This week we gather together to share research results and to enjoy each other’s culinary handiwork.
I’m sending around an email describing what we’ll be doing on Tuesday. You may use the comment feature here to describe your contribution to our potluck.
Title image shows the Swedish Chef (a.k.a. Børk) preparing a chocolate mousse. (What, were you expecting the other “chef”?)
Our final reading is David Montgomery, King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2003). You may post your comments here.
Title image comes from a terrific multimedia presentation developed by the National Geographic. Here, an Atlantic salmon creeps along the rocky bed of the St. Jean River (Quebec).
With the end of the course nearly in sight, we turn our attention to Emiko Ohnuki-Tierny, Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). It is a lovely — and short — book.
Title image by Robert Essel (NYC / Corbis) shows women drying rice in a field in Wakayama (Japan).
We’re now reading Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). It is a potentionally important book for many of our research papers, so let us start a smart discussion here and continue it in person when we meet on Tuesday.
Title image is a photo by Jake Howlett.
On this Tuesday we gathered to turn in rough drafts of our research papers and to enjoy a field trip to the Main Street Market at 416 West Main Street.
We visited Feast for a short conversation about cheese and a taste off that oddly delicious cocoa powder-spinkled goat cheese; and then to
the Organic Butcher to see them cut up some beef and hear all about changing trends in meat; and then made a short dash across the street to the (Afghani) World Market.
There were no readings this week, due to our commitment to our rough drafts. Instead we just studied beef- and pork-butchering charts that La Fleur had photocopied.
Any reactions to our field trip?
Title image shows Bartolomeo Passerotti’s The Butcher Shop (1580s).
Now we read James McCann, Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). Comments anyone?
There are two “public” copies. The first is at Clemons Reserve and the second is my copy, which is now in the HIST 401-B box in Randall 112 (the history department’s lounge/copyroom). If you want to use the latter, please just don’t take it too far afield — because someone else might need it, too.
This week we dig in to Jeffrey Pilcher, ¡Que vivan los tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). Post your comments here.
Title image shows Tamalada (”Making Tamales”), a 1990 lithograph done by Carmen Lopez Garza, and now conserved by The Mexican Museum (San Francisco).
Returning from spring break, we’ll meet to discuss Larry Zuckerman, The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (Faber & Faber, 1998; North Point Press, 1999). You may post notes here.
Title image shows Vincent van Gogh’s De aardappeleters (”the Potato Eaters”), now conserved at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
We need to round-up some stray things mentioned in the past several weeks.
Here’s some information and images about nutria. I can’t remember how this critter intruded on our conversation about Salt . . . perhaps Jump was looking to boost his “Fear Factor” rating?
Also during Week 5, I mentioned Harold McGee on the science of cooking. I can’t recommend his book highly enough.
At our Week 4 meeting, I mentioned the Cola vs. Pop. vs. Soda map.
And some time earlier — I can’t remember when — I promised information about “Coca-Cola Ham”. I cooked it a few years ago (when I lived in Leiden, NL and a fresh ham required a special order from Piet van der Vooren, our great butcher) after the recipe appeared in Cook’s Illustrated. I can testify to its strangely delicious taste and the reliability of this recipe.
Finally, here’s a pic of Mamer’s entry for her family’s baking contest. We enjoyed the cupcake trial-version in Week 2, and can’t imagine anything could top this!
Cookie Monster used my cell-phone to take several photos of the Italian delicacies — olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fig jam — UVACT brought “home” to our classroom last week. We still need to master Bluetooth to get them off and posted here.
Anything else?
Title image comes from the Kentucky Horse Park.
We’re now reading Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Title image shows a Red (or “North”) Devon steer [artist and date unknown]. Historians of the breed believe it to be the first introduced to colonial New England.
Check the Wiki on cattle history, terminology (e.g., what’s a “steer”?), and more.
