Gary Allen's Blog, page 15

The Perception of Perception

Waking in the morning: my eyes are not yet opened, but sounds arrive, unbidden. A distant sound, barely perceptible at first, draws my attention, and I fix my ears’ powers upon it, they go out to it, probing, turning up the volume on just it, and ignoring every other ambient sound. Ahhh… it’s just a squirrel trying, without success, to get into the bird feeder. The ears snap back onto the side of my head, and the sound’s volume drops to irrelevancy.One eyelid lifts reluctantly, allowing light to stream in, and slams shut. I open both eyes. At once, my senses stop being passive receivers of messages from the parts of the universe that aren’t me. My eyes stop being mere recipients of reflected light waves. They flit about the room, going out to caress and minutely examine tiny bumps on the ceiling, a spot of dappled light on the dresser. They do not idly collect visual data that just happens to be flowing toward them. They actively seine it in, picking through it for meaningful details. They ignore everything that is routine, ordinary. It’s as if only the noteworthy bits are even visible. Eyes can’t be bothered with what they’ve seen a million times before.Scientists tell us that none of this is actually happening. They say our senses merely respond to stimuli that surround me, but that’s not at all what it seems like. 
I never feel like a passive receiver. Rather, I am an all-powerful omniscient observer, situated at the exact center of the Universe. Attuned to its slightest variations, I am able to reach out and extract their meaning, instantly. A telescope, microscope, and microphone are merely extensions of my senses—and, like them, flow out of me to collect whatever data I require.

Food Sites for January 2016

A lone winter apple, a treat for gleaning birds.

January is about beginning anew, returning to fundamentals, enjoying simple things after all the holiday excesses. What could be more basic than apple pie? After all, don’t we begin the alphabet with “A is for Apple?” Byron clearly associated the fruit with beginnings: “Since Eve ate apples...”
Last month we posted a couple of new articles. Roll Magazine published “Moors and Christians: Comfort Food for an Uncomfortable Season,” on serving the musical fruit, indoors. “Remembrance of Shellfish Past,”  a travel reminiscence of sorts, appeared in Modern Salt.
We also completed the index and final edits to our latest book ( Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods ), due for publication in May. WHEW!
Regular subscribers to our updates newsletter receive these updates from our blog, Just Served,  directly—but there is much more at the blog that isn’t delivered automatically. 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.
This month’s quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection) are—quelle surprise!—about baked apples:

“I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream... I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.” Mark Twain 

“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.” Jane Austen 

“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” Carl Sagan

GaryJanuary, 2016
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 of you who have introduced us to sites like the ones in this newsletter (such as Krishnendu Ray), 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 ----
Chinese Food and the Joy of Inauthentic Cooking(Hua Hsu in the New Yorker)
CIA Menu Collection(from the archives of The Culinary Institute of America)
Cocktail at the End of the Universe, The(visiting nerd bars, “in search of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, an imaginary 1970’s cocktail from space”)
End of Craft Beer, The(Matthew Giles, at Grub Street, on the current—and future—state of “artisanal-small-independent” breweries)
How Horror Star Vincent Price Eerily Predicted America’s Culinary Future(a movie star’s travel/cook book pre-dated Time-Life’s Foods of the World series by three years, making ordinary Americans’ culinary options less provincial)
How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution(Moises Velasquez-Manoff, writing in Nautilus, on what microbiologists are beginning to learn about the friendly “germs” that should be living in our guts—and what happens when they aren’t)
Modern Salt (lovely new magazine from Great Britain, but featuring food writers from all over; mostly online, with occasional printed editions planned)
Sex, Death and Mushrooms(Helen MacDonald, in The New York Times, on foraging for fungi in the English countryside)
Spice That Built Venice, The(Jack Turner, at Smithsonian, on the medieval pepper trade)
Taste, Toil and Ethnicity(Krishnendu Ray, at Huffpost, on the relationship between the food industry’s largely immigrant workforce and changing mainstream attitudes about “taste”)
Unusual Coleslaw(recipes from South Australian community cookbooks)
What to Eat in France: The History of Sauce(an excerpt from a book-in-progress by Jonell Galloway)
Who Owns Southern Food?(Andrea King Collier—at National Geographic’s blog, The Plate—hopes to “...begin a real conversation about race, culture and food in this country...”)
Why We Took Cocaine Out of Soda(short answer: racism)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful) site for writers/bloggers ----
3 Reasons Why Great Writers Always Work Alone
Case of the Disappearing Editor, The
Dear Authors, I’m Sorry
Freelance Isn’t Free!
How to Build an Author Platform Through Email Lists
How to Start a Food Blog: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide
Importance of Feedback, The
Lost Art of Letter-Writing, The
Self-Editing Basics: 10 Simple Ways to Edit Your Own Book
Twitter Tips for Authors
Watch What Happens When You Ask Non-Creative Professionals to Work for Free
What Does a Literary Agent Want to See When They Google You?
Writers, We Need to Stop Saying This
You Elitist, Supercilious, Condescending, Snob!

---- more blogs ----
Becky Diamond
Culinaria Eugenius
Little Library Café, The

---- changed URL ----
Pass the Garum

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
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 support On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it? 
It’s easy. Whenever you want to shop on Amazon (think last-minute holiday shopping), click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there will earn a commission for this newsletter (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books).
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)(Kindle)
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 (pre-order)(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 #183” 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 (c) 2016 by Gary Allen.

The Bottom Line

I recently took a business class. I know—that seems completely out of character, but try to get past that for a moment.The instructor started by asking if any of the students had their own businesses. A couple of them did, and while I was tempted to join them, I held back. I suspected that they wouldn’t consider my writing to be a real business (even if the IRS does). The instructor asked each of the responding proprietors if they considered themselves to be successful. They did. He then followed up with questions that tried to better define their ideas of what constituted “success.” No matter how they responded, he managed to reduce the idea of success to just one aspect: increased revenue.I sat back in my chair, relieved to discover that resisting the opportunity to join in had been the right move. For one thing, reducing what I do, as a writer, to the accumulation of “increased revenue” would either be laughable or severely depressing. There was no way that the class, or its instructor, could possibly think that my “business” was successful. What could I possibly gain by exposing myself to such ridicule? And yet, I do consider my writing business to be successful. How would I have been able to explain that seeming incongruity?Perhaps (since I’m a writer) I might employ a metaphor. Consider two hypothetical travelers: both need to get from Point A to Point B. For one traveler, the destination is everything. Using the most efficient available means of transport makes sense for that traveler, because the trip is just an inconvenient delay that must be endured before arrival at Point B. Anything that renders the trip uneventful is preferred (because “events,” by their very nature, are distractions). We’ve seen many such travelers at airports; their tiny carry-ons allowing them to zip through TSA screening, and avoid needlessly waiting for luggage to arrive at their destination. They look straight ahead, as if their goal was almost visible, just over the horizon. If our first traveler does not reach Point B, then the trip is a failure.Our other hypothetical traveler also needs to get to Point B, but the destination isn’t the only consideration. Instead of flying from airports, all of which are as mind-deadeningly identical as a mall, this traveler prefers to take to the road. Cars, bicycles, or hiking boots are the preferred modes of transportation. This traveler’s eyes are on the horizon too, but also along both s ides of the road, into the woods, and up and down each river that is crossed. Whereas one traveler wishes to deny the existence of the distance between two points, the other want to experience every bit of it. For the second traveler, the trip is not an inconvenient delay in attaining the goal, it is part of the goal. If the second traveler doesn’t get to Point B, it would not be a failure, because the trip itself had provided rewards all along the way.Efficiency drives one traveler, experience drives the other. Rather than extend the metaphor far beyond its breaking point, let’s just agree that the point of most businesses is the acquisition of money—money that, presumably, can be used to pay for whatever makes the business owner happy. So, in a sense, the business itself is an inconvenience that stands between one and one’s goal.For me, every part of the writing process makes the trip worth it: the original concept, the research, the blocking out and subsequent re-arranging of the parts, the search for the right combination of words, the surprise when a near-synonym reveals additional unexpected insight, overcoming difficulties along the way, re-working the piece’s to clarify its argument, even the dialogue with readers who find unintended meanings I hadn’t known were there—both good and bad. 
This writing “business” could, in theory, be used to fund some other desired reward—but that would just be an extra perk. Obviously, I prefer to be paid for my work but, even when I don’t get a check, the writing itself pays me. It all comes down to semantics and varying definitions of “business” and “success”—differences that would probably be nonsensical to the instructor and everyone else in that classroom.

Food Sites for December 2015

Uncracked (and virtually uncrackable) black walnuts, Juglans nigra

The holiday season looms before us, so this month’s issue is served early. It’s a big one, so we wanted to give you a chance to digest it before the serious eating and drinking begins.
Regular subscribers to our updates newsletter receive these updates from our blog, Just Served, directly—but there is much more at the blog that isn’t delivered automatically. Last month the blog featured an update on an article that had previously appeared in Roll Magazine. “Seeing Red Redux,” dishes H. Allen Smith’s literary trash talk concerning another’s pretence to chili greatness.
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.
This month’s quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection) are hot stuff:

 “It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’ve done, or think you can do. There's a confrontation with destiny awaiting you. Somewhere, there is a chile you cannot eat.” Daniel Pinkwater 

“Next to jazz music, there is nothing that lifts the spirit and strengthens the soul more than a good bowl of chili.” Harry James

 “Chili represents your three stages of matter: solid, liquid, and eventually gas.” character Dan Conner, on Roseanne 

“Wish I had time for just one more bowl of chili.” Kit Carson’s last words

December, 2015
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 of you who have introduced us to sites like the ones in this newsletter (such as Ken Albala), 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 ----
Accounting for Taste(The New Yorker’s Nicola Twilley on Charles Spence’s experiments using our other senses to change our perception of flavor)
Archive of Eating, The(a New York Times article, by Bee Wilson, about Barbara Ketcham Wheaton’s database of ancient recipes)
At the Getty Museum, Outrageous Menus of Centuries Past(Judith H. Dobrzynski, in The New York Times, on Getty’s exhibit, “The Edible Monument: The Art of Food for Festivals”)
Betty Crocker’s Absurd, Gorgeous Atomic-Age Creations(Tamar Adler, in The New York Times, on the politics and psychology behind all those dishes that seem ridiculous to us, now)
Chemistry Teacher’s Guide to the Perfect Cup of Coffee, A(The Guardian’s Andy Brunning has the jitters about bitterness)
Craft Beer Is Booming, but Some Brewers Worry About the Future(Vikas Bajaj, in The New York Times, is concerned about the effect mergers will have on distribution of artisanal brews)
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: Food in the Middle Ages and Renaissance(an exhibit at the Getty Museum)
Endangered Apples: Help Save Britain’s Rare Varieties(The Guardian’s Felicity Cloake on ignored heirloom varieties)
Food Studies is Not as Frivolous as You Might Think(Kristin Reynolds and Julian Agyeman on societal benefits of food studies programs)
Gastronomy Books(selected rare books in the Library of Congress collection)
Guide to the Chilies of Mexico, The(Lucky Peach’s guide, by Alex Stupak & Jordana Rothman, authors of Tacos: Recipes and Provocations)
How and Why You Should be Making Blood Sausage at Home(Bryan Mayer celebrates his inner vampire at Food Republic)
In Defense of the True ’Cue(the gospel—of North Carolina BBQ—according to Calvin Trillin, in The New Yorker)
Is Wine Flavor in the Wine or in the Mind (Part 1)Is Wine Flavor in the Wine or in the Mind (Part 2)(Dwight Furrow’s efforts to separate the subjective from the objective in wine tasting)
Jewish Meals in Antiquity(Jordan D. Rosenblum draws upon archaeological and textual evidence)
Mark Twain–Recipes from a Little Bill of Fare(Tori Avey on Twain’s nostalgic longing for familiar American dishes while traveling in Europe)
Museum of Food and Drink Takes a Look at Flavor(William Grimes, in The New York Times, reports on an exhibit about flavor chemistry)
Neurogastronomy 101: The Science of Taste Perception(Eater’s Susmita Bara on the collaboration between chefs, food technologists, and scientists to better understand how we perceive taste, in order to improve our food, both aesthetically and nutritionally)
Pumpkins and Cabbages(vegetable puns and metaphors in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor)
Reconstructing Medieval Bread(Ken Albala digs through the archives of the J. Paul Getty Museum)
Sexism in the Kitchen(Jen Agg, in The New York Times, on the “testosterone-fueled environment” that continues to exist in professional kitchens)
Tasting a Flavor that Doesn’t Exist(Jenny Chen, in Atlantic, on how some aromas can make us perceive tastes, even when they missing)
To Help Feed Billions of People, Scientists Braved the Snake-Infested and Croc-Filled Swamps of Northern Australia in Search of Rice(Lisa M. Hamilton, in The California Sunday Magazine, on the perils of looking into the early history of Oryza sativa)
Uncovering the Myths of the “Founding Mother” Cuisine: A Few Words about England, Africa, and a Bibliography(southern cooking has been the darling of American food lately, which has led to much speculation about the role of African cooking in the creation of U.S. “cuisine;” Cynthia Bertelsen is trying to sort out the issues involved)
USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection(searchable database of 7584 images of fruits, created between 1886 and 1942)
What is Black Garlic?(Dr. Arielle Johnson tells what it is—and what it isn’t—at Lucky Peach)
You Asked: Should I Count Calories?(Markham Heid, in Time: not all calories are created equal)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful) site for writers/bloggers ----
12 Struggles Only People Who Work from Home Truly Understand
British Library Offers Over 1 Million Free Vintage Images for Download
Is Your Food Blog Good Enough for a Beard Award?
Why I Write for Free
Why the Battle Between E-Books and Print May be Over
Why This Food Writer Refuses to Review Street Vendors
Your First Book is Finished and Published! Now What? (Do’s and Don’ts

---- more blogs ----
Art of Food
cooking with bruce and mark

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
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 support On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it? 
It’s easy. Whenever you want to shop on Amazon. Com, click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there will earn a commission for this newsletter (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books).
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)(Kindle)
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 (pre-order)(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 #182 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 (c) 2015 by Gary Allen.

Seeing Red Redux

We’ve written elsewhere about how varying opinions concerning the hows, what-nots, why-nots, and wherefores of chili con carne have led to some—what’s a polite way to describe it—intense ego-driven battles. In case you missed that column—or are too damned lazy to follow the link—allow me provide some background. I’ll see your laziness and raise you this (not coincidently saving me the trouble of writing it anew):In 1967, a humorist named H. Allen Smith—who lived in (of all places) New York's Westchester County—published an article in Holiday magazine, in which he puffed up his chest and bragged, “Nobody knows more about chili than I do.” As you might imagine, many chili aficionados, some of them native Texans, took wholly justified umbrage with that Yankee disrespect.One irate Texan, Frank X. Tolbert, had recently published the very first book about chili: A Bowl of Red . Tolbert was a popular columnist at the Dallas Morning News. A reader of his “Tolbert’s Texas” column protested that no self-respecting Texan should ever allow an insult of that magnitude to stand unchallenged. He urged Tolbert’s friend Wick Fowler -- creator of Wick's Two-Alarm Chili mix -- to defend the Lone Star State against this revival of the War of Northern Aggression. The resulting show-down (that – surely a mere coincidence -- served as a promotional stunt for A Bowl of Red) was the world's first Chili Cook-Off. Some 250 people showed up to watch the two-man firefight in the small, but dusty, town of Terlingua. Smith made the classic mistake of bringing a ladle to a gunfight. Fowler, with characteristically understated Texan savoir faire, competed in the shade of an immense sombrero. Everyone expected the locale to have given the home-field advantage to Fowler. However, when the dust (and/or flatulence) cleared, the result was a draw.We’ve since learned that the Smith/Fowler pot was stirred by more than Smith’s first chili boast. About the same time as Smith waved his red cape in Fowler’s face, he also wrote a book, a book that, we are led to believe, was not about chili at all. It was about a cat.Much like this article, Smith’s book was a sequel. His earlier book, Rhubarb (1946), was about a wild and cantankerous feline that managed to inherit a huge fortune from an equally cantankerous benefactor. Part of the cat’s inheritance, and the bulk of the story, was a losing New York baseball that was affectionately known to its fans as “The Loonies.” The cat, of course, turned the team into a winner.But we digress.Smith’s sequel, Son of Rhubarb , came out in 1967. The fact that it was published in the same year as his Holiday article—and in the year following the publication of Fowler’s A Bowl of Red, might just seem to be a coincidence. Unless we read it.The book opens with the demise of Rhubarb, followed immediately by the scramble of all sorts of unscrupulous individuals for the cat’s millions—all of whom are glad that there was no heir. Unless there was one…The rest of the book involves the search for that heir, and—lest you think that this digression has gone on too long, and that we’ve lost the thread completely—takes us from New York to…Wait for it…Texas.And not just any part of Texas, but a ranch called Bowlared, owned by someone named Petticoats Kockamaney (who, like Fowler, had made his fortune selling chili powder). Kockamaney’s was not just any chili powder,; it was made of a secret blend of spices that acted like Viagra on those who ate it. This was a nod to an old O. Henry story, “The Enchanted Kiss,” which—not coincidentally—was the first literary mention of chili con carne. In the O. Henry story, Mexican women, called “chili queens,” purveyed their bowls of red on the darkened Military Plaza of San Antonio. Their fragrant dishes gave one certain life-affirming powers—but only if prepared with one very unusual ingredient. Kockamaney’s chili powder also had a special ingredient, but we’ll keep both secrets (so as not to spoil the surprises). Kockamaney protected his secret recipe, and secret stash, with the help of a small army of former Hell’s Angels he called his “Chili Queens,” who—despite their collective name—are “no more’n thirty-three and a third per cent” queer. This was, you understand, 1967, when “queer” was still used as a pejorative; hell, it might still be, in Good Ol’ Boy Texas.Just to make sure we readers know who was doing the boasting and cow-pie tossing, Smith frequently appeared in his own book, portrayed as an incredibly suave, handsome, and omnipotent savior, who showed up—miraculously—whenever he was most needed.We never get to see the white hat Smith must have been wearing (or his smirk, thinking about Fowler’s reaction to the book).ReferencesSmith, H. Allen. “Nobody Knows More About Chili Than I Do.” Holiday 42:68-9, August 1967.
Rhubarb, Country Life Press: New York, 1946.
Son of Rhubarb. New York: Trident Press, 1967
Tolbert, Frank X. A Bowl of Red. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

Food Sites for November 2015

Cape Cod White (or Eastham) Turnip.

Since Thanksgiving is soon to be upon many of us in the food blogging community, we thought we should share this.
You know, for perspective.
Since our latest book, Sausage: A Global History, was finally released, we published a couple of utterly self-serving articles in support of it: “Prepare Yourself for the Wurst,” and “Not Really a Book Review,” both at Roll Magazine. 
Our next book, Can It! The Pleasures and Perils of Preserving Foods, is already edited and in production. It should be out in 2016.
Regular subscribers to our updates newsletter receive these updates from our blog, Just Served,  directly—but there is much more at the blog that isn’t delivered automatically. Last month, for example, the blog featured a guest post by Joel Denker: The Carrot Quest. It’s adapted from the Introduction to his new book, The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat .
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.
This month’s quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection) is utterly and unapologetically arbitrary:

“…whether we are conspicuously eating well, or conspicuously depriving ourselves and others, we mark ourselves off—either as having more than anyone else, or less; and either is made a virtue...” Robin Fox 

“Food writing shouldn’t be precious, pretentious, or condescending. Just because you know what confit means doesn’t make you a better person.” Adam Roberts 

“Sometimes I think I’m liquefying like an old Camembert.” Gustave Flaubert 

“Pythagoras might have [had] calmer sleeps, if he [had] totally abstained from beans.” Sir Thomas Browne

GaryNovember, 2015
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 of you who have introduced us to sites like the ones in this newsletter (such as Fabio Parasecoli), 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 Food Idioms in Other Languages(tasty tidbits from Oxford Dictionaries)
Carbon Footprint of Eating Out, The(Chris Ying compares, at Lucky Peach, the environmental impact of eating in restaurants vs. home-cooked meals)
Diaspora of Spam, The(Evelyn Kim, a guest curator at The New York Academy of Medicine, on the all-too-familiar brick of meat in a can)
Diet Fads are Destroying Us: Paleo, Gluten-Free and the Lies We Tell Ourselves(an interview—with Alan Levinovitz, in Salon—on the purpose and function of popular food choices, disguised as science, that are actually irrational)
Economic History of Leftovers, An(Atlantic’s Helen Veit plots the rise and fall—and rise—of popularity of recycled meals against changes in technology, economy, and environmental awareness)
For Decades, the Government Steered Millions Away from Whole Milk. Was that Wrong?(Peter Whoriskey questions official dogma in The Washington Post—bring on the butterfat!)
Fried Eggs with Jam? A Short History of the USSR Through its Food(An excerpt from The CCCP Cook Book: True Stories of Soviet Cuisine, by Olga Syutkin and Pavel Syutkin)
History of Poland’s National Obsession with Open Sandwiches, A(Magdalena Kasprzyk–Chevriaux, on the transition from French hors d'oeuvres to Polish everyday food)
How Early Cookbooks Sparked a Lifestyle Revolution(how Platina—and printing—changed everything; Christine Baumgarthuber explains in The New Inquiry)
Is “Food Porn” Making Us Fat?(Trevor Baker looks at new scientific evidence, in The Guardian, that casts blame for obesity on—wait for it—food writers & photographers)
Modern Cooking & the Erice Workshops on Molecular & Physical Gastronomy (Harold McGee on the origins of so-called “molecular gastronomy”)
Mushroom that Explains the World, The(Jedediah Purdy’s review of Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World in New Republic; fungi as metaphor for an economics of decay)
Photogrammar(searchable database of 170,000 WPA-era photos taken between 1935 and 1945, almost all public domain)
Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army(an excerpt from Ted Merwin’s book, Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli )
Sexism of American Kitchen Design, The(Rachel Z. Arndt, in The Atlantic, on the causes and effects of standardization)
Snobs, Critics, and Wine Lovers(Dwight Furrow: “…wine lovers seek experience, wine snobs seek approval”)
Way to Kill a Complex City is to Chase Out All the Poor People—and Their Food, The(Samantha Gillison’s lament over lost luncheonettes and the glories of a simpler—and cheaper—past, in The Guardian)
What do Real Italians think about New York’s Italian Food?(Rose Hackman, in The Guardian, finds much of it pretty hard to swallow)
What Ever Happened to Turtle Soup?(Jack Hitt’s article, in Saveur, about an old-time classic that is now nearly forgotten)
When Food Changed History: The French Revolution(Lisa Bramen, about two simultaneous revolutions, in The Smithsonian)

---- inspirational (or otherwise useful) site for writers/bloggers ----
30 Food Photography Tips for Bloggers: The Ultimate Guide
Why Have Digital Books Stopped Evolving?
Written Recipes Undergo a Makeover

---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
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 support On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it? 
It’s easy. Whenever you want to shop on Amazon. Com, click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there will earn a commission for this newsletter (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books).
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)(Kindle)
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)
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 #181” 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 (c) 2015 by Gary Allen.

Neon

Around nineteen-sixty-one or two, I showed one of my poems (I was very young, and still wrote poetry) to Mr. Grant, a favorite teacher—a man who mentored me long after I had been just one of his many pupils. He was, himself, a poet, and I respected his opinion over all others.I no longer remember much about the poem, but I recall that I had used “neon” as a metaphor for something ineffably beautiful. I was stunned when he told me I needed to change that specific word. He said it was wrong, that it sent the wrong message because it had such negative connotations. At the time I couldn’t understand his objection.For me, “neon” suggested glowing brilliance, the sort of thing that turns urban wet pavements, at night, into magical vistas, replacing the mundane horizontality of the daytime world into a maelstrom of swirling color, one that is limited by neither top nor bottom, but simply is, in omnipresent glory. For him, the word had only one meaning: “tawdry.”I know, now, why he felt that way: he grew up in a different time, in a different cultural context. Our conversation was an example of generational language differences. Imagine a confrontation between a painter of the Ashcan School and a Pop artist. Both look at the ordinary world, and portray it as they see it—but they see it through very different eyes. One wants to reveal the squalor of ordinary life, while the other celebrates the sheer exuberance of it. Both, in effect, preach to the art-buying intelligentsia, the sort of people who don’t live in anything like the worlds they paint—but their sermons couldn’t be more different. Warhol might understand the Glackens' point-of-view—intellectually, if not viscerally—but Glackens would be mystified by Warhol.Jacob Riis spoke to one generation, Tom Wolfe to the other. The city of one smelled of stale cabbage and trash, the other of incense and hashish.I was still writing in the JFK era—before my generation had found its modus operandi—but the language we would eventually need was already evolving. Before the decade was out “neon,” and all it implied to the adolescent me, would epitomize the very spirit of the psychedelic generation.I hadn’t understood Mr. Grant’s objection because I didn’t realize that we weren’t speaking the same language. Dylan had not yet written “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” but they already were. Will this be a lesson we will apply in trying to communicate with the next generations?It seems unlikely.

The Carrot Quest

A guest post by Joel S. Denker:


The familiar orange carrot was once an oddity. It is just a little more than four hundred years old. The purple carrot, originally domesticated in Afghanistan in 900 A.D., was dominant until the orange root was bred by Dutch gardeners in the 1600s. As surprising as this tale is, its uncovering is equally intriguing. Scouring paintings in the Louvre and other museums during the 1950s, an unsung Dutch agronomist made a stunning discovery about the change in the carrot’s color. By the seventeenth century, he observed, the orange carrot was becoming more prominent in the still life paintings of his homeland. The story of the carrot is just one of the hidden tales my book, The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, recounts. Like the carrot, most of the foods we eat have reached us only after traveling a long, intricate path, with many twists and turns along the way. I explore how a wide range of ingredients, from artichokes to strawberries, were in different locations invested with new meaning. They acquired not only culinary significance but also ceremonial, medicinal, and economic importance. Foods were variously relished, revered, and reviled.I took many foods, common and unusual, for granted. Determined to overcome my complacency, I began the quest out of which this book was created. The carrot was one of my early subjects. When my wife, Peggy, urged me to dig into its story, I first resisted, wondering how such an ordinary vegetable could be of any interest. As I delved into its history, I was surprised to learn of the carrot’s beginnings as a purple root. When I shared my discovery with friends, they were also tantalized. I presented the results of my investigation to an annual meeting of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The audience of historians, cooks, gardeners, and culinary amateurs reacted with enthusiasm. I was spurred to continue.It is easy to forget that commonplace foods were once mystifying. Fernandez de Oviedo, the sixteenth century Spanish traveler, groped for ways to describe the alien avocado. “In the center of a fruit is a seed like a peeled chestnut.” Its paste, he observed, was “similar to butter.” Since the avocado resembled a pear, the Spaniard recommended enjoying it with a pear.The tomato, a recent import to Italy from Spain, puzzled the Italian physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli. It is another “species of eggplant,” he reported. In the Middle East, the banana, which was probably carried there from India by Arab traders, piqued the curiosity of Crusaders in the Holy Land. “There is also another fruit called apples of Paradise,” wrote Burchard of Mt. Zion in 1282. “It grows like a bunch of grapes, having many grains (fruits)…. These grains are oblong in shape, sometimes six fingers and thick as a hen’s egg.”Before strange foods became ordinary and commonplace, people had to overcome their visceral distaste for them. One of those reviled was the cucumber. “Raw cucumber makes the churchyards prosperous.” As this sixteenth century English saying suggests, the cucumber once raised the specter of death. Scientific opinion and popular prejudice combined to give the gourd a fearsome quality. “It has been a common saying of physicians in England that a cucumber should be well sliced and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing,” Samuel Johnson wrote. Culinary authorities would also be dismissive. Isabella Beeton, the Victorian food writer, wrote that a “cucumber is a cold food and difficult of digestion when eaten raw.” She added that “delicate stomachs should avoid the plant, for it is cold and indigestible.” Some herbs and spices, now in fashion, only slowly came into vogue when distaste for them faded. Coriander, whose leaves perk up Mexican, Indian, and Thai cooking, was once dubbed the “stinking herbe.” Older commentators compared its scent to that of the stink bug. Modern food opinion was also initially disdainful. Food anthropologist Margaret Visser suggests that the “green leaves of the plant are said to smell like squashed bed-bugs.”Foods were also surrounded by superstitions and taboos. The eggplant was viewed suspiciously from its earliest days. In Spain, it was not only viewed as a “semitic” food but also as a carrier of ills. Wherever the eggplant migrated, feelings of dread followed. The Moors in Spain, the story went, planted the poisonous vegetable in order to kill Christians. In Italy, where it was transported by Arab traders, the eggplant was called melanzane, from the Latin mala insana, or mad apple. A host of maladies were imputed to it. Castore Durante, the sixteenth century physician, blamed melancholy, cancer, leprosy, and headaches on eating eggplant.Even in the Middle East, where it would be passionately embraced, it was originally disdained. In his book on poisons, Ibn Washiya, an Arab toxicologist, declared the raw vegetable poisonous. “Its color is like the scorpion’s belly and its taste is like the scorpion’s sting,” according to an eleventh century Bedouin saying, cited by food scholar Charles Perry.Conversely, foods, especially those invested with sacred symbolism, could also inspire wonder and awe. In ritual, ceremony, and primal rites, they gave a larger meaning to life. The crimson pomegranate was a symbol of holiness, fertility, and abundance. Both the Jews and the early Christians were devoted to the fruit. Renaissance painters who linked the pomegranate to the Christ child made it a religious motif.Just as food plants could be sacramental, they could also be denounced by the religious establishment. Coffee, which had become a popular drink in the Islamic coffeehouses, threatened clerics. Fearful that these new venues would lure their flocks away from the mosque, the imams tried to stamp them out.Even in Christian Europe, coffee was greeted warily. Catholic priests attacked the “hellish black brew,” a drink they considered only fit for Muslims. They failed to persuade Pope Clement VII, who, in the early 1600s rejected their entreaties: “We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it,” he declared.Food was also the raw material for myths and legends. Treasured by many as an auspicious fruit, the pomegranate took on darker tones in Greek myth. The goddess Persephone, who was spirited away to the underworld by Hades, the lord of the lower depths, was tempted to eat a “honey sweet” pomegranate seed. As a consequence, she was condemned to stay underground during the winter months and only ascend to earth in the spring. Many plants were esteemed as much for their curative powers as for their culinary attractions. Before it was transformed into an everyday food, celery, for example, was valued for its restorative seeds and leaves. Its bitterness and pungent fragrance, which have been largely bred out of the modern vegetable, made “water parsley” a popular medicine. The plant was hung in the rooms of ancient Greeks suffering severe illnesses. Years later in England, the herbalist Nicholas Culpepper praised celery as a tonic: The plant was “one of the herbs which is eaten in the spring to sweeten and purify the blood.”Celery never completely lost its medicinal aura. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, a center of vegetable cultivation in the late nineteenth century, companies marketed celery palliatives. Kalamazoo Celery and Sarsparilla Compound was promoted as a cure for “fever … all forms of nervousness, headache, and neuralgia … and female complaints.” Food played another important role, as a symbol of social distinction. The wealthy, for example, ostentatiously displayed exotic fruits as signs of status. The regal pineapple was a centerpiece at dinner tables on English estates and depicted on Wedgewood china, sugar bowls, and teapots. The gentry grew luxurious pineapples in “pineries” (hot houses) during the cold months. Similarly, French royals prominently housed evergreen trees bearing oranges in fancy enclosures called orangeries.On the other hand, in many cultures, some foods were assigned a lower status. Lentils, the “poor man’s meat,” may be fashionable today, but in the past were often associated with the plebeian classes. This was the image of the common legume in ancient Greece: “When you cook lentil soup, don’t add perfume,” Jocasta says in the play Phoenician Women. A rich man should shun lentils, Aristophanes counsels. “Now that he is rich he will no longer eat lentils; formerly when he was poor, he ate what he could get.” The Middle Eastern food writer Claudia Roden tells of occasions when her aunt offered guests a special lentil dish pleading, “Excuse the food of the poor!”Food could also serve as an engine of economic growth. The common white potato often had a vulgar reputation. “The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers,” the French philosopher Diderot sneered. But potatoes paid economic dividends. Feeding the commoners of northern Europe, the tuber promoted a surge in population. As the historian William McNeill, who did his dissertation on the potato, pointed out, “[T]he spread of potatoes undergirded the nineteenth century industrialization by expanding local food supply, sometimes as much as four times over the caloric yield obtainable from grain harvests of the same fields.” The potato, the scholar argues, sped northern Europe’s rise to “world dominion.”Other transplants sustained masses of people and met their nutritional needs. The peanut, a Latin American native carried to West Africa by the Portuguese, filled a major gap in the diet. Converted into spicy soups or stews, it provided critical protein.In the modern era, ingenious marketing was often required to persuade shoppers to try novel foods. The banana, which some feared would upset their stomachs, was such an item. United Fruit experimented in its test kitchens, searching for a breakfast dish that the banana could accompany. Cornflakes with milk and bananas was the company’s candidate. Cereal boxes in the 1920s contained coupons offering free bananas.Broccoli, which once had a predominantly ethnic market among Italians, was transformed into a national brand by the D’Arrigo Brothers Company. The company advertised the vegetable on the radio and labeled it “Andy Boy,” after the son of one of the company’s founders. The new brand had a dramatic impact on the mother of Charles S. Vizzini, a friend of mine. “It’s not broccoli. It’s Andy Boy,” she enthused.The odyssey of foods will doubtless continue. There are more hurdles for even the oldest of foods to surmount. When will we be as conversant with the ancient fig as we are now with the once-unfamiliar pomegranate?______
Adapted from the Introduction to The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, available from Rowman & Littlefield (or 1-800-243-0495) or through Amazon.com and other online vendors.The contents of this post are Copyright Joel S. Denker, 2015.

Food Sites for October 2015

It’s canning season: spiced seckel pears, tangy mid-winter companions to rich meals.

October is fast approaching & already the nights are cooler and the prospect of long slow-cooked meals is looking more attractive. This week, boeuf bourguignon... can cassoulet and choucroute garnie be far behind?

Our latest book, Sausage: A Global History , is finally out, so we published an article to provide a kind of back-story: “A Vegetarian Unmade,” at Roll Magazine.

Regular subscribers to our updates newsletter receive these updates from our blog, Just Served,  directly—but there is much more at the blog that isn’t delivered automatically. For example, Dr Sanscravat continued his idle speculations in essays, “We Are What We Ate,” and “Thinking About Lunch.” The blog also welcomed a guest poster: Becky Libourel Diamond, author of the new book The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge.
It’s been a busy month.

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.

The presidential election is still over a year away, but we’re already dyspeptic from hearing about it on the news. As preventative medicine, this month’s quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection) chooses a few non-political items from TV journalists:

You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times. Morley Safer 

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars. Charles Kuralt 

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 

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can’t remember what they are. Matt Lauer

Gary
October, 2015
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 of you who have introduced us to sites like the ones in this newsletter (such as Fabio Parasecoli), 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 ----
10 Wine Myths Debunked
(accepted wisdom... not so much)

Archaeological Team Prepares 4,000-year-old Hittite Meals 
(according to archaeologist Aykut Çınaroğlu, Chef Ömür Akk—an excavation team member—used “recipes” from clay tablets, recreating as closely as possible the techniques and equipment of the period)

Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Humans Cooking with Fire 
(Kenneth Miller, writing in Discover, on the work of archaeologist Paul Goldberg)

Best-Tasting, Biggest American Fruit You Probably Haven’t Tasted, The
(Andrew Moore, enraptured by pawpaws, in The Washington Post)

Blessed Be My Freshly Slaughtered Dinner
(Kate Murphy, in The New York Times, on the ethics—and recent fashionability—of killing one’s own meat)

Boundaries of Taste, The
(special food-centered issue of Guernica: a magazine of art & politics)

Canning History: When Propaganda Encouraged Patriotic Preserves 
(Jessica Stoller-Conrad’s report, on NPR, about wartime efforts to conserve food)

Chew on This: The Science of Great NYC Bagels (It’s Not the Water)
(NPR takes a bite out of a much-loved myth)

Cultures and Cuisines
(“an illustrated guide to the culture and cuisine of Brazil”)

Fifth Flavor, The
(Roland Kelts, finding himself through umami, in Guernica)

Food as Therapy
(“Elements of the History of Nutrition in Ancient Greece and Rome,” 
Francesco Perono Cacciafoco’s posting at academia.edu)

French Bread History: Making Medieval/Renaissance Bread
(Les Leftovers, working without a net—or contemporary recipes, since there are none—to try to resurrect some pain perdú)

From Poison to Passion: The Secret History of the Tomato
(Sara Bir at modern farmer)

From the Crack Cocaine of Its Day to Craft Gin
(a juniper-scented addition to the history of alcohol, in The Economist)

Great Sushi Craze of 1905, The 
(“The Unexpected History of Japanese Food in America, From Edo Bay to the Bowery,” Part 1 of H.D. Miller’s article at eccentricculinary.com)

Hot Dog!
(sidewalk history on a bun; from the Museum of the City of New York)

How Black Chefs Paved the Way for American Cuisine
(Michael Twitty sets the record straight, at First We Feast)

Humans Hunted for Meat 2 Million Years Ago
(Robin McKie, writing in The Guardian, on recent work of anthropologist Henry Bunn: “We no longer needed to invest internal resources on huge digestive tracts that were previously required to process vegetation and fruit, which are more difficult to digest. Freed from that task by meat, the new, energy-rich resources were then diverted inside our bodies and used to fuel our growing brains.”)

Illustrated History of Soul Food, An
(Adrian Miller, writing at First We Feast)

My Great Grandmother’s Industrially Processed Food
(Rachel Laudan on methods used in mass-production of food in the nineteenth century)

New Rules of Oyster Eating, The
(Rowan Jacobsen, the proprietor-maven at Oysterater, shucks and tells at Lucky Peach)

Paleo Diet: Big Brains Needed Carbs: Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution
(“...archaeological, anthropological, genetic, physiological and anatomical data [indicate] carbohydrate consumption, particularly in the form of starch, was critical for the accelerated expansion of the human brain over the last million years…”; article in Science Daily)

Peppermills
(Jan Whitaker discusses the once-common giant peppermills and how they got so big)

Popular Drinks of the Georgian Era
(a surprising number of ways to meet your daily vegetable requirements)

Price of Wine, The
(disentangling wine price and perceived quality at Priceonomics)

Rare History Well Done
(“meat in America;” a BackStory podcast from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities)

Riots and Rye: Bread and the French Revolution 
(Michael R. Lynn, writes about passion the French have for bread, for the Ultimate History Project)

Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence have now Shown it Doesn’t Exist
(Jennifer Welsh, at Business Insider, on the rigorous tests that disproved the popular belief in gluten’s effects on non-celiac consumers)

Searching for the “Grey Market” Foods of New York City
(Malcolm T. Nicholson’s quest to find, and sample, forbidden food and drink)

Seduction of Stink, The
(Fuchsia Dunlop writes, in Saveur, of the disgusting/enchanting fermented foods of Shaoxing, China)

Slaughter, The
(Stewart Sinclair—no relation to The Jungle’s author—writes, in The Dallas Morning News, about the ethics of taking an animal’s life for food)

Sorghum: A Love Story
(Julian Brunt, waxes euphoric in the magazine of the Southern Fan Beverage Institute, about a Mississippi tradition)

Sugar Crazy: The Story of our Doughnut Obsession
(Michael Krondl, an historian who has begun to specialize in sweet treats, dishes in Zester Daily)

Syneresis and Other Geeky Jargon for Cooks
(Valerie Ryan, in The Boston Globe, on the pleasures of food science)

To Go
(Jan Whitaker on the history of take-out food)


---- inspirational (or otherwise useful) site for writers/bloggers ----
4 Things to Consider When Researching Literary Agents

Beautiful Cookbooks with Stories and Personality Sell Best, Says Editor

Diana Henry: How to Write a Cookbook

Judging a Book by its Cover: What Book Publicists—and Media—Want to See on the Outside of a Book


---- other blogs ----
Fresh Loaf, The

My African Food Map

Nigerian Lazy Chef


---- changed URL ----
What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?
(“The Government’s Effect on the American Diet;” based on a 2011 exhibit at The National Archives Museum; also check “A Menu of Food-Related Primary Sources”)


---- that’s all for now ----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:

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 support On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it? 

It’s easy. Whenever you want to shop on Amazon. Com, 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.

The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Paper)(Kindle)
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)
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 #180 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 (c) 2015 by Gary Allen.

Guest Post: Becky Libourel Diamond

In 1851, fifteen wealthy New Yorkers wanted to show a group of Philadelphia friends just how impressive a meal could be and took them to Delmonico’s, New York’s finest restaurant. However, not to be outdone, the Philadelphia men invited the New Yorkers to a meal prepared by James W. Parkinson in their city. In what became known as the “Thousand Dollar Dinner,” Parkinson successfully rose to the challenge, creating a seventeen-course extravaganza featuring fresh salmon, baked rockfish, braised pigeon, turtle steaks, spring lamb, out-of-season fruits and vegetables, and desserts, all paired with rare wines and liquors. Midway through the twelve-hour meal, the New Yorkers declared Philadelphia the winner of their competition, and at several times stood in ovation to acknowledge the chef ’s mastery. The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge tells this unique story, presenting the entire seventeen-course meal, course by course, explaining each dish and its history. A gastronomic turning point, Parkinson’s luxurious meal helped launch the era of grand banquets of the gilded age and established a new level of American culinary arts to rival those of Europe.Excerpt – “An Invitation”A cool spring breeze swept over the Camden and Philadelphia Steamboat ferry as it chugged its way across the Delaware River toward the city of Philadelphia. That evening in April 1851, many of the ferry passengers were on the final leg of their journey from New York City. Among those who had made this excursion were fifteen impeccably dressed New York gentlemen. They had accepted an invitation to dine at an exclusive Philadelphia restaurant called Parkinson’s.After the boat docked at the Walnut Street wharf, the men collected their leather travel cases and stepped off the ferry. They located the livery drivers who had been hired to meet them and were soon riding in three sleek black carriages, the horses’ feet clip-clopping on the cobblestones. As the carriages reached Eighth Street, they turned south and stopped in front of number 38, a three-story brick building displaying a large sign with “PARKINSONS” in block lettering. Gleaming white marble steps led up to the restaurant’s front door, which was surrounded on either side by a storefront made completely out of clear glass, with etched detailing at the top.The headwaiter came out to meet the gentlemen and led them up the stairs into one of the restaurant’s richly furnished front salons. Decorated in deep shades of burgundy, the room featured Wilton carpets, marble-topped tables, and ornately curved mahogany furniture. Waiting to greet the New Yorkers were their Philadelphia friends. While they made light conversation, several waiters approached with aperitifs on silver trays—cognac and wine bitters, with Madeira and sherry—designed to stimulate the appetite. Unknown to the guests, this was the first taste of a meal they would remember for a lifetime.Soon the headwaiter directed them up the stairs into the banquet room where they would be dining. Thirty place settings of the finest china, silver, and crystal were situated around the enormous mahogany table, covered with a cloth of freshly starched white linen. A table fork and a fish fork were placed to the left side of each plate, and to the right lay a table knife, a silver fish knife, a soup spoon, and a small fork for oysters. Small individual saltcellars were above each plate on the right side.To the left of each plate a silver stand held the bill of fare, a large booklet beautifully printed in gold and decorative colors. Mounted pieces of ornamental confectionery, statuettes, and striking flower arrangements were artfully displayed down the center of the table. The light of dozens of candelabras mixed with the glow from three gas chandeliers. Tall, exquisitely decorated cakes, meringues, and colorful confectionery were arranged on the massive carved sideboard. The long buffet held rows of wine and liquor bottles, ice buckets of champagne, and pitchers of water. These thirty men were about to experience a meal of extraordinary proportions.***By the mid-nineteenth century, restaurants were popping up by the dozens in cities throughout the United States, where demand was the highest.  Both Philadelphia and New York were leaders in this restaurant revolution and developed a culinary rivalry. Upper-class residents of each city felt their metropolis had the best chefs and superior restaurants. This competitiveness was the driving force in bringing these fifteen wealthy New York gentlemen to dine at Parkinson’s.This culinary duel began a few months earlier, when the New Yorkers wanted to show a group of Philadelphia friends just how impressive a meal could be had in their city. These two “clubs of good-livers” apparently “spent one day in every year and all their spare cash in trying to rival each other’s banquets.” To pull off this feat, they went to Delmonico’s, New York’s finest restaurant, and requested the services of its host, Lorenzo Delmonico. They told him they wanted to “astonish our Quaker City friends with the sumptuousness of our feast,” assuring him that money was no object and instructing him to do “his level best” as their honor and the honor of New York were at stake. Lorenzo Delmonico agreed, and he treated the New Yorkers and their fifteen invited Philadelphians to a magnificent banquet at his restaurant on South William Street, much enjoyed by all. However, not to be outdone, the Philadelphia men politely invited the New Yorkers “to drop in upon them some evening and take pot-luck with them.” They then contacted their best caterer and restaurateur, James W. Parkinson, and asked him to create a similar dinner.They set the date for April 19, which made things rather tricky for Parkinson, as it was between seasons. But Parkinson successfully rose to the challenge, creating a seventeen-course feast famously referred to by Philadelphia newspapers as the “Thousand Dollar Dinner” (since it reputedly cost the Philadelphians $1,000, an enormous sum equivalent to perhaps thirty-two times that amount today). The guests sat down at 6 P.M. and did not rise from their chairs until 6 A.M. the next morning. ***Parkinson’s dinner paired different rare wines and liquors with each of the courses, which included such delicacies as fresh oysters, green turtle soup, game birds, diamond-back terrapin, out-of-season fruits and vegetables, pièces montées, and several dessert courses showcasing rich pastries, ice cream, cakes, and puddings. Each of Parkinson’s courses was designed to meld familiar dishes with novel presentations. Special praise went to an artful and luscious sorbet that he created using an expensive Hungarian Tokaj wine.

The meal was astonishing, unlike anything the New Yorkers had ever experienced. Three different times during the meal the New Yorkers stood in appreciation, not only to acknowledge that the Philadelphians had “conquered them triumphantly,” but also to unanimously declare that the meal “far surpassed any similar entertainment which had ever been given in this country.” This was not a light compliment. Delmonico’s set the tone for nineteenth century fine dining in New York City, and the rest of America as well.But at the same time Delmonico’s was firmly entrenching itself as the place for elegant dining in New York, Parkinson’s was establishing a similar presence in Philadelphia. James Parkinson had a creative, innovative way with food, such as the invention of Champagne frappe à la glacé (a semi-frozen froth made with the sparkling wine) and the creation of elaborate ice cream sculptures. In addition to his fine dining establishment, he had a highly successful catering business and was nationally known for his ice cream and confectionery. It was no surprise then that this group of fifteen wealthy Philadelphians would choose Parkinson’s restaurant to host their banquet. They knew James W. Parkinson had the culinary prowess to win over their New York friends. And on a seasonable April evening in 1851, the history of American cooking would be changed forever.__________
Becky Libourel Diamond’s new book, The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge, will be launched on October 15th, 2015 (but can be pre-ordered from Amazon).
___________
The contents of this article are:
 Copyright 2015, Becky Libourel Diamond