Gary Allen's Blog, page 8

Food Sites for August 2020

Sweet Basil, the perfume of summer.
Eating, in the hot months, is all about freshness, using cooking methods that won’t heat up the house, but burst with flavors that never need the slow cajoling of a wintery braise. Give us something quickly grilled, served with a sun-soaked side dish—like a Caprese salad—and something tall and cold and sparkling to keep us company us on a shady porch or patio.
The Corona virus has forced some odd changes on most of us. Unless you happen to be a writer—in which case it’s possible that you haven’t noticed anything happening at all. Sitting in front of a blank piece of paper (or white window on a computer screen) is pretty much the same, everywhere, no matter what’s bedeviling all those non-writers in the outside world. Penwipe Publishing has been on vacation this month, which is just as well because we are plugging away at yet another book (or two), and had nothing ready for release into the wild.
On the off-chance that you get a chance to go on a roadtrip this summer, we’ve added a few more podcasts, to keep you company.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page, mostly about our food writing.
A few thoughts about the apotheosis of summer, from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes/What would life be like without homegrown tomatoes/Only two things that money can’t buy/That’s true love and homegrown tomatoes. Guy Clark

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

A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad. Jane Grigson

 GaryAugust, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Cara DeSilva), 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 —
Alcohol Professor, The(Adam Levy’s blogposts on “all things bibulous—wine, beer, spirits and cocktails, along with travel tips, book reviews, bar reviews, [and] recipes”)
Answer to Agriculture’s Biggest Problem Is Tiny Technology, The(Sarah Wells’ article, at Inverse, about the future of nanotechnology in farming)
Around Italy in Vintage Citrus-Growing Technology(Karen Chernick’s GastroObscura article about Sophia Massarella’s efforts to photographically document the traditional citrus growers of Italy)
Buzz on Our Forgotten American Tea Plant, The(Murray Carpenter brews a pot of yaupon for NPR’s Morning Edition)
Cheese Professor, The(Adam Levy’s blogposts on “all things cheese—type, pairing, history, trends, ...travel tips, book reviews, [and] recipes”)
Cherokee Chefs Bringing Back North America’s Lost Cuisine, The(modern-traditional Native American cooking and archaeology in Kentucky; Eric J. Wallace’s Atlas Obscura article)
Cook Like an Ancient Mesopotamian with the World’s Oldest Recipes(Jess Eng’s article at GastroObscura; you may not be able to walk like an Egyptian, but...)
Curry Before Columbus(Nishant Batsha’s article, in Contingent Magazine, on the history of spice mixtures in Indian cuisine: “the history of curry before Columbus is a history of spice”, with an emphasis on asafetida)
Definitive Whiskey Urban Dictionary, The(Aaron Goldfarb provides the definitions at VinePair)
First Chefs: Fame and Foodways from Britain to the Americas(notes from an exhibition that was held at The Folger Library)
Goetta(Ohio’s answer to Pennsylvania’s scrapple, substituting oat meal for corn meal)
History of Ice Cream, The: From Shaved Ice to King of Dessert(Gerard Paul’s article at Many Eats)
Imogene Lim Restaurant Menu Collection(mostly Chinese restaurant menus from US and Canada, archived at Vancouver Island University)
In Search of Real Barbecue(Sylvia Lovegren’s smoke-ringed article in American Heritage)
Inside Ethiopia’s Endangered Wild-Coffee Forests(Jeff Koehler writes about the last place on earth where Coffea arabica grows wild for GastroObscura)
Open Food Science Journal, The (peer reviewed articles on all aspects of food science and technology)
T astes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire (a PDF of Andrew Dalby’s 2010 book)
Tastes of Wine, The: Towards a Cultural History(PDF of Steven Shapin’s essay on how, historically, we have described wine; in Nicola Perullo‘s Wineworld: New Essays on Wine, Taste, Philosophy and Aesthetics)
What Do Christians (Not) Eat: Food Taboos and the Ethiopian Christian Communities (13th-18th c.)(Thomas Guindeuil’s article in Annales d’Éthiopie ; in English, book in French)
What Was Cooking in Medieval Cairo?(Nawal Nasrallah’s account in Rawi magazine)
Why We Eat the Food We Eat (Part 1, “What We Ate,” of Zev Robinson’s Vimeo documentary)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Are These the 4 Most Neglected Pages on Your Blog?
Confusing Tastes with Flavours
E.B. White on Writing with Style
Emotional Wines
Food Fanaticism and Social Media
Food Rules and Authenticity
How Do Publishers Decide Which Books to Bet On?
Is This Duck Kosher? It’s Complicated
Little Known, Much Loved Cookbook That Was Ahead of Its Time, The
There’s No Such Thing as “Weird” Meat
This Is How Much Money Cookbook Authors Can Actually Make
Two Signs of a Great Recipe, The
What Is a Recipe, Really?
Whose Dish Is It Anyway?

— another blog —
Readable Feast, The

— podcasts —
Bite
Gravy
Special Sauce
Why We Eat What We Eat

— changed URLs —
Gravy Quarterly

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Ephemera: a short collection of short stories
(Kindle)
Prophet Amidst Losses
(Kindle)
Cenotaphs
(Kindle)
Future Tense: Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #238 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.

Food Sites for July 2020

It's the berries.
We’ve gone through another month of anti-viral isolation: nothing but reading, writing, cooking, drinking, and taking in the ever-changing view of the garden; perhaps pulling the errant weed. Which is to say, no different from what our life was like before the pandemic.
However, Corona (the novel virus) has caused some unexpected symptoms to manifest themselves in the Hudson Valley. Against all odds (and, some might argue, common sense), it has caused Penwipe Publishing to infect an unsuspecting public with yet another of our Kindle Books. 




Future Tense: Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past  is a non-food book—and a novel to boot. It asks the question: “What would it be like to suddenly have clear memories of things that don't happen 'til decades later?” A small group of hippies—at an upstate New York bar, in 1968—find themselves in that very situation. What follows is a before-and-after story, in which it’s never quite clear which is which. Confusion, wild speculation, enlightenment, and lust abound—so, pretty much just like the sixties.

BTW, we’re continuing to include podcasts, at least as long as pandemic and political chaos occupy the news. So, maybe forever.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page, mostly about our food writing.
Some berry sweet remarks from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did. Dr. William Butler (and quoted in Izaac Walton’s Compleat Angler)

A man in the wilderness asked me, “How many strawberries grow in the sea?” I answered him, as I thought good, “As many as red herrings grow in the wood.” Mother Goose

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle;/And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best/Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality. Shakespeare; King Henry V. Act I. Scene 1

We respond to strawberry fields or cherry orchards with a delight that a cabbage patch or even an elegant vegetable garden cannot provoke. Jane Grigson

You have to ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. Goethe

Gary
July, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Cynthia Bertelsen), 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 —
All the Wine That’s Fit to Print(Leslie Pariseau’s history of the way wine has been treated in The New York Times’ restaurant reviews; for Punch)
Around the World in Pancakes(Niki Achitoff-Gray describes 23 different types—from aebleskiver to okonomiyaki—at Serious Eats)
Beginner’s Guide to Foraging, A(Laura Hampson’s introduction to London’s wild foods; in the Evening Standard)
Brief History of Cooking with Computers, A(Michael Y. Park’s survey, at Bon Appétit)
Court Case That Killed the ‘Ladies Menu,’ The(Natasha Frost’s Gastro Obscura article on how one aspect of restaurant culture was shaped by larger cultural shifts)
Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food (PDF of Andy Smith’s 2006 book)
Flavor Networks Reveal Universal Principle Behind Successful Recipes(MIT Technology Review’s analysis of various ways to understand why certain flavor combinations work well together)
Food for Thought(J. Hoberman’s Bookforum review of Ben Katchor’s book, The Dairy Restaurant ; remembering the eateries of a mostly bygone era)
From Fruit-At-The-Bottom to Keto: How Yogurt in America Reflects Its Food Trends(a single-serve cup of food history from Priya Krishna, at Vox)
History of Chinese Food, The(3,000 years of Chinese gastronomy; a paper by Calisi Boudicca)
History of Popcorn, The: How One Grain Became a Staple Snack(a seven-millennial trip from Peru to the microwave; Michelle Delgado’s article at Serious Eats)
How the Black Death Gave Rise to British Pub Culture(Richard Collett’s GastroObscura article)
How to Engineer Comfort Food: Why Certain Foods Make Us Calm(Ali Pattillo’ Inverse interview with Archer-Daniels-Midland food scientist, Marie Wright, on why we gravitate to familiar flavors)
Label This(transcribed database of the Amerine wine label collection at University of California at Davis)
Restaurant-ing on Wheels(Jan Whitaker, on the mobile history of stand-up street food, from lunch wagons to food trucks; at her blog, Restaurant-ing Through History)
Science of Sourdough Starters, The(Tim Chin’s article at Serious Eats)
Sickness in Our Food Supply, The(Michael Pollan’s article in The New York Review of Books; the infection is not biological, it’s political)
Social History of the Science of Food Analysis and the Control of Adulteration(Peter Atkins paper in 2013’s The Handbook of Food Research )
Some Like Them Hot!(Matthew Wills’ short history of chile peppers, at JSTORDaily)
South African Journal of Enology and Viticulture (research in viticulture, enology, wine biotechnology, plant biotechnology, microbiology, plant pathology, entomology and soil science)
Tips for Responsible Drinking, from 16th-Century Germany(Matthew Taub’s GastroObscura article about a 1536 treatise written by Vincent Obsopoeus in Bavaria)
Where Wine Flavors Come From: The Science of Wine Aromas(the science; from Wine Folly)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Coffee at Eleven
Cookbooks: Behind-The-Scenes Look at the People Who Make Them
End of Meat Is Here, The
Everyone in Pompeii Got Takeout, Too
I Ate Chicken for a Whole Year and Wrote a Cookbook All About It. Here Are 10 (Sometimes Surprising!) Things I Learned.
Tales from Topographic Kitchens
This Is the Dumbest Foodie Battle of Our Time
When the Mind Rules the Belly: The Ism’s of Food

— podcasts —
Anthrochef
at the sauce
Burnt Toast
Copper & Heat
FOOD + GARDEN
Inside winemaking
Point of Origin
Toasted Sister

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by our commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Ephemera: a short collection of short stories
(Kindle)
Prophet Amidst Losses
(Kindle)
Cenotaphs
(Kindle)
Future Tense: Remembrance of Things Not Yet Past
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #237 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for June 2020

A display at London’s Borough Market
With this issue of our updates newsletter, we round out twenty years of publication! It doesn’t feel like that long but, apparently, time flies when you’re having fungi.
It’s been a busy month in lock-down America: In a continuing effort to de-clutter our hard drive, Penwipe Publishing recently released another of our Kindle Books into the wild. Prophet Amidst Losses is not a food book. It’s a kind of theme-and-variations—in 19 short (many very short) stories—about the experience of loss. Sounds depressing, right? Sometimes, yes—but a surprising large amount of it is wickedly funny. 
Much like life.
We’ve also published, through Penwipe, another non-food book, Cenotaphs . It’s a novel about the common urge to escape from one’s current existence—presumably for someplace better. Disappearing, as several characters discover, is not always what they expected—or desired. 
As usual, our readers get to enjoy a little snarky schadenfreude along the way.
We’ve also updated, expanded, and improved the readability of our earlier book: Terms of Vegery . It might well be our best illustrated—but silliest—book.
So far.
In our previous issue, we added a new category—Podcasts—and we’ll continue that feature for as long as it’s needed. If we must be stuck at home, we might as well listen to something better than endless bad pandemic news.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page, mostly about our food writing.
A little bright-side stay-at-home advice from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

You know—you don’t gain weight if no one sees you eating. Orson Welles

Gary
June, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Sarah Wassberg), 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 —
40 Ways the World Makes Awesome Hot Dogs(Food Republic’s chart that shows you how to walk your dog)
1700s Plague Cure that Inspired an Uncannily Contemporary Cocktail, The(Reina Gattuso, on an ancient libation, poured at GastroObserver)
Anthropology of Chinese Foodways (PDF of book from North American Business Press, by Tian Guang and Chen Gang)
Authenticity in the Kitchen(Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005)
Did Ancient Greeks Drink Beer?(Max Nelson’s 2104 article in Phoenix)
“Extinct” Apple Varieties Are Actually Everywhere(Matthew Taub, at GastroObscura, on recently discovered lost heirlooms)
Handbook of Spices, Seasonings, and Flavorings (complete text of Susheela Raghavan’s book, in PDF)
How America Rediscovered a Cookbook from the Harlem Renaissance(Mayukh Sen’s Atlas Obscura article on an unfinished manuscript, by Arturo Schomburg, that paved the way for a whole area of food studies)
How to Turn Plants into Tinctures, Like an Ancient Alchemist(historic background and methods, from Jessica Leigh Heste, at GastroObscura)
In Thailand, Funeral Cookbooks Preserve Recipes and Memories(Chawadee Nualkhair’s GastroObscura article on the social history of these cookbooks)
Inside the World’s Only Sourdough Library(Anne Ewbank’s GastroObserver article about this archive of sourdough starters, in St. Vith, Belgium)
“Man is a Dining Animal”: The Archaeology of the English at Table, c.1750-1900(Annie Gray’s paper on how gender and class affected British dining practices)
Neanderthals Ate Food Thought to Be Crucial to Human Intelligence(Sarah Sloat, at Inverse, on research that suggests a diet rich in seafood “...may have endowed Neanderthals with good brain health, boosting their cognitive skills”)
Secret Lives of Fungi, The(New Yorker article, by Hua Hsu; fungi much are more than shiitake and psilocybin)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Are Self-Published Authors Still Indie Authors?
Cooking with Gaul
Foodie Culture as We Know It Is Over
History Eats
History in the Kitchen
Judging a Book by Its Title
Looking for the Origin of the Term “Food System”
MFK Fisher Never Wanted to Be MFK Fisher
Museum of Kitchenalia
“No One Suspected Me”: Women Food Critics Dish on Dining Out for a Living
Procrastinator’s Guide to Getting Things Done, A
Toward a New Lexicon for American Wine
Way I Used to Read Recipes, The
When Fonts Fight, Times New Roman Conquers

— podcasts —
America’s Test Kitchen: Proof
Chowhound’s Table Talk
Fantastic History of Food, The
Florida Oranges: A Colorful History
Food Chain, The
Gastropod
Heritage Radio Network: The Food Seen
Leitesculinaria
Salt, The
Splendid Table, The
Sporkful, The

— Changed URL —
Food in Medieval Sicily, Revised

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Ephemera: a short collection of short stories
(Kindle)
Prophet Amidst Losses
(Kindle)
Cenotaphs
(Kindle)

Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #236 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for May 2020

Dr Sanscravat arrogating his idol; at the Twain home in Hartford, CT
We’re about to enter the last part of our third-quarter century of existence. As Mark Twain said (when he turned 70):

It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach—unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture.

In response to the current plague that’s going around—and, if we’re lucky enough to survive it, the onslaught of senility—we’ve decided that we should get off our duffs and publish more of the books that clutter our hard drive. Consequently, we recently self-published, as a Kindle Book, Ephemera: a short collection of short stories . There is some—admittedly weird—culinary content (but if you’re expecting usable recipes and/or serious food history, all we can say is: “Good bloody luck finding them”).
Ephemera is the first title released by our new enterprise: Penwipe Publishing. We expect that its backlist will grow longer, sometime in the near future. As part of the process, we’ve recently reformatted our previously self-published titles in order to make them (we hope) “more user-friendly.” BTW, “Penwipe” is the short, modern incarnation of the company’s full name: “Inkblot, Penwipe, Bluepencil & Erasercrumbs, SLC.” The abbreviation, as you no doubt expect, stands for “Severely Limited Corporation.”
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page, mostly about our food writing.
When we think about age, we need to remember that it is not just about wine and cheese. A few thoughts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

I have enjoyed great health at a great age because every day since I can remember, I have consumed a bottle of wine—except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles. Bishop of Seville

Older women are like aging strudels—the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own. Robert Farrar Capon

There is no cure ’gainst age but it. Alexander Pope, on coffee

Old people shouldn’t eat health food. They need all the preservatives they can get. Robert Orben

I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table. Rodney Dangerfield

Gary
May, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Rachel Laudan), 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 —
Food and Wine Pairing is Junk Science(Alder Yarrow’s commonsense argument at his blog, Vinography)
History of Cooking(Maria Cecilia Metran’s detailed timeline)
Irrational Nature of Pie, The(The Botanist in the Kitchen’s discourse on nuts, with a heavy emphasis on pecans)
New Worlds, New Tastes: Food Fashions After the Renaissance(Brian Cowan examines the origins of early modern food culture)
Plea for Culinary Modernism, A: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food(Rachel Laudan’s 2001 Gastronomica article)
Prehispanic Use of Chili Peppers in Chiapas, Mexico(archaeological evidence reported by Terry G. Powis, et. al., in PLOS ONE)
Swift Overview of Eating and Drinking Since Antiquity, A(chapter by Peter Scholliers and Paul Erdkamp, in Handbook of Eating and Drinking )
Who’s Afraid of Chop Suey?(Charles Hayford’s 2011 article about the early history of Chinese food in the US, in Education About Asia)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Baker’s Dozen of Food History Blogs, A
Brief History of Food Blogs, A
I’m Sick of Scrolling Past Essays to Get to Recipes I’m Not Paying For
Japanese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten for 32 Years: Behold the Delicious Illustrations of Itsuo Kobayashi
When Ancient Writing Is an Art, Science, and Snack

— more blogs —
Food Historian The
Musings on Food History

— podcasts —

Food Micro Minutes
Food Chain, The
Foodie Pharmacology
Milk the Funk
Serving Up Science

— gallows humor —
All 50 States Reimagined as Food Puns(some are punnier than others)
Humor, Food In(“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” E. B. White)

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Ephemera: a short collection of short stories
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #235 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

Sphex Appeal

Jennifer Fletcher peers through the windshield and out across the river. It’s midnight; all she can see is the dim outline of Bear Mountain against a starry moonless night. She turns to face the handsome dark-haired stranger she met at the bar, hardly believing her good luck. The headlights of a police car sweep across them, then continue down the mountain. The turn-off on the Bear Mountain Parkway is a popular spot for lovers (and temporary hook-ups, like theirs). The cops rarely bother with them.Once the patrol car passes by, she suggests that they move to someplace where, “they can be more comfortable.” Her “date” smiles and climbs out, walking around to open the driver-side door for her. She holds out her hand, like a lady; he takes it and gently guides her to the back seat.“What a gentleman!” she declares.After some preliminary kissing, she reaches down and unbuckles his belt. Feeling around for his zipper, she feels the bulge in his pants grow firmer—and warmer. This was going to be a night to remember.Jennifer brushes her long blond hair aside, and bends down over his lap. She kisses the tip of his penis, and smiles inwardly as it slides past her lips and tongue and deep into her mouth. She’s been here before. She is, however, a bit surprised when it grows still larger. That’s unusual. She’s more surprised when it continues to grow, sliding down her throat, past her esophagus, and all the way to her stomach.Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Still, it is oddly pleasurable, and doesn’t even make her gag. That was new, too; while she’d never really been into that whole deep throat thing, this was easy. She felt him shudder, and an incredible feeling of warmth filled her.It was all so beautiful that she fainted.—Around seven the next morning, the same squad car slows as it approaches the look-out. Deputy Schmidt notices that one of the cars he’d seen the night before is still parked there. That was not typical; most of these trysts last for only an hour or so. He’d never seen a couple spend an entire night there. Anything out of the ordinary triggers his cop instincts. He pulls in alongside the overnighter to take a look.The car is empty. Places that serve as Lover’s Lanes are, of course, far away from prying eyes—and definitely not in walking distance of anyplace else. It’s unlikely that anyone walked home from that car. He moves over to a stone wall and considers possible romantic spots on several rocky ledges below him. No one there, either.He walks back to the parked car for another, closer, look. In the back seat, he observes something that looks like a rumpled blanket. Curious, he bends to look closer. He jumps back, spinning around, and vomits on the passenger-side door of his cruiser, completely obscuring the shield-shaped logo of the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department. It’s not a blanket.It’s the complete skin of a long-haired blond woman.—The Medical Examiner’s lab, in the basement of Peekskill hospital, is conveniently close to the morgue. A few hours after Deputy Schmidt’s discovery, the skin of an unidentified woman is delivered to the ME. Doctor Weiglein opens the oddly light body bag, and places the skin on one of his stainless-steel tables.He’d known—even before med school—that the skin was the largest organ in the human body, but this is his first opportunity to weigh one. His examination is different in several other ways. There is no incision to make; no other organs to weigh; no skeleton to measure. All he can do is spread the skin for examination.The only external sign of damage—other than being a bodyless skin—is a long, jagged tear that runs down the anterior of what had once been a body, beginning from the underside of the mandible, and continuing all the way to the pubis. The tear shows signs of having been forced from inside the body.Weiglein examines the skin for signs of cutmarks to explain the absence of muscles, organs, and bones. There are none. He makes a note about two peculiar aspects of the remains: the skin—that once enclosed the arms and legs—is inside out; he also detects an unfamiliar musky smell. He swabs the interior of the skin, and sends it to the lab for ID.—Bruce Higgins is draped, provocatively, with one elbow on the bar of The Ramrod. He scopes the crowd, looking for Mr. Right—or, at least, Mr. Good Enough for Tonight. Not much of interest. Several former one-nighters, all of whom deserved to be one-nighters. Several regulars who hadn’t even deserved that. Still, it’s a terrible thing to go home drunk and alone. He might be forced to settle on one of them. Maybe two—that, at least, might make things more interesting.Peering down the bar, coyly looking over the salted rim of his third Margarita, he spots a newcomer to The Ramrod. “Newcomer” might— with any luck—be the operative term. He smirks. The stranger is tall, muscular, with longish blond hair. Bruce orders another drink, and has Dirk, the shirtless bartender, deliver it to the godlike blond at the far end of the bar. Thor—or whatever the mystery-man’s name is—raises his glass and winks. Bruce brushes his neatly-trimmed black mustache and saunters down to seal the deal.They chat of this and that—then dance for a while, their bodies rubbing sinuously to an appropriately-retro bossa nova instrumental. Bruce likes what he feels. It’s a package he’s more than ready to open. They sashay, to that Brazilian beat, to the hall behind the bar. They see two restrooms; one marked “Men,” and one marked “Women” with “Wo” crossed out. The one that had once been reserved for women still has several stalls. They enter that one and choose a stall. The blond stranger closes the stall door and faces Bruce, who sits on the closed toilet. After a few tugs at the waistband of the black leather pants, he succeeds in pulling them down. “OMfuckingG,” Bruce whispers to himself, “… he really is a god!” He licks the godhead. If his mouth wasn’t full, he’d be smiling as the engorged flesh pushes down his throat. “It must be all those margaritas,” he reasons, “because that doesn’t hurt a bit.” A pun forms in his mind, “Way tequila mood, Brucie boy!”The deity’s dick swells and lengthens, entirely filling Bruce’s gastrointestinal track. “Wow,” he thinks, “this is the first time I’ve had anal sex from both ends… at the same time… and from the same guy.” He was about to compare himself to a spit-roast, but he passed out before he could visualize it.Twenty minutes later, Dirk begins to wonder what had become of Higgins and the blond stranger. He glances toward the hallway a couple of times. One time, he sees the stranger walking away from the rest rooms in the company of a tall dark man who looks vaguely familiar. He had a mustache very like Bruce’s, but he was significantly taller—and better built—than Bruce could ever have hoped to be.Still, the bartender wonders why his friend hasn’t returned. The next time he has a break, he walks back to the men’s room. No sign of Bruce. He looks into the former women’s room and sees nothing. Then he notices that one of the stalls was closed—with no feet showing below the door. He knocks and gets no answer. The door bears several scratches, as if someone had crawled over it. Odd.He enters the adjoining stall and climbs, first to the seat and then up on the tank. He peers over the divider. The stall is empty. There are, however, some crumpled rags stuffed in the toilet.Since one of Dirk’s jobs was seeing that bathrooms remained in good working order, he’s annoyed. He takes out a knife and jimmies open the latch. The door swings in, and he gets to see what was clogging the toilet.It was Bruce. Or, at least, his most superficial manifestation.—For the second time in Doctor Weiglein’s career, a bodiless integument arrives at his lab in a practically empty body bag. For this to have happened once, was noteworthy enough… but to occur twice, in the course of one week, suggested that something very odd was happening in Westchester County. He unfolds the skin of the late Bruce Higgins, just as he had done with Ms. Fletcher’s. Once again, the same absence of muscle, bone, and internal organs. Once again, the same jagged tear. Once again, the same odd mustiness. The only real difference is that this victim was male. Weiglein has to face the fact that both were victims of some form of foul play; no animal—or other natural force of which he was aware—could have caused these results. What, or who, could have caused this was impossible to imagine.While noting all his observations, for the record, he hears someone enter the lab. Looking up, he recognizes one of his colleagues. “Ahhhhh… Palmes, is it? I apologize… I’m not very good at remembering names… of the living.” This was not news to Doctor Palmer. He’d been working in the ME’s office for three years, and Weiglein had never gotten his name right. Not even once.“I have the result of tests on the sample you gave me a couple of days ago… well, a kind of result.”“What do you mean, ‘a kind of result’?”“Let’s just say that it’s the kind of result that leaves more questions than answers.”“I thought I already had too many questions… but what’s a few more? What did you find on that swab?”“Something odd. DNA from an interesting Genus… but not from any known species.”“Species of what?”“The Genus Sphex, of the family Sphecidae, the digger wasps.”“Okay. Digger wasps. What’s so interesting about them?“They have a number of curious features, but what’s interesting in this case is that I have just identified the DNA of a creature that no one has ever seen. Where did you collect that sample?”“Another interesting case… involving something that no one has ever seen. Until this month. And then seen twice.”“Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might have said.”“Alice who?”“Never mind. What were your interesting cases, this month?”“Twice, in recent days, I have received the flayed remains of young people that were devoid of any internal organs, muscle, blood, adipose tissue, bones… nothing. All that was found was their skins. There were no signs of surgical procedures; no cut marks, and no evidence that might indicate that such procedures were post-mortem.”“Whatever happened to them… happened while they were still alive? That’s horrendous!”“Indeed. It makes one wonder what sort of person was capable of… that is, could… and would… do something like that to another person.”“What else did you find when you examined the… remains?”“Just what I’ve told you… and, of course, the odd smell that led me to swab the interior surfaces of the integument for analysis. Oh… and that the skin of the arms and legs was reversed.”“The leg skins were where the arm skins were supposed to be… and vice versa?”“No… that would have been weird. Weirder. I mean those parts of the skins were inside out.”“You mean like what sometimes happens to sleeves when you take off a shirt?”“Exactly so! Funny I never made the connection…”“Was there anything else about the two skins that you haven’t told me?”“Their only external injury was a single avulsive wound… they appeared to have been roughly ripped down the front… from the inside.”Weiglein notices a sudden change in Palmer’s expression. What had been mere curiosity now reflected a wide-eyed, raised eyebrow, full-blown “AHA!” moment. “What is it, man?”“You remember that I said the Sphecidae was an interesting Genus? It just became a lot more interesting…”“How so?”“The digger wasps are a special kind of parasitic insects. They insert their eggs inside the bodies of certain other insects. The larvae hatch, then begin consuming their hosts. The young wasps carefully avoid eating any vital organs… until the end of their growth period. They need to keep their food source alive as long as possible. When fully developed, they eat the last bits. The host dies, and the new digger wasp rips its way out of the host’s exoskeleton—in effect. its cocoon—and emerges as an adult, ready to repeat the process.”“You think that something like this is happening, here, but with humans being parasitized… don’t you?”“It begins to look that way.”—Over the next few weeks, more empty skins are discovered. One was found in a secluded corner of Depew Park, between some bushes by the lake. Housekeeping staff at a popular no-tell motel—just outside of town, on Rt. 202, near the end of the Bear Mountain Parkway—were horrified to find another. That one was was left dangling over the edge of a double bed whose covers had not even been turned down. Yet another was found beside the railroad tracks on Roa Hook, not far from Annsville Creek. The only other evidence at that site were several empty beer cans.Doctor Palmer had raised some unsettling questions. Weiglein wondered: “When this sphex-like creature uses human bodies for its own breeding purposes, how many eggs are laid at one time?” It was horrible to imagine a body seething with maggots that all emerge, at once, as adults. Even if only one egg is laid per victim, does the creature live on, after ovipositing, to lay again? If so, the number of breeding insects (for lack of a better word) would still double each time. While the rate of reproduction is slower with single eggs than with multiple eggs, the number of fertile insects still grows exponentially.Doctor Weiglein had managed to keep details about the bodies—or the mysteriously missing parts of bodies—from coverage in The Evening Star or WLNA, but he was beginning to think that the public might benefit from some sort of warning. Some form of public warning, yes,  but he has no idea how to proceed. It mustn’t be too specific, of course, at least until they knew more about what he was starting to regard as an infestation.Doctor Weiglein is convinced that Should he contact the Health Department? Pest Control? Homeland Security? How can he explain the situation to the authorities, when they have had little or no notice, in the media, about the problem? Even if they believe him, what preventative measures might the authorities recommend? Safe sex… whatever that might mean, now? He cannot even say, for certain, that sex (for the human victim) was involved in the attacks… ‘though, based on circumstantial evidence, it seems probable. Abstinence? Parts of the government have tried that—in the past, for other reasons—with an entirely predictable failure rate.As he expected, the number of bodiless skins increased dramatically over the next two weeks. Remains were found in dozens of places, many by civilians. One skill was found in the shower room of the local YMCA. Another was lying on a picnic blanket In Sprout Brook Park. Still another was draped over the ladder of the float in the middle of Mohegan Lake. The public began to panic, and demand explanations from the authorities. Also, as the doctor foresaw, reliable explanations were not forthcoming. All sorts of frivolous and baseless claims, often contradictory, were issued by various officials. None of them reduced public anxiety in any way. Weiglein feared that he would face increasing pressure, and scrutiny, and he was right again.—Lee Lillja tends bar at the upscale brewpub across from the Peekskill train station. She is eating a free slice of the pub’s signature roasted garlic pizza when she sees the 10:07 from Grand Central arrive. She spots a tall, good-looking man stepping down to the well-lighted platform. She puts down the remaining crust, gives the bottom edge of her tank-top a little tug, and reaches into her purse for a Listerine Breath Strip.The man she noticed had worked up a thirst during his ride, and discovered—much to his dismay—that the bar car was only available during rush hour. He spots the “No Draft Dodgers” brewpub, just across Railroad Avenue, and hurries over. After spending most of the evening chatting across the bar with Lee, he convinvces her to agree to go out when her shift ends. It wasn’t much of a struggle; she was convinced before he walked in the door. At closing time, they walk out to the parking lot. She touches his hand and coos, “Let’s go for drive… so we can talk in private.”He loves the idea.They tool up Route 9, and at the end of a long downhill section, turn left to pass over the bridge at Annsville Creek, invisible in the darkness. She swings through the seemingly endless series of tight curves on the Bear Mountain Parkway, finally pulling into a lookout on the left, not far from the Bear Mountain Bridge. “At last,” she sighs, “I thought we’d never get here!”They lean toward each other and kiss. Clearly, the conversational portion of the evening’s activities is over. Looking into his eyes, she reaches down to the front of his pants. His eyes close, and he sighs in anticipatory bliss. She undoes his pants and takes his penis into both hands. It is very warm. She likes the feel of it… almost as much as he does. She bends down to lick the hot flesh, and he groans with pleasure. He sighs again, a little louder, then again, louder still. With her head down, she can’t see the expression change on his face. He doesn’t look happy.With his penis growing in her mouth, she imagines the choking sound she hears is some unusual form of ecstasy. It’s not. His body shivers, then stiffens. She looks up to see his head thrown back. His mouth agape and his eyes stuck wide open, unblinking. Finding herself suddenly alone with an unexpected and totally unexplainable corpse, she screams in panic.The couple in the next car turn toward the sound, hastily scramble into some of their clothes, and run to see if they can help. Their eyes bulge at the sight of the partially-clothed dead man. They both look away. Having seen more he wanted, the guy runs back to his own car for a cell phone to call 911.Deputy Schneider, on his regular route, gets the call from the dispatcher and flips on his siren and all of his lights. He power-slides through the last couple of turns, skidding to a gravelly stop between two parked cars. A small group of people stands next to—but not looking into—one of the cars. “This is beginning to become a bad habit,” he muses. He walks to the back window and peers in, half-expecting to see another flayed human hide. The onlookers interrupt him, telling him to look in the front passenger’s seat. He’s seen plenty of dead bodies, most of them more than just skin, but this was something else. The victim’s death grimace, combined with his giant erection, made Schneider hesitate in mid-stride. He gets back to business, taking down everyone’s information, then walks back to his car. He gets on the radio to call for the coroner—all in one breath—exhales, and sits back to wait. Schneider has a thermos full of coffee, and a bag of chocolate-glazed doughnuts, sitting beside him—but his normal appetite is nowhere in evidence.—Dr. Weiglein was working his way through the night’s supply of flayed former humans when the coroner’s van pulls up to the loading dock. The team wheels a gurney into the lab. It seemed like ages since the doctor had seen a fullbody bag arrive. He looks forward to the return to normal. It’s not. He unzips the bag and tries to slide the body onto a work table. Something catches in the bag, interrupting his usual practiced procedure. Pulling on the open edges of the bag he sees that a large erect penis is caught in the zipper. “The guy’s lucky to be dead… that would hurt like the dickens if he wasn’t,” he chuckles to himself. There are no other living ears in the lab. He doesn’t need to pretend that constant exposure to the dead hasn’t deadened some of the more compassionate feelings that others deem necessary. He’s not a monster—or at least he doesn’t think so—no matter what they think.Such thoughts are a distraction, not conducive to maintaining his efficiency as a medical examiner. He sets them aside, and gets back to work. The first think he notices, other than the giant phallus itself, is that the member is covered with oozing blisters. It looks like a particularly nasty case of poison ivy. He makes a note of it before continuing the examination. He makes the standard Y-shaped incision, and removes the organs, weighing them and looking for anything out of the ordinary. He reflects that, lately, everything is out of the ordinary. He looks at the man’s face and notes petechial hemorrhaging of the conjunctiva. He finds no sign of abrasions or ligature marks on the man’s neck, so he reaches up from the chest cavity and feels along the trachea. Intense swelling has caused it to be completely closed off. So… the cause of death was asphyxiation. His questions, now, were who or what, in turn, caused it… and how was it done without leaving external visual evidence?He then recalls, with a shiver of disgust, the blistered priapism. The symptoms, at distinctly separate parts of the body may not be coincidental. What if both were caused by the same thing? “This is beginning to look like acute anaphylactic shock,” he marks in his notes. In hopes of identifying the causative agent—or agents—he takes samples of the liver, blood, and the stomach contents. He also takes a swab of the inside of the mouth, and another of the liquid adhering the tip and sides of the penis. “More treats for Doctor Palmes’ lab,” he says out loud, though he is alone in the room.—The next day, Weiglein gets a phone call from a very excited Dr. Palmer. “I ran DNA analysis on the blood sample you sent me.”“I assumed you would…”“Where did you collect it?”“From a cadaver in my lab, why?’“From a real cadaver… not just another one of those empty skins?”“Yes. What is so significant about this particular sample, that you want to know about its provenance?”“Because the DNA is an exact match for the first swab you made… of the interior surface of the first flayed victim.”“So?”“But this sample was not from a victim…”“Of course! That means we have our unsub, right here in the lab!”“Not only that… it means that, for the first time, we have an actual specimen of a species we could only imagine before! We are going to be famous! There might even be a Nobel Prize in Medicine for this!”“Unless, of course, there are no unflayed humans left on the planet to award it.”“You’ve spent too much time in the company of the dead; you’re developing a very dark outlook. But you’re right… it would definitely be in our interest… as a species, and not just as potential Nobel Laureates… to prevent the annihilation of our kind.”“How very altruistic of you, Doctor Palmes.”“Palmer.”“What?”“Never mind. I need to get back to the rest of the tests you ordered… I was just so excited by the DNA results that everything else was put on hold!”—Palmer rings off, so Weiglein returns to the drawer holding the specimen in question. With renewed interest, he slides the cadaver onto a table and begins a new examination. He first takes a closer look at the genitalia (he has decided to stop referring to it as “a penis”). Slicing it open, he does not find the expected tumescent, blood-engorged tissue. Instead he discovers a nested series of fleshy tubes, something like a telescope, that could be extended to nearly a meter in length. More surprising still is the presence of both testes and ovaries. This thing that bears a superficial resemblance to Homo sapiens is anything but human. It represents some form of hermaphroditic species that has acquired the ability to mimic us in order to reproduce itself. Weiglein is intellectually stimulated by the specimen on his table, at the same time as he is repulsed by it. For now, he has seen more than enough. He slides the thing back into its stainless-steel drawer, and returns to his desk. He calls “Palmes” to see if any progress has been made on the other samples he’d sent.—Weiglein posted messages about their findings to several online discussions among Medical Examiners. He intended the messages to be warnings… but was shocked at how large the response turned out to be. Other MEs, from around the country reported that they too had seen flayed-skin victims. He was careful not to reveal what they had learned about the creature he was storing in his lab. No one else had encountered anything like what Palmer and Weiglein had found. That was reassuring—as far as their Nobel aspirations—but they wished they could collect additional data to reinforce their theories. “It’s always a tricky balance between proprietary secrecy and the advantage of shared data from one’s colleagues,” Palmer commiserated with Weiglein.“Speaking of which… what else have you learned from the samples?”“That’s what I was coming to tell you… in person… I didn’t want anyone to overhear a phone conversation. You were right about anaphylaxis…”“How do you know?”“His… or her… or its… histamine levels were off the charts. Our friend was strongly allergic to something in the barmaid’s car… something it hadn’t been exposed to earlier… or it would have died sooner.”“Something he ate?”“No. There was nothing in the stomach. In fact, the stomach was practically a vestigial organ… it was too tiny to support a body of that size.”“What supplied its energy needs?”“I suspect it completed its feeding during the larval stage. It was living off fat reserves built up before it emerged as an adult.”“If the allergic trigger was not consumed…”“It was like contact dermatitis, but it caused a much stronger reaction than we see with compounds like poison ivy’s urushiol.” “Urushiol was my first thought when I examined its blistered member.”“It was an excellent hypothesis… but you were thinking of the wrong allergen.”“Are you going to make me beg for the answer?”“No…” Palmer laughed, “… it was something that the barmaid had on… or in… her. We would have thought of this a lot sooner if the officer who responded to the 911 call had included Ms. Lillja’s bad breath in his report.”“Barmaids and cops are often of the same social class… why would he even take note of her halitosis?”“First of all, that’s just rude, insensitive, and classist… and, second of all, it misses my point.”“Fair enough. I admit to maintaining a certain amount of distance …metaphorical and physical… between myself and the hoi polloi. But what was your point? Oh… and a point of rhetoric: when you begin a sentence with ‘first of all,’ repeating the ‘of all’ is superfluous and in bad taste.”“I stand corrected, your grace,” replied Palmer with full-on facetiousness. “The reason I mentioned Ms. Lillja’s breath was because it reeked of garlic.”“So?”“Our tests indicate that the irritant that caused the creature’s massive histamine reaction was allyl methyl sulfide, one of the key components of garlic breath.”“Very interesting! I wonder why he wasn’t put off by it?”“Perhaps these creatures can’t perceive it… until it’s too late?”“If so, we might have discovered their Achilles Heel. We have a way to fight this infestation!”—Palmer shuffles into Weiglein’s lab and drops into one of the two chairs. The ME looks up from his notes and greets him, “Why so glum, Palmes? You’re almost as wan as one of my patients.”“You know, it’s good that we turned over our findings… most of them… to the authorities… and glad they’re actually doing something about the infestation, but…”“Let me guess. You’re tired of hearing about vampires?”“My god… there’s no escaping the subject. Every channel has special coverage… with different talking heads going on and on… and on… about vampires… their history, their legends, the kinds of animals that drink blood… and the movies! Who knew that so many movies have been made about things that want consume us? They’re on all the channels, all the time… the only break we ever get is when they drag out those talking heads for yet another mind-deadening dialogue about you-know-what.”“It is boring… but the repetition is well-intentioned. If people take heed, the infestation will… eventually… come to an end.” “Of course… I know it’s important… but what about all the garlic growers’ associations and their self-serving PSAs?”“I must agree… there’re only so many times I can bear to hear that vapid jingle, ‘Vampires walk among us… eat some garlic every day!’ Much as I like garlic, I never again want to wake up in the morning thinking that I have to sprinkle garlic powder on my granola.”“Ughhhh,” Palmer shuddered. Then his eyes closed, and his head tilted; he was clearly revisiting some ancient memory. “What is it Dr. Palmes?”“I’ve been thinking that our current situation seems very familiar….”“To what? Surely you’ve never experienced anything like this before… none of us have.”“Not exactly… but, back in the fifties, we were afraid of so many things… things that we couldn’t see, but threatened to destroy us.”“I’m not sure I understand…”“Polio, commies, radiation. Every day, we were warned that… at any moment… we could be killed… or worse. Even the movies… like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, suggested that hidden forces were out to get us. For a child of the fifties, real boogiemen were all around us.”“A lot of that was a mixture of red-scare propaganda and irrational fears of the science that was beyond the control of ordinary people… the creatures in the films were metaphorical communists.”“I understand that… now… but, as a child, I had a terror of the unknown. I think that’s what seems familiar today.”“How so?”“My parents used to take me to drive-in movies… usually in my pajamas. One of the films we saw had Charlton Heston battling army ants, somewhere in South America. Naked Jungle… that was it! It was terrifying. The last scene I remember was of a guy who was supposed to open a floodgate, to wash away the invading ants… supposed to do so… but he passes out drunk, and the ants ate him… right down to his skeleton.”“You’re older than I thought… a true child of the fifties! Why haven’t you retired yet?”“That’s a different story… and not relevant. The only reason I mention seeing the movie, now, is that I probably closed my eyes to avoid looking at it… and fell asleep before the ending…”“So?”“It gave me nightmares for years… because I never found out if those unstoppable ants won.”

Food Sites for April 2020

Sixty years ago, restaurants in Nashville were closed because of the fear of contagion—by even the possibility of folks of different races eating together. Today we close eateries for fear a different kind of contagion.
We may be living in fearful—and fearsome—times, when even the thought of commensality seems like risky business. We may be afraid to eat together, in public, but we can still share our conversations about food with each other around virtual tables (like this one). Bon appetit—and à votre santé!
The deadline for the Sophie Coe Prize in Food History is fast approaching (April 25th). If you're thinking of entering, go to this page, ASAP!
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page. 
A couple of thoughts about commensality, from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

I wonder if I love the communal act of eating so much because throughout my childhood, with four older brothers and a mom who worked in the restaurant business, I spent a lot of time fending for myself, eating alone—and recognizing how eating together made all the difference. Thomas Keller

Men that can have communication in nothing else can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine. Thomas Carlyle

Gary
April, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Dwight Furrow), 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 —
Archaeobotanist Searching Art for Lost Fruit, The(Gastro Obscura’s Vittoria Traverso, on Isabella Dalla Ragione’s efforts to rediscover Italy’s lost fruits and vegetables)
Bitter Side of Cocoa Production, The(Teresa Carr, at Sapiens, on the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute’s efforts on behalf of the world’s cacao farmers)
Coalition for Food & Agricultural Sociology(site for “...scholars and activists doing work on food and agricultural systems within the discipline of sociology”)
Cooking from Georgia O’Keeffe’s Recipes(Rachel Syme’s New Yorker essay)
European Journal of Food, Drink and Society (academic journal from Technological University Dublin)
Feed the World(Henrietta Moore’s review of Martín Caparrós’ Hunger: The Oldest Problem , in Literary Review)
From Chop Suey Houses to Saloons: What Was Chicago’s Foodie Scene Like in the Early 20th Century?(Monica Eng reports on WBEZ’s Curious City)
Horn & Hardart Automats: Redefining Lunchtime, Dining on a Dime(Michelle Cohen’s fond reminiscence, for 6sqft)
How a Potato Is Fueling the Fight to Protect a National Monument(Aimiee Maxwell’s Gastro Obscura article about a nearly 11,000-year-old indigenous foodstuff in Utah)
How Coffee Processing and Fermentation Impact Flavors in Your Cup(Lauren Mowery explains—for Vinepair—what happens to coffee before it appears, miraculously, in your cup)
How the Tip of Florida Became a Tropical-Fruit Paradise(Atlas Obscura visits Homestead Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center and the Fruit and Spice Park)
Monks Who Accidentally Invented Washed-Rind “Stinky” Cheese, The(Christine Clark, on the magic—or monster—that is Brevibacterium linens; in Vinepair)
Origins of Taste, The(paper by Peter Atkins and Ian Bowler, in Food in Society: Economy, Culture, Geography )
Point of Saturation(Andrew Egan’s article, in Tedium, about the ubiquitous point-of-sales systems used in the restaurant industry)
Why of Cooking, The(Joe Pinkser reveals the best books to help in understanding what goes on in the kitchen; in The Atlantic)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Author Blogging: 5 Reasons to Start and 3 Ways to Do It Right
Decline & Fall of Editorial Quality, The
Dirty Secret, A: You Can Only Be a Writer If You Can Afford It
Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When You Write?
Global Food History
How to Copyright a Book in the U.S. (Written by a Lawyer)
Imagination and the Language of Wine
Impostor Syndrome: Do You Sometimes Feel Like a Fraud?
Latest on the Flavor Pairing Saga, The
More on Wine Metaphors
Punctuation for Beginners: All About Hyphens & Em Dashes
Punctuation for Beginners: All About the Ellipsis
War on Food Waste Is a Waste of Time, The

— more blogs —
edible eighteenth century, the
When Kool-Aid Is the Start of a Culinary Education

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #234 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for March 2020

It’s citrus time, bringing a little brightness to the cold gray of late winter. Our day job has been getting in the way of writing... working seven days a week will do that. Consequently, this issue is a little shorter than usual. Soon, however, there will be time to write again—and time to tour the magical mystery we call “Spring.” This morning, we got a little taste: our first crocus bloom of the year.
Our blog has added a new article, “A Twisted Tale,” an attempt to understand the connections between some foods that seem to have nothing in common... except the similarity of their names.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page. 
A little perspective for writers from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No belly and no bowels, Only consonants and vowels. John Crowe Ransom

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. Winston Churchill 

 If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up. Dr. Seuss

Gary
March, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Linda Nygaard), 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 —
Around the World in Rare and Beautiful Apples(Anne Ewbank, at Gastro Obscura, on William Mullan—a photographer of rare and unusual apple varieties)
Communist Designed Your Kitchen, A(Marcel Bois’ biographical sketch of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky—who invented the Frankfurt Kitchen—in Jacobin Magazine)
How Much Terroir Expression Do You Really Want in Your Wine?(Tim Atkin on the changing nature of the wines we think we recognize from their terroir)
Peanuts: Genetics, Processing, and Utilization (text of the 2016 book by H. Thomas Stalker and Richard F. Wilson)
Strange Foods that Americans Loved a Century Ago, The(Ana Swanson leafs through the historical menu collection at the New York Public Library to see how tastes have changed; for The Washington Post)
Sugar Alters the Brain Similarly to One of the Most Addictive Drugs on Earth(Emma Betuel, at Inverse, on research conducted—no joke intended—on pigs)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
5 Ways I Refuse to Describe Food in 2020
10 Extra Ways to Proofread Your Writing Like a Boss
Build a Platform with a Self-Published Cookbook
Design of a Home-cooked Meal, The: The Tacit Dimension in Decoding Recipes
I was Burned Out on Food Blogging. Then I Started a Fashion Project
In the Saturated Space of Food Writing, We Have Lost That Food Is Political
Lessons from a Nightmarish Writing Workshop
Midlife Crisis of the American Restaurant Review, The
Narrow Your Focus When You Start a Blog
Networking for Introverts
Newsletter: Here’s Why We Stopped Italicizing ‘Foreign’ Foods
Punctuation for Beginners: All About Question & Exclamation Marks
Self-Care for Writers
What Is the Problem with Wine Metaphors?

— that’s all for now —

Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #233 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

A Twisted Tale

Tortes, tortellini, tortelloni, tortas… what could they possibly have in common? I assumed that there might be an etymological answer… after all, all these foods come from countries who speak romance languages. They all have some connection to Ancient Rome. They all involve flat, round starchy products, often stuffed with something else. Did their stuffing have something to do with their linguistic connections?What about the legal term, “torts” …as in “torts and malfeasances?” Not a very promising direction. What about “torture,” or even “tortoises?” Torture seemed an unlikely match to all those much more appealing foodstuffs. As for tortoises… they are sort of round, and might appear stuffed, if you look at them the right way. No… that’s pushing it too far.At first glance, it was a little odd that so many seemingly unrelated foods might share a linguistic ancestor. A quick look at the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology should have helped, right? Alas, these reference books didn’t address any of my culinary concerns… but they did say that modern words are descended from a Latin word for twisting.Frankly, I wasn’t getting the connection to the various foodstuffs that provoked my question in the first place. I dug out my Latin-English dictionary. AHA! Ancient Romans used to bake twisted breads called tortae. What, exactly was a twisted bread? Think challah. Along the way, I discovered that bread baking, for the Romans, changed in response to techniques they learned from the Greeks. It’s often the case that food culture changes in response to historical meetings of different cultures (wars, colonizations, and immigration have almost always led to the adoption—and adaptation—of new foods). Maybe the spread of the Roman Empire was, in some way, responsible for all these related food names?Before the Romans colonized Greece, they ate their grains primarily in the form of puls… gruel-like dishes. Italian polenta is descended from those ancient dishes (and, obviously, couldn’t be made from corn until long after the fall of the Roman Empire, corn was not available until the New World was discovered). The new breads they baked were round (carbonized loaves have been recovered from the volcanic ashes of Pompeii)… so something about roundness and baking must have been carried to the foods of countries whose language had evolved from Latin. This was more promising. The dishes did not travel from place to place, and then evolve into new dishes. Sausages (and words for sausages) traveled the same way— but, while they changed to reflect different tastes and availability of ingredients, they still remained sausages. All of the tort-related foods became something very different from the original Roman bread. So, the form—round, somewhat flat, and dense—seems to have traveled with the old Latin-based name to various countries. The names and attributes were adopted, not the food itself. “Torta” is Italian for cake… not too much of a stretch from Latin tortae. They are round and flat. Pizza rustica, for example, is a dense rich torta; it’s a savory cheesecake wrapped in a pastry crust. Germanic tortes—like the Viennese sacher torte—are also round and flat. They’re as dense as the pizza rustica, but sweet. They’re dense because they contain ground nuts instead of flour (so there’s no gluten to hold bubbles of carbon dioxide—that would otherwise be produced by yeast or chemical leavening).In Spain, tortilla (the diminutive of cake) follows the plan, but stays on the savory side of things. Their tortilla de patatas is a dense flat omelet, layered with sliced potatoes, sometimes enriched with bits of chorizo sausage. It is served hot or cold, cut in wedge-shaped slices—just like a cake.Only the name “tortilla” made it from Spain to Mexico. The conquistadors saw the flat breads of the Aztecs, made of nixtamalized corn, and gave them the only name that seemed appropriate. It was easier for them than adopting the Nahuatl word for the traditional flatbread, tlaxcalli. The round and layered form is reflected by Mexican tortas, but they are not cakes, this time. They’re sandwiches—fluffy buns, over-stuffed with an assortment of meats, cheeses, beans, sliced avocados, and chiles. While the tortillas, especially the flour tortillas used for burritos, marked the union of Spanish and Indian ideas about food, tortas are probably the result of the French occupation of Mexico. French colonials in Indochina (Vietnam) created similar sandwiches there—bánh mi—but they used baguettes instead of the round buns of Mexican tortas. Perhaps that’s why the Romance-language “torta” was never used there.What about some of the Italian stuffed pastas that initiated this question? Tortelloni are circles of pasta dough, stuffed with bland filling, such as ricotta cheese. The name just means “little cake.” Tortellini are even smaller, and usually containing richer fillings, like finely ground seasoned meat.Etymologists are uncertain about the roots of the name “tortoise.” Some think the name is connected to the twisted-looking legs of these animals. I like to think—probably with no linguistic justification, whatsoever—that their bumpy domed shells reminded the ancients of tortae, twisted loaves of bread.

Food Sites for February 2020

Eggplant—a key ingredient for so many middle eastern dishes: baba ghanoush and moutabel, Turkish imam bayildi, maghmour (Lebanon’s take on Greek moussaka), or Israeli roasted eggplant with za’atar.

News stories from the Middle East, of late, have been filled with so many terrifying events and fist-shakings that they have nearly put us off our feed. 
Nearly. 
It takes a lot to make us stop eating. Instead, it has us thinking about making peace by sharing the foods that come from that stress-filled region. Five years ago, Roll Magazine published “Moors and Christians: Comfort Food for an Uncomfortable Season.” That was before the latest saber-rattling, on both sides, made the season even more uncomfortable. Cold weather, and the hope of cooler heads, might call for revisiting the article’s recipe. A quick google search will find recipes for all the dishes listed below this episode’s photo.
More recently, Roll has published two excerpts from our book, Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier . The article’s title is, oddly enough, “Two Tastes of Sauce”... 
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page. Who knew?
In the interest of commensality, we’re serving a few Middle Eastern sayings from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

“The origin of the destruction of the body is the removal of dinner.” Iranian proverb

“Eat according to your own taste, but dress according to people’s taste” Arabian proverb

“Look and keep silent, and if you are eating meat, tell the world it’s fish.” Arabian proverb

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.” Arabian proverb

“He who wants to eat honey should endure the stings.” Lebanese proverb

“He who inserts himself between the onion and its skin, will only gain its smell.” Arabian proverb

“Eat breakfast alone, share lunch with a friend, and give your dinner to your enemy.” Iranian proverb

“The unlucky person finds bones in his tripe dinner.” Egyptian proverb

“He who eats alone chokes alone.” Arabian proverb

Gary
February, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Cara De Silva), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.

— the new sites —
Alimentary Rules of Building a Cookbook Collection, The(Anna Kate E. Cannon’s article, in The Harvard Crimson, on the origins of the Schlesinger Library’s culinary collection)
Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles, A: A Miraculous Resurgence(review of Ned Palmer’s book in The Guardian; spoiler alert: mass production doesn’t make for great cheese)
Chinese for Christmas(Jan Whitaker’s Restaurant-ing Through History looks at the beginnings of a Jewish tradition in America)
Earliest Roasted Root Vegetables Found in 170,000-Year-Old Cave Dirt(report of a South African discovery in NewScientist)
Factory for Romans’ Favorite Funky Fish Sauce Discovered Near Ashkelon(Amanda Borschel-Dan’s article, in The Times of Israel, on an archaeological site of an ancient garum factory)
Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture (PDF of E.N. Anderson’s 2005 book)
Evolution of the Kitchen, The(Cheryl Fenton’s Boston Globe article about stylistic changes from 1960s to today)
Food and Foodways Web Archive(video captures in the collection of The Library of Congress)
Frances Moore Lappé Changed How We Eat(the author of Diet for a Small Planet “...wants to do the same for our democracy”; David Marchese’s article in The New York Times)
History of Espresso in Italy and in the World, A(English translation of Jonathan Morris’ article in 100% Espresso Italiano)
How an English Energy Crisis Helped Create Champagne(Jai Ubhi’s GastroObscura article on the origins of that noble drink; surprise, it didn’t begin with Dom Perignon)
Lab-Grown Food Will Soon Destroy Farming–and Save the Planet(George Monbiot, in The Guardian, on work being done by Solar Foods, in Helsinki)
Mexican Cookbook Collection(the library at University of Texas, San Angelo, contains some 1,800 cookbooks, dating back to 1789; so far, 47 have been digitized)
Minerality in Wine: Where Are We Now?(Alex Maltman explains the phenomenon from several vantages for Decanter)
Nicole Di Bona Peterson Collection of Advertising Cookbooks(eighty-two downloadable cookbooks from the collection at Duke University’s John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History)
Real Story of Gumbo, Okra, and Filé, The(Robert Moss stirs the historical pot at Serious Eats)
Why (and How, Exactly) Did Early Humans Start Cooking?(an excerpt from Guy Crosby’s book, Cook, Taste, Learn: How the Evolution of Science Transformed the Art of Cooking )

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
A Bitter Centipede If Eaten in a Pleasing Berry Pie Will Taste Sweet (Polish proverb)
Is It Time to Change How We Describe Wine?
Ruth Reichl, Mayor of Menuland
WTF is Grammar?

— yet another blog —
What Was the Foodie?

— changed URL —
Culinary Historians of Southern California (CHSC)

— a little gallows humor —
Australian Distillery Just Invented Vegemite-Flavored Liqueur, An
French Laundry Failed Saber Attempt Shows How Not to Open a $2K Nebuchadnezzar
2019 Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog, The

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #232 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for January 2020

Cold weather means “forget about fresh summery salads—it’s time for winter vegetables.
Another new year is upon us—one that promises to be filled with anxiety and inflammatory rhetoric. Oh, and there will be news, too. A good time to stay at home and slow-cook our way into oblivion (or, at least, caloric/cholesterol-enabled bliss). 
Something that might be from The Curb Your Appetite Department: These are troubled times, and troubled times beg for frivolous diversions. In a search for something along those lines, we came across a kind of fairy tale—written long ago, as fairy tales are wont to do—and offer “A Simple Love Story” as your escape du jour.
Something from The Unlikely News Department: And, before you ask, this is not another fairy tale—even if it sounds like one. Every year, Choice Reviews (a publication of the American Library Association) digs through their year’s 6,000 reviews to select their “Outstanding Academic Titles” list. Less than 10% are chosen, and, of that list, only 21 books were about food and/or agriculture. This year, no doubt the result of some inexplicable fluke of planetary alignments, Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier , was included among them.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page. Who knew?
Some wintery thoughts from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink. P.G. Wodehouse

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

The Highlanders regale themselves with whisky. They find it an excellent preservation against the winter cold. It is given with great success to the infants in the confluent smallpox. Tobias Smollett

Out of snow, you can’t make cheesecake. Jewish Proverb

Gary
January, 2020
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Suzanne Fass), 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 —
82 Vintage Cookbooks, Free to Download, Offer a Fascinating Illustrated Look at Culinary and Cultural History(advertising cookbooks from a collection in Duke University’s Rubenstein Library)
Can Kyoto’s Buddhist Cuisine Teach Us All to Eat Better?(Alex Halberstadt’s Saveur article on shojin ryori, the temple cuisine of Japan)
Currying Flavour(Nina Notman explores the science behind the complex flavors of Indian cooking for Chemistry World)
Flour Power(Yes Magazine’s Liz Carlisle examines many aspects—agricultural, economic, culinary, and more—of the ancient grain movement)
Future Is Flavorless, The(Alison Sinkewicz, at—of all places—Taste, on one company’s plans for a brave new world that far from a culinary utopia)
How Jell-O Molds Claimed Their Spot on the American Table(Julia Moskin’s New York Times article on how Americans’ love-hate to get jiggly with their food)
How Spices Changed the Ancient World(the BBC’s Martha Henriques, on the cultural, economic, ecological, and historical impact of the spice trade—from ancient times to the present)
How Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires(more spice history, from Ligaya Mishan in The New York Times Style Section)
How to Eat Like an Etruscan Did (2,000 Years Ago)(John Hooper, in The Economist, on Farrell Monaco’s recent work in gastronomic archaeology)
Identity: Are We What We Eat(Warren Belasco’s chapter from Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008 book Food)
Imperial Kitchen, The(Jason Goodwin’s account of the glories of Ottoman kitchens, in Lapham’s Quarterly)
Ira Silverman Railroad Menu Collection(Northwestern University’s digitized collection)
Journey of a Coffee Bean, The (Infographic)(Tim McKirdy and Danielle Grinberg take us from shrub to cup, at Vinepair)
Model of Historical Development and Future Trends of Italian Cuisine in America, A(academic paper by Bill Ryan, Angelo A. Camillo, Woo Kim, and Patrick J Moreo in the International Journal of Hospitality Management)
Pirate Botanist Helped Bring Hot Chocolate to England, A(Reina Gattuso’s article about William Hughes, at GastroObscura)
Real Reason Sugar Has No Place in Cornbread, The(Robert Moss defends the faith in Serious Eats)
True Treats(GastroObserver article about a combination food history museum and candy store in Harper’s Ferry, WV)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
Alex Ainouz Wants to Inspire You to Cook by Failing
Body and Soul at Table
Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash, The
Ed Levine And J. Kenji López-Alt Are Serious Eaters and Dedicated Food Science Nerds
Five Best: Paul Freedman on American Food
Food for Thought: Menus That Made History
Food Is Where the Generation Gap Is Widest
It’s All About the Excess
Lessons: The Less-Traveled Road to Getting a Book Published
Library Cookbooks Were All We Needed for a Family Voyage
My Life as a Child Chef
What Did “Authenticity” in Food Mean in 2019?
What Does “Good Food” Really Mean?
What Is Ethical Eating in the Age of Climate Change?
Will Write for Food: Ruth Reichl and Soleil Ho Discuss the Changing Role of Food Writers
Writing When You’re Broke: Authors’ Incomes Collapse to “Abject” Levels
— yet another blog —
My Annoying Opinions

— a little gallows humor —
Ketchup vs. Catsup (Grammar Rules)
See How Picasso, van Gogh and Other Famous Artists Would Serve a Thanksgiving Meal
Why Menu Translations Go Terribly Wrong

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include my own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order any books via those links, the price you pay is not increased by my commission. 
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #231 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 ©2020 by Gary Allen.