Gary Allen's Blog, page 10

Food Sites for April 2019

Winter has only four days left as we write. Traces of Spring are beginning to appear, but it’s still cold enough for long slow-cooked meals. A pot of beans would do nicely—even if they’re dried (unlike the fresh cranberry beans above... the produce of a previous summer).
Winter is made for scribblers like us, if only because there are no soft breezes, hazy vistas, shy morels, or rising trout to distract us. We’re doing our best to make use of the time, adding chapters to one novel while editing another. Someday, we might even find a new subject for a food book...
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Some mixed opinions about the musical fruit from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

Abstain from beans. There be sundry interpretations of this symbol. But Plutarch and Cicero think beans to be forbidden of Pythagoras, because they be windy and do engender impure humours and for that cause provoke bodily lust. Richard Taverner

If pale beans bubble for you in a red earthenware pot, you can often decline the dinners of sumptuous hosts. Martial

I have no truck with lettuce, cabbage, and similar chlorophyll. Any dietitian will tell you that a running foot of apple strudel contains four times the vitamins of a bushel of beans. S.J. Perelman

Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear. Aesop

Gary
April, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Elatia Harris), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
Ancient Greeks Used Portable Grills at Their Picnics(Megan Gannon reviews some recent Mycenaean archeology for Live Science)
Biblical Spice Rack, A(Devorah Emmet Wigoder, on “herbs and spices of the ancient Near East” for Bible History Daily)
Biology of... Sourdough, The(Patricia Gadsby and Eric Weeks, in Discover Magazine, on the influence of Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis on the flavor of San Francisco’s famous bread)
Can Hot Peppers Make Me Happy?(Edith Zimmerman, in New York magazine, on experiencing capsaicin)
Capturing Campus Cuisine(archaeologists’ efforts to understand the dining habits of students and faculty in nineteenth century Michigan)
Corn Domestication Took Some Unexpected Twists and Turns(Bruce Bower, at Science News, looks at what recent DNA research can tell us about the 9,000-year domestication of maize’s wild ancestor, teosinte)
Food Programme, The (podcasts of the BBC Radio4 series)
History of Singapore in 10 Dishes, A(Wee Ling Soh’s article, in Roads & Kingdoms, on an archetypical fusion cuisine)
It’s Time to Study Whether Eating Particular Diets Can Help Heal Us(Siddhartha Mukherjee, in The New York Times, on the dearth of knowledge about the intersection of nutrition and oncology)
Lab-Grown Meat’s Steady March to Your Plate(Matt Davis’s article, at Big Think, on the economics, ecology, and aesthetics of synthetic meat)
Missing Ingredient: Understanding the Effect of Time on Food and Flavor(Chip Walton interviews Jenny Linford—author of Missing Ingredient—for The Splendid Table)
Should Plant-Based Proteins Be Called “Meat”?(Melissa Kravitz discusses the linguistic and legal issues for Truthout)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
How to Write About Food: In the Classroom with Jonathan Gold
In Bad Taste
Is Handwriting Dead? Hardly. We Need it More than Ever
Problem with Authenticity, The
Stop Shaming Recipe Bloggers for Writing a Lot
What Collecting 100 Rejections Taught Me about Creative Failure

---- yet another blog ----
Archaeology of Taste

---- changed URL ----
How Black Chefs Paved the Way for American Cuisine

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #222 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for March 2019

Caffeine (C8H10N4O2): Brain Juice, Cupped Lighting, Go Juice, High Octane, Java, Jitter Juice, Joe, Liquid Energy, Morning Jolt, Rocket Fuel
Winter should be the most productive season for writing, but it doesn’t hurt to prime the pump, does it? Balzac, who managed to crank out a few words in his time, is said to have consumed some fifty cups a day. Granted, they were tiny cups... but even so, he must have had a hard time sitting still in his chair. He described the effect of his preferred stimulant:

… sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

Haven’t seen any reviews of Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier, yet... but it was cited in a Wikipedia entry. Are any non-academics sufficiently nerdy to read footnotes... anywhere, let alone at Wikipedia? Also, do academics even read Wikipedia? So many trivial questions that distract one from one’s writing... probably need to pour another cup of coffee.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
More stimuli from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. Paul Erdos

…counterfeit foods are common in times of scarcity: wartime ersatz coffee for example. Or carob for real chocolate, when there is a scarcity of common sense. Janet Clarkson

Gary
March, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to David M. Rosenstein), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
19th & 20th Century Cookbooks(online texts from the Noreen Reale Falcone Library of Lemoyne University)
Bewitching Kitchen(thoughtful and artful recipes from a bacteriologist; plus some scientific insights)
Brief History of Cheddar Cheese, A(Gordon Edgar‘s account at Saveur)
Great Medieval Water Myth, The(Jim Chevallier asserts that, while there were many good reasons for drinking beer in the Middle Ages, dread of impure water wasn’t one of them)
Joy of Menus, The(according to At the Table’s Diana Henry, ”While you read a menu, time is suspended“)
Overlooked History of Black Mixology, The(Emily Bell, at Vinepair, explains that cocktail creators weren’t always white hipsters)
Rambunctious, Elitist Chocolate Houses of 18th-Century London, The(Lauren Cocking reports on the wild and crazy cocoa scene, for Gastro Obscura)
Rose Family: Rosaceae(botanical info on: almonds, apples, apricots, cherries, loquats, peaches, pears, pluots, and quinces)
Scenes from a Cricket Harvest(Julia Sherman develops a Taste for entomophagy)
Victorian Cookbooks Were Stuffed with Costumed Roosters and Sphinx Cakes(Anika Burgess’s illustrated visit to bizarre dishes at Gastro Obscura)
What Did Ancient Babylonians Eat? A Yale-Harvard Team Tested Their Recipes(Bess Connolly outlines some of the complications of recreating 4,000-year-old dishes for Yale News)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
5 Editor Pet Peeves about Cookbook Manuscripts
Cultural Appropriation, Authenticity and Gastronomic Colonialism
Dare to Cook Photo-Free (And Love It So Much More)
End Intellectual Property
Everyone’s a Copywriter. Right?
From Shambles to the Planetary Health Diet: How Language Has Shaped How We Think About Food for Centuries
How to Say “I’m a Writer” and Mean It
Is Wine Writing in Decline?
John McPhee: Seven Ways of Looking at a Writer
Let’s Be Clear about Influencers in the Wine World
Photography for Beginners
Role of Experience and Emotion in Food History, The
Typewriter Lives, The
What Your Method of Brewing Coffee Says About You
When Cooking Is a Compulsion

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #221 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for February 2019

Cassoulet... not pretty, but pretty good for a wintery night.
We suspect that you might be feeling a certain relief... now that the holiday season’s grande bouffe is behind us (alas, perhaps, literally—or steatopygously—behind us). Nonetheless, Roll Magazine has published some of our thoughts on holiday feasting. “Eating Our Way Through the Holidays” is served somewhat tongue-in-cheek... which means it is utterly devoid of fats and carbs.
Our next food book, Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier , is due from Rowman and Littlefield any day now. Maryann Tebben (author of Sauces: A Global History ) was kind enough to write this blurb for the back cover: 

A truly comprehensive world tour of sauces, with recipes for every sauce you can imagine (and some you can’t). This book is a lively and engaging fresh take on what sauces are and how to define them, with scientific principles and a healthy dose of humor, a century after Escoffier.

We’re blushing... but we’ll take it anyway.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Some thoughts about a First World problem from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four... unless there are three other people. Orson Welles

Oh, pity the poor glutton
Whose troubles all begin
In struggling on and on to turn
What’s out into what’s in. Walter de la Mare

What feeds me destroys me. Christopher Marlowe

The optimist sees the doughnut but the pessimist see 452 calories and a shed load of sugar. James Minter

Let me have men about me that are fat... Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous. William Shakespeare

Gary
February, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Jonell Galloway), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
Attention: No Food or Drink in the Library(James Edward Malin describes some of the difficulties that food scholars face in today’s libraries in an article in Graduate Association for Food Studies; it’s not about the absence of snacking opportunities)
Comfort Foods(Mayukh Sen’s article, in Topic, on foods meant to soothe the souls of the bereaved)
Explore Unique Food & Drink(archive of articles from Gastro Obscura)
Finishing School for the Unfinished(Gael Greene, on becoming Gael Greene under the tyranny of New York’s haute cuisine, in her blog, Bite: My Journal)
Hippocras, or Spiced Wine(Marissa Nicosia on several versions of this medieval/winter favorite)
How Chickens Became the Ultimate Symbol of the Anthropocene(Carys Bennett, Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, and Richard Thomas on chicken “evolution” for The Conversation)
Is That Classic Cocktail’s Origin Story Actually True?(Robert Simonson debunks some fakelore for Punch)
Make Every Piece Count(Ernie Smith writes, for Tedium, about the meat industry’s attempts to find more profitable ways to cut meat—making inexpensive parts of each animal more desirable)
No Meats on its Bill of Fare; Vegetarian Restaurant No. 1 Will Be Opened To-Morrow(archived New York Times article, from February 4, 1895, on the city’s first meatless eatery)
Nostalgia by the Canful(Matt and Ted Lee, at Garden&Gun, mourn the loss of some traditional southern foodstuffs)
Poet’s Table, The(Mayukh Sen’s essay, in the Poetry Foundation magazine, on the cookbooks of Maya Angelou)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
Does It Pay to Be a Writer?
Food and Wine Wisdom
From Zero-Idea to a Hero Article in 6 Steps
Need for the Ethical Omnivore, The
Pleasures of the Literary Meal
Start Here: How to Write a Book Proposal

---- yet another blog ----
Cloud 9 Cookery

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #220 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.

Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for January 2019

Winter, a time to consider one’s roots (both metaphorical & culinary).
‘Tis winter, a time when writers are wont to curl up with a book—their own or someone else’s. Preferably, this is done in the company of a warming libation: coffee, tea, cocoa, or something stronger (‘though, unless one’s byline is Hemingway, “something stronger” is not recommended during the editing phase). Kenneth Rexroth, by the way, was fond of hot white wine,  infused with cardamom seeds. 
We’re scribbling away, nearly half-way through the first draft of a second novel (a book that has little or nothing to do with food). Since, we won’t start editing it for months, it might be prudent to discover where our jar of cardamom seeds is hiding.
Our next food book, Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier , is due from Rowman and Littlefield in January, and is already available for pre-order.


You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Have you noticed that certain holidays are always associated with heavy drinking? As New Year’s Eve is a notable example, here are few thoughts about the sauce (from an expert we lost this year). They’re the sort of thing you might expect to find at On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

Unlicensed hooch from a stranger in a parking lot. Good idea? Yes, of course it is. Anthony Bourdain

I need the anesthetic qualities of the local fire water. Anthony Bourdain

For their own good, vegetarians should never be allowed near fine beers and ales. It will only make them loud and belligerent, and they lack the physical strength and aggressive nature to back up any drunken assertions. Anthony Bourdain

I believe—to the best of my recollection, anyway—that I soon made the classic error of moving from margaritas to actual shots of straight tequila. It does make it easier to meet new people. Anthony Bourdain

Gary
January, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Scott Alves Barton), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
Asian-American Cuisine’s Rise, and Triumph(Ligaya Mishan addresses complex issues of authenticity and otherness in The New York Times)
Best Bits, The(the offal truth, from the blog Old European Culture)
Beyond Taste: Texture Really Determines How We Eat(Jen Karetnick on why taste and smell aren’t everything in how we perceive food, for ABP: A Beautiful Perspective)
Bronze Age Tomb in Israel Reveals the Earliest Known Use of Vanilla, A(Bruce Bower, in Science News, on archaeological evidence that vanilla did not—contrary to conventional wisdom—originate in Mexico)
Cuisine of the Philippines is More Diverse than You Ever Imagined, The(Saveur’s Jasmine P. Ting on one of the world’s most truly “fusion” cuisines)
Disgusting Food Museum, The(a visit to this Swedish destination might help you stay on your diet)
Elitist’s Guide to Salad Greens, The(Kristy Mucci’s Saveur pictorial guide)
Flowers in Food are Popular but Data on Their Safety is Limited(Gavin Markham’s article, in Locavore, in response to work done at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark)
Humble History of Pumpkin Pie, The(Shaun Chavis interviews Ken Albala for How Stuff Works)
Jell-O: America’s Most Famous Dessert: At Home Everywhere(beautifully illustrated exhibit from the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library)
Madeira 101: History in a Bottle(Bryce Wiatrak’s take on this fortified wine, for Delectable)
Ode to Joy(Kat Kinsman’s Food & Wine article about Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking)
Over 100 Years Ago, the US Government Commissioned 7,500 Watercolor Paintings of Every Kind of Fruit in the Country(Chloe Olewitz’s article, in Morsel, on the creation of the Wiki gallery of fruit art)
Reviving the Lost Tradition of Cooking Flowers(Vittoria Traverso on foraging, Italian style, for Gastro Obscura)
Sourdough Hands: How Bakers and Bread Are a Microbial Match(Lindsay Patterson on a recent experiment that studied how the bacterial ecology of bakers’ hands affects the breads they bake; on NPR’s The Salt)
These Artists are Creating Work That’s About, and Made from, Food(Ligaya Mishan, in The New York Times, on the work of “artists who play with their food”)
Unbroken Etymology of “Bread,” The(Anatoly Liberman shows that even a very respectable blog—like that of the Oxford University Press—can’t always provide easy answers to what might seem to be simple questions)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
52 of the World’s Most Out-There Myths About Food
Do Cookbooks Need Nutrition Facts?
Emily Dickinson’s Hidden Kitchen
How to Find Great Images for Your Site (Without Getting Sued)
How to Finally Write Your Nonfiction Book
How to Write a Restaurant Cookbook
Secret to Writing a Great Book, The: Start With a Great Idea
The Good, the Bad, and the Delicious: 20 Unexpected Literary Cookbooks
Where Food Writing Leads
Why Perfection is the Enemy of Done
Year in Broth, The

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #219 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.

Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for December 2018

Sage, in our sorry excuse for an herb garden.
The aroma of the first sage-stuffed roasted turkey of the season can warm the coldest heart...  if we can manage to dig some out of our snow-draped garden. Speaking of turkeys, Roll Magazine has reissued an article (“Thanksgiving”), on the off-chance that you might have forgotten there was such a holiday in the offing...
Modern Salt has published one of our memoirish angling sagas. The Great Texan Fish Massacre revisits the scene of an ancient crime. Our next book, Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier , is due from Rowman and Littlefield in January, but is already available for pre-order.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Before our new book comes out, a few thoughts about sauces from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven. Ambrose Bierce

Sauces are greatly admired by the British. ...we like our sauces to come to the table in the bottle so that in between examining the other guests we can read the labels and memorize the list of ingredients. Derek Cooper

A well made sauce will make even an elephant or a grandfather palatable. Grimod de la Reyniere

GaryDecember, 2018
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Suzanne Fass and Dianne Jacob), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
Ancient South Americans Tasted Chocolate 1,500 Years Before Anyone Else(Bruce Bower, at Science News, on recent archaeological work near the upper Amazon)
Before Guy, There Was Graham(Heather Arndt Anderson interviewed Graham Kerr for Taste
Economics of Medieval English Brewing, The(“recovering medievalist“ Karl Hagen’s researches into the fifteenth-century’s The Book of Margery Kemp)
Evidence for the Paleoethnobotany of the Neanderthal: A Review of the Literature(Gerhard P. Shipley and Kelly Kindscher, at Scientifica, on how we know what we know about the eating habits of some early ancestors)
Exploring Ancient Alchemy and Remote Terrain to Find France’s Best-Kept Wine Secret(Mary Winston Nicklin, at Vinepair, on the fortified French wine, Banyuls)
Five Things You Need to Know About the Sardine(answers provided by Trevor Day, author of Sardine )
Hop Take: Stop Changing the Definition of Craft Brewer(Vinepair’s Cat Wolinski discusses on-going arguments in the brewing industry)
Horlicks Malted Milk(Rachel Rummel, for Gastro Obscura, on a “health food” turned soda fountain staple)
How the Mafia Got to Our Food(Hannah Roberts exposes—in the Financial Times’ FT Magazine Food & Drink—the ways organized crime is diverting farm subsidies, food processing, and markets all over Italy)
In Medieval Europe, No Outfit Was Complete Without a Personal Eating Knife(Gastro Obscura’s Abbey Perreault on the manners and table habits of pre-fork Europe)
Save the Tortilla(Leila Ashtari, at Modern Farmer, on the state of heirloom corn in Mexico)
Science of Good Chocolate, The(Simran Sethi, in Smithsonian, on the nuances of chocolate flavor, as explained by cacao guru Darin Sukha)
Temple Wall Recipes Reveal a Wealth of Unexplored Culinary History(Abbey Perreault on the work of Andrea Gutiérrez, who has found that inscriptions of South Indian temples can tell us a lot about medieval foodways—mostly through described naivedya, food offerings; a Gastro Obscura article)
What is Brix in Wine (and Beer)?(Tim McKirdy explains how and why the sugar content of potential alcoholic beverages is measured; in Vinepair)
Who Has the Copyright Over My Cheese?(Amie Tsang reports, in The New York Times, about a Dutch court’s ruling; spoiler alert: a flavor is not a copyrightable “expression of an original intellectual creation”)
Why is Goat Cheese Put in that Awful Vacuum-Sealed Packaging?(myrecipes answers several cheese-related questions, not just about plastic-robed chevre)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
3 Stats that Prove Just How Valuable Newsletters Are
Everyone Should Have a Gross Recipe
How to Write a Cookbook that Gets People Talking
I Love Baking. I Hate Bake Sales.
M.F.K. Fisher and the Art of the Culinary Selfie
What I Learned Writing a Cookbook as a Late Bloomer
Why a Book Tour Is More Brutal Than a Political Campaign
Wine Versus Food (in Surprising and Important Ways)

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for Our Books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #218 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2018 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for November 2018

Strutting at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY.
What a difference a month makes! Right now, with November just about to start, the prospect of a turkey dinner (with, as the expression goes, “all the fixins”) is a cascade of nostalgic and gustatory longing. By the first day of December, it’s a mind- and palate-numbing mass of leftovers that one can’t even give away—because everyone else’s refrigerator is stuffed with identically dead birds.
Speaking of leftovers... Roll Magazine has reprised an old article (that had been in print, but never online, before). “Creamsicles, Re-imagined” provided a couple of frosty treats just when summer began to disappear from memory. Jonell Galloway has published our article, “The History of Roquefort Dressing” at The Rambling Epicure.
Still waiting for responses to the first draft of our novel (Future Tense: The Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past). We suspect that there’s entirely too much gentility among our friends—consequently, they just can’t bear to hurt our feelings. They don’t realize that this affliction is not so easily thwarted. Our next novel (Cenotaphs) is already metastasizing at a dangerous pace.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
In order to get the jump on the impending post-prandial avian aversion, here are some leftovers from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

On Thanksgiving, you realize you’re living in a modern world. Millions of turkeys baste themselves in millions of ovens that clean themselves. George Carlin

Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. Ambrose Bierce

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander, but it is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the Guinea hen. Alice B. Toklas

If the soup had been as warm as the wine, if the wine had been as old as the turkey, if the turkey had had a breast like the maid, it would have been a swell dinner. Duncan Hines

Gary
November, 2018
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Vic Leeds), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
10th-Century Baghdad Cookbook That’s a Poetic Tome to Food, The(Gastro Obscura’s Paula Mejia rhapsodizes about medieval Islamic gastronomy as revealed in the Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens )
Before Food Trucks, Americans ate “Night Lunch” from Beautiful Wagons(Anne Ewbank writes about the ancestors of our all-night diners, for Gastro Obscura)
Behold Salvador Dalí’s Recently Republished Wine Bible(spoiler alert: this is NOT your usual wine book—that’s why an article about it appears in Gastro Obscura)
Exploring a “Treasure Trove” of Medieval Egyptian Recipes(Abbey Perreault, at Gastro Obscura, on the Kanz al-Fawa’id Fi Tanwi’ al-Mawa’id, or Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table)
Exploring the Intoxicants & Early Modernity(searchable database about drinking in England between 1580 and 1740)
History of New Orleans in 8 Dishes, A(Sarah Baird’s homage at Roads & Kingdoms)
Kvass(Gastro Obscura’s Rachel Rummel serves a glass of a classic Slavic tipple)
Museo di Prosciutto di Parma(museum dedicated to one of the world’s greatest hams; in English and Italian)
Riverside Public Library Citrus Label Collection(140 images from a California archive of decorative fruit-crate labels; 1885-1930s)
Pot-au-Feu, France’s National Dish(Alexander Lee, in History Today, on the social and economic history of the quintessential Gallic stew)
Scientific Case for Eating Bread, The(Markham Heid, at Medium, says the “vilification of bread isn’t supported by strong research”)
Taste (Andrea Pavoni has edited this collection of examinations of taste—as a philosophical concept—for the University of Westminster Press; downloadable PDF)
Tavola Mediterranea(archaeologist Farrell Monaco digs into the cooking of the ancient lands surrounding the Mediterranean, “one dish at a time”)
When Did Age Start to Equal Greatness in Spirits?(Aaron Goldfarb, at Punch, isn’t falling for the hype)
When the Food we Ate was Literally Poison (Even More so than Now)(Deborah Blum’s excerpt, at Literary Hub, of her book—The Poison Squad—about one nineteenth-century’s chemist’s fight against food adulteration)
Why Hunting Down “Authentic Ethnic Food” is a Loaded Proposition(Maria Godoy, at NPR’s Food for Thought, on Krishnendu Ray’s recent work on ethnicity, The Other, and our expectations about authenticity and prices)

---- changed URLs ----
Delicatessing at the Delirama
Poetry of Sausages

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
Beef Bile and Bitter Greens: How to Write and Photograph a Cookbook in Rural Northern Thailand
Challenges of Wine and Food Criticism, The
Finding a New Creative Path With Food with Sonja Overhiser
Just Write 500 Words
Rule of the Scene, The: Why Where You Live Affects the Work You Do
We Can’t Write Off Business Meals Anymore

---- yet more blogs ----
ABCDs of Cooking
Beekeeping Like a Girl
Manitoba Food History Project, The
Pete Brown

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs: 

Helping On the Table—without spending a dime of your own money on it—is as easy as pie
Whenever you plan to go shopping on Amazon, first click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books) will earn a commission for this newsletter without adding a dime (or even a penny) to your bill.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(these newsletters merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #217 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2018 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for October 2018

You don’t know jack...
October is one of the rare months when we try to do things with common foodstuffs that don’t involve cooking or eating. Maybe it’s because, at harvest time, there’s just too much of everything to even consider eating it all?
The first—very rough—draft of our novel (Future Tense: The Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past) has been completed and is out for comments from a few selected victims. When comments come in, we’ll consider what to do next. Meanwhile, we’ve started work on yet another (and very different sort of) novel. Its working title is Cenotaphs. Doctor Sam once said—probably to James Boswell, who scribbled about everything Johnson said: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” 
We are neither amused nor comforted by that.
An update from the non-fiction section: we’ve received the galleys for our latest book, Sauces Reconsidered: Àpres Escoffier, and have compiled its index, and made final corrections. Our work is finally complete (at least until post-publication marketing kicks in). It’s now slated for release in January!
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
There are better things to do with pumpkins than smashing them in the street or frightening children (not that frightening them is an altogether bad thing). Here are few comments from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie? John Greenleaf Whittier

My favorite word is ‘pumpkin.’ You can’t take it seriously. But you can’t ignore it, either. It takes ahold of your head and that’s it. You are a pumpkin. Or you are not. I am. Harrison Salisbury

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. Jim Davis (as Garfield)

Gary
October, 2018
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Abe Opincar), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
Archaeologists Find 3,200-Year-Old Cheese in an Egyptian Tomb(Niraj Chokshi describes, for The New York Times, some really really well-aged cheese)
Conqueror Who Longed for Melons, The(Mark Hay, at Gastro Obscura, on Zahir Al-Din Muhammad—Aka, Babur—sixteenth-century proto-foodie)
Delicatessing at the Delirama(Jan Whitaker proves that art of writing menu copy is not what it used to be, at her blog, Restauranting through History)
Exploring the World of Colourful Medieval Cuisine(Natalie Anderson, at medievalists.net, looks at Chris Woolgar’s study of how medieval people regarded their meals: “Contemporary science teaches that objects that shine reflect light, but medieval people saw these objects as the source of light, and the divine qualities of light made them virtuous in their own right.”)
Hot Tamales(Jennifer Stewart Kornegay, The Local Palate; not Mexican tamales, but Delta tamales, like the ones Robert Johnson sang about: “if you got ‘em for sale…”)
How to Read a Food Label(Sophie Egan peels away the mysteries for The New York Times)
In England, Brewing Beer Was Women’s Work Until It Became Big Business(Cat Wolinski, at VinePair, on the role of brewsters in medieval England)
Inside a 17th-Century ‘Barbarian’ Cookbook From Japan(Anne Ewbank, at Gastro Obscura, on an early Japanese cookbook that incorporated ingredients and methods from the Iberian Peninsula)
Let’s Call It Assimilation Food(Soleil Ho, at Taste, on something more significant than fusion food)
Myths of the Wine World #1: Winemakers Make Wine(Dwight Furrow, in debunking mode, at Edible Arts)
Myths of the Wine World #2: No Wine is Worth More than $100(Dwight Furrow, continues in debunking mode, at Edible Arts)
Nixtamalization: Chemistry and Nature in Sweet Hominy(Howard Miller, Aat An Eccentric Culinary History, on the history, chemistry, and processing of corn into nutritious masa and hominy)
Song of the Vine: A History of Wine(site accompanying an exhibition at Cornell University in 2008-2009)
SPIT Lab Finds How Saliva Shapes Taste(James Gaines, at Inside Science, on how Purdue’s Saliva, Perception, Ingestion, and Tongues Laboratory discovered that “taste influences diet, but diet might also influence taste“)
Wheat’s Complex Genome Finally Deciphered, Offering Hope for Better Harvests and Nonallergenic Varieties(Elizabeth Pennisi, in Science, on recent work by the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
A Perfect, and Perfectly Modern, Cookbook that Deserves to Be Reissued
Clippy Couture
Cooking the Books
Have We Reached a Fork in the Road for Food Criticism?
How Iconic Cookbooks Reflect the Politics of the World Around Them
How to Use Instagram to Reach New Readers Everyday
What is the Matter with Wine Metaphors?
When are You Getting a Real Job?
When Should You Write for Exposure? 5 Questions to Ask
Zadie Smith’s Rules for Writers

---- yet more blogs ----
Hummus Blog, The
Hot for Pots: The Archaeology of Food and Cooking

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs: 
Want to help On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it?
It’s easy. Whenever you plan to go shopping on Amazon, click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there will earn a commission for this newsletter without adding to your cost (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books).
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Paper)(Kindle)(these newsletters merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)

The Herbalist in the Kitchen(Hardcover)(Kindle)

The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Human Cuisine(Paper)(Kindle)

Herbs: A Global History(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Sausage: A Global History(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods (Hardcover)(Kindle)

Terms of Vegery(Kindle)

How to Serve Man: On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating(Kindle)

Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #216 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2018 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for September 2018

It’s corn season in the Hudson Valley.
We weren’t able to come up anything sufficiently corny to open this month’s updates (at least none that we haven’t posted before) so, we’ll just dive into update itself.
Our odd little food story, “Wheeling,” has been performed aloud (fortunately by real actors, not the author). You’ll find it among the podcast episodes at The Strange Recital’s site.  
The first draft of a novel (Future Tense: The Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past) has been completed and is out for comments from a few selected victims. Eventually, we’ll have to start thinking about what to do with it, publicationwise. Meanwhile, we’ll just let it ferment. Since we can’t bear to be without a writing project, we’ve been editing a collection of Dr Sanscravat’s scurrilous scribbles and begun sketching out the beginnings of yet another novel. 
An update from the non-fiction section: our latest book, Sauces Reconsidered: Àpres Escoffier, has passed through copy-editing and is off to the typesetter... it’s scheduled for release in December or January!
As Montesquieu said so pithily (and no, we haven’t begun typing with a lisp): “An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.”
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Something about maize inspires nostalgic quotes (these are from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food—not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother’s milk singing to your bloodstream. Dorothy Allison 

In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece. A.J. Liebling

Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie. Craig Claiborne

Gary
September, 2018
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Jonell Galloway & Cara De Silva), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

---- the new sites ----
12 German Sausages, From Brilliant to Wonderful(Jennifer Mcgavin takes the mystery out these meats at The Spruce Eats)
Archaeologists Discover Bread that Predates Agriculture by 4,000 Years(Heritage Daily reports on evidence—found by archaeologists of the University of Copenhagen—of Jordanian bread that is over fourteen thousand years old)
At Home at the Table(Amelia Pape’s tribute to Chez Panisse at Terroir Review)
Brief History of the Humble Indian Pickle, A(Culture Trip’s Kshitija P explores the past of these iconic dishes to ancient Persia)
Do You Eat Dog?(Soleil Ho, at Taste, on xenophobic racism in the very question)
Eater’s Digest(“a short and useful history of restaurant reviews,” from Carly DeFilippo, at Life & Thyme)
Enslaved Chefs Who Invented Southern Hospitality, The(Kelley Fanto Deetz, at zócalo: “By forgetting enslaved cooks’ pain to soothe our own, we erase the pride and the achievements of countless brilliant cooks who nourished a nation “)
Farming Invented Twice in the Middle East, Genomes Study Reveals(Ewen Callaway writes, for Scientific American, about recent archaeological DNA evidence collected in the Fertile Crescent)
FDA Outlook on Plant-Based ‘Milk’ Is Bleak: “An Almond Doesn’t Lactate”(Emma Betuel, at Inverse, on the dairy industry’s efforts to keep the official definitions of their products as narrow as possible)
Found: Evidence of Italy’s Oldest Olive Oil(Anne Ewbank, at Gastro Obscura, on recent analysis of a four-thousand-year-old jar from Sicily)
From Russia with Borscht(you can’t beet Alexander Lee’s article in History Today)
Hermeneutics of Mayo Haters, The(Dwight Furrow, at Edible Arts, on the disappearance of a once ubiquitous condiment)
Mediating Cultural Encounters at Sea: Dining in the Modern Cruise Industry(Shayan S. Lallani’s article in the Journal of Tourism History 9, follows historical and sociological developments in the cruise industry though the foods it serves)
New Worlder (there’s a lot more cooking in these two continents than just in America and Mexico)
Nourish(PBS TV series on traditional southern cooking, with scientist/cook Dr. Howard Conyers)
Plant Breeder Who Minted a New World of Flavor, The(Samantha Nobles-Block’s Gastro Obscura bio of inveterate taste-tinkerer Jim Westerfield)
Prehistoric People Started to Spread Domesticated Bananas Across the World 6,000 Years Ago(Chris Hunt and Rathnasiri Premathilake discuss the evidence at The Conversation)
Scientific Reason Why Some People Hate Cheese, The(according to Maxine Builder, at Extra Crispy, the answer is not in their stars... it’s in their genes)
Sugartime(Ruby Tandoh on several of the complex issues of sweetness, at Eater)
Vindication of Cheese, Butter, and Full-Fat Milk, The(James Hamblin pours on the butterfat in The Atlantic)
Weird New Fruits Could Hit Aisles Soon Thanks to Gene-Editing(Nicola Davis reports, in The Guardian, on some of the unusual things starting to happen in the GMO world)

---- changed URLs ----
CIA Menu Collection
Taste of History with Joyce White, A

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
American Entrée, The: A Menu Misnomer?
Country’s First Cookbook-Inspired Café Just Opened in Austin, The
Crowdsourcing Pleasures and Perils
How to Write a Book Without Losing Your Mind
“That Guy Who Won That Thing”: What Jonathan Gold Meant for Food Writing
This Bookstore is Stuffed with Just One Thing: Cookbooks
Why is Wine Talk Considered Pretentious?
Your Images Got Stolen—How to do a DMCA Takedown Notice

---- yet another blog ----
Flavors of Diaspora

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs: 

Want to help On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it?
It’s easy. Whenever you plan to go shopping on Amazon, click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there will earn a commission for this newsletter without adding to your cost (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books).
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)(Kindle)(these newsletters merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)

The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)(Kindle)

The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Human Cuisine
(Paper)(Kindle)

Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)(Kindle)

Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man: On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)

Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #215 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2018 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for August 2018

It’s tomato time in the Hudson Valley.
It’s also the dog days... and, for us, that means hot dogs. Speaking about what to put on one’s hot dog comes perilously close to bringing up religion and politics in mixed company... so we won’t go there. However, we’re going to be in Chicago soon, and will definitely side with locals on that issue.
The only thing worse would be to bring up the subject of pizza...
Last month, a little drinking story, “Tour Parisien,” found its way onto our blog. Another story, about someone with a different kind of appetite, “Across a Crowded Room,” showed up at the same place. Apparently, we’ve been in a fictitious mood of late (a disclaimer: the stories are definitely not autobiographical). We’ve also completed the first draft of our novel (it’s not autobiographical either, ’though it does contain some elements that might be recognizable as somewhat Dr Sanscravatish).
This, however, is not fiction: our latest book, Sauces Reconsidered: Àpres Escoffier, is finally in production... it’s scheduled for release in December or January!
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook, and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Some juicy quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatoes screaming.—Joseph Campbell 

It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.—Lewis Grizzard 

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can’t eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as “progress,” doesn't spread.—Andy Rooney 

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.—Peter Kay

Gary
August, 2018
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Dianne Jacob), thanks, and keep them coming!
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---- the new sites ----
Animal Domestication—Table of Dates and Places(K. Kris Hirst’s article at Thought & Co.)
Catering(Jan Whitaker’s article on race, gender, and the connections between restaurants and more peripatetic forms of foodservice)
Food(The Washington Post’s food section)
How to Steal 50 Million Bees(a not-so-sweet surprise from Josh Dean at Bloomberg News)
Is There Such a Thing as “American” Food?(Ruth Tobias reports on a Slow Food panel that discussed an issue that hasn’t been resolved since Sidney Mintz first raised it)
Justice Among the Jell-O Recipes: The Feminist History of Food Journalism(Suzanne Cope writes, in the LA Review of Books, about the progressive ideals that emerged from food journalism in the days before men even considered doing it)
Pasta Project, The(regional types and recipes)
Plant Domestication—Table of Dates and Places of Human Farming Advances(K. Kris Hirst’s article at Thought & Co.)
Queer Food Is Hiding in Plain Sight(sometimes discrete, sometimes flamboyantly obvious; Kyle Fitzpatrick dishes on dishes for Eater)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers ----
5 Podcasts for Food Editors to Gobble Up
Amazing Stock Photography
Baby Wife
Is Copy Editing Necessary?
Meet the 26-Year-Old James Beard Award Winner Reinventing Food Writing
Pitching and Moaning: A Guide to Submitting Your Writing
Someone Stole My Pictures Online. Now What? Here are Some Options
Writing for Blogs versus Writing Online Articles
Writing Wisdom from Anne Carson: “It is Very Fun to Delete Stuff”

---- yet another blog ----
Korsha Wilson

---- that’s all for now ----
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The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #214 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2018 by Gary Allen.

Tour Parisien

Oh dear, I’m not sure exactly when it was—sometime back in the mid-sixties, I suppose—while I was on location, shooting a film in France. I played a middle-aged society matron, traveling on a tramp steamer that was stranded for a few days in some de classé French port. The very idea was preposterous, of course, but this was before Hollywood had discovered cinema verité, or even, it seems, the notion that a plot needed to make some sort of sense.Nonetheless, there we were, ensconced in a Paris that was still quintessentially French. Why were we in Paris, when our film was set in an unnamed seaport? Who knows? No doubt—entre nous, mon cherie—the director required the sort of amenities that simply could not be found in a working-class town. A decent hotel, preferably free of the usual vermin; restaurants that served something better than the sort of things merchant sailors might eat while on shore-leave; le shopping—you know: haut monde, civilization. Whatever his reasons, we were in Paris, and had to make the best of it.That meant shooting early in the morning, to capture the moody half-light, and to avoid the crowds of tourists that somehow appeared, apre-midi, everyday. It was hell, naturellement, getting up that ungodly hour—but one does what one must for the sake of her art. It was a job, and—frankly—paying jobs don’t come along that often for those of use who can no longer pretend to be ingénues.While walking from my hotel to our location, along the Boulevard Saint-Germain, I caught a glimpse of myself, reflected in a store window. That visage seemed to be just a bit wan, even faded—and could do with a little pick-me-up. Un café—and just a soupçon of Pernod—seemed just the thing. I was right, of course, and—once refreshed—the morning’s shoot went off without a hitch. Having completed my day’s labors, all two hours of them, I was left with the question of what to do with the time before dinner and the viewing of the dailies. I was a bit thirsty, so I thought I’d look around for a Tab (we girls must watch our figures, you know), and possibly take in some of the sights, possibly absorb a bit of local color.Heading back up the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the general direction of the Latin Quarter, I stopped to chat with Aristide—the maitre d’ of a little restaurant where I’d been having my dinners (at least when I wasn’t required to dine with my colleagues from the film). The restaurant, naturellement, was not yet open—and Aristide was relaxing with Le Figaro, le tabac, and un armagnac. Filthy French habits, of course, but when in France… so I sat beside him, with my own tumbler of brandy. I noticed that his tight black boots sat on the chair beside him, while his black-stockinged toes rejoiced in liberté under the tiny table. He grumbled about the rich American tourists who were ruining his beloved neighborhood—missing entirely the quintessential irony of the situation: the fact that American dollars paid his salary, or that his only listener, an American woman (not wealthy, but certainly not impoverished, either), was sharing his table. It would have been tres gauche to remind him of the obvious truth—that Americans had saved the derrieres of the French in not one, but two world wars—not that I would ever be so tactless. No, we chatted amiably of this and that, and after saying our au revoirs, I went on my way. I chanced to glance back, and there he was—still muttering in his little cloud of Gauloise-blue smoke, his bootless toes gesturing emphatically to an audience of pigeons. Quel drôle!Along the way, I saw a couple of boulangers at a nickel-topped bar—their work, like mine, done for the day—enjoying some garlicky parslied moules with a tall bottle of wine from the Loire. This seemed like an eminently sensible thing to do, so I joined them. Well, I didn’t actually join them—as they ignored my presence completely (apparently they weren’t admirateurs du cinemá, and didn’t recognize me)—but I did stand at the bar beside them. This was just as well, since Aristide had provided more than enough conversation for a while—allowing me to devote my full attention to the crisp, slightly floral, wine.After that, I was feeling just a tad… not drunk, mind you… but somewhat more “malleable” than is expected in a distinguished woman of my age. The prudence that comes with experience suggested that some caffeine might be in order. So I wandered about a bit, until I found a place to get some coffee—and a bite or two of patisserie (reasoning that the brasserie’s plate of mussels had done little to absorb the alcohol in that bottle of Sevre et Maine).An espresso—and a couple of Napoleons—later, and I had nearly restored my usual dignity, but I found that it was mixed with a certain savoire-vivre, an almost celebratory mood. A mood that called for champagne. 

Fortunately, Paris is the sort of town where champagne is readily available. Thinking to myself, “How singularly à propos,” I ordered a magnum of La Grande Dame. Given my festive mood, I suppose it didn’t occur to me that there was no one with whom to share that immense black bottle. Once opened, of course, it would only go flat—a terrible thing to happen to such wonderful champagne—so I drank it.For some reason, the details of what happened afterwards are somewhat hazy. Someone must have recognized me for the celebrity I was, and—realizing that there was only one American film crew in Paris—delivered me back to our location. This was doubly fortunate, for not only did this spare me from any public embarrassment that might have resulted from my tour Parisien, but the film’s commissary was the only place in Paris where one could find a can of Tab.