Matthew Amster-Burton was a restaurant critic and food writer long before he and his wife, Laurie, had Iris. Now he’s a full-time, stay-at-home Dad and his experience with food has changed …a little.
Hungry Monkey is the story of Amster-Burton’s life as a food-lover—with a child. It’s the story of how he came to realize that kids don’t need puree in a jar or special menus at restaurants and that raising an adventurous eater is about exposure, invention, and patience. He writes of the highs and lows of teaching your child about food—the high of rediscovering how something tastes for the first time through a child’s unedited reaction, the low of thinking you have a precocious vegetable fiend on your hands only to discover that a child’s preferences change from day to day (and may take years to include vegetables again). Sharing in his culinary capers is little Iris, a budding gourmand and a zippy critic herself—who makes hug sandwiches, gobbles up hot chilis, and even helps around the kitchen sometimes.
A memoir on the wild joys of food and parenting and the marvelous mélange of the two—Hungry Monkey takes food enthusiasts on a new adventure in eating, with dozens of delicious recipes and notes on which can accommodate help from "little fingers." In the end, our guide reminds us: "Food is fun, and you get to enjoy it three times a day, plus snacks!"

Parents who love One Bite Won't Kill You by Ann Hodgman, grownups who enjoy food quests like American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads by Pascale LeDraoulec and books with recipes at the end of every chapter as in Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel are going to love Hungry Monkey. It is funny. It is honest. It has great recommendations for children's books. Matthew Amster-Burton is a foodie, a writer of the best kind, and a full-time dad/dinner-maker. His daughter, Iris, is the focus of his cooking as he tries to shatter baby-food stereotypes and expose her to tantalizing exotic taste treats you are not likely to find in any of the typical parenting books. Who else recommends sushi for babies? Lobster and satay for kids? Chapters all include recipes with great directions that will make you laugh while you cook, a rare treat in cookbooks. I made the mistake of reading this in bed and kept having to take naps to make up for all the lost sleep because I could not put the book down at the end of each chapter but had to keep reading. Just the chapter titles give you a taste of the irreverent tone of this fabulous book: Where Do Monkeys Come From?; You Fed Your Baby WHAT?; Snacktime: Two of the Five Most Important Meals of the Day; Tradition without Turkey: Thanksgiving in the Monkey House; Life in the Sushi Belt. It ends as well as it begins with a chapter/postnote on Our Favorite Convenience Foods and even the acknowledgements (which are at the end of the book, a touch of genius if you ask me) are great reading. It is sure to be one of the books you buy by the handful as soon as it comes out in paperback to give to your favorite people with who you probablyalready shared many copies of titles like the Sweet Potato Queens Big Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner by Jill Conner Browne or The Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast by Bill Richardson. This is one book you better not lend out because you most assuredly will not get it back. Three free chapters at http://www.hungrymonkeybook.com. Matthew Amster-Burton's blog is rootsandgrubs.com. Reviewer: Gwynne Spencer