Les Livres Qui Reste(nt) Ici

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
The book remaining longest on my shelves, therefore deserving of Christopher Marlowe’s pastoral, is Waverly Root’s ‘Food’. Why should this be so? The poor old thing is broken-backed, it looks as if someone [...]

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What Does Roger Daltry Have to Do With Home on the Range, Cow Patties and Son-of-a-Bitch-Stew?

You’ll have to see it to believe it:
Extreme History – Cooking on the Chisholm Trail

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From Soup to Nuts: More Eating in the 1940’s

In this vintage ad from the 1940’s we’ve now discovered how the Chiquita Banana Helps the Pieman – and have also had a fascinating demonstration on how to flute a banana.
But that’s only dessert. ‘Where’s the beef?’ (Clara would ask) – and here it is:
Recipes from Gourmet magazine during the 1940’s, [...]

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M.F.K. Fisher: Dining Through Hardship and War With Simplicity and Sophistication – The 1940’s

Ouch. It’s January 2009, and wallets previously ready to fly open at the slightest beckoning call of the local free-range organic rabbit (head still on, bones intact, tiny tail bone looking rather pitiful now shed of its cute fluffy fur) for $7 per pound – which effectively makes the cost of the meat shorn of [...]

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The Niceness of Ice-Ness with a Plum or Two and some History

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams – This Is Just To Say (1934)
Ice. Most of us don’t think about it a lot. It’s there in the freezer, or dispensed by the icemaker.
Clink clink. The ice cubes go into the drink!
William Carlos Williams [...]

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The Ballontine Marches Forward

I haven’t trounced the ballontine yet. It continues its sneaky advance.
There are a few recipes for ballontines online. Not a lot. The ballontine has lost to the galantine in recent years, badly.
Here’s part of a recipe for a galantine I found online – it does make mention of a ballontine some number of paragraphs into [...]

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Sugarplums are Fast Food

The Fast Food Feminist posted a collection of links to sugar plum recipes last year around this time – along with some philosophic musings.
Here is the post:

Sugar: Many Ways of Sweetness

Photo Flickr-Phil Gyford

Are there different ways to be “sweet”? Women are defined in general presumption to be like the rhyme “sugar and spice [...]

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‘Near a Thousand Tables’ (my fancy was so strong)

(This is part 3 of 3 posts.)
………………………………………………
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
Here’s my favorite bit of the book – it comes from the chapter titled ‘The Edible Earth’ and the subject is wheat, which the author has nick-named ‘The World Conquerer’:
No relief of the Triumph of Progress, of the kind which often decorates the tympana [...]

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‘Near a Thousand Tables’ Dances (Does not Plod)

(This is part 2 of 3 posts.)
……………………………………………………
Plod, plod, plod.
Plodding is a fact of life.
Everyone does it. There are those who embrace plodding as the most virtuous and acceptable way to live. Within this form of thinking, the idea of stepping out of the circle of plodding to do a little jig or a mad pirouette [...]

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On My Table: ‘Near a Thousand Tables’ by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

(This is part 1 of 3 posts.)
………………………………………………..
‘Near a Thousand Tables’ is a very different book within the genre of food history than I’ve ever seen or read before. There may be books equal to (or similar to) it – my reading on food history is only a small part of the other sorts of reading [...]

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Mark Twain Eats America – Writ Large and Small(er)

Turtle Soup, anyone?
IN 1879, a homesick Mark Twain sat in an Italian hotel room and wrote a long fantasy menu of all his favorite American foods. The menu began as a joke, with Twain describing the 80-dish spread as a “modest, private affair” that he wanted all to himself. But it reads today as a [...]

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Load Your Plate with Jingo-istic Sentiment – It’s TURKEY DAY!

The countdown has begun. The plans are being discussed. The larders (that means cupboards and refrigerators for those of you who prefer modern speech) are being filled and filled and filled.
It’s the Day to Be Thankful. Or (more commonly) the Day to Get Stuffed Till You Hurt. Add a pinch of the usual dissonances that [...]

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Blogging Food History

In a general sense, every person who blogs on food is blogging food history. A rather remarkable record exists of our current times free of most of the constraints which limited real-time documentation of foodways in past times – today’s blogs document both high-end and lower-end dining. What’s blogged today is what is actually on [...]

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Food History, Politics, and Hunger: Doin’ the Hokey Pokey

You put your left foot in
You put your right foot out
You put your left foot in
And you shake it all about
You grab yourself a partner and you turn yourself about
That’s what it’s all about!
Anybody remember the hokey-pokey dance? Always fun, even the confusing parts that should not have been but were, in the silly way [...]

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