Gary Allen's Blog, page 9

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.

A Simple Love Story

Long ago and far away, in a place not at all like here, there was a small village. It was an almost completely ordinary village. Almost. Like many small villages, it was surrounded by vast stretches of land containing nothing that even vaguely resembled a city (or, to be honest, anything like a medium-sized town). In fact, no one in the village had even visited a city. I never heard of anyone from a city ever visiting it, either. Why on earth would they want to? It was small and, as I said, almost completely ordinary. The village’s only visitors came from the dark forest surrounding the almost completely ordinary village. To describe the forest as the suburbs of the village would, if it were not so utterly ridiculous, be considered either shamelessly exaggerated or an outright lie. The kindest thing I can say about the place is that it was not really a part of the village. Still, the people who lived there didn’t mind. Much. They liked being able to visit the village whenever they felt like it. The surprising thing was that they felt like it so often. They were very easily pleased. Among them was a girl who positively loved visiting the village. Anyone from a city, or even a medium-sized town, would have noticed instantly that she was not a beautiful girl. I don’t mean to suggest that she was ugly... she was just, well, not quite almost completely ordinary. However, as no such outsider ever came to the village, no one noticed. It was not the girl’s fault, of course, that she was not beautiful. Nor was it her fault that she didn’t know that she was not beautiful. No one in the village knew that she was not beautiful. They were idiots. Every one of them. You think that it’s nasty for me to describe the villagers this way? It’s not, really... it’s just a plain fact. They were empty-headed, vacant, altogether stupid people. Being empty-headed, vacant, and altogether stupid, it didn’t bother them in the least. They didn’t have enough sense to know that they were simpletons. This may seem horrid to intelligent people—like you and me—but it was actually quite pleasant for them. Each day, the girl who was not beautiful would wake up, lovingly brush out her long and unlovely hair, and dress in her finest going-to-the- village clothes. As you might imagine, her idea of finery was not quite almost completely ordinary. By our high standards, it stunk. Literally.I mean it.It didn’t matter. The villagers loved it. Every day it was the same story: primp, rush toward town, then slow down to a stylish saunter. She made certain that every villager had a chance to bask in the radiance of her rare beauty. At least, that’s the way she imagined it. To tell the truth, that’s the way it seemed to them, too. They were, after all, simpletons. Every day she passed through the village, flirting with one fool after another. Some she teased, some she tickled. One might receive a wonderfully conspiratorial wink. To another she’d flash a suggestive smile that made him melt into a puddle of imaginary bliss. In her own way, she was quite the artist. Don’t get me wrong; she wasn’t trying to mislead them. She simply did what she could to brighten their drab and meaningless lives. It was her job. It was more than a full-time job, really. It was her mission in life. It was her way to keep the idea of her beauty alive in their otherwise empty heads. Her behavior may seem heartless and self-centered to sensitive people like us. However, the simpletons of that almost completely ordinary village were extremely grateful. After all, it wasn’t every village that possessed such a rare and exquisite beauty. Just to be near her was to be truly blessed. They could hardly believe their good fortune. They were imbeciles. Although they all shared in this gratitude, it would be a mistake to assume that they knew that they shared it. You see, each of them believed that the girl preferred him above all the others. Each one kept his feelings secret, having convinced himself that he shared a magical unspoken love with the girl who was not beautiful. Besides, it never occurred to any of them to ask anyone else about their feelings. I told you that they were not very bright. In this dim-lit mental world, they were not alone. We mustn’t forget the girl who was not beautiful. It’s hard for us to believe that she could flirt like that, without once considering the effect she might have had upon that community of dullards. It only proves that she had the mental agility of a clam. Maybe a lump of mud that only looked like a clam. You might think the lowly clam (or similar lump of mud) sits, blissfully unaware, at the bottom of the intellectual heap. Close, but not quite. Keep reminding yourself that this was not just an ordinarily stupid town. In the stupidity category, this town reigned supreme. The more I think about it, the more unusual our almost completely ordinary village appears. You see, they had a natural resource that set them apart from any conceivable competition. The village contained one amazingly dull young man. He was so simple and mindless, that the mental superiority of clams was, for him, an utterly unreachable goal. He was more like a rock, immovably embedded in six or seven feet of mud. Are you beginning to grasp the situation? Would such a rock even understand that clams exist? What could he know of the possibility of intellectual excellence? You wouldn’t think that, even if he knew of such perfection, he would presume to possess it. You would be mistaken. From our point of view, being the village idiot in that town of fools should have been distinction enough for him. But no. He persuaded himself that he was the wisest man in town. “Unbelievable!” you say? “How could he get away with such a preposterous notion?” you wonder. “Why didn’t someone try to knock some sense into his empty head?” you ask. They couldn’t. It was not his fault, of course, that he was not the wisest man in town. Nor was it his fault that he didn’t know that he was not the wisest man in town. No one in the village knew it. They were all simpletons. You see, it was easy for him to maintain this senseless idea because no one in the town could tell him otherwise. Not one of them had any notion of the concept of wisdom. Since they had no idea what he was jabbering about, they couldn’t very well say he was wrong, could they? It was only common sense that if he wasn’t wrong, then he must have been right. They had never met anyone who was right about anything before. They were amazed. They were, after all, amazingly stupid. In their eyes, he was a genius. The almost completely ordinary village had never had a genius of its own. We—who are sophisticated and worldly—could never be deceived as they were deceived. It may sound a bit odd, but in that simple place, all the young man needed to do was to say that he was brilliant. A person actually was whatever he had the nerve, or ignorance, to claim. Convinced by their own insensibility, they saw him as the most respected man in the village. Their version of a living intellectual treasure. And so it was that he achieved the recognition he thought he deserved. I wouldn’t say that it went to his head, exactly, but he did start to think differently about himself. He saw his place in the village in a new light. He felt that the villagers’ new attentions befitted someone of his exalted status. He began to think that he was entitled to even more. It was a simple matter of balance, of merit, of personal worth. With the awesome responsibility of wisdom should come certain privileges. It was only fair. There was a drawback to having privileges in the almost completely ordinary village. They had nothing to give that was any better than what everyone already had. Sure, he could have more gruel than anyone else, but was that something that he actually wanted? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so. Even someone of his limited intelligence knew that there was such a thing as too much gruel. He could have a smelly hovel of his own. Big deal, he already had one of those. What did the village have to offer to someone as important as himself? Apart from the almost total absence of brains, there was something that made this village different from other villages. Its simple peasants were extremely lucky to have among them a rare and exquisite beauty. Remember her? It’s a safe bet that our not-so-brilliant youth remembered her. You are probably not surprised to hear that—like every other man in town—he believed she preferred him above all of the others. He, of course, kept his feelings secret, because there was no reason to flourish them in front of the other villagers. How could they possibly understand someone of his complexity? He had convinced himself that he shared a magical unspoken love with the girl who was not beautiful. The smartest boy and the most beautiful girl, together in the same small town, what could be more perfect? “Perfection” was a totally new concept in the almost completely ordinary village. It was a subject worthy of consideration by the wisest man in town. He applied the awesome power of his massive mentality to the problem. Being somewhat out of practice, he became tired after about a minute. He saw that this was more of a challenge than he had expected. He would have to be careful to keep up his strength. He took a break. After staring thoughtlessly out the window for an hour or so, something like responsibility made a grab at him. He threw himself back into the task he had set for himself. Actually, he would have if he had only remembered what it was that he was supposed to be thinking about. Pacing and head-scratching and staring at the ceiling seemed to help. “Perfection,” he recalled with a suddenness that shocked him. “That’s what I’m working on!” The effort took a lot out of him. He took a break for some gruel, to prepare him for his renewed efforts. The gruel wasn’t great. He seemed to remember that it smelled much better when he made it...the week before last. There was some funny crusty stuff on the top. He was pretty sure it wasn’t there when the gruel was fresh. He could, of course, make some new gruel... except he had something else he had to do. He couldn’t, at the moment, remember just what it was, but he knew it was more important than making new gruel. He was too important to be concerned about gruel. He ate some of the crusty stuff. He knew instantly that he had made a mistake. Previously unnoticed parts of his insides started pushing and shoving, trying to find a way out of his body. This was not the sort of break he had in mind. He was deeply uncomfortable, and was beginning to resent it. It didn’t seem fair that he had to suffer like this. After all, in service to his village, he was trying to discover the meaning of perfection. “Perfection,” he moaned to himself, “is not anything like this!” Free time to think about important things, that would be perfection. Not being bothered with trivial matters, that would be perfection. Having someone to take care of such things for him, that would really be perfection. The sickness—and a number of other unpleasant things—passed from him. He returned to his task. He was pleased that he was beginning to get a grip on his subject. He now knew some of the things that were not perfection. He could imagine some things that were. These were big accomplishments. He deserved a break. He took it. He sat staring out the window, his mouth hanging open. His unfocused eyes looked, not surprisingly, exactly like the eyes of someone who had never had a thought in his head. He felt good. It was comfortable to sit and do what he did best. While he sat, rapt in thoughtlessness as he was, things went on before him. Clouds floated by without benefit of his wisdom. Trees grew at a pace that was dizzying by comparison to his mental processes. Birds flew by, some of them stopping to build nests in those very trees. It seemed that generations of birds nested and raised families while he sat at that window. Gradually, this natural panorama penetrated his dense unthinking contentment. I don’t know if it was the airy flow of clouds or the flutter of wings that first broke his reverie. Like bubbles rising from the rotten stuff at the bottom of a swamp, an idea started to surface in his mind. He watched those birds with an intensity that made his previous efforts at thought seem insignificant. He was fascinated by the birds. He was puzzled by this fascination because he didn’t know why it interested him. He had the strangest sensation that the birds meant something but he was equally certain that it was beyond his understanding. Like perfection. There was no way he was going to understand perfection. He had tried his hardest, but he knew he would never understand it. He knew it as he had never known anything before. It disappointed him that he was going to disappoint the villagers. It seemed especially cruel that he would never understand perfection when it was obvious, even to him, that the birds understood it perfectly. They didn’t just understand perfection, the birds were perfection. Suddenly, he thought that he understood it all. The birds were perfect because they were together. He would not let the villagers down. He would do more than explain perfection: he would show it to them. He would marry the girl that they all imagined to be beautiful. Together, they would be perfection itself. As the brightest and most beautiful, they would be the talk of the village forever. This might sound quite ridiculous to us—knowing what they were really like—but to him it was a sure thing. Since she already preferred him over all the others, she would naturally say yes to his proposal. In his under-ripe, but over-cooked, mind everything was as it should be. There was just the little thing of actually asking her. It was not a big deal. Within minutes of the time the idea occurred to him, he had convinced himself that they had always known that they would be married one day. It was just that their magical and unspoken love had never required them to speak of it. They never needed words. Any fool could see the way she looked at him. Any fool, indeed! You and I know that he was not just any fool; he was the stupidest man in an incredibly stupid village. Worse, he was the stupidest man in an incredibly stupid village made even more senseless by imagining that he was in love. In a very weird way, it was perfect: it was perfectly moronic. His understanding of perfection, however, was less than perfect. You are not surprised? I never thought you would be. One of the things he didn’t know about perfection was that it didn’t last. Maybe, in some subliminal fashion, he did understand it. It would explain why he wasted no time converting his great idea into action. While the incredible idea was still fresh in his mind he rushed out to her stinking hovel to ask her to be his bride. It was only a formality, of course, but there was no point in putting it off. Since he had no reason to think that his question was unusual or unexpected, he didn’t bother to do anything to prepare her for it. He just ran up to her door, stuck his head in, and proposed. She didn’t say anything. He was stunned. He never thought that she would do anything but say yes. The darkness in the stale, windowless shack only added to his confusion. Eventually, his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He began to understand her reluctance to answer. She hadn’t been there to hear the question. He turned and ran around the back of the filthy shed-like building. He was ecstatic. She had not actually turned him down. This proved that they were destined to be together. Admittedly, they were not together at the moment, but that was a minor, and easily remedied, inconvenience. He found her, gazing in a mirror, in the pig pen. You’re going to ask me why there was a mirror in the pig pen, aren’t you? Simple: she had mirrors everywhere. She was, after all, the most beautiful girl in town. She had certain responsibilities. At that moment, she was busy constructing new masterpieces out of her long and unlovely hair. She was also worried about something that might just have been the beginnings of a blemish on her flawless skin. Take my word for it: her skin was not flawless and it was not just the beginning of a blemish. But none of this mattered to the young man. It did not matter, because he thought he was in love and because he was an idiot. She seemed to be the most beautiful girl in the world. He couldn’t fault her for looking in the mirror. What a let-down, he thought, it would be for her to look anywhere else. On this point, they were in complete agreement. They both shared a magical unspoken love for the girl in the mirror. He stood, gazing at her imagined beauty, speechlessly. Instead of “speechlessly,” I almost said “struck dumb by her loveliness,” or “senselessly,” but you get the picture. Gradually, he remembered his reason for being there. He was going to marry this goddess. All he had to do was ask. Strangely, now that she was right there before him, he found it difficult to speak. His mouth felt unusually dry. He tried to moisten his lips, but his tongue felt thick and appeared to be covered with something like ashes. He swallowed hard, in the vain hope that his courage would miraculously return. It didn’t work. The sound of his swallow interrupted her labors in front of the mirror. Her first sensation was one of annoyance. Turning to confront this irritant, she realized that a man was present. She switched emotions instantly, turning on the full force of her charms. He gasped and fell to his knees before the gorgeous spectacle. This was a mistake. He had been standing in the pig sty when she turned his way. Have you ever visited a piggery? Two things strike you immediately. The second is the mud. It is black, composed of all the things that you might expect to find in a pig pen. There is soil, of course, and just enough liquid to make particularly sticky mud. The source of that liquid varies, but is always intimately connected to the bodily functions of pigs. There is also rotten food. You might think that, being pigs, they would eat everything they find in their pen. Almost, but not quite. Some things they taste, find too disgusting, even for them, and spit out. This adds a certain richness to the mix of experiences you have when you visit a pig pen. It also goes a long way in explaining the first thing that strikes you upon arrival. The aroma. It is pungently, penetratingly, reekingly, unforgettably, mind-numbingly awful. You try to turn away from its assault, but it is everywhere. Have ever noticed that sometimes a tiny amount of a bad smell seems vaguely pleasant? The merest whiff of skunk, miles away, is almost a perfume, hauntingly musky. Not so with pigs. One sniff of our fat friends, and you’re looking for a way out. Our not-so-clever young man was on his knees in that black, stinking, clinging mud. He was slowly sinking, the hideous wetness creeping up his pants’ legs. He needed to get up, get away, jump in the river... anything to escape that dreadfully foul stench. He yelled, as if begging for a life- preserver, “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” Gazing at the pathetic creature at her feet, she felt the stirrings of a strange new emotion within her. It grew and grew until she could resist it no longer. Her suitor, embedded in the filth of the pig pen, watched in amazement as she was transformed by these raging new feelings. She looked down at our sorry excuse for a hero, and surrendered to a desire she had never felt before. Unfortunately for her suitor, that desire was neither for him nor for his love. It was for laughter. She thought his proposal was the most ridiculous thing that she had ever heard. She looked at the slimy black creature at her feet and lost all control. She laughed so hard that she had to cling to a post by the pig sty for support. Her laughter shook the fence apart, freeing an assortment of pigs of various sizes. It made no difference to her. She laughed so hard that her beloved mirror fell into unbelievably slimy swine slop. She looked down at the mud-splattered mirror and saw herself through a veil of pig droppings. She was convinced that there was never a funnier sight on earth. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down in that black, stinking, clinging mud. It didn’t bother her in the least. In fact, it only made her laugh harder. Tears formed in her eyes, and she was gasping for breath, but still she laughed. She wiped away the tears with an almost refined gesture that left a delicate smear of pig spittle at the corner of her eye. It was too much. She fell back, thrashing and splashing and laughing hysterically. She went on like this for days. Her suitor had never seen anything like it. No one had ever seen anything like it. Everyone in the almost completely ordinary village was thrilled and amazed by the spectacle. Of course, those townspeople were thrilled and amazed by the magic of gruel. It was an easy crowd to impress. It was easy because nothing stayed in their heads for very long. Almost everything seemed new to them. This was good for them, but it was better for our unsuccessful suitor. The villagers were excited by her weird behavior, but they were only vaguely aware of its cause. They suspected that it might have been something he said, but they couldn’t quite put their fingers on what it had been. The forsaken suitor knew, all too well, what had started the outbreak of laughter. Just thinking about it brought back all the horrors of his experience in the pig sty. He was so humiliated by his rejection that he nearly forgot the smell. Nearly. On the other hand, he had learned something that no one else in the village knew. He knew that he was an idiot. It was the village’s first, and only, genuine insight. This knowledge changed his life. Having some understanding—any understanding—was a great burden, especially for someone with his limited abilities. He stopped strutting around like some kind of philosophical rooster. To his surprise, it did not change his status in the village. He was still a celebrity. This puzzled him, because he knew that he was a failure. He had not won the hand of what he still believed to be the fair maiden. His heroic quest for knowledge had led nowhere. He had not begun to understand the nature of perfection. None of this mattered to the villagers. They never really cared about his search for perfection, anyway. He remained a celebrity because he had given something to the village that it would never forget. They were simple people with simple tastes. What he had done was simply stupendous. He had caused the girl who was not beautiful to do a swan-dive into the swine-slime. They were very appreciative. If they remembered his proposal, it didn’t surprise them. Each of them still believed that she preferred him above all others. 
Afterword
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to keep from picking and scratching at an old scab? It was just like that with our hapless suitor. He could not resist picking at the memory of those events. Even though it made him uncomfortable to recall his failures, he could never withstand the temptation to revisit the scene of what came to be known as his triumph. The not quite completely ordinary town was not very large. Often, because it was such a small place, he would encounter the girl who was not beautiful. These chance meetings confused and delighted him as only an idiot can be confused and delighted. He would smile and blush and stammer. There was not a sensible word in his head. He searched through the dusty and unused corners of his brain, hoping that some witty and wise remark might have been left there. He searched with the pathetic hope that shines brightest among the most unprepared. How could someone, who had never in his life made a witty and wise remark, consider it likely that such things were lying about in heaps, waiting to be reclaimed? Did he think that, in some unremembered glorious past, he had been so quick-witted and cool that he had casually put aside great gleaming mountains of brilliant remarks, unused, waiting for just this kind of moment? If such hopes existed, we can be sure that they were completely in vain. Gradually, even he understood that there was no hope. Every time he reached that level of despair, an idea would come to him. It was an idea that promised to break the horrible silence, an idea so subtle and ingratiating that she would never be able to resist its charms. He recalled that there was, indeed, one thing that would unite them in the warmth of shared bliss. It was always the same idea. Unfortunately, he never realized that it was the same idea until he heard the words escaping. As if watching through a window, he could see his own lips shaping the words, reminding her of the day he proposed to her. He always winced when he recognized his mistake. She always laughed (‘though she never repeated the fantastic display of their day in the slime). Her laughter, ‘though light and pleasant, had a bitter sting. It lasted for only a few seconds, but they were excruciatingly intense seconds. While her laughter hurt him, he did not entirely dislike it. His pain was a treasured possession, a souvenir scar, a trophy. He believed that real suffering was only possible for people of great sensitivity. People such as himself. He was proud of his pain. He was proud of his failure, because you can’t have great failures without attempting great deeds. That his great quest for wisdom had brought him to his knees in a pig sty meant nothing. What was important was that he had made the attempt. This was more than heroism, it was true nobility: an extraordinary mind used to answer a crucial question. How could one person sacrifice so much in the service of his community? It’s simple.
If you’re an idiot. 

Food Sites for December 2019

Fruit of the vine... or the vine, at least.
The holiday season is fast upon us... and we intend to skip the eggnog, thank you very much. Wine, however, is always welcome.
Speaking of things that are welcome, if you visit any of the Amazon links for our books, at the end of this newsletter... and then buy anything (such as holiday presents of any kind; it doesn’t even have to be one of our books), this newsletter will receive a commission—and it will not add one red cent to your Amazon bill. You can give us a gift for free!
When we finish writing something, and manage to get it published, that’s usually the end of the story (unless it’s followed by some kind of marketing: readings, books-signings, or interviews). Mostly we sit around, twiddling our thumbs, and wondering if anyone will ever read it. However, occasionally word comes back that someone did read it. Not only that, they actually wrote about it. It seems our last conventionally published book, Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier , was reviewed last summer in the American Culinary Federation’s site We Are Chefs... and we just learned they liked it!
(Try to imagine that last part spoken in Sally Field’s Academy Awards voice.)
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.
We’ve spoken, in the past, about our love of coffee...but isn’t it curious that the very name “coffee” is from the Arabic for “wine?” Maybe it just seems curious because we’re in our cups at On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

A carbonated wine foisted upon Americans (who else would drink it?) by winery ad agencies as a way of getting rid of inferior champagne by mixing it with inferior burgundy. John Ciardi, on cold duck

Cheese that is compelled by law to append the word ‘food’ to its title does not go well with red wine or fruit. Fran Lebowitz

As you get older, you shouldn’t waste time drinking bad wine. Julia Child

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

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

— the new sites —
Breaking Bread: The Dark and White Flours of Ideology(what bread means; Nicolaia Rips in Cabinet Magazine)
Eternal Table, The(Karima Moyer-Nocchi muses on historic Italian cookery, with recipes of course)
History of Roger’s Mushrooms and What Happened to It, The(Alan Wood explains—for Weekend Gardener—the loss of a once-valued mushroom database... and offers some modern alternatives)
Jasmine, Basmati, Sticky, and Beyond: The Serious Eats Guide to Rice(Sho Spaeth, for Serious Eats, on the history and characteristics of the world’s most popular grain)
Last Wild Apple Forests, The(GastroObserver travels to Kazakhstan)
Not Shakespeare’s Cup of Tea: Consuming Caffeine in Early Modern England(Elisa Tersigni explains why the Bard stuck with cakes and ale; in The Folger Library’s Shakespeare and Beyond)
Pollinators, The (website of a film about the importance of honeybees, the threats against them, and possible approaches to their—and our—continued survival)
Savoring Decay: Cheese, Heritage, and the Allure of Imminent Dissolution(PDF of Harry G. West’s article in Gastronomica)
Why the History of Our Food Is Still Important Today(Laura Carlson’s answer, in Forbes)
World’s Oldest-known Recipes Decoded, The(Ashley Winchester reports, for the BBC, on recent attempts to recreate the recipes found on Babylonian tablets in Yale’s Babylonian Collection)
You Are What You (Don’t) Eat(James McWilliams, at Hedgehog Review, on the intersection of cult-like puritanism and diet)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
AgentQuery.com
America Has Never Been So Desperate for Tomato Season
Biggest Food Revolution Ever: The Printed Cookbook?, The
Cookbooks Are So Much More than Recipes and Photographs
Misunderstanding the Role of the Food Critic
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules for Writers
Pat Barker: To Be a Writer You Must Resist the Urge to Clean
Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts
Relentless Research, Fevered Rewrites, Endless Edits—Plus a Coat and Tie
Stop Calling Soy Sauce “Soy”
Undeserved Gift, An
What’s an Influencer Worth to Books?
What’s Cooking in English Culinary Texts? Insights from Genre Corpora for Cookbook and Menu Writers and Translators
Words You’ll Never See Me Use in Restaurant Reviews
Write Practice, The

— a little gallows humor —
How Carob Traumatized a Generation

— 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: Aprés 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 #230 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.

Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for November 2109

The pumpkin spice harvest is in full swing...
November is fast approaching, and with it, the season of immense turkeys and slabs of pumpkin pie and (for those who share our particular set of nostalgia genes) additional slices of mince or pecan pie. We’re entering the foothills of our Great Sierra of Surfeit—the seasonal holiday dinner circuit—and must begin training soon if we are to survive its excesses.
If anyone actually reads through all this newsletter, they might discover a new category of links. Socrates might have opined “know thyself,” but he never said we mustn’t laugh while doing so. 
Speaking of knowing oneself... we’ve self-published yet another kindle book. The Digressions of Dr Sanscravat: Gastronomical Ramblings & Other Diversions is a thinly disguised memoir that pretends to be an annotated collection of essays by a cranky old guy who may be familiar to folks who get this newsletter.
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.
Motivation is everything, and (around here, at least) “motivation” is spelled “C.A.F.F.E.I.N.E.” Here are a few more cups from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. Jess Walter

I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now. Louisa May Alcott

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. Dave Barry

In Seattle, you haven’t had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it’s running. Jeff Bezos

Gary
November, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to 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 —
Ancient Sexual Energy Mushroom Is on the Brink of Mass Production, An(Emma Betuel writes about the Chinese obsession with Cordyceps—a type of fungus-infected caterpillars that may, or may not, have certain powers—for Inverse)
Cache of Crypto-Jewish Recipes Dating to Inquisition Found in Miami Kitchen(Renee Ghert-Zand’s article, in The Times of Israel, about Genie Milgrom’s Sephardic cookbook, Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers: Unique Recipes and Stories from the Times of the Crypto-Jews during the Spanish Inquisition )
Culinary Arts: A Guide to the Literature(overview by Jeffrey P. Miller and Jonathan Deutsch)
Did Humans Once Live by Beer Alone? An Oktoberfest Tale(Lina Zeldovich, in JSTOR Daily, on the never-ending archaeological argument over beer vs bread as the incentive for ancient agriculture)
History of Beer Is the History of the World, The(Jeff Opperman’s questionable—but amusing—research into the origins of his favorite quaff; for Outside Online)
Judas Ear, The(Anna Journey, “reimagining the mushroom” for The Believer)
Mexican Sweet Breads: An Essential Glossary(Daniela Galarza’s guide to the baked goods of Mexico City, for Eater)
Pasta: It’s Better Cold(Taste’s Chris Crowley brings pasta salad history to the cook-out)
Pliny the Elder, the First Wine Critic and Why He Still Matters(Lauren Mowery’s article in WineEnthusiast)
Struggle to Save Heirloom Rice in India, The(Debal Deb writes about one nation’s efforts to preserve an essential crop’s genetic diversity, in Scientific American; subscription required)
We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (full text of Donna R. Gabaccia’s 1998 book, as a PDF)
What Chili Peppers Can Teach Us about Pain(Tanya Lewis interviews physiologist David Julius, for Scientific American)
What “Colonial Kitchens” Say About America(Erin Blakemore, in JSTOR Daily, on the fake nostalgia Americans love so much... even long before Norman Rockwell based a career of it)
What’s Cooking in America?(Liora Gvion‘s article tracking the way cookbooks have historically mirrored changes in ethnicity in American life; in Food, Culture and Society)
When We Love Our Food So Much That It Goes Extinct(Luisa Torres interviews Lenore Newman—author of Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food —for NPR’s The Salt)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —
7 Ways to Deal with Negative Feedback on Your Writing
10 Famous Authors Addicted to Coffee
15 Killer Tips from Successful Bloggers You Can Use Immediately
44 Common Confusions to Annoy the Grammar Police
Art of Punctuation, The
Avoiding Plagiarism—Paraphrasing
“Can’t I Just Say It’s Tasty?” Why Food Critics Go Too Far
How Not to Write About Africa: African Cuisines in Food Writing
How to Write Great Blog Post Titles
It’s Time to Ditch the Shame Surrounding “Trash Foods”
Maybe the Secret to Writing is Not Writing?
Online, No One Knows You’re Poor
Radical Copyeditor’s Style Guide for Writing About Transgender People, The
Three Cookbook Authors on How They Got Their First Book Deal
Top 10 Culinary Memoirs
Want to Write a Cookbook? Don’t Count the Money Just Yet

— a little gallows humor —
Literal Writing Exercises
Publishing a Book, by the Numbers

— more blogs —
Andrea Lawson Gray: Recipes and Writing
Anise to Za’atar

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

Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for October 2019

Summer isn’t going to last forever... better fry up those green tomatoes before it’s too late!

October is almost upon us. We’ve already begun to use the oven... something that was unimaginable only a week ago. Soon, pies and stews and roasts and casseroles will become our daily fare... and the forlorn grill will be bundled-up to wait out the winter.
Our blog Just Served, has posted an article (“A Few Words About Salt”), an excerpt from our book, Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier .
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.
Since, for some reason, we can’t seem to banish pie from our consciousness at the moment, we might as well hack out a slice (or four) from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

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

My mother didn’t really cook. But she did make key lime pie, until the day the top of the evaporated milk container accidentally ended up in the pie and she decided cooking took too much concentration. William Norwich

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

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy. Jack Handey

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

— the new sites —
Aesthetic Properties of Wine, The(draft of a paper by Andrea Borghini and Tommaso Piazza—"a metaphysical account” of the experience of tasting wine)
America’s First Taco Editor Says That Burritos Are Actually Tacos(Helen Rosner interviews José R. Ralat for The New Yorker’s “Annals of Gastronomy”)
Ancient Tooth Decay Reveals Carb-Filled Truth About Paleo Diet(Yasmin Tayag, at INVERSE, reveals the findings from a 1.2 million-year-old molar; spoiler alert: it’s grain)
Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites(Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, in Biblical Archaeology, on another exercise in experimental archaeology)
Confusing Tastes with Flavours(downloadable PDF of paper by Charles Smith, Barry Smith, and Malika Auvtay, published in Perceptions and Its Modalities )
Earliest Evidence of Dairy Production Verified in Northwest Turkey(8,600 year-old evidence reported in Archaeology News Network)
“Excrements of the Earth”: Mushrooms in Early Modern England(Michael Walkdenm at the Folger Library’s Shakespeare & Beyond, on what was then—and sometimes now—considered a “notoriously treacherous... source of food”)
FDA Notices of Judgment Collection, 1908-1966(archive of results of prosecutions of violators of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act; over 30,000 cases of food alone, sortable by key words, defendants, courts, and dates)
For True Foodies Only(a chef’s site—with jobs, recipes, a great cheese encyclopedia, and more)
Found: The Earliest Direct Evidence of Milk Consumption(Gastro Observer’s Anne Ewbank reports on archaeological evidence that Britons were eating cheese before they evolved the gene that prevented lactose intolerance)
Future of Food, The: Why Farming Is Moving Indoors(Russell Hotten’s article for BBC News)
Gin and Morals, Please(Thomas Triedman writes about Hogarth’s take on the degradation of eighteenth-century England for New Criterion)
History of Gastronomy: The Birth of the Haute Cuisine(concise version of the 17th century’s innovations; at French website, gastronomos)
Origins of the Apple: The Role of Megafaunal Mutualism in the Domestication of Malus and Rosaceous Trees(Robert Nicholas Spengler’s paper, in Frontiers in Plant Science, on the evolution and domestication of the world’s best-known fruit)
Red Wine Benefits Linked to Better Gut Health, Study Finds(more good news: MDlinx’s summary of a paper published in the journal Gastroenterology)
Salt King of America, The(Andrew Zaleski’s account of a visit with Ben Jacobsen, for Bloomberg Businessweek)
Science of Flavor, The(Farmer Lee Jones and Chefs Garden’s lab studies agricultural science’s effect on flavor, from soil microbes to the nutrient content of produce)
Sugar that Saturates the American Diet Has A Barbaric History as the ‘White Gold’ that Fueled Slavery, The(Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s story, in The New York Times, is anything but sweet)
Why Americans Love Their Apple Pie(Gabriella Petrick serves it up—without entering the cheddar cheese vs à la mode fray—for Smithsonian Magazine)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers —
Established Writers on Newer Younger Writers
From Full-Time to Freelance Writing: Ways to Cope
“I Think You Need to Rewrite It”: Ruth Reichl on What Makes an Editor Great
Inside the Weird World of Restaurant Critics
Recipes for Success? We Put Cookbooks from Top Chefs to the Test
Writer’s Dilemma, The
— more blogs —
Tales from Topographic Kitchens

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear in them is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #228 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

A Few Words about Salt

It’s almost impossible to discuss sauces without mentioning sodium chloride. Salt is so important that the very words “sauce” and “salsa” (not to mention “sausage,” “salary,” and “salubrious”) are derived, ultimately, from the Latin “sal,” for salt. It is so basic that the Cynic, Antiphanes, was quoted in The Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus: “Of the relishes which come from the sea we always have one, and that day in, day out. I mean salt.” (Book 9, p. 161)
It’s not a coincidence that Matthew 5:13-16, has Jesus saying: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” We are nothing if we’re not “worth our salt”—and neither are our sauces.
This is not just a Western concept. The ancient Chinese had a saying: “Oh salt, he is a General in the Chinese cuisine” … This saying, used earlier but recorded by Ban Gu during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE), shows the importance of salt in all sauces.
Salt crystals bring cultural meanings and give people food choices in sauce manufacture. Salt supplements enhance each sauce, and Chinese food preparation reflects people's affection for sauce and salt in their lives. In China, people do not get their salt from a salt shaker. They get theirs using many different sauces as they prepare their dishes. Thus, in China, salt and sauce are great partners.(Zhou Hongcheng).
Salt is essential to life for all of us (animals travel miles just for a chance to lick soil containing even a trace of salt). However, for anyone afflicted by hypertension, too much salt can be dangerous. Fortunately, excess salt is eliminated by the kidneys of healthy people, so—for them, at least—warnings about NaCl’s dangers should be taken with a grain of you-know-what.
—
This excerpt from Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier (Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy, 2019), and the illustration above—which is not part of the book—are protected by copyright, and may not be republished in any form without prior permission.

Food Sites for September 2019

Black coffee... writing’s rocket fuel.
It’s almost September, as we write, so it’s still hot... but we can sense what’s coming. Fortunately, before the grim part of the year arrives, we get to celebrate the bounty of the harvest. Our gardens (or farmers’ markets) are gloriously replete with fresh produce... produce we won’t see again for a long time (unless it’s a pale substitute, picked someplace far, far, away).
The Rambling Epicure has published an article (“Cutting the Mustard”), which is actually an excerpt from our book, Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier .
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.
On the off-chance that you aren’t already convinced that caffeine is essential to our production of (often excess) verbiage, gulp down a few cups from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

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

Coffee: we can get it anywhere, and get as loaded as we like on it, until such teeth-chattering, eye-bulging, nonsense-gibbering time as we may be classified unable to operate heavy machinery. Joan Frank

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move... similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Coffee isn’t my cup of tea. Samuel Goldwyn

Gary
September, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to 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 —
Aberdeen Could Be Whisky Birthplace, Researchers Claim(The Guardian reports on a recent discovery of written evidence of the first scotch whisky still)
All About Spices (scanned copy of A. M. & J. Ferguson’s 1892 book)
Around the World in 125 Melons(Anne Ewbank’s beautifully illustrated review of Amy Goldman’s book, The Melon , in Gastro Obscura)
Badass Lady Pilot Who Revolutionized the Art of Food Writing, The(Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, at Mental Floss, on a now nearly forgotten food journalist: Clementine Paddleford)
Canary Islands Connection, The(Gary Paul Nabhan explains the similarities between Mexican and Arabic cuisines—and their historic connection through the Canary Islands—for AramcoWorld)
Changing American Diet, The(Nathan Yau’s moving analysis of USDA data for the years 1970-2013; at Flowingdata)
Collards vs. Kale: Why Only One Supergreen Is a Superstar(Rebekah Kebede, on the societal causes of food preference, for National Geographic)
Conversation with the Team That Made Bread with Ancient Egyptian Yeast, A(Jenny G. Zhang, asks—for Eater—how they actually did it)
Delicious, Ancient History of Chocolate and Vanilla, The(Franz Lidz, in Smithsonian Magazine, provides new evidence of the flavors’ antiquity)
Eat Like Royalty with this Cookbook from the Emperor Who Built the Taj Mahal(Reina Gattuso, at GastroObscura, on Salma Yusuf Husain’s book The Mughal Feast )
Eliza Leslie: The Most Influential Cookbook Writer of the 19th Century(Liz Susman Karp’s Mental Floss article; it includes the first appearance in print of a recipe for chocolate cake)
How Does a Lab-Grown Burger Taste? Similar to McDonald's, Say Scientists(Inverse’s Mike Brown on a taste-test of patties grown from a few stem cells)
Illustrated Guide to Chinese Dumplings, An(Feijun Tan, at RADII, describes thirteen varieties)
Invention of Authentic Italian Food, The(Fabio Parasecoli’s essay from Roberta Sassatelli’s collection Italians and Food )
Is Sugar Toxic? Here's the Actual Truth About the Sweet Substance(Alexandra Pattillo interviews Robert Lustig and Marion Nestle for inverse to find out)
Last Supper in Pompeii review, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford(Alastair Sooke, describes for The Telegraph, “a feast of a show that reveals what the Romans really ate”)
Liquid Assets: Deciphering Sake in the Japanese Capital(Fran Kuzui and Phoebe Amoroso explain nihonshu and discuss sake, Tokyo style, for Culinary Backstreets)
Most Popular Cheeses in the World(descriptions of hundreds of cheeses, plus cheese festivals)
On the Uncanny Adaptability of American Fast Food(Adam Chandler travels our new McWorld in a quest for fast food for Literary Hub)
Same Compounds: Different Flavours(Barry Smith explain, in the Proceedings of Wine Active Compounds 2008, why the flavor of wines can vary—even if they contain the same flavor compounds—"because of differences in their thresholds of perception”)
Scientist Behind Some of Our Favorite Junk Foods, The(Emily Matchar, at The Smithsonian, on William A. Mitchell, the chemist responsible for artificial tapioca, Cool Whip, instant Jell-O, Pop Rocks, and Tang)
Sights, Sounds and Realities that Only Butchers Experience, The(Huffington Post’s Lee Breslouer interviews butchers about the realities of their work)
Story of Chile Peppers, The(the low-down from New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute)
Strange Science Inside your Sourdough, The(Veronique Greenwood, in BBC’s future, pays a visit to a sourdough library in Belgium’s Centre for Bread Flavour)
True Taste of a Wine, The(Barry Smith—from the School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Philosophy—on how complex a wine tasting experience can be)
Why Are Diners Traditionally Greek? It’s an Immigration Story, Naturally(Tracy Saelinger’s answer at Kitchn)
Wine Appreciation: Connoisseurship or Snobbery(Barry Smith asks the hard questions at The World of the Mind)
You Should Definitely Eat Spaghetti in Japan(Eater’s Nina Li Coomes waxes rhapsodic—and ecstatic—about the unexpected fusion of eastern and western pasta)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers —
5 Things to Do to Get Over Self-Doubt at Work
15 Helpful Words for Talking About Wine
Against Style Guides—Sort Of
Arkansas Wants to Make Sure You Know ‘Almonds Don’t Lactate’
Best Cookbooks of the Century So Far, The
Eight Ways to Curb Your Procrastination
Homo gluttonous
Kevin Alexander on the Funny, Unflinching, Cooking Memoirs You Need to Read
Moral Crusade Against Foodies, The
Objectivity of Taste and Tasting, The
Past, Present, and Future of Food Studies, The: An Oral History with Gastronomica’s Editors
Sophia Loren, Food Writer
Warning, Do Not Change Your Blog Theme Until You Read This
We Become Attached to Rules We Have Learned
What Anne Sexton Taught Me About... Self-Promotion
What We Write About When We Write About Food
When You Can’t Write, Write Anyways
Writer’s Envy Applied to Other Professions

— changed URL —
Cooking in the Archives

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #227 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.

Food Sites for August 2019

Carolina Reapers (Capsicum chinense... a cruel hybrid of Ghost Peppers and Habaneros)

It’s August, so it’s hot. Damned hot. And likely to get hotter.We can hide from the heat—with A/C, frozen desserts, or a trayful of icy libations—or we can choose to embrace it. Biting into a Carolina Reaper might be taking things a bit too far, though. 
Long ago, one of our more imprudent forms of gluttony took wing, and Modern Salt has published an account of it. “And it Burns, Burns, Burns, the Ring of Fire...” is hot stuff (or, at least, it’s about hot stuff).
Roll Magazine has published “Zhōng Guó,” a more civilized account of more recent over-indulgence. It involves some of the best dim sum available within 100 miles (and a shopping trip to our favorite Asian Supermarket). 
While almost everything we’ve published (so far) has been about food, we’ve accumulated several unpublished books that are not. Finding an agent for the odd mixture of short stories, essays, novels, and poems that litter our hard drive is daunting. We’ve started self-publishing the backlog as Kindle books. Our first one is How to Write a Great Book . As you might guess, it’s not really a how-to book. What it is a tongue-in-cheekiness look at how the great writers actually wrote theirs.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a LOT of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.
More hotness, this time from On the Table’s culinary quote collection):

He chopped up peppers, mixed them with vinegar and Avery Island salt, put the mixture in wooden barrels to age and funneled the resulting sauce into secondhand cologne bottles. James Conaway (on the invention of Tabasco)

They used to have a fish on the menu that was smoked, grilled and peppered. They did everything to this fish but pistol-whip it and dress it in Bermuda shorts. William E. Geist

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

Gary
August, 2019
PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line.  It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Alan Lake), 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 —
140 Years of Menu Design(An illustrated sample from Henry Phillips, at Gear Patrol)
8,000-Year-Old Homebrew Recipe Should Be Familiar to Modern Beer Snobs, An(Emma Betuel, at Inverse, on neolithic brewing methods in China)
Biotech Cockaigne of the Vegan Hopeful(Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft’s Hedgehog Review article on the future—and consequences—of cultured meat)
Bitter End for Regular Joe. A? Scientists Engineer a Smooth Beanless Coffee(Jodi Helmer, at NPR’s The Salt, on developing a coffee substitute entirely from chemicals)
Brief History of Pennsylvania Scrapple, A(Jaya Saxena tells the offal truth about a regional specialty, at Taste)
Building Blocks: The Chiles of Mexico(Megan Frye, at Culinary Backstreets, on that which makes Mexican dishes Mexican)
Dairy Farming—the Ancient History of Producing Milk(archaeologist Kris Hirst looks at the evidence for the use of milk, going back 8,000 years, for Thought & Co.)
Empire of Meat(Alicia Kennedy’s review of Joshua Specht’s Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America , in The Baffler)
Everything You Need to Know About the True Origins of the Everything Bagel(GastroObserver’s Dan Nosowitz says no one knows… but he does know who named it; Who nu?)
Five Myths About Barbecue(barbecue author Jim Auchmutey clears the air in The Washington Post)
Great Aged (Fermented) Sausage(Ed Behr, in his magazine, the Art of Eating, on the reality of—or lack thereof—uncured meat, and the joys of the real thing)
Hard to Swallow(Madeline Leung Coleman writes, for topic magazine, about “energy bars,” the non-food that people eat when they don’t want to eat)
How a Cash-Strapped Start-up Became the Internet’s Food-Nerd Utopia(Chris Crowley’s Grubstreet account of Serious Eats ’ rise to prominence)
How Almonds Went from Deadly to Delicious(Susie Neilson, at NPR’s The Salt, on an ancient mutation that made sweet almonds possible)
How French Cuisine Took Over the World(Henry Notaker, at Literary Hub, on how they did it with cookbooks)
Lab, The(archive of articles about chocolate; recipes, chemistry, cultivation, techniques, etc.)
Natural Wine Movement is About More Than Just Wine, The(Jonathan Nossiter, at Literary Hub, says not all of them “are natural wines of a spurious radicality”)
People Who Invent New Food Flavours, The(a BBC slideshow, by Bernadette Young and William Park, about the collaboration of Matthew Walter and Alison Freedman)
Pressure Cooker was Not an Instant Success, The(Amanda Herbert, at The Recipe Project, on a seventeenth-century precursor of the Instant Pot)
Rise of the Fork, The(Slate’s Sara Goldsmith history of the ubiquitous utensil)
Spam: The Meat That Won World War II & Possibly Saved Humanity(Appalachian Magazine takes some of the mystery out of mystery meat)
Ultimate Guide to Charcuterie, The(Pamela Vachon, at Chowhound, on the miracle of preserved meats) 

— inspirational (or otherwise useful or amusing) sites for writers/bloggers —
Choices We Make when We Write about Food, The
How a Former Human Rights Campaigner Wrote One of the Most Powerful Cookbooks of the Year
How a Literary Prank Convinced Germany That “Hansel and Gretel” Was Real
How to Purge 30 Years of Cookbooks? Start with the Ones by Chefs.
Purdue Writing Lab, The
Read Between the Lines: On Menus as Texts
Restaurant Reviewing Needs a Revamp
Ruth Reichl on M.F.K. Fisher’s Lifetime of Joyous Eating
These 50 Awesome Book Covers Will Inspire You—and Teach You How to Design Your Own
To Be More Creative, Cheer Up
Why Molecular Gastronomy Was Far More Than a Fad in the Restaurant World
Ye Olde Tyme-Y Words

— that’s all for now —
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our books:
The Resource Guide for Food Writers
(Hardcover)
(Paper)
(Kindle)
(newsletters like this merely update the contents of the book; what doesn’t appear here is already in the book)
The Herbalist in the Kitchen
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food And Drink Industries
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Human Cuisine
(Paper)
(Kindle)
Herbs: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sausage: A Global History
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods
(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Sauces Reconsidered: Aprés Escoffier(Hardcover)
(Kindle)
Terms of Vegery
(Kindle)
How to Serve Man:
On Cannibalism, Sex, Sacrifice, & the Nature of Eating
(Kindle)
How to Write a Great Book
(Kindle)
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.
______________
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #226 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.
Copyright ©2019 by Gary Allen.