes; it used to be -- I mean, it could be 22 pages. All that circular advertising from the giant and local food stores used to be in the section. There weren't a lot of pictures of food, but there were a lot of ads and a lot of recipes sort of wrapped around it. So I hear you. I would do a much bigger section if I could, but it's based on the amount of advertising we get, and like I said, we do get to expand for our holiday editions, you know, Thanksgiving, and around Christmastime, and of course the cookies as much space as it takes. That's how big we make it so. >> And the tomato recipe. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Tomatoes; yes, yes. Thank you. >> I just wanted -- I want to say ditto what she exactly said, that's the reason I've kept my Washington Post subscription for the last 25 years is for the food section. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Thank you. >> But my question is, is Joe coming back to work for the Washington Post in the -- >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Oh, he's back. >> He's back now; okay. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: He's back. >> Okay. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: He was on book leave last year in 2012, so I got to run the section, which was really, really fun, and do the cookbook at the same time on my own time. Joe took a year to write a book. He lived with his sister and brother-in-law in Maine. He wrote a vegetable-focused cookbook. And as a matter of fact even as we speak he's on tour right now promoting that book. But he came back in January of 2013. >> Oh, I didn't know that. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: So he's back at the helm, and I'm happy to have him back. He's really fun. He brought to me such a sense of fun to the food section. And he was really I think in modern times the first outside the newsroom hire someone who he actually has a degree in culinary training, as well as just a really good writer. He would review restaurants and gadgets when he was at the Boston Globe. So I think he brought a lot of professionalism to the section. Not that it wasn't like that before, but just sort of mirrored a shift in people's sophisticated conversations they were having about food. And he's a lot of fun, as you know, so. >> Thank you. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: He's back. >> The focus on fresh local foods has been a revelation in cooking and going out to restaurants, but yet remains this tremendous fast food industry out there which contributes to obesity. I'm just wondering if there's some kind of role that The Post food section can play in trying to promote alternatives to this. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: No; that's an interesting question. We see ourselves not as -- although you could certainly make the case that we've been advocates for the fresh and local food movements, writing, you know, endless stories about them, and their producers, and the people who bring it to the farmers' markets and the way that we cover that. I think sometimes it's difficult for us to think that we're also in a position where we can be advocates, you know, to speak out against certain kinds of foods. I mean, it's a little bit like we can promote what's good, but, you know, everybody knows people who eat fast food do it because it's fast, because it's cheap, because they don't cook. So we can put as much stuff and energy into giving you recipes that are easy enough and fast enough that you'd want to cook them, and reporting in the health and science section as we do from time to time, about the dangers of obesity, of too much sugar and sodium in our diets. When we test recipes, for example, we use kosher salt because it's -- by volume it's got a little less sodium and makes a difference in a recipe that uses a lot of salt. We call for unsalted butter, we use no salt added canned produces like stocks and beans. So I think we're getting at it a little bit that way. >> Hi, Bonnie. I'm a long-time collector of Post recipes. I love them. And my husband recently gave me the book. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Yay. >> But how does one become a tester? >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Here's how you do it. It's not that hard. Again, no big staff or anything like that. I've got sort of a setup -- and I meant to say earlier that a fair number of my testers are actually outside The Post, don't work at The Post, they're just willing to make the food to be part of the whole thing. And I think starting maybe in 2005 Judy Haverman [assumed spelling], who was editor of the food section at the time said, "Why don't we in terms of accountability put the tester's name at the bottom of the recipes so underneath that 4-point type of the nutritional analysis, you'll see who it is?" And more and more of these days it's people who, like I said, are outside the building. So normally what a person does is email me through food@washpost.com, or through my email, bonnie.benwick@washpost.com, and I'll ask you some -- there's a little back and forth thing, maybe a phone call, except I tend not to answer the phone a lot at work. I don't know if I'm not at my desk enough or what it is. So try me first by email. I'll ask you some questions like, "Are you willing to bring samples down to The Post so that we can try them and so that we can maybe photograph them," and just a little bit about your cooking habits. What happens then is I'll send you a sort to list of how we do what we do. And I would say maybe every couple of weeks on a Friday afternoon I'll send out maybe 15 or 20 names of recipes. I might try to entice people and say, "If you take 3 recipes, you get like a new cookbook," not from us but from someone -- something that I've gotten. You have to follow -- you have to be willing to answer all those niggling questions that I write into the recipe for you. And then you just give us feedback and you give us like, you know, how much -- how many pounds of apples it took. A lot of recipes they'd say like, "Two apples." You're like, "Okay; that could be like an apple this big, or an apple this big." So we try to, you know, get that extra information from the testers. And then if you pass those with flying colors, you get included on an email list, and then you get to look at the recipes. And it's a very quick first come first served. Cookie recipes I get responses like that, no surprising. And then you just make arrangements to bring it in. So sometimes if you live near a staffer who works at The Post, they can, you know, be your bag man or something like that. But it's just that simple really. I mean, I like getting recipes tested by people who are actually cooking in their homes. Every once in a while it goes a little awry. There are some testers who have come to me and they bring in a dish and I taste it, and it doesn't taste so great, it does taste kind of flat, and I say, "You know, is this the amount of salt that you use?" And she's like, "Well, I didn't use salt. I don't cook with salt." So you have to cook the recipe as it's written on the sheet. That's one of the requirements. Other than that, I think it's easy. So I'm hoping to hear from you. >> Hi, Bonnie. Besides for The Post cookbook, is there anything else that you're really excited about for cookbooks or trends that are coming out; because holidays are coming. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: They are. They are. And let's see, my desk right now looks like an environmental safety hazard. I have stacks of cookbooks, teetering stacks, and I see the trends in the cookbooks -- this is always a big time of year for baking. But the baking, again, has gotten ethnic. And so there's Mediterranean baking that I think a lot of us don't do quite enough of. There are some very, very delicious recipes. And I like things with nuts, and there's always good nut and honey kind of recipes in those books. I have seen a lot of vegan cookbooks, I mean a lot. The food editors at this conference were almost complaining that they didn't want to see one more vegan cookbook come across their desks. But, you know, we have a responsibility to review them, and honest -- you know, and somebody thought that was a trend so. There were some -- there was kind of a higher number of Jewish cookbooks that came out. And I'll tell you something funny, after the -- usually there's a -- the cookbook season is very heavy in the fall. There's -- that's why you see so many titles coming out now, because they really want to get all your holiday dollars. And then there's another season sort of in the spring and summer that takes care of all that wonderful things you can do with fresh produce and, you know, canning and preserving books all come out then. But I've noticed in January I now get stacks and stacks of the healthful, the know this, know that, the -- you know, something to help us get through when all those Weight Watchers commercials start coming on. And we think we want to cook for ourselves so it's almost become like a third season. But right now I don't see any of those titles at all so. >> Do you have any cookbooks that are kind of your favorites that you go back to again and again? >> Bonnie S. Benwick: That's a really tough question. What are my favorite cookbooks? I like a lot of cookbooks. I have no -- I have 27 favorite recipes in The Post Cookbook, and I have a zillion favorite cookbooks. But I would have to say in my all-time pantheon is "All About Brazing" by Molly Stevens. >> Oh, yes. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: She's fabulous, and I think I have at least cooked every recipe in that book at least once. Came out a couple years ago. [Inaudible] that he just did, I mean, it had all those other books over the years, and related to his television shows. But the last one he did, "The Essential Preparing" [phonetic] I think it's called, that came out in 2012, just really sums it up nicely. It's got his little illustrations in there. You know, I like seeing it more than I like reading it. But it's a really good reference book to have around. There's also a little paperback that I would encourage everybody to find called, "The Food Lovers' Companion." Have you guys heard of that? It's a reference book that everybody needs. I mean, it's got more than 7,000 entries. It's written in a very short blurby paragraph style. It will tell you the difference between polenta and, you know, other types of cornmeal. It will tell you about, you know, 6 different kinds of squash and what you should do with each one of them. It's real easy to read. And every time -- almost every time I answer a question online, during our free-range chat, I have that book right at my side opened to the page that I'm talking from. I may not, you know, give enough credit. I try to source it as much as possible. But it's a book that costs -- you know, it's small, costs 8 bucks or something. But I encourage you to get it. It's really going to increase your knowledge while you're sitting there stirring your risotto. You could just kind of pick through and pop on any page and learn something that you didn't know, so. >> Thank you. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: Thanks. I think we've got about 2 more minutes, so any other questions? >> [Inaudible]. >> Bonnie S. Benwick: It's called "The Food Lovers' Companion," a thick small paperback, and Sharon Herbst H E R B S T, is the author. She passed away a couple of years. Her husband and other relatives have picked up the -- you know, they just put out a newer version that's got about a thousand more listings in it, which is on my desk at work so. I really appreciate you guys coming out. I had no -- [applause] thank you. >> This has been a presentation of The Library of Congress.