Longing to know the secrets of food stylists?  They brush green beans with glycerine, top pies with shaving cream, and go a la mode with mashed potatoes. Or are you looking to track down the visual history of Betty Crocker? American hot dog history? Find these and other nuggets of food miscellany in an impressive, eclectic whirlwind called Offbeat Food by Alan Ridenour, published by Santa Monica Press, 2000, $19.95. (Paperback, 233pp.)

Chockablock with well-chosen illustrations, Offbeat Food was laid out by a website designer, not a book person and the result is lively and inventive. My only problem with a book such as this, loaded as it is with useful information, is the lack of an index. You’ll have to surf through it to find what you seek on Candy, Cannibalism, Cheese Steak, Chewing Gum and Crackerjacks.
 
 

Another Santa Monica Press offering is Café Nation by Sandra Mizumoto Posey, 2000, $9.95. ( Paperback, 210 pp.)The subtitle is Coffee Folklore, Magick, and Divination, appropriate to an author with a PhD in folklore and mythology from UCLA.  Posey begins with a concise history of coffee drinking, then segues into coffee divination---substitute grounds for leaves--, then coffee magick, (her spelling,) including spells and potions, and a range of fine coffee-making recipes. The final chapter requires committed study, presumably over several cups of Joe—in it the author reveals the Café Nation System, which involves bean casting, and daunting methods of interpreting same. Visit www.cafenation.net for assistance.

Eating in America, by Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont, The Ecco Press, 1976, 1995, is an extremely personal exploration of the history of American food preparation and consumption, beginning with salt water- stained written reports brought back by the Vikings. It closes in the late 1970’s, the authors lamenting that most of America’s cooking is still tied to the wretched traditions of the British Isles, though Root and de Rochemont are heartened by a trend towards the baking of decent bread. Too bad the they didn’t make it to today’s millennial perch, to observe the triumph of salsa sales over ketchup,  ubiquitous Thai restaurants, fish tacos, and micro-breweries, among much other evidence that Brit fare is no longer the mother lode.