BOOKS

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Writing books is one of my vices. I love immersing myself in the research and—for cookbooks—developing and testing the recipes. It's such a pleasure to travel around the world, experience new places, eat local foods, interview interesting people, and delve into library resources dating back hundreds of years.

The five books I've written include an award-winning cookbook about the regional cuisines of Spain, a travel memoir and an additional cookbook about my life in Siberia, and a history of the University of Maryland's education programs around the world. I've also contributed entries to encyclopedias published by Oxford University Press and written articles for several compilation books, such as the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Two new books of mine were published in 2018, and I'm now working on a book about Scotland. Read more about my books (below) and watch this page for updates.

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T-BONE WHACKS & CAVIAR SNACKS

Cooking with Two Texans in Siberia & the Russian Far East

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by Sharon Hudgins

with recipes by Sharon Hudgins & Tom Hudgins

University of North Texas Press, 2018

A new collection of culinary adventures, fascinating food stories, and regional recipes from the Asian side of Russia.

Finalist, 2019 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Silk Road Category

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T-Bone Whacks & Caviar Snacks is the first cookbook in America to focus on the foods of the Asian side of Russia, a vast land stretching over 8 time zones from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Combining personal stories with food history, 140 recipes, and 75 photos, this unique book chronicles the culinary adventures of two intrepid Texans during two years of eating their way around Siberia and the Russian Far East.

Travel with the authors as they discover the cooking of Russia's eastern lands—from meals on the dining cars of Trans-Siberian luxury trains, to lavish dinner parties in Soviet-era high-rise apartment buildings, to picnics at remote little dachas in the lush green forests near the Russian-Chinese border. Learn how Siberians celebrate Christmas, New Year, Easter, birthdays, and weddings. And find out how the authors managed to cook Tex-Mex food on the "Stoves-from-Hell" in their three Russian apartments.

This new collection of fascinating food stories and delicious regional recipes will introduce you to another world of good eating. And here's the bonus: All the recipes can be made with ingredients from your local supermarket or delicatessen.

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Praise for T-BONE WHACKS & CAVIAR SNACKS

Sharon Hudgins' charming food memoir about living in Russia is both a fun read and an excellent cookbook….the moving story of life in a foreign land and a comprehensive collection of Russian recipes you will find nowhere else. — James Oseland, Editor-in-Chief, World Food, and judge on Top Chef Masters

Highly original and a fun read. Cooks, travelers, and lovers of food history will embrace this book. — Dave DeWitt, author of Precious Cargo

Sharon has recorded an important slice of Russian history and culture. She has produced a treasure of a book that will be referenced by cultural historians and home cooks for decades to come. — Catherine Cheremeteff Jones, author of A Year of Russian Feasts

Combining personal memoir, adventurous travel, food history, and mouthwatering recipes, this unique book captures the mysterious culinary spirit of Siberia…and invites you to dine at tables crowded with delicacies from salmon caviar to sweetened cranberry cream. — Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking

My test for a good cookbook asks three questions: Can you find the ingredients locally? Are the recipes easy to follow? Does the food taste good? The answer to all three here is yes, yes, and yes. — Kathryn Demps, Sibirica: Journal of Siberian Studies

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FOOD ON THE MOVE

Dining on the Legendary Railway Journeys of the World

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Sharon Hudgins, Editor & Author of Trans-Siberian Railway chapter

Reaktion Books, 2018

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All aboard for a delicious ride on nine legendary railway journeys! Food on the Move travels across five continents, focusing on the culinary history of famous trains and railroad routes from the earliest days of rail travel to the present.

Enjoy haute cuisine in the elegant dining cars of the Orient Express, American steak-and-eggs on the Santa Fe Super Chief, and home-cooked regional foods along the Trans-Siberian tracks. Eat your way across Canada's vast interior and Australia's dusty Outback. Grab an infamous "British railway sandwich" on the Flying Scotsman. Snack on spicy samosas on the Darjeeling Himalayan line. Dine at speed on Japan's "Bullet Train." And sip South African wines in the luxurious lounge car of the Blue Train, its glass windows fused with gold dust.

With chapters by eight different authors, this entertaining and informative book includes 150 vivid illustrations, along with recipes from historical menus, train station restaurants, platform vendors, and contemporary dining-car chefs. Food on the Move is a veritable feast for the palate and the eyes.

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Praise for FOOD ON THE MOVE

Food and trains, my twin passions, are brought together brilliantly in this guided tour of the symbiotic relationship between railways and eating. Whether it is a simple aloo dum enjoyed in the hill town of Darjeeling, caviar on the Trans-Siberian, or a feast on the Orient Express, this book makes you want to go on every journey and eat every meal described in it. — Christian Wolmar, author of Engines of the Raj: How the Steam Age Transformed India

Hudgins and seven other writers recount the glory days of train travel, specifically focusing on the cuisine that travelers used to partake of en route. Readers will appreciate all of the research that shines in each chapter, but included photographs and recipes are sure to whet many a nostalgic appetite for a slower, more gentle, more genteel way of life and travel. —  Booklist 

Food on the Move describes dining by rail...as an experience as exhilarating and varied as watching the scenery unfold mile by mile...The visions laid out in this book of the glory days of the Orient Express or of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway make my celebrations over the appearance of a new snack packet in the Amtrak cafe car seem particularly paltry. — Corby Kummer, New York Times

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THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA

A Slice of Life in Siberia and the Russian Far East

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by Sharon Hudgins

Texas A & M University Press, 2003, 2004, 2009

ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Bronze Award, 2003

Cordon d'Or—Gold Ribbon International Award, 2005

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Travel with Sharon Hudgins to the Asian side of Russia, a vast area closed to most foreigners during much of the 20th century. Stories of her personal experiences are set within their historical, geographical, and cultural context: the cities of Vladivostok and Irkutsk; Lake Baikal; the Trans-Siberian Railroad; Russian feasts, festivals, and farmers' markets; Christmas, New Year, and Easter celebrations; housing conditions in Russia's "high-rise villages"; the Russian education system; and even the Spanish, French, and Tex-Mex dinner parties she hosted in Siberia. Now in its third printing, this richly detailed book will open your eyes to a region of the world still unknown to most people in the West.

Praise for THE OTHER SIDE OF RUSSIA

Sharon Hudgins has written a vivid and engrossing book about a part of the world that's both geographically and ethnically complex. She's done much to make the unfamiliar familiar.  — Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Sharon Hudgins' perceptive memoir of survival in modern Siberia is full of anecdotes, conversation, humor, food, friendships, and hardships...an animated examination of grim, grimy, and unpredictably gracious ordinary life in the extraordinary place she calls 'Absurdistan.'   — Alfred Friendly, Jr., co-author of Ecocide in the USSR and former Newsweek Moscow bureau chief

Chapter 7, entitled 'The High-Rise Village,' is an instant classic in the literature on Russia. This is a wonderful book that has something for all...it will entertain everyone from lay persons to Slavic scholars.   — Victor L. Mote, University of Houston and author of Siberia: Worlds Apart

As an eyewitness portrayal of Russia's East during the first years of the post-communist era, this book is destined to become a key primary description of social change in an often forgotten region of the world. Highly recommended.  — E. J. Vajda, Western Washington University

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SPANIEN: KÜCHE, LAND UND MENSCHEN

(Spain: The Cuisine, the Land, the People)

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by Sharon Hudgins (text), Bruno Hausch (photos), Christine Messer (recipes)

Edited by Sharon Hudgins

Hädecke Verlag, Germany, 1991

Silver Medal for Gastronomy, German Academy of Gastronomy, 1992

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Sharon Hudgins wrote the text and edited the recipes for this award-winning cookbook about the regional cuisines of Spain, illustrated with 250 color photographs by one of Germany's most acclaimed food photographers. The author traveled through every province on the Spanish mainland to research the history, geography, agriculture, religions, and customs that shaped the great variety of dishes eaten in different parts of Spain, from Galicia to Andalusia, from Catalonia to Castile. Spain Gourmetour magazine praised Spanien: Küche, Land und Menschen as "a very thoroughly and accurately researched book that leaves nothing out...an excellent book to read and then to cook from." Includes 125 recipes from every region of Spain.

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BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: THE FIRST SIXTY YEARS, 1947-2007

by Sharon Hudgins

University of Maryland University College, 2008

 

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NEVER AN IVORY TOWER: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE—THE FIRST 50 YEARS

by Sharon Hudgins

University of Maryland University College, 2000

transparent 200x225Beyond the Ivory Tower: The First Sixty Years, 1947-2007 is a new, updated edition of Never an Ivory Tower: University of Maryland University College—The First 50 Years, a commemorative history written for UMUC's 50th anniversary in 1997. The 60th-anniversary edition, published in 2008, features nearly 300 pages of stories and photographs covering the history of UMUC's non-traditional education programs in more than 70 countries around the globe, from the Pentagon in 1947 to war-torn Germany in 1949, from icy Greenland to sunny Bermuda, from South Korea to Japan. Some of the most poignant stories are those told by students and faculty in UMUC's education programs for the US military stationed in Vietnam in the 1960s, Bosnia in the 1990s, and other areas of conflict abroad. 

Full Text PDF

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Sharon Hudgins has edited cookbooks for publishers in the United States and Europe, including dual-language cookbooks such as Original Bayrisch / The Best of Bavarian Food. She has also adapted into special English several books on international politics and political theory for people who read English as a second language. She is a contributor to several compilation cookbooks, including Storied Dishes: What Our Family Recipes Tell Us about Who We Are and Where We've Been (edited by Linda Murray Berzok, 2010). She has written entries for The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, Culinary Biographies, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, and Street Food around the World, as well as nine articles published in the annual Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.