Gary Allen's Blog, page 20

Food Sites for October 2013

We live in apple country.

It’s been pretty clear lately – at least here in the Hudson Valley – that summer is pretty much over. We may have a few more days that feel hot, but the cool, almost cold, nights are harbingers of The End. Fresh corn and tomatoes, as wonderful as they are, are beginning to lose their magic – but apples are just coming into their own. Homemade applesauce, apple butter, baked apples, and pies (so many pies) sound like exactly what we need to wake up our jaded palates. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice are – or soon will be – in the air.
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. The blog has been feeling a bit neglected lately (that tends to happen when there’s a book project on our desk)… but Just Served’s archive has still got more than enough material for any but the most cravenly-addicted readers. Not that there actually are any “cravenly-addicted readers” of the blog – but imaginary creatures (griffins, hippogriffs, unicorns) are amusing to …ummm …errr… ahhh… imagine.
Until such time as we can set aside the current book to write something for the blog, you can follow the trail of breadcrumbs we leave on Facebook, and Twitter. You can also find links to all of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our backlisted (and, no, I didn’t say “blacklisted” – so don’t get your hopes up) LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history & science articles.
Not wishing to wander too far from the orchard’s offerings here are some excerpts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

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

“[The (apple) pie should be eaten] while it is yet florescent, white or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges (as if the flavor were so good to itself that its own lips watered!), of a mild and modest warmth, the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels of apple neither dissolved nor yet in original substance, but hanging as it were in a trance between the spirit and the flesh of applehood... then, O blessed man, favored by all the divinities! eat, give thanks, and go forth, ‘in apple-pie order!’” Henry Ward Beecher

“The natural term of an apple-pie is but twelve hours. It reaches its highest state about one hour after it comes from the oven, and just before its natural heat has quite departed. But every hour afterward is a declension. And after it is one day old, it is thence-forward but the ghastly corpse of apple-pie.” Henry Ward Beecher

“Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom’s apple pie. In fact, now that Mom’s apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.” William Zinsser

GaryOctober, 2013

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 suggested sites -- 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 Rules For Eating in Italy Without Scaring the Italians(how to be less of a meatball)
Absinthe: “The Guillotine of the Soul”(Herb Hallas describes fin de siècle efforts to ban the green fairy)
Chronology of Tofu Worldwide, 965 A.D. to 1929(surprise: Benjamin Franklin mailed rather vague instructions on how to make bean curd to Philadelphia, in 1770)
Cooking Is Freedom(personal essay by Jim Sollisch in The New York Times)
Culinary Institute of America: Menu Collection(collection includes some 25,000 menus, ’though not all are digitized… yet)
Eat and Get Gas(Jan Whitaker’s vehicle stops at all roadside eateries)
English Ale and Beer in Shakespeare’s Time(H.A. Monckton’s article in The City University of London’s History Today)
Fruits of America, The (facsimile edition of C.M. Hovey’s 1853 book, with 48 color plates)
How to Make Perfect Coffee(Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez analyze “the science of what makes coffee great” in The Atlantic)
Hunger Games, The(“State Fair Food Gets More Outrageous;” Alexander Abad-Santos discusses extreme eating, in The Atlantic)
Making Kimchi(Laura Kelly, at The Silkroad Gourmet, explains much more about kimchi than how to prepare it)
Marketing and Trade(a vast collection of data and reports on all aspects of food marketing and trade, both foreign and domestic)
Recipes for Development: Robert Oliver at TEDxAuckland(using the menu to improve many things beyond the table; youtube video of a TED talk)
Seeing an Image of Another Person Eating an Unhealthy Food Can Influence Your Own Taste(research published in the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing)
State Fair Vendors Innovate to Survive(“small purveyors battle bigger rivals as each tries to top the others in food gimmicks;” Caroline Porter describes “gross food and beverage sales” in The Wall Street Journal)
What Explains the Difference in the Way Americans and French (and Brits) Eat?(some answers from Jayson Lusk, a food and agricultural economist)
Why Do We Cook?(Cynthia Bertelsen asks the deceptively simple question, and digs through answers that change with time and circumstance)

---- inspirational (or otherwise) sites for writers/bloggers ----
Food Poetry: Recipe. A Cento, by Karen Resta
How Poetry Can Make You a Better Food Writer
Key Book Marketing Principle that Authors Must Learn, A (or Not Forget)
Newest Facebook Like Farming Scam - Watch Out, Food Bloggers and Recipe Writers!
Open Letter to The New York Times Magazine Food Section , An
Recipe Testing, What’s the Scoop?

---- yet more blogs ----
Food Matters
Real. Local. Food.

---- moved or changed URLs ----
Art of the Cure, The
National Meat Association (NMA)
U.S. Poultry & Egg Association

---- 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 this newsletter, 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 On the Table.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Paper) (Kindle)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Hardcover)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries (Hardcover)  (Kindle)
Human Cuisine (Paper) (Kindle)
Herbs: 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 #156” 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for September 2013

 Savoy Cabbage, The King's Garden, Fort Ticonderoga, New York

Whenever we start work on a new book, the research phase invariably leads us to encounter websites that we would otherwise miss. It’s a wonderfully distracting form of procrastination that – sometimes, just sometimes – leads to something productive. The very fact that you’re reading this suggests that you might be a fellow procrastinator, so (as a form of professional courtesy) we are passing along this longer-than-usual list of sites and blogs.
If anything you find here leads to something actually useful, feel free to credit (blame) us to those who would complain about your sloth-like lack of measurable productivity.
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 stirred up a hornet’s nest by posting “Mayo on a Burger?”. Apparently there are other people who have strong (and conflicting) feelings about the subject. Who knew?
Readers with nothing better to do can follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. Additional time-wasting links to all of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our backlisted (not “blacklisted,” as one might reasonably expect) LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history & science articles.
As the gardens and fields begin the season’s final glorious burst of production, here are some excerpts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

“The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Call any vegetable, call it by name, call any vegetable and the vegetable will respond to you.” Frank Zappa

“A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.” P. J. O’Rourke

GarySeptember, 2013

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 suggested sites -- 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 ----
8 Weeds You Can Eat(according to Organic Gardening magazine: “One person’s weed-filled lawn is another person’s salad bar”)
Age Your Canned Goods(Harold McGee “…think[s] of best-by dates as maybe-getting-interesting-by dates”)
American Cakes – Pineapple Upside-Down Cake(Gil Marks provides the history of this classic cake, along with several historic recipes)
Arctic Foodways and Contemporary Cuisine(Zona Spray Starks compares Inuit and classic French cooking techniques and products; a PDF from Gastronomica)
Caramelization: New Science, New Possibilities(Harold McGee looks at some surprising properties of sugar and heat)
Cooking. What’s Involved and What That Means(Rachel Laudan seeks to distill cooking to its essence; ultimately, no matter how you look at it, it’s energy)
Dr. Annie Gray(links to talks given by, or interviews with, a British historian of eighteenth & nineteenth century Food)
Evolution of American Barbecue, The(a sweet and tangy post from The Smithsonian Institute)
Food: Provocation(Julie Guthman, in Cultural Anthropology, asks the most basic question: “what is food?”)
Foodways, ‘Foodism,’ or Foodscapes? Navigating the Local/Global and Food/Culture Divides(downloadable PDF from Carolyn de la Peña and Benjamin Lawrence)
Kitchen as a Pollution Hazard, The(it’s not just hot air in Peter Andrey Smith’s blog post at The New York Times)
Kitchen at the Center of History, The(Rachel Laudan talks about food and culture as process)
Local Palate, The (magazine about the “food culture of the south” – southern US, that is)
Malayan Cookery Books(Bonnie Tan’s examination of 1929’s The “Mems” Own Cookery Book)
Margaret Rizzuto Food Photography(portfolio and contact info)
Modern Farmer (e-zine for “anyone who wants to know more about how food reaches their plate”)
Picnicking Through the Past(Maya Pieris traces al fresco dining to the fourteenth century)
Researching Food Cultures Without Written Recipes(Patrick Cauldwell uses Vikings as a model for this kind of research; downloadable PDF)
RogersMushrooms(identifying keys, thousands of photos, books, cooking info – and yes, talk on mushroom poisoning)
Shacks, Huts, and Shanties(Jan Whitaker revisits some casual eating establishments of the past)
Sharon Hudgins(an archive of food and travel articles, plus recipes, from the former editor of Chile Pepper magazine)
Sleep Deprivation Linked to Junk Food Cravings(Yasmin Anwar reports on recent research at UC Berkeley)
Understanding an Italian Wine List(tutorial on producers, types, regions, varietals, and vintages)
Vegetarianism as an International Movement, c. 1840-1915(article by James Gregory; downloadable PDF)
Vibrant Market Is Heart of Multiethnic Capital(Rachel Donadio’s article, in The New York Times, on the changing look – and flavors – of Rome’s iconic food market)
What is an Heirloom Vegetable?(it’s not as obvious as it sounds, but here are three common denominators)

-- inspirational (or otherwise) sites for writers/bloggers --
9 Ways Not to Make an Ass of Yourself as a Food Critic
How To Self-Publish A Bestseller: Publishing 3.0

---- yet more blogs ----
American Table, The
Cookbook of Unknown Ladies, The
Culinary Life, The
Eat Your Books
Foodimentary
Fuchsia Dunlop
In History’s Kitchen
It Takes a Kitchen
My Medieval Kitchen
Paper and Salt
Sandwich Monday
Spartan Diet
Thehistoricfoodie’s Blog
Write Taste, The

---- moved or changed URLs ----
Curious Cook
Zester Daily

---- 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 this newsletter, 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 On the Table.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Paper) (Kindle)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Hardcover)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries (Hardcover) (Kindle)
Human Cuisine (Paper) (Kindle)
Herbs: 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 #155” 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Mayo on a Burger?

Let me say – right up front – that I’m against it. On principle."What Principle?" you ask. The same one that tells a Chicagoan that it’s just wrong to put ketchup on a hot dog, but sport peppers, bright green relish, and celery salt are de rigueur; that no right-thinking Texan would dream of putting beans in his chili, but that a citizen of Cincinnati knows that it must contain beans plus cinnamon, and should be served over spaghetti; that one region of the Carolinas prefers mustard-based barbecue sauce, but another insists on vinegar, that the BBQ meat of choice is pork in the south, but beef in Texas; that burgoo is made in Kentucky, but practically nowhere else; and that andouille means something totally different in Louisiana and France.What I’m saying is that regional foods should stay regional. The malling, and big-boxing, of America has already made the country into one very long homogenous strip mall, so that that New Jersey and South Dakota are virtually indistinguishable. And yet we continually bastardize our regional foods, creating geographic monstrosities like “St. Louis BBQ Lobster Rolls, with Pineapple-Habanero Aioli, and Maple-Kosher-Dill Pickled Okra.” Hurriedly shoving such unholy alliances aside, some fundamental questions remain on the table. Even if we could get true Texas brisket, slow-smoked over mesquite, in New England – should we? Doesn’t that do for our meals what malls and big box stores have already done for landscape? What, really, is the point of travel -- if everyplace, and every cuisine, is the result of exactly the same focus-group-think?America’s first hamburger sandwich was made at Louis’ Lunch, a little place in New Haven, CT, in 1900. They were served, not on buns, but on toasted white bread. You can still get one there, and they still use the same cast-iron toasters they used over a century ago. Here, in the Hudson Valley, Jitterbugs (hamburgers covered with brown gravy) are a local invention. Are either of these the correct, official, way to serve hamburgers? Of course they are, and of course they are not. What’s important is that the purveyors of generic mass-produced burgers have not yet rendered the local versions obsolete (much as they’ve tried).Mayo on burgers couldn’t have been common much before 1920 (when Richard Hellman’s jars of ready-made mayo started appearing on a lot of store shelves). In 1927, Hellman’s and Best merged – and, today, the exact same mayonnaise is sold under two different labels, on each side of the Mississippi River. Someone, somewhere in the far west, had the idea that mayo was the best condiment for burgers– because, by 1941, James Beard was talking about “California burgers,” spread with mayonnaise. One extremely large company -- that coincidentally started in California, and boasts sales of billions of hamburgers – squirts a “special sauce,” that is primarily mayonnaise, on them. Beard’s version lacked only the sesame-seed bun.That company may believe that it can unilaterally define hamburgers for the world, but their thinking is fundamentally flawed. There’s no such thing -- nor can there ever be such a thing -- as “the ideal hamburger,” and that’s just the way I like it. The perfect burger is the local version -- not a one-size-fits-all burger that’s the same wherever, and whenever, you order one. Food should be different in different places and at different times. I might (I said, “might”) even order a burger with mayonnaise – if and when I happen to be in California.All of this burger talk has definitely put me in the cranky-old-guy rant mode, so let me ask you another question (or two, or three). Do you remember the ecstasy of popping the season’s first strawberry into your mouth, the perfumed juiciness of the summer’s first cantaloupe, the glorious taste of a ripe tomato, still hot from the sun in the garden, with nothing but a sprinkling of salt, or the slightly astringent crunch of the fall’s first mackintosh? Have you noticed that euphoria is mysteriously missing from your culinary calendar -- now that we have mediocre versions of all those foods, year-round?Why do you think that is?-----A big thank you to historian Andy Smith. You can bite into more about this juicy subject in his books Pure Ketchup  and Hamburger: A Global History .

Food Sites for August 2013

Fresh local tomatoes at last! Mignorelli Farm, Rhinebeck, NY

“Hot time, summer in the city” – and the country; the heat is inescapable. It’s July as I write this -- a pitcher of ice water and I are sweating it out together. Because of the brief monsoon-like downpours we’ve had everyday, plant life of every description threatens to engulf the house.
I eat what I can, but I’m not keeping up...
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.
Truly adventurous (or uncontrollable link-following) readers can follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. If those are insufficiently soporific, links to all of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our older LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history & science articles.
Here are a few summertime excerpts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

Aioli epitomizes the heat, the power, and the joy of the Provençal sun, but it has another virtue -- it drives away flies. Frederic Mistral

Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the fleeting moment. Elizabeth David 

When one has tasted watermelon he knows what the angels eat. Mark Twain 

Never go fishing with just one Baptist. That way they won't drink your beer. Garrison Keillor

GaryAugust, 2013

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 suggested sites (you know I’m talking about you Cara) -- 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----
Dining by Gaslight(Jan Whittaker’s exploration of a dining destination in St. Louis, Missouri that once flourished, then disappeared, in the 1960s)
Eat the Weeds(Green Deane’s foraging site)
Eighteenth-Century Material Culture: The Kitchen: Food Storage Containers(photos of ceramic jars, glass, water jars -- plus wooden boxes for bulk dry ingredients, spices, and for measuring)
Fishbase(immense database of fish species, searchable using scientific names -- or common names, in any language)
Flavor (“The taste of cutlery: how the taste of food is affected by the weight, size, shape, and colour of the cutlery used to eat it” – a PDF from Vanessa Harrar and Charles Spence)
For Its Latest Beer, a Craft Brewer Chooses an Unlikely Pairing: Archaeology(the Great Lakes Brewing Company -- in Cleveland, Ohio – is attempting to replicate an ancient Babylonian brew, this time using authentic methods and a recipe from the “Hymn to Nikasi”)
If You Could Eat Only One Thing…(“You still wouldn’t want it to be Soylent;” comparing the ways our bodies respond to food substitutes vs. actual food)
Is There a Secret Ingredient in the Jewish Relationship with Food?(“They tried to kill us, we won, now let’s eat;” with answers from Gil Marks, Claudia Roden, and Susan Starr Sered, in Moment Magazine)
Macedoine and Other Eccentric Jellies(Ivan Day’s Victorian jellies are definitely not the usual Jell-O salads)
Pasta’s Winding Way West(Tom Verde and Nancy Verde Barr on the Arabic origin of pasta secca)
Quinoa Should be Taking Over the World. This is Why it Isn’t.(article by Lydia DePillis, in the Washington Post)
Spoken Dish, A(storytellers “celebrating southern food traditions”)
What Peach Did They Dare to Eat at Masada?(a taste of botanical archaeology)
Why the Tomato was Feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years(article from the Smithsonian’s blog)
Why We Could Stomach Kangaroo Curry But Never Boiled Horse(some thoughts about the taboo, from BBC History Magazine)

-- inspirational (or otherwise) sites for writers/bloggers --
BookMarketingBuzzBlog
Online Photographer, The
Scientific Guide to Writing Great Headlines on Twitter, Facebook and your Blog

-- yet more blogs --
Carbonara
Food Blog Alliance
Kukla’s Kouzina
Meathenge
Pastries Like a Pro
Senegal Food and Dining

----moved or changed URL----
Szathmary Culinary Manuscripts and Cookbooks

----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 this newsletter, 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 On the Table.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Paper) (Kindle)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Hardcover)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries (Hardcover)  (Kindle)
Human Cuisine (Paper) (Kindle)
Herbs: 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 #154” 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for July 2013

“There is something in the red of a raspberry pie that looks as good to a man as the red in a sheep looks to a wolf.” Evelyn Waugh

It’s berry season in the Hudson Valley. Need I say more?
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.
We recently gave a talk to the Red Hook Historical Society about the influence of early Dutch colonists on the eating habits of modern Americans: “Dutch Treat.” The online version includes notes and references.
Truly adventurous (and/or masochistic) readers can follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. If you are still not completely off your feed, links to all of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our backlisted (and, no, I didn’t say “blacklisted” – so don’t get your hopes up) LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history & science articles.
Here are a few excerpts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection that celebrate the very thing that makes us what we are (foodies, connoisseurs, gourmets, essers, fressers, noshers, gourmandizers, feinschmeckers, gluttons -- take your pick):

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.” Luciano Pavarotti

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” Franz Kafka

GaryJuly, 2013

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 suggested sites -- 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----
Anthropological Journal Discussion of Classical Food Framework Tools(Robert Lawson’s paper comparing theoretical approaches to the study of food)
Charming the Ignorant: A Rhetorical Analysis of Michael Pollan's Introduction to The Omnivore's Dilemma(Berry College’s Jordyn Wagner examines the mechanics, and intent, of Pollans’ writing style)
Chiles of Mexico, The(Isabel Hood’s introduction to this hot topic, followed by pages on specific chiles)Chiles of Mexico, The: El Jalapeño Chiles of Mexico, The: El Mulato
Chiles of Mexico, The: El Pasilla
Cuisine of Mexican Convents, The(Rachel Laudan looks at the foods of 18th–century nuns in Mexico)
Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security(detailed FAO report on entomophagy; a large PDF file)
Food Writing Lives: Sheila Hibben(Anne Mendelson looks at one writer’s approach to honest American food; Hibben was an early exponent of regional cooking)
Foodies(former LinkedIn discussion group, now a public site)
Gastronomic Writing - Then & Now(Jason Adamson looks at its roots in 19th-century France)
Haggis - Peasant Food to Diasporic Icon(whether productive of longing or loathing, this Scottish dish tells us a lot about our notions of food and identity)
How Britain’s Appetite for Beef Influenced American Taste(Kara Newman traces the histories of our taste for meat and the technologies that catered to it)
Inside the Zodiac Club(Danielle Oteri serves the inside scoop on New York City’s 145-year-old secret dining society)
Kaiseki in Kyoto, Japan: a Regional Foodway(Jason Adamson explains the history and culture of this traditional meal, then describes his experience at one of these unique dinners)
Mystery of Curry, The(Andrew Lawler’s article, on Slate, about archaeological investigations into ancient curries)
Nutritionally Improved Agricultural Crops(nutritional aspects of GMO research – an article that does not address thorny environmental issues – from the National Institutes of Health)
On Authenticity(Raymond Sokolov asks, in essence, “What does authentic mean?”)
On Literature and Food(another essay by Raymond Sokolov, who is not impressed by celebrity chefs)
On the Gas (e-zine on “the art, science & culture of food”)
Table Comes First, The : Adam Gopnik on the Meaning of Food(Maria Popova’s review in The Atlantic)
Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater, The(how the internet is making it impossible to find something [safe] to eat)

-- inspirational (or otherwise) sites for writers/bloggers --
A Dab of Vaseline? Perfect
Attending a Food Blogging Conference (the What, the How, the Why)
Hoard and Historian
How to Write an Effective Book Description
Recipe Attribution
Should You Self-Publish? 15 Questions
Thank You, Apple, for Going to Court Over E-Books

-- yet more blogs --
Salt, The
Shut Up, Foodies!
Will Cook for Friends

----that's all for now----
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
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"The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #153" 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Going Dutch

Roelof Koets, "A Fruit-filled Pastry, Fruits, Glasses, and Plates;" ca. 1645. ------------ This paper was read to a meeting of the Red Hook Historical Society, Red Hook, New York, 19 May 2013. Society members and local restaurants recreated many of the period dishes mentioned in the paper, making the event a festive occasion of which the region's Dutch settlers would surely have approved.------------One of the ways we can learn what people ate in the past is by reading the recipes that were available to them. For example, the first cookbook produced in the US was the 1745 reprint of Hannah Glasse's modestly titled The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Ever Yet Published. Fifty-one years later, Amelia Simmons' American Cookery appeared in Hartford. CT. We can also get a taste of the period's infatuation with subtitles, as the book's cover is completely filled with this:or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to plain cake: Adapted to this country, and all grades of life.The subtitle alone exceeds the attention span of most of today's readers -- but the book was so popular in the eighteenth-century that a second edition was published the same year, in Albany.Glasse and Simmons’ books were not, however, the first cookbooks used in our part of the New World.The Van Cortlandt family, who arrived in the Hudson Valley in 1639, ordered a copy of the 1683 edition of The Pleasurable Country Life from Holland. Originally published in 1667, it was a virtual encyclopedia of how to live the good life, and it contained the most popular Dutch cookbook of the time, The Sensible Cook. Dutch authors were as liberal in their use of subtitles as were their English-speaking colleagues. Fully half of the cover of the Van Cortlandt's edition bore, in smallish type:or Careful Housekeeper
Describing,
How to cook, stew, roast, fry, bake and prepare all sorts of Dishes in the best and most able manner; with the appropriate Sauces:
Very useful and Profitable in all Households.
Enlarged, with the
DUTCH BUTCHERING TIME.
To which is added the
SENSIBLE CONFECTIONER,
Instructing how to prepare and preserve good and useful confection from many kinds of Fruit, Roots, Flowers, and Leaves, etc.All that cover text was needed because advertising (or book-signings, or author appearances on talk shows) had not yet been invented, so -- if a book was to sell at all -- it had to market itself. That wordy subtitle also suggests a question (which I will not attempt to answer here): With all that cover copy, what could possibly have been omitted that required the use of that final "etc."?Peter Rose, the leading expert on Dutch cookery in our region, has translated the Van Cortlandt's copy (which is now part of the collection at Tarrytown's Sleepy Hollow Restoration, now called Historic Hudson Valley). I have drawn heavily upon this and other books she has written.When we think of "American food," the first phrase that comes to mind is: "American as apple pie." Of course, apple pie is not really American – some think it's English (because the English do make apple pies), but The Sensible Cook contains four recipes for apple-taerts that we would still recognize as apple pies – and it was here before any English cookbooks. Also, the first apple tree in the New World was not planted by British settlers in New England – the one planted in 1647, in Manhattan, by Peter Stuyvesant (the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam) continued to bear fruit for 219 years. If not for the fact that a derailed train uprooted it in 1866, it would probably still be producing heirloom apples. That unfortunate event was clearly something that Stuyvesant could never have foreseen. By the way, all the stories about John Chapman, Johnny Appleseed, are much newer – he didn't begin planting apple nurseries until shortly before 1800.Just down the street, here in Red Hook, there's an historic eatery, the Halfway Diner. It's singled out for historic recognition because it represents an architectural style that is not only uniquely American but, also because diner cuisine is quintessentially American. For us, a meal is not really a complete meal unless it has a minimum of three components: a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. "What about such things as hamburgers and hot dogs", you ask? If you were to order either at the Halfway, the meat and bun would not be alone on the plate. There will always be a pickle, or a token cup of coleslaw, or both. We may not always eat them… but they will have served their purpose, just by appearing on our plates.How long has this been going on?Well, The Sensible Cook has a recipe for sour pickles that would perfectly suit the average diner customer (although most of us would expect a more garlicky version – later immigrants from eastern Europe liked garlic more than did the Dutch). But what about the coleslaw?When Carl von Linné (better known today as Linnaeus) wanted to expand his comprehensive listing of scientific names to include species of the New World, he sent young botanists here to collect and categorize our wild plants. The Swedish Royal Academy co-sponsored Pehr Kalm, one of Linné's protégés, in the hopes that he would bring back valuable plants and seeds. Linné immortalized Kalm by naming a genus after him: Kalmia latifolia is our Mountain Laurel.What's that got to do with coleslaw?Kalm’s journals tell us a lot about life in colonial America -- and he spent a lot of time in the Hudson Valley. He rented a room in a Dutch home and, in an entry from 1749, he described what he called "an unusual salad" served by his landlady:She took the inner leaves of a head of cabbage, namely, the leaves which usually remain when the outermost leaves are removed, and cut them in long thin strips about 1/12 to 1/6 of an inch wide, seldom more… she… poured oil and vinegar pon [sic] them, added some salt and pepper… melted butter… is kept in a warm pot or crock and poured over the salad after it has been served. [i]He meant that melted butter was sometimes used in place of oil. The dish was called "koolsla" -- short for "koolsalade" – or cabbage salad. The dish seems different from our coleslaw because of two later developments: inexpensive graters that eliminated the need for hand-slicing of the cabbage and the absence of mayonnaise. That omnipresent ingredient was invented seven years after Kalm's observations, and didn't become an American mainstay until after Richard Hellman started selling it, readymade in jars, in 1912.While Kalm said quite a bit about the food he ate in Dutch homes, it’s important to remember that our region was largely British at the time. On that subject, he was more succinct: "The art of cooking as practised by Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding."One of the other things that makes diners uniquely American is that their menus are achronological. By that, I mean that almost everywhere, we expect to find different meals served throughout the day. Breakfast dishes in the morning, lunches at mid-day, and dinners in the evening – except on Sunday when everyday routines are disrupted. When our religions were more puritanical, the Sabbath was reserved for activities that made everyday schedules inconvenient. Today's religious observances – like brunch, shopping, and seasonal rituals like cookouts, baseball and football – still make Sunday an exception to the menu clock we obey the rest of the week.However, diners are like little islands that exist outside of our clock-driven existence. At a diner, one can order from any part of the menu at any time of day. If your stomach can handle it, you can feel free to have ham and eggs, a shrimp cocktail, and piece of lemon meringue pie that is somewhere north of eight-inches tall. Diners are culinary anarchies, and that's just the way we like them.What makes diners so democratic is the fact that we can eat breakfast whenever we feel like it -- before the workday begins, or after a long night of drinking, or anywhere in between, alone or with friends. Consequently, it's among the breakfast items that we should be looking for traces of early Dutch gastronomic influences.The early Dutch settlers brought chickens and pigs when they sailed to New Netherland, so they had eggs, bacon and sausages – but so did every other European cuisine. What they had that was different were two other mainstays of the American breakfast table: pancakes and waffles.Just as in today's diners, the Dutch ate pancakes at any time of day. Dutch dining habits anticipated our modern diner expectation of “breakfast, any time.” However, their pancakes were not the airy confections we know today. Our pancakes are chemically-leavened; they use baking powder to create the carbon dioxide bubbles that lighten their batter. Baking powder not invented until 1843 (and didn't begin to be produced in the US until 1855). Simmons' book 1796 book was the first to mention use of pearl ash -- potassium carbonate -- that cooks extracted from wood ashes. Since Dutch pancakes contained neither pearl ash nor yeast, they tended to be heavy and filling.Pancakes came in several forms, and The Sensible Cook mentions three of them. The most basic contained only flour, eggs and milk (and sometimes a little sugar). Sugar was just beginning to be cheap enough for everyday use (there were some fifty sugar refineries in Amsterdam in the 1640s). However, it still had to be shipped to the colonies here, and arrived in hard cone-shaped loaves that had to scraped and pounded before it could be used.A second, fancier version, named Groeningen (after a fortified city and province in the far north of the Netherlands), adds currants and cinnamon. The Dutch East India Company was at the peak of its power at the time, so cinnamon and other spices were readily available, even in the colonies.This was even more evident in the third recipe "To fry the best kind of Pancakes." It had a higher egg-to flour ratio, and lots of spices: cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg. These pancakes were fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar before serving.Later Dutch pancake recipes included appel pannenkoeken a plate-sized, dense and savory version that included apples, bacon and gouda. New Netherlanders ate similar pancakes almost every day.Tiny poffertjes -- bulging silver-dollar-sized pancakes cooked in special pans that had dimple-like indentations -- were served only on special occasions. Flensjes were thick crêpes served like a layer cake, with applesauce for filling, and served dusted with powdered sugar. Another special pancake was called drie-in-de-pan. They were yeast-raised pancakes cooked, as the name implies, three at a time, often with a filling of apples and currants or raisins.Like ordinary pancakes, waffles were eaten almost every day. Recipes for modern waffles usually contain more oil than is found in pancake batter. It helps them avoid sticking to their convoluted griddles – and their Dutch precursors were no different. Their waffles used melted butter, and instead of baking powder they used yeast – so the batter had to rest for a while to allow the yeast to ferment some of the starch into leavening gas.Of course, the most basic breakfast at a diner is taken at the counter: a cup of coffee and a doughnut.The Dutch didn't develop a taste for coffee and tea until the end of the seventeenth century. Despite the fact that the Dutch East India Company had planted coffee plantations in Ceylon in 1658, the first coffeehouse to the New world didn't open until 1689, in Boston. Coffee was not nearly as popular as tea (in fact, it didn't become an American staple until after the famous Tea Party in Boston's harbor in 1773).Once the Dutch started drinking tea, they made it a big part of their social lives. Nearly a century after the English took control of what had been New Amsterdam, the Dutch inhabitants still preferred tea. Pehr Kalm noted thatTheir breakfast is tea, commonly without milk. ...They never put sugar into the cup, but take a small bit of it into their mouths while they drink. ...Coffee is not usual here.[ii]Sixty years later, in 1809, Washington Irving was able to write:The tea was served out of a majestic delft tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs – with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies.He went on to describe some early-American ingenuity, and at the same time reaffirming Kalm's observations:To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup – and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea table, by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth – an expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany; but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen, Flatbush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.[iii]Before you ask, Communipaw is today's Hoboken, and the Flatbush he mentioned isn't the one in Brooklyn – it's part of modern Saugerties, between Esopus Creek and the Hudson.The boundary between history and comedy is not always well-defined in Irving's writings, so it's often good to take his culinary observations, not with a lump of sugar, but with a grain of salt. In Irving’s second edition, Knickerbocker said the “worthy burghers of Albany” had told him that “…suspending a lump of sugar over the Albany tea-tables… had been discontinued for some years past.”[iv]Some serious historians complain that Knickerbocker is lousy history -- however their inability to recognize satire merely proves that they were born without funny-bones.Irving was not, however, joshing us with his praises of doughnuts:Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks – a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.[v]These early doughnuts were not the ring-shaped versions we know today. Doughnuts didn't get their holes until well into the nineteenth century, because while the originals were yeast-raised, the newer "cake doughnuts" contained baking powder and didn't begin to rise until the frying started – and the batter in the center was often undercooked. The holes were meant to allow all of doughnut batter to cook evenly. Olykoeks were round balls, a little smaller than a tennis ball (another name for these fritter-like cakes was oleibollen) and sometimes flattened a bit. They were sometimes filled with stewed apples or raisins, and were seasoned with nutmeg or mace; either way, they were fried in lard, not the oil we use today. Oliebollen (in German it’s slightly different from the Dutch spelling) were made as early as the tenth century by Germanic cooks, but found their way to the New World via the Dutch.They took days to make, because the yeast dough had to rise twice before frying. Once they were done, they were rolled in sugar, which sounds familiar to us. It's curious, that a century after doughnuts began having holes, the holes themselves are marketed as treats in themselves – in a sense returning to something very like their Dutch origins.In the 1819 story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving has Ichabod Crane admiring “the ample charms of a Dutch country tea table,” especially “the doughy doughnut, the tender olykoek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller.” Yes, the Dutch invented our alternative doughnut as well – and their twisted crullers were remarkably similar to our modern crullers. The French cruller, on the other hand, is related only by the fact they're fried. The batter for French crullers is pre-cooked – it's more like the pâte choux batter used to make cream puffs, than doughnut batter.Of course, we don't live for breakfast alone; there are other meals. But, if anything that characterizes American eating habits, it's our love of snacks that really sets us apart. Anything we can eat with one hand, while driving, watching TV, or standing up – especially if it's got carbs, fat, salt and/or sugar – we love.You can guess where I'm going with this, can't you?The Dutch gave us just what we want.Pretzels? A Dutch invention. There's a great painting, done around 1681 by Job Berckheyde, showing a Dutch baker blowing a horn to announce his freshly-baked wares – he stands behind a counter covered with various breads, rolls and pretzels. Behind him there's a wooden rack from which six more fat pretzels hang. They look like the ones still sold on the streets of Manhattan. However, they're somewhat harder and, in place of salt they've got sugar and cinnamon. They're called krakelingen, and would be good dunked in coffee, like doughnuts or biscotti. They were commonly made in Holland, but we know they were made here too – because they were mentioned, in court proceedings in New Amsterdam, in 1653.Is there any snack dearer to our hearts than the humble cookie?In French and British English, it's a biscuit – 'though before adopting the French word, the English called them "New Year's cakes." In Italian, they're biscotto; in Portuguese, biscoito , -- like the German word zwieback – all words that reflect the fact that they're twice-baked (or, at least, baked to twice-baked crispness). In German it's a keks, which sounds suspiciously like our "cake," or plätzchen, and in Spanish it's galleta – both of which literally mean "little cake." Our "cookie" also means "little cake" – because it's based on the Dutch word koekje, the diminutive of koek (a flat, barely risen cake). Only in America and other former Dutch-speaking colonies are these little treats called anything like "cookies."The Dutch didn't have chocolate chip cookies or oatmeal-raisin cookies, but they did make many different types. Speculaasbrokken were a kind of spice cookie that had a blanched almond embedded in its center. These seasonal treats were served during the period before Christmas. They were a smaller version of speculaas, a molded spice cake.Theerandjes were bar cookies, softer and chewier than most other cookies of the time. The recipe appeared in a Dutch cookbook, Perfect Instructions for the Pastry Bakers or Their Students, published in the Netherlands in 1753. They stayed soft because they contained honey, which is hygroscopic – it drew moisture from the air, so they didn't completely dry after coming out of the oven. These cookies were topped with candied orange peel and citron in a honey glaze.Honey was, before mass-produced sugar, the primary sweetener in Europe – so it's not surprising that colonists brought bees with them to the New World (the first honeybees in North America arrived in 1622).Once sugar became affordable, candying was a popular way of preserving fruit. Another was fruit leather. Fruit Roll-ups were not invented by General Mills in the 1980s – they just added the saran-wrap and trademarked the name. Recipes for fruit leathers appeared in The Sensible Confectioner, as early as 1683 (the edition that the VanCortlandt family had).Tea cookjes were thin wafer-like butter cookies with slightly-browned edges. Their name is half English and half Dutch because the recipe comes from a recipe book from a Dutch household that was hand-written sometime around 1800, long after the Dutch and English were no longer in control of the region. Today, we think of wafers as any thin crisp cookies, but in Dutch colonial times, they were thin crisp waffle-like cookies, similar to the cones that we use with ice cream.When most of us went to school, the Dutch period in our US history classes was glanced over, in a rush to get to the presumably more-important English-focused historical events. Part of the reason for this is the fact that English language and culture are the supposed models upon which the American experience is based.We also tend to think of American history as somehow independent of events in other parts of the world. The back-and-forth control of the Hudson Valley, between the English and the Dutch, was but a small part of larger wars being waged between the two countries in the seventeenth century. At issue was control of the seas, and especially the trade routes and colonies used by spice merchants. What was happening here was mirrored, in a bigger way, by battles waged in South Asia and the Caribbean.However, we should also consider the fact that, for most of the last century, the textbook industry has been centered in Boston (for the same reason, most students are unaware that much of the Revolution happened south of Philadelphia). In Boston, history -- as it's understood -- began shortly before the Revolution. Here, in the Hudson Valley, it started over a century and a half earlier.Today, we've considered just a tiny part of the Dutch influence on American culture – the things we love to stuff in our faces. Even through the narrow window of food history, it's easy to see that, given a choice, Americans still enjoy "going Dutch."[vi]
Notes

[i] Quoted in Rose, Peter G. Foods of the Hudson. 1993, p. 142.[ii] Quoted in Rose, Peter G. The Sensible Cook. 1989, p. 27.[iii] Irving, Washington. A History of New York. 1940, n.p.[iv] ibid.[v] Quoted in Rose, 1989, p. 29.[vi] While many pejorative “Dutch” terms (like “Dutch courage” and “Dutch widow”) arose during the seventeenth-century conflicts, “Dutch treat” and “going Dutch” are not among them. It reflects the sensible “everyone-pays-his-own-way” practice that is still common among the Dutch today. It was depicted, in 1845 -- without a hint of a slight -- by James Fenimore Cooper. After one character in his novel, Satanstoe, set in the mid-eighteenth century, paid for several Dutch people to get into a fair, they all carefully repaid him for their share of the cost.
ReferencesBarnes, Donna R. and Peter G. Rose. Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life. Albany and Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002.Heiss, Mary Lou, and Robert J. Heiss. The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2007.Hess, Karen. Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.Irving, Washington. Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York. New York: The Heritage Press, 1940.Kalm, Pehr. Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770. New York: Dover, 1966.Prendergast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books, 1999.Rose, Peter G. Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch. Charleston, SC: Hickory Press, 2009.
Matters of Taste: Dutch Recipes with an American Connection. Albany and Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002.
Foods of the Hudson: A Seasonal Sampling of the Region's Bounty. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1993.Rose, Peter G. (trans. & ed.) The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World (De Verstandige Kok): Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989.

food sites for June 2013

Nettles, Urtica dioica – Dutchess County, New York

June is literally "bustin' out all over" in the Hudson Valley, and young greens, wild and domestic, are at their best. Slow cooked, or simply served as salads, they're a welcome change from the root vegetables of winter. But first, a word of advice from someone who -- once, and only once -- became unwittingly intimate with Urtica dioica: Don't consider, even for a second, making a salad of raw nettles – heat is required to denature the enzymes that provide their sting.
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. It's Spring, a time when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love, and an old man's fancy turns to... well... thoughts. Every once in a while, Dr Sanscravat ventures into the realm of fiction (yes, intentionally). Last month Just Served featured one of these excursions: "Caddis." It is not about food, but the vagaries of memory.
Persistent (or otherwise unoccupied) readers can follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. Links to all of our online scribbles are available at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. Also, Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our backlisted LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history and science articles.
In recognition of wedding season, here are a few excerpts from On the Table's culinary quote collection:

In the nineteenth century, it was traditional to serve three courses of asparagus -- thought to be a powerful aphrodisiac -- to a French groom on the night before the wedding. The modern French gentleman has discarded the noble asparagus for the more romantic passion prompter -- Champagne. Sharon Tyler Herbst

After about 20 years of marriage, I'm finally starting to scratch the surface of what women want. And I think the answer lies somewhere between conversation and chocolate. Mel Gibson

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked. Winston Churchill

The most dangerous food is wedding cake. James Thurber

GaryJune, 2013

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 suggested sites -- 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----
Antiquity(Part 1 of "History of Health Food," from The Smithsonian Institution’s blog, Food & Think)
Bibliographical List Related to Food Advice in Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries(compiled by Peter Scholliers)
Birth of Dieting, The(Part 3 of "History of Health Food," from The Smithsonian Institution's blog, Food & Think)
Dressing for Dinner(Jan Whitaker's site, Restaurant-ing Through History, tracks the evolution  -- or devolution – of what-to-wear at the table)
Eating Alone in Italy(Lynne Curry shows that M.F.K. Fisher wasn't the only one who could write well about solitary dining)
History of Baseball Stadium Nachos, The(the true history of nachos may be elusive, but origin of the stuff they serve at ballgames is not; an article from Food & Think, a Smithsonian Institute blog)
Illegal Food: Step Away from the Cheese, Ma'am(a few forbidden foods)
Importance of the Humble Fig to Humankind(short article in Archaeology News; with a link to original article, sold at Springer Journal Human Ecology)
Mean Cuisine(as Juvenal is alleged to have said, "It’s impossible not to write satire;" this biting amuse bouche is served by Joyce Wadler, in The New York Times)
Medieval and Renaissance Periods(Part 2 of "History of Health Food," from The Smithsonian Institution’s blog, Food & Think)
Most Unusual Restaurants in the World, The(carrying themes to extremes)
Newly-Discovered 12th Century Recipes to Be Recreated("...food recipes from a 12th century Durham Priory manuscript have been found to pre-date the earliest known ones by 150 years")
Science Behind Beer Nuts, The(the Monell Chemical Senses Center explains why beer tastes better with peanuts – among other things)
Slippery Business(Tom Mueller writes about "The trade in adulterated olive oil" in an archived article from The New Yorker)
Treasures from the Past(Ammini Ramachandran collects and annotates books about Indian cookery and food science – Supasatra -- that date back to the sixteenth century; plus forgotten recipes from the period)
What Iconic American Food Helped America through WWII?(hint: it contains Yellow Dye #5 and Yellow Dye #6)
What Makes Eating So Satisfying?(deconstructing the sensory experience)

-- inspirational (or otherwise) site for writers/bloggers --
After Self-Publishing: How to Find an Agent and a Publisher for Your Self-Published Book
Compare POD Publishers!
On Food
Photo Gallery: Photographing Food
Secrets of Writing Recipes for Big Food Magazines
What Is Considered Previously Published Writing?
What Writers Earn: A Cultural Myth

-- yet more blogs --
Eat Like a Man
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 this newsletter, 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 On the Table.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (Paper)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Hardcover)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries (Hardcover) (Kindle)
Human Cuisine (Paper) (Kindle)
Herbs: 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 #152" 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Caddis

Everything in the room is brown—except for the man, who is gray. The walls, covered with ancient photographs, diplomas, newspaper clippings, and mounted insects… brown. Bookshelves overflow with brown books. Towers of browning books and faded scientific journals lean into the corners. The brown desk is covered with browning papers, a rack of brown pipes that haven’t been used in decades sits atop a stack of brown magazines, a humidor holds crumbs of desiccated brown tobacco, and—everywhere—dozens of small jars of alcohol, each containing tiny brown Trichoptera larvae.
The miniscule worms, slightly shaggy, seem to have all their legs at the front of their bodies, bunched just behind their dark bumpy heads. They are not beautiful, except to the gray figure sitting at the desk. “Any damned fool can be a lepidopterist,” the man mutters. He says this to himself, as there is no one else in the room—and hasn’t been for as long as the man can remember.
The retired entomology professor prefers the uninterrupted quiet of his study, just as he had always preferred the solitude of field work over the incessant bother of the classroom. Swarms of co-eds reminded him of butterflies, pretty to look at for a moment but of no lasting interest. He often told his colleagues, while looking over his bifocals, and down his own long proboscis, that it was no coincidence that the author of Lolita was an amateur lepidopterist.
The man is working on his magnum opus, the definitive treatise on his beloved caddisflies. He’d spent thousands of hours lifting slippery rocks from streams to find the tiny creatures clinging there. Many of them build little mansions for themselves of whatever they can find. Some species cement miniscule pebbles and grains of sand into slightly-curved masonry cylinders, just large enough to protect their soft abdomens, while leaving their heads and legs free to feed on the streams’ slime of algae, bacteria, protozoa and other microfauna. Others weave tiny twigs and bits of leaves into ragged basket-like huts that are virtually invisible in the detritus that accumulates in quiet backwaters of the streams.
They are never invisible to him.
He loves all the caddisflies, but resents the “flies” in their name. They are not (he is quick to point out) nasty disease-bearing Diptera, but lovely little moth-like beings that flit above the most beautiful trout streams as adults, after living as architects of their own larval homes. He admires their ingenuity, even though he knows better than to assume conscious thought involved in their constructions (each species having all of its blueprints safely locked away in its DNA).
Of all the 12,000 Trichopterans, he most loves the ones that don’t use their skills to construct homes. His favorites make tiny nets of some gossamer material, like the silk of spider-webs. They cast little bag-like seines that billow downstream to capture microscopic bits of food from the current. “Like me,” he thought, “they sample the waters for what most interests them.”
The gray bachelor is happy in his work. He has spent his life collecting, preserving, describing, and cataloguing insects that are no larger than one of his neatly-trimmed fingernails. Like a caddis larva, he can stay comfortably encased in the clutter of his study, a perfect home he has assembled over the course of a long career. His is not the sort of life that one shares with a mate.
As he writes, he occasionally reaches across the detritus to look closely into one of his specimen jars. He knows, without a glance at the meticulous label, the species of each larva. He also remembers the day it was collected, the weather, the time of day, and—most of all—the stream that yielded it. He is amused by the ironic fact that flowing water always lingers longest in his memory.
Sometimes, when examining a specimen, Thoreau’s words form in his head.
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”
He savors the brief literary distraction, then returns to work on his own book.
Other times, a recalled stream triggers memories of another stream, one that flowed over bare white rock, so clear, so devoid of biota, that no caddisflies ever built homes there.
He visited the stream, just once, sixty-odd years ago, while he was still a university undergraduate. He no longer remembers how he arrived at the stream, or when he left. All he remembers is that he walked beside it with the most lovely girl he had ever seen. He doesn’t remember how he happened to be with the girl, who he had never seen before, or would ever see again. He recalls that she was slender, with long blonde hair. Her voice was soft and quiet, though he doesn’t remember a word of what they said. He knows that it was sunrise, because the low clear light across white rock seemed to pass through her, lending a luminous translucency—like fragile porcelain—to her delicate features.
The recalled experience is so dream-like that sometimes he imagines that it is, in fact, only a dream. If it is a dream, it is a recurrent one, and one that intrudes far too often into his waking hours. The interruptions to his work irritate him, but not as much as the fact that he is never able wrest any more substantial data from the evanescent vision.
How could this have been just one brief encounter?
Why didn’t he try to see her again?
How did he even manage to spend those few moments with someone so far out of his league?
Indeed, did he even have a league?
Did he ever go out on a date, with anyone?
What could he have possibly had to say to such a radiant creature?
Did he say anything, or just walk along in stunned silence?
Was he silent because he feared that a single word might break the transcendent spell that held him?
Again and again, year after year, decade after decade, he asks himself these questions. He can picture, but doesn’t actually remember, her blue eyes asking similar questions—but suspects that detail was added to the mystery long after the event.
All he knows is that the experience, real or imagined, occurred so long ago that he will never find answers to any of his questions about it. Its constant interruptions and sheer fruitlessness annoy him. He much prefers science, where asked questions may sometimes be answered, where the answers can be tested, and either kept or discarded—but do not linger, unfathomable, for a lifetime.
Just before returning to his manuscript, for a brief instant, he pictures himself as one of his beloved caddis larvae, eternally casting a net in waters that race across smooth white rock, so clear, so pure, that nothing—ever—is caught in its web.

Foodsites for May 2013

Ramps, Allium tricoccum, Dutchess County, NY


It's practically May, a month in which it's said that we are prone to "go blissfully astray" – as if any one month is more likely than any other for such digressions from the path of righteousness. Speaking of paths (was that a terrible segue, or what?), I found the two ramps, pictured above, growing beside a trail where I normally hunt for morels. Not enough to pick, of course, but a welcome sight where I'd never seen them before.
With Spring, the urge to partake in outside sports begins to take hold and -- for those of us whose competitive spirits aren't necessarily accompanied by a longing for physical exercise – barbecue and chili cook-offs provide another venue for public displays of chest-thumping. Not coincidentally, they also provide an opportunity for the consumption of beer – an often-essential preliminary event at such pissing contests (actual or metaphorical). We recently took a little look at the history of chili competitions in Seeing Red.
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. Continuing in the "blissfully astray" direction, Dr Sanscavat added a tale of culinary woe from his youth to Just Served last month. It's called "Eggs"  Truly adventurous (and/or masochistic) readers can follow us on Facebook, or Twitter. If you are still not completely off your feed, links to all of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. Leitesculinaria has reposted twenty-or-so of our backlisted LC pieces here, as part of their archive of food history and science articles.
In celebration of the beginning of foraging season, this excerpt from On the Table's culinary quote collection:

A white truffle, which elsewhere might sell for hundreds of dollars, seemed easier to come by than something fresh and green. What could be got from the woods was free and amounted to a diurnal dining diary that everyone kept in their heads. May was wild asparagus, arugula, and artichokes. June was wild lettuce and stinging nettles. July was cherries and wild strawberries. August was forest berries. September was porcini. Bill Buford

GaryMay, 2013

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 suggested sites -- thanks, and keep them coming!
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the new sites
American Association of Meat Processors, The (AAMP)(trade group providing information on food safety, recall information, regulations, and nutritional labeling)
Art of Fermentation, The(an interview with the fermentation guru, Sandor Katz, at the American Museum of Natural History)
Classics Professor Unearths Archaeological Clues about Ancient Roman Vineyards(first century grape seeds may tell us something about the origins of today's Chianti)
Foraging and Parasites(Rosemary Drisdelle asks, "Are You In Danger When You Eat Wild Food?")
graze (a Chicago-based literary food magazine – with a refreshing lack of recipes or restaurant reviews)
Hidden Forces That Shape What We Eat, The(a brief interview with professor Frederick Kaufman, at NY's American Museum of Natural History)
Joy of Cooking 's Family History, The(interview with Irma S. Rombauer's great-grandson -- John Becker -- who is still editing and updating the classic cookbook)

Maya and Aztec Chocolate History and Antecedents(Patrick Hunt explores archaeology and chocolate in Electrum Magazine)
Sauces(a hierarchy of mostly Classical French sauces)
Turkeys Part I(The University of Leicester begins to tell us "The reason why cranberry jelly was invented")
U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF)(trade group site that offers information on international markets, news and statistics, plus export resources)

inspirational (or otherwise) site for writers/bloggers
Why Bookstores Aren’t Helping Indie Authors -- Yet

yet another blog
My Culinary Joy

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 this newsletter, 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 On the Table.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers (paper)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen (hardcover)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries (hardcover) (Kindle)
Human Cuisine (paper) (Kindle)
Herbs: 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 #151" 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) 2013 by Gary Allen.

Eggs

When I was a child, I developed a loathing for eggs. Sometimes, when I was ill, my mother would stir an egg into my milk, sweeten it, and try to convince me that it was a kind of milk shake. Invariably, a quivering piece of raw egg-white—something like a boiled booger, cooled and congealed—would lie stranded on my tongue.Even now, I shudder in remembered disgust.I could be induced to try a little scrambled egg (if very dry) or a hard-boiled egg (if very cold, and with its shell dyed in the gaudiest Easter-egg colors that modern chemistry could provide), but the very idea of slurping down runny yolks—reeking sulfuriously in their fluorescent yellow nastiness—was the stuff of nightmares.Just sitting at the breakfast table when my father cut into his sunnyside-ups was an unbearable ordeal. I could turn away, of course, but that eggy smell soon overcame my pitiful attempts at table manners—and there was no way to hide the kicking-in of the gag reflex. I was certain that there was nothing worse that could happen at breakfast.I was wrong.One morning, I woke to find that my grandfather had spent the night at our house. He was a silent gray figure, as grizzled and uncuddly as the generations of taciturn Danes who preceded him. He sat—hunched slightly forward—at the breakfast table, looking down at his glass of milk. He remained silent as I sat across from him. He lifted the glass, and slowly—in one long draft—drank the whole thing. It was only at the end, when the cloudy glass was nearly empty, that I saw it.A raw egg had been lying, hidden like some foul serpent, at the bottom of his glass. Slowly, oh how horribly slowly, the slimy thing slid down the milky film and into his mouth.Some sixty years later, I have become as gray and grizzled and uncuddly as my grandfather was then—but no power on earth could make me swallow one of those milky raw eggs.