Favorites

Books & Periodicals
Archives

Events

Films

Links

Products

Restaurants

Tours

TV & Radio

The FOOD Museum needs to eat too!
Please keep us fed--you'll support the website and help bring lively, multi-cultural food programs to schools across the country.

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Books Worth Noting

This Organic Life
Joan Dye Gussow is that rare person on this planet who lives what she believes. And she believes emphatically in eating locally. We ate breakfast today at her house on the Hudson River in Piermont, NY---the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries had just been plucked as locally as a few yards out into her garden plots lapped by the tidal Hudson. As best as she can, 77 year-old Joan eats from her 12 raised beds and assorted pots and side plantings, year round.

A nutrition educator by trade, she is professor emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, has sat on numerous boards, and is friends with most of the stars in sustainable ag/organic gardening and so on. Her latest book, This Organic Life, published by Chelsea Green in 2001, grabbed us by the small hairs in the chapter titled " California and the Rest of Us." We Americans demand and expect cheap food year round, regardless of the season and we pay mightily for it, our taxes keeping the flow of bought and/or stolen water coursing into the irrigated fields of the deserts of California. It's an insane situation that has put farmers out of business across the US and left many major metro areas across the country dependent on produce from the West.

And Joan asks how long can the West provide?

" There are many threats to California's continued fruitfulness--soil erosion, air pollution, salinization of irrigated land,the invasion of exotic pests, and land subsidence are among them. But the two most worrying are the disappearance of farmland and the competition for water."

Another ramification that strikes Foodie's mind is that "terrorists" could easily disrupt or block the flow of food heading east in trucks. Ponder that the next time you observe airport security personnel nonsensically herding elderly ladies into machines that seek out hidden explosives by sending puffs of air into their blouses and up their skirts.

Most of us cannot grow all our own food--even Joan buys grains and grapefruit juice and surely Belgian chocolates ( we must ask her!) from beyond her garden walls--and a commitment to eating locally does not require us to give up all taste for globally traded products. We are only entreated to wake up to what we eat and who produces it and why we want it or think we need it..

Alimentum: A Nourishing Journal
If you like your foodie literature short and sweet, neatly contained in a journal suitable for insertion in pockets, and you'd rather not wait for the New Yorker's special issue on food, Alimentum is for you. The New York-based journal was launched by writer and caterer Paulette Licitra soon after she had the notion that food had not yet been honored by a dedicated lit mag. Her husband, Peter Selgin, a writer, painter, editor, teacher, shares editing duties with Paulette, the publisher. Evidently they are already backlogged on submissions--the first two editions, Winter and Summer, have just emerged--so expect a wait on your poem about the armadillo that refused to cook up tender. Ultimately Alimentum hopes to pay its writers but for the moment the reward is seeing your work in elegant print.

On Sunday Foodie caught the Alimentum crowd at a reading at a restaurant in Brooklyn to note the publication of Summer. (Night and Day in Park Slope hosted the event.) While some material "reads" well and its authors have a gift for same, other does not, alas. We think that the best presenters should take the mike---Foodie assumed, incorrectly, that she would find the authors in the magazine, after the fact. Alas, she does not know the name of the fellow who did a funny riff on the food references missing from Lawrence's Women in Love, nor the young woman who read some poetry with memorable lines like, "the fish in the window are taken already," and "Keep the taste of your sandwich closed, in your mouth," and something about the bottoms of feet, as "flaky as whitefish." Lynn Levin read with delayed amusement about her attempt to eat guinea pig in Peru, and Angus Woodward wondered what the "tomato as a fruit or not" controversy was all about.

Foodie was about to launch into a didactic explanation of the whole affair settled by the Supremes in 1887---the government wanted tomatoes taxed as a veg, the importers wanted it untaxed as a fruit--and of course we all know technically that it is a fruit, botanically...but since this entire explanation would have been utterly unliterary, Foodie shut up and ate her nicely prepared fried baby artichokes.

The Wise Mullet of Cook Bayou
Today, children, we turn our attention to the magnificent leaping mullet, the mostly-vegetarian fish with a gizzard ( tastes like flying chicken?) and the focus both of a kiddie book, The Wise Mullet of Cook Bayou, and an October event in Florida's northwest panhandle with the enticing name Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival.

The book was written by journalist and native Floridian Timothy Weeks. It tells the strong simple story of three mullet in a Florida bayou who choose different life paths, with the "wise" one making out the best. Weeks says his book is based on a story by the Persian Sufi mystic Rumi, a philospher and poet who inspired the "whirling dervishes," those for whom dance was a pathway to the Divine. Many old hand Floridians say the mullet "leaps for joy," as often as it leaps to avoid danger, so the Rumi connection is fitting.

Weeks' children's book project became a family affair. His mother, Jeanne, did the illustrations. His sister, Kimberly Bryant did the editing, and his Dad, David inspired his early interest in mullet. Crazy as it may sound, this shiny, tidy book laid out with a combo of hand drawings and computer graphics, smells terrific, sort of a petroleum and printing press melange. The odor does not from the two recipes by Jeanne at the back for Golden Brown Mullet and Cheese Grits, staple foods of the denizens of Cook Bayou. ( Contact Weeks directly for the book-- educators can obtain a teaching packet as well. )

Once we saw the mighty leap of one of these fish in Florida, we decided perhaps we harbored a mullet-within, and became loathe to eat them. Before the infamous net ban of 1995, mullet was the least expensive fish in local Florida markets. Today it's harder to find, though the smoked mullet at South Pasadena's( St. Petersburg) Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish is a favorite.

For more things mullet, visit the B.B. Mullet Festival in Niceville, named Boggy Bayou until the citizenry wanted a more Up Town name. You and 100,000 other visitors will eat 10 tons of mullet ( we know, mullet doesn't sound scarce) during three days, October 20, 21 and 22.

As for the fabled "do," known as The Mullet, no mullet possibly could leap to the notion that its arrangement of fins (?) ( see the mullet pic up top) would spawn an entire culture. Wikipedia says the mullet --short everywhere, but long in the back, was sported by fishermen in the 19th c to keep the backs of their heads warm.

Organic, Inc.
The author of the highly readable Organic, Inc. --- Natural Foods and How They Grew ( Harcourt, Inc., $25, ) begins his book as a customer, wowed by the seductive offerings of Whole Foods, and drawn to the fresh locally-grown produce of farmers' markets. Samuel Fromartz, a business writer, sets out to discover why he and other consumers buy organic foods. In the course of his odyssey he meets most of the big players in this complex business, as well as several small growers and many others involved in organic food.

His first chapter, Humus Worshippers, reveals a 1998 study done by the University of Washington's Chensheng Lu of children in the Seattle area , testing their urine for levels of pesticide residue. He found them in hundreds of 2-5 year-olds. But one child of the study had none. He lived in a family that exclusively ate organically grown food.

Many people have chosen to go with organic for that reason alone--but consumers have other reasons---better support for the environment and sustainability, positive health benefits, economic support of local growers and so on.

Astonishingly, we live in an era in America when only 1% of the population farms, down from 25% in 1940. Fromartz profiles the 30 year efforts of the Crawford family's New Morning Farm in central Pennsylvania. New Morning exemplifies the successful small farm protoype--it is organic, independent, and "local," and also very clever in the way it markets its fares outside traditional outlets.

Fromartz also looks deeply into the doings of giant organic firms like California's Earthbound Farms, and Colorado's Horizon Organic and tofu-based White Wave, both now owned by Dean Foods.

While organic farmers and the US government have reached an agreement as to what constitutes "organic growing," they have wrestled long, hard, and not terribly successfully with what makes a finished product "organic." Fromartz moves through this complex, would be-acronym-littered--NODPA, NOFA, NOSB--field as well as anyone could.

In the end, the author decides that consumers of organic foods and products are in a way conflicted, spending top dollar for items an individual thinks matters lost, such as organic milk for children, and staying mainstream with say, canned baked beans. And dabbling in gardening.

Read this book.

The Solar Chef's Recipe Book
Baking with the light of the sun; quick, plan ahead suppers; chowing down on more than just the BBQued beast. Anyone?

With the sun beating down hard here in the drought-filled Southwest, and energy prices escalating, Foodie may just finally set up her own solar cooker. She saw one at an alternative energy fair, or rather, her nose smelled it, and she beelined over to speak with the cook , organic gardener, and author of The Solar Chef's Recipe Book, Rose Marie Kern. ( Visit the Solar Ranch website, $15 plus $2.50 shipping.) Rose Marie was cooking up Suntan Chicken, with red chile sauce and lime, in her Global Sun Oven, and even to a veggie it smelled divine. Apparently Rose Marie was inspired by solar as a kid, when on blistering hot days folks would attempt to fry an egg on the sidewalk. And even now, though she cooks with fairly high end solar cookers, she suggests that you or your kids can build a simple solar device by lining a shoebox with aluminum. Then paint the outside of a quart canning jar black and put anything you want heated up inside. Put the jar in the box, tilt the box towards the sun, wait 15-20 minutes and bingo.

The joys of solar cooking evidently include the pleasure of using free energy, cooking things slowly, with moisture well contained, observing the movement of celestial bodies, and cooking in the wilderness when campfires are banned. And these recipes, among others: Motto's Sephardic Matzo Ball Soup, Gingered Sweet Potato Bisque, Beer Cheese Bread, Chicken Mole...Yes, indeed, make meals while the sun shines.

I Want My Dinner Now!

( $12.95, Hestia's Hearth Publishing and Design, Kenniwick, WA) is for the newbie cook, and/or for the home food purveyor who wants to do right by the family but has little time or inclination for frequent food shopping or the glories of cuisine. Pottle has some good ideas--Foodie especially liked the one about freezing leftover tomato paste/sauce/cut up tomatoes in a tomato bin for later use. And her book is well organized, with the ingredients set forth for either two servings or six.

Her menu planning is mind-arrestingly thorough, so that a week in which 1/2 can of soup is used makes use of the other half by the end of the week. ( Canned soup? What? Still edible?) Her recipes are fairly basic, straight-forward American fare, and even the occasional dalliance into exotica--Thai chicken, or paella--is served up so that the most finicky isolationist eater will probably try it. Margarine is listed as an acceptable ingredient throughout, however, and olive oil is not mentioned. While this cookbook is not inspiring, in it Pottle achieves her goal--she provides quickly assembled meals so that the frazzled family can avoid the take-out, pre-packaged route and eat together.

The Big Book of Barbeque Sides by Rick Browne,

( $16.95, Collectors Press, Portland, OR) suggests things aside from the main event to cook over those perfect hot coals or fragrant wood. Things like Savory Onion Pudding, a rich dish that involves Emmental, thinly sliced onions, and Vermouth, and three ways to roast corn, and even grilled fruit with an eggy brown sugar and dry cider sauce. Author Browne, the host of the PBS show Barbeque America, also prepares sides away from the grill--for Dirty Rice, he shares his specially concocted Creole blend. His Sweet Potato Biscuits sound sublime but do they really need the 1/4 c. brown sugar he includes? Moments ago, Foodie served up his Sicilian White Beans and Parmesan, with crusty bread and a side of fresh spinach with garlic. Just fine.

Peace, Love and Barbecue
by Mike Mills and Amy Mills Tunnicliffe.

Wow—what I thought I knew about barbecue I learned from Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker. Or maybe it was Playboy. Now Trillin is terrific, but he’s terribly fixated on Kansas City and on Arthur Bryant’s in particular, whereas the Mills duo, pere et fille, have seemingly eaten barbecue everywhere it’s fit to eat. In putting this opus together, they traveled 100,000 miles through 15 states, sampling along the way. The book reels in the reader with family tales, recipes, barbecue tips and techniques, food history notes, profiles of A-list barbecue restaurants and their owners, sauces galore, and an inventive layout packed with black and white photos.
“Barbecue” here is the real deal—a spiced piece of meat, usually pork, smoked slowly over charcoal and wood, in a pit or cooker. It may have started with Caribbean slaves or it may not have. Evidently barbecue-ers have been chewing over BBQ origins for years. In any event, it doesn’t matter. I cannot imagine a more definitive, amusing history of this traditional southern American food coming along the gastro pike anytime soon.
( Rodale, 2005, $19.95)
Mike Mills owns six barbecue restaurants, four in Vegas and two in Southern Illinois, and is a partner in Blue Smoke Restaurant, New York. Amy Mills Tunnicliffe is a writer.

Teenage Waistland--A Former Fat Kid Weighs In

We made reference to this book and its author, Abby Ellin, in The FOOD Museum's detailed exploration of hunger, obesity and school lunch reform. So she recently sent us a copy and Foodie was reeled in from the first sentence of page xv: "I was 10 the first time I stepped on a scale."

The author has no definitive array of answers or advice on how to handle "the fat thing" with kids but it becomes clear, rapidly, that shaming the heavier kids into "doing something about their weight" is not the way to go. Ellin was an overweight kid, not obese, and sent herself to fat camps for years on inherited income derived from her grandfather.

Still reading this eminently accessible, thoughtful and entertaining book, Foodie has been thinking back to her own dinosaur-era childhood--when kids ran around outdoors until hauled in for bed, when girls, certainly, had no organized sports teams, and when tv was not in her home! ( Nor were the glorious Internets, obviously..) And food was prepared fresh, and our family ate dinner together. ( And we were all slim.) It all sounds bizarrely antique.

A Revolution in Eating—How the Quest for Food Shaped America
by James E. McWilliams

Flexibility, even tolerance may well have contributed to the uniqueness of American food, according to historian McWilliams in this extremely rich, readable book. Early colonists were forced by circumstances to eat many foods they knew nothing of, or starve. They learned new foodways from native people but also took lessons from the Africans they brought to the colonies as slaves—by leaving slaves to cultivate small patches of their own ground, their overseers benefited. Slaves made use of sweet potatoes and peppers, and black-eyed peas, and brought okra to the mix, serving everything up in savory slow cooked stews.
And once Americans were well underway cultivating food plants both from the Americas and from Europe in their own garden plots or farms, they took pride in their ability to feed themselves, independent of their home countries across the Atlantic. When British soldiers began pilfering Colonial foodstores, the notion of a revolution became more visceral and less a matter of taxation or philosophy.
Knowing where our food comes from, (and one hopes much of it increasingly comes from nearby,) and participating in food growing and cooking with fresh ingredients is a subtext important to the author who advocates in interviews for a more reasonable way of feeding all Americans.
(Columbia University Press, 2005, $29.95.)

Eating Your Words by former restaurant critic of the New York Times, William Grimes, is a valuable encyclopedic glossary of foodie words and concepts, (particularly noteworthy is an entry for The FOOD Museum...) Over 1000 entries from acorn squash to zwieback should answer any foodie’s basic questions. “Laddu,” by the way, is an Indian confection.
(Oxford University Press, 2004, $20.) Incidentally, if you haven’t read Grimes’ book about a large black hen that appeared in his Queens, NY backyard one day, do. The title: My Fine Feathered Friend.

Pork Chops & Applesauce
by Cynthia Briggs, 2003. (Order from the author.) http://www.porkchopsandapplesauce.net/index.htm

This recipe-filled memoir reminds us of a time when many Americans lived on farms and their food was fresh, healthy, and sustaining. Families participated in food raising and children knew that pork chops came from pigs, not a cellophane wrapped styrofoam tray.
Briggs clearly enjoys food and cooking and the stories that often accompany good eating.
This is a woman who not only has brewed many home beers, but still makes her own sauerbraten. The Irish dill bread sounds terrific, and the fruit empenadas, and Grandma’s blueberry orange bread, oh my!

The Kegan Hall Library of Culinary Library of Culinary Arts, London, is distributed in the U.S. by Columbia University Press. Several titles in this unusual series have come our way—all appear to be republications of books from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. All food historians and cooks will find ample fodder in this series indeed. The books do not come cheaply—from the publisher, they list at $100 and up. http://www.keganpaul.com/

Skuse’s Complete Confectioner
by E. Skuse, 1890, republished 2004.

The art of sugar boiling and its many offshoots is explained by the mysterious E. Skuse. All any would-be maker of bonbons, pastilles, twisted barley sugar sticks et al would find this of interest. It includes assorted litho illustrations, including one of a peppermint bulls-eyes machine with a hand crank. Skuse, whether he or she, makes this statement up front: “Of the entire make of confectionery in the United Kingdom, at least two thirds of it may be written down under the name of boiled sugar.” Skuse insists that retail candy sellers should get on with sugar boiling. Why? “ It gives a character to the business, a fascinating odour to the premises, and a general at-homeness to the surroundings.”

A Guide for the Greedy, by a Greedy Woman
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, 1922, republished 2003.

Pennell was an American journalist working from the 1880’s until her death in 1936. She lived many years in London with her husband Joseph, a famous illustrator where they hobnobbed with the likes of James McNeil Whistler. While in London she wrote a food column for the Pall Mall Gazette and this volume comprises some of those. Her introduction, however, relates her sense of the history of “cookery books.” The book begins in earnest with this forthright statement: ”Gluttony is ranked with the deadly sins; it should be honoured among the cardinal virtues.” Elsewhere, she writes of sole: “ Have you ever considered the sole: the simple, unassuming sole, in Quaker-like garb, striking a quiet grey note in every fishmonger’s window, a constant rebuke to the mackerel that makes such a vain parade of its green audacity....”

Food for the Greedy
by Nancy Shaw, 1936, 1951, republished 2005, gives us jellied eels and boiled suet pudding of lamb and oysters, and a bit more
.
Something New in Sandwiches by M. Redington White, 1932, republished 2004, reinvigorates our interest in slices of bread, indeed, by tossing out “Atta Boy”, a three slice hot sandwich of cooked creamed corn, bacon, and French beans. And prune sandwiches for children, sweet digestive biscuit or water biscuit sandwiches for the bread-challenged, and a slew of vegetarian offerings, including a sandwich of chopped sea kale, vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Menus and Twelve Hundred Recipes by Baron Brisse, 1868, republished 2004. A renowned gourmande of his era, the Baron wrote about food but does not appear to have been a professional chef. He collected both menus and recipes and this book, translated into English in 1905, contains both. The Baron modestly announces that “ all the world acknowledges that it is from us ( France) that the most varied culinary resources come, and it is also in France that the cleverest artists have devoted their talents to the preparation of dishes with which to enrich our bills of fare.” His July 4th menu features julienne soup, turbot with horseradish sauce, brown fricassee of fowl, roast calf’s kidney, cauliflower fritters, and whipped strawberries and cream.

The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel and Olga Hartley, 1925, republished 2004. Leyel founded The Herb Society in London in 1927 in part to support the use of herbal medicine in Britain. The authors exhort us to do “ as the French do, shop first, and then arrange the dinner according to what is most plentiful in the market, (rather than) to go out and buy what is necessary for a pre-arranged menu.” Yes! Many of us foodies tend to do this as a matter of course, and to emphasize this approach, this book lists recipes by raw materials.

Click here to read archived reviews.

Return to our home page.