Pasta Grannies

March 15, 2023

Italian food is - I declare - one of the best cuisines and most popular foods; just about every town in America has an Italian restaurant. Pasta Grannies is one of the greatest food treasures on YouTube, with 913K subscribers; if you haven't watched hours of Italian grandmothers hand-rolling pasta dough on wooden cutting boards, start now. A YouTube video called 91-year-old Maria shares her lasagna recipe with Pasta Grannies has 8.3 million views. You can find recipes for handrolled gnocchi, bucatini, orecchiette, and raviolli. It's not all pasta; short videos about Italian desserts can be found within the Pasta Grannies playlists, such as 93-year-old Clara makes the best crunchy creamy cannoli and How to make a classic tiramisù dessert from Treviso! The Italian culinary matriarchs are not only from Italy; Nonna Maria has lived in New Jersey for 50 years. Pasta Grannies produced two cookbooks, one from 2019 and the most recently in November 2022. Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook: The Secrets of Italy's Best Home Cooks by Vicky Bennison won the 2020 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Single Subject Cookbook. A playlist called Pasta Grannies cookbook currently includes 64 recipes from the two cookbooks; you can watch them here. Buon appetito!

Neysa McMein (1888-1949)

March 14, 2023

I discovered Neysa McMein while researching the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. According to Brooke Bailey in The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Artists, Neysa McMein was born Margary Edna; Wikipedia notes Neysa was originally named Marjorie Frances McMein. Which is accurate? I do not know. However, Neysa was the name that brought her fame and recognition. Neysa McMein was an artist and illustrator trained at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York and moved to New York City around 1911, and "for many months she peddled her pictures from publisher to publisher without success, but when at last one was finally accepted, other orders fairly poured in." (The Sunday Telegram, 1915) By 1915, Neysa Moran McMein earned something close to 300k a year for her illustrations. From the mid-1910s until the 1930s, Neysa's illustrations graced the covers of McClure's, McCall's, The Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, Woman's Home Companion, and Collier's. Before the days when photography began to appear on glossy magazine covers, Neysa was an influential and highly paid woman artist during her era; her pastels included women wearing hats with dangling fruits or drinking cocktail beverages. In addition to her work at magazines, she created advertisements for the commercial food industry; one illustration was for Adam's California Fruit Gum by a New Jersey-based company called American Chicle Company. General Mills also commissioned Neysa McMein to paint a portrait of the Betty Crocker persona used in food advertisements during the 1930s and 1940s. "In 1936, Neysa McMein, a prominent painter, was commissioned to create an official portrait... the Betty Crocker making her debut on the Softasilk cake flour box in 1937 was a severe young matron with a distant gaze, slightly pursed lips, and crisp white ruching at the neckline of her red dress."(Slotnick) Betty Crocker was never a living, breathing, or feasting domestic lady. Betty Crocker was a fantasy and creation of the General Mills corporation, and Neysa brought her to life. During McMein's life, she dined and romped around with 20s flappers and stars such as Charlie Chaplin and was a woman's rights activist, mover, and shaker challenging the status quo. She lived the extraordinary life of a wealthy artist in the roaring twenties in New York City. According to one article, in an interview with the actress Ruth Gordon, who talks about banana ice cream being her second favorite, she mentions, "...the only person I know in New York who can make it well is Neysa McMein." (Evening Star, 1937) In 1987, Brian Gallagher published a book about Neysa McMein called Anything Goes: The Jazz Age Adventures of Neysa McMein and Her Extravagant Circle of Friends. If you can find a copy, I'm sure it will be worth the read. 

• Bailey B. (1994). The remarkable lives of 100 women artists. Bob Adams.
• The Sunday Telegram, Clarksburg, W. Va., 22 Aug. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85059732/1915-08-22/ed-1/seq-28/
• Evening Star, Washington, D.C., 18 April 1937. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1937-04-18/ed-1/seq-94/
• Slotnick, B. (2012). Betty Crocker. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. : Oxford University Press.
• Gallagher B. (1987). Anything Goes  The Jazz Age Adventures of Neysa Mcmein and Her Extravagant Circle of Friends (1st ed.). Times Books.

Saturday Evening Post 1900 - 1930

Food Product Cookbooks

March 12, 2023

Why yellow? It's as if the marketing focus groups for food companies determined yellow is popular among consumers because Vegemite, Bisquick, Duke's, and Old El Paso food products are designed with yellow labels and yellow backgrounds for their cookbooks. This spring, The Vegemite Cookbook: Favourite recipes that taste like Australia came out in March, and The Old El Paso Cookbook: 20-Minute-Prep Mexican-Style Meals will become available in April. Betty Crocker Bisquick Quick To The Table: Easy Recipes for Food You Want to Eat by Betty Crocker and The Duke's Mayonnaise Cookbook: 75 Recipes Celebrating the Perfect Condiment by Ashley Strickland Freeman came out during the pandemic in 2020. Food product cookbooks are not new; throughout history, Jell-O has sold cookbooks related to their product, like the Joys of Jell-O: gelatin dessert by General Foods Corporation (1967). The citrus company Sunkist published a cookbook in 1916 called Sunkist Recipes: Oranges-Lemons by Alice Bradley. The list goes on:  Campbell's Classic Recipes by Campbell Soup Company (2000); The Pillsbury Cookbook (1989); Del Monte: Quick & Easy Recipes (1996); Hershey's 1934 Cookbook by the Hershey Foods Corporation (1993); Quaker Oats' Stretching Food Dollars cookbook (1982); and Whitman's Chocolate Cookbook (1987). The cookbooks are designed for consumers to buy and cook recipes using commercially available food products. Brand name cookbooks can also be a quirky reference to pop culture foods like The Twinkies Cookbook, which came out in 2015, or the Spam the Cookbook by Marguerite Patten from 2018.

Women and Food

March 11, 2023

According to the Encyclopedia of Food and Drink, women's history was often unrecorded due to the primary focus on men in the public light; therefore, finding the woman's voice in the archive can be tricky since it was often forgotten. Throughout human history, women have primarily partook in "domestic duties and family service at home." (Katz) I'm thankful for all the women, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and caretakers who have helped to nourish loved ones and provide healthy nutrition for future generations. Unfortunately, the preparation of meals was an important role lost in my family and many other multigenerational American families. My mother, highly influenced by 1970s feminism, refused to cook; she depended on the commercial food industry to feed her family, from frozen dinners to fast food; she rarely used an oven or toiled with domestic duties and was entirely dependent on American society to provide maternal care, which left me utterly reliant on corporations, fast foods, and frozen meals to sustain my mental and physical development. For me, the television became the babysitter, and the microwave my mother. As a child, I envied my friends with grandmothers and mothers or caretakers who prepared hot meals for their loved ones. Growing up in California, my friend's mother from Mexico cooked every course with love. I still remember when she opened the ceramic container with freshly made hot corn tortillas, and I can still feel her warmth and care in her dimly lit home. Another friend's mother threw me a birthday party and baked me a cake. I thank these women for teaching their children about food and love and teaching me about the importance of a family meal. Interestingly, the Encyclopedia of Food and Drink mentions, "many women know far less about cookery than their mothers did and have asserted their perceived liberation from household drudgery with the proud statement, "I don't cook." (Katz). As a guinea pig for such a social experiment, I highly advise rethinking such caretaking methods; it just creates a void and room for neglect. At one point, "... fast food, convenience, and "take-out" foods, ... traditional male cuisine, [replaced] the comfort foods associated with women's home cooking... economic progress has weakened associations between gender and cuisine and the link between women and food, leaving us to ponder the consequences." (Katz) Hopefully, the next generation will remember the culinary traditions lost to Lean Cuisines, Hot Pockets, Mcdonald's, and Vending Machines. Bringing back traditional cooking methods and opening the kitchen to all genders will help deliver healthy foods, nurture the community, and support parental love. Throughout history, women have played an essential role in the kitchen; respect and honor are warranted for all kitchen contributions. Readers can find cookbooks about women, food, and the kitchen below. 

• Katz S. H. & Weaver W. W. (2003). Women and Food in Encyclopedia of food and culture. Scribner.

New Jersey Postcards

Olga Costa

Paul C. Bragg

March 8, 2023

One food staple for vegetarians and vegans is Bragg's Nutritional Yeast Seasoning. Its yellow fish flakes texture is enriched with Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, and B6 and B12 vitamins. The label on the packaging in my kitchen cabinet says Braggs was established in 1912 by two founders, Patricia Bragg N.D., Ph.D., and Paul C. Bragg N.D., Ph.D. Any seller proclaiming to be a health guru usually comes from the confidence man category. Paul C. Bragg (1895-1976) is a complex man with a constantly changing biography. It was reported that he worked in insurance as a salesman and lied about his upbringing, place of birth, and family origin. In the September 17, 1913 issue of the Washington Times, the article discusses Paul C. Bragg as a Carnegie hero who went to St. Charles Military School in St. Louis, Missouri, to teach wrestling and boxing in exchange for a four-year medical degree. However, it looks like St. Charles closed down two years after Braggs began schooling, and the building burned down a few years later, perhaps leaving Braggs unable to complete his medical degree. In the November 16, 1929 issue of The Indianapolis Times, it is claimed that Bragg was a "super athlete... who rebuilt himself from a hopeless cripple." Around the same time the Military School closed in 1915, Bragg claims, at 20, he was near death with tuberculosis, ulcers, rheumatism, catarrh, and asthma, citing being in a "wheelchair waiting to die." But he pulled through with good health and vitamins. Later on, during his successful health guru phase, Bragg would often host health lectures at Masonic Temples. In a 1935 advertisement in the Washington Times, Bragg claims he is the "discoverer of super brain breathing." That same year in 1935, Bragg was a health editor at a magazine and was charged with practicing the "healing arts" without a license.  He most definitely did not earn a Ph.D. Professor Braggs was fined $100 for prescribing unlicensed medicine, violating California law. I'm confused about why Bragg packaging says the company was established in 1912, a year before his short-lived medical training, and also, for many decades, listed Paul C. Bragg N.D., Ph.D. to the packaging. Bragg products continue to be popular at health food stores, with consumers dosing on spoonfuls of apple cider vinegar, the "original wellness elixir," as treatments for better health. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you'll always find the fine print, "Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

New Jersey

March 7, 2023

New Jersey has a rich and fertile history in the lands of the Lenape. The state's history moves through colonialism and America's revolutionary independence into the endless farmlands and the booming industrial age. NJ is now the state I call home, the fourth on my list, including California, Maryland, and New York; I've landed here in the land of complex histories. Wanting to learn more about my new homeland, I've checked out a few books from my local library, Down Jersey Cooking (2004) by Joe Colanero and Dishing Up New Jersey (2016) by John Holl. My Jersey-raised husband has told me NJ is known for its famous blueberries, pork rolls, Zeppoles, Jersey corn, egg farms, and Benny Tudinos' giant Hoboken slice of pizza. In addition to dishes and produce, American companies have their roots in NJ, such as Campbell's Soup, founded in Camden, and South Jersey's Welch's Grape Juice. According to Down Jersey Cooking, Vineland is the dandelion capital of the world, and the book includes recipes for cooking with dandelions. Jersey is also known for an array of coastal kinds of seafood. Colanero includes recipes from the diverse communities within the state that make up Jersey's food history. With roots in German, Native American, African American, Jewish, Italian, and Japanese, NJ has such a diverse and rich history. The book includes recipes for Jersey corn, like the Fresh Jersey Corn Cakes, and Jersey Tomato, and Corn Salsa. Jersey Green Clam Chowder is another recipe; the green is named after the added peppers, parsley, and spinach, not the green clams... One uncommon transformation is the recipe for Pork Roll Soup called TEC (Taylor Ham Egg Cheese) soup, and the NJ Sloppy Joe is more like a club sandwich with swiss cheese, coleslaw, and Russian dressing. The book also mentions Jersey food festivals like the Pork Roll Festival in Trenton and the Jersey Shore Food Truck Festival. The New Jersey Food Truck Cookbook by Vincent Parisi is a new book that came out in February, and the next Jersey Shore Food Truck Festival will happen in Oceanport May 28 -30, 2023.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Culinary Quilts

March 5, 2023

Food is a common theme within homemade quilting communities, and fruits and vegetables are cut and woven into fabrics. The Museum of Food and Drink started The Legacy Quilt Project, celebrating people, places, and foods that contributed to the development of African American cuisine. The Legacy Quilt is 14 feet by 30 feet and comprises 406 quilted block patches designed by Harlem Needle Arts and Adrian Franks. The quilt honors chef Mashama Bailey, food columnist Nikita Richardson, cookbook author Edna Lewis, Top Chef contestant Carla Hall, and food historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris. The Legacy Quilt can be viewed online. Another museum exhibit was the Women of Taste: A Collaboration Celebrating Quilt Artists and Chefs, a traveling exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution from 1999 to 2002. The project paired chefs with quilters to create 50 culinary quilts, such as a kaleidoscopic quilt by Teresa Barkley and Lidia Matticchio Bastianich or Variations on a Theme with a chicken and watermelon by Beatriz Grayson and Mollie Katzen. Sarah Leverett, Patricia Curtan, and Alice Waters designed Alice's Garden a quilt. Frutti Di Mare Di Venezia by Elizabeth Cherry Owen and Marcella Hazan has fish swimming in streams—Bon Appetite by Yvonne Porcella and Julia Child with eggs, eggplant, wine, and lettuce. The quilts can be viewed in the book Women of Taste by Jen Bilik.

The Little Library Cookbooks

March 4, 2023

I recently checked out works by women authors from my local public library to celebrate women's history month. The Little Library Cookbook by Kate Young explores the foods in fiction, citing many women authors such as Elena Ferrante, Dodie Smith, Banana Yoshimoto, Astrid Lindgren, Jane Austin, Laura Ingall's Wilder, Sylvia Plath, Zadie Smith, Beatrix Potter, Barbara Pym, Amy Tan, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, Harper Lee, J.K. Rowling, and Louisa May Alcott. Young identifies dishes from within each literary work and offers recipes to recreate such dishes, all while readers explore classic books and authors. Her approach is fun, creative, and exploratory, combining culinary arts and fiction. In Elena Ferrante's celebrated book, My Brilliant Friend, she writes about Neapolitan pizza with ricotta cheese. Dodie Smith's romantic young adult novel, I Capture the Castle, describes a bread and butter dish with honey tea. Banana Yoshimoto mentions ramen in her book Kitchen, which Young reimagines using a ginger garlic miso broth with noodles, egg, and tofu. Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch has a passage about coffee cinnamon rolls, and Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love details a character having tea with chocolate eclairs. Zadie Smith writes about pastry with spiced beef in White Teeth. Kate Young has written two other literary cookbooks, The Little Library Year: Recipes and Reading to Suit Each Season and The Little Library Christmas. 

Paul Cézanne

Oysters

March 2, 2023

Once widespread in the New York waterways, oysters have lost their luster over the years; industrial age pollution did a number on the oyster population; however, oyster restoration is returning to New York to combat climate change with the Billion Oyster Project. The New Food Lover's Companion describes oysters as follows, "the hard rough, gray shell contains a meat that can vary in color from creamy beige to pale gray, in flavor from salty to bland and in texture from tender to firm." (Herbst) Such a description should not warrant thousands of years of human love for small gray and bland-shelled creatures. Mary Frances Kennedy (MFK) Fisher, a food writer who wrote, Consider the Oyster, wrote about her first oyster experience in The Gastronomical Me: The First Oyster. It was an eastern oyster shipped to the west coast; her mother said, "it was vulgar as well as extremely unpleasant to do anything with an oyster but swallow it as quickly as possible." (Fisher) Yet, the young Fisher declared, "oysters are simply marvelous."(Fisher) The Story of Food refers to shellfish as "packets of protein" that are "cheap and plentiful, while others are viewed as the height of luxury." (DK) Oysters were cultivated by the Romans from the Mediterranean seas and were considered a delicacy, and later, oysters were considered foods for the poor in England and France. Oysters were also consumed by ingenious people living near the coastline in America. During the late 1900s, pollution and overfishing in America created a supply chain issue that caused the prices to rise, moving the oyster up in status to a luxurious commodity. (DK) "By 1874, over 850 oyster establishments existed in New York City alone."(Reardon) The Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal in New York has remained open since 1913. The popularity of Fresh oysters remains a strong seller at restaurants, arriving on iced trays, opened shells served with lemon and mignonette sauce to be slurped while chilled, like eating directly from the icy sea. Herbst from The New Food Lover's Companion says there are three types of oysters in America, the Pacific, Atlantic, and Olympia, which should be consumed during the fall and winter. Oysters also contain the nutrients such as iron, calcium, and niacin. (Herbst) 

• DK Publishing Inc. (2018). The Story of Food: An Illustrated History of Everything We Eat (First American). DK Publishing. 
• Herbst S. T. & Herbst R. (2007). The new food lover's companion : more than 6 700 a-to-z entries describe foods cooking techniques herbs spices desserts wines and the ingredients for pleasurable dining (4th ed.). Barron's Educational Series.
• Fisher, MFK (1943). The Gastronomical Me: The First Oyster In Gilbert S. M. & Porter R. J. (2015). Eating words: a norton anthology of food writing (First). W.W. Norton & Company.
• Reardon, J. (2012). Oyster Bars. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. : Oxford University Press.

Let Them Eat Cake!

March 1, 2023

It's the first day of March and 20 days closer to spring; the flowers will soon return with ample sunshine, color, and life. What better way to celebrate the return of the goddess Persephone than with elaborate cakes covered in sprinkles, pastels, and frosting in ultimate Instagram and TikTok fun? Sweet dessert-themed cookbooks galore will be available this spring. Mayumu by Abi Balingit, a Filipino cookbook, was just released, which includes a recipe for a Halo-halo baked Alaska. The board game Candy Land even has a new 2023 official cookbook. In April, a new edition of 101 Things to Do With a Cake Mix by Stephanie Ashcraft and Get Baked Sensational Cakes, Bakes & Desserts by Rich Myers will be out. Bake Me a Cat by Kim-Joy comes out in May. In addition to the newly released cookbooks, Caketopia by Sheri Wilson, the Golden Girls Cookbook, and All About Cake by Christina Tosi supply recipes for readers to make cake batter creations. The television show Is it Cake? returns in March with its second season. Adding a little Punky Brewster, colorful sprinkles, rich buttercream, and spunky creativity will bring life to post-winter gloom. Happy early spring! 

The Story of Food

Hazard in the Wilderness

February 27, 2023

Linda Burfield Perry Hazzard was a starvation pseudo-doctor promoting fasting to cure disease; she opened a sanitarium called Wilderness Heights in Washington state and charged the wealthy for starvation treatments, offering diets of tomato, asparagus, and orange juice. Dozens of her patients died, placing Dr. Hazzard on the front page of newspapers, a story as scandalous as Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Hazzard, who also went by Perry, was linked to a starvation death as early as 1902, with the death of Mrs. Gertrude Young. In 1902, "Dr. Linda Perry... admits that she has no license to practice medicine." (The Norfolk Weekly News-Journal, November 21, 1902). According to one newspaper article, Lynda Burfield Perry developed a relationship with a married man who lived at the same address as one of her patients. She later knowingly married this man. Samuel C. Hazzard was married to at least three other women under pseudonyms, such as Samuel Hazzard, Eugene Vandrin, and Samuel Hargrave. Sam's bigamy sent him to prison for two years in a highly publicized case, well documented in newspapers. In addition to bigamy, he was also an insurance salesman. Adding to his rap sheet, he was also wanted for going awol from the army and "... forging and cashing government vouchers." (The Saint Paul Globe, February 10, 1904.) After the slammer, they moved west, and that's when Linda Hazzard began to develop Wilderness Heights. Together, husband and wife robbed wealthy patients of their properties by becoming the administrator of their estates, withdrawing funds, and institutionalizing patients to support their sanatarium expansion financially. One of Hazzard's patients was a wealthy English woman named Claire Williamson, who died under her quackery care in 1911. Claire Williamson's sister, Dorothea, survived treatment weighing only 61 pounds. Dorothea described the prescribed diet of "vegetable broth or fruit juice" and "required them to drink about eight quarts of warm water every day." (The Tacoma Times, January 20, 1912) The manslaughter verdict from the highly publicized trial sent Linda Hazzard to Walla Walla prison in 1913, but by 1915, she was out on parole. Another Hazzard patient was "Robert Graham, the bread king of Great Britain, and once baker to King Edward, who came to Seattle to take the fast cure." (The Tacoma Times, January 06, 1914) Linda Hazzard eventually succumbed to starvation at 70. Linda and Samual Hazzard were dangerous con artists that financially thrived with their malicious, murderous thievery, using a lack of food to control their victims. You can read more about the Hazzard duo in Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen. Linda and Samuel, Hazzard's tale, reminds me of Bad Vegan on Netflix about restaurant chef Sarma Melngailis and conman Anthony Strangis.

• Hazzard, L. Burfield. (1912). Fasting for the cure of disease. 4th ed. New York: Physical Culture Corporation. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924012177204&view=1up&seq=7 
• Olsen G. (2005). Starvation Heights (First Three Rivers Press). Three Rivers Press. https://www.worldcat.org/title/57010001 

The Dinner Table

Coffee

February 25, 2023

Coffee has a fascinating history! The coffee bean originated in Ethiopia and was spread to Yemen by Muslim traders and popularized as an alternative to wine which the Koran and Islamic law forbade. Years ago, I took a gratis two-week trip to Egypt, seeking Arabic coffee; I was surprised by the popularity of Nescafe as the preferred coffee drink in Egypt. I assumed freshly roasted coffee would be available ubiquitously since it was the Middle East, Arab world, and Ottoman Empire responsible for spreading the Ethiopian coffee bean, but I was mistaken. As I explored even more North African and Arab countries, Nescafe was still the chosen favorite available in restaurants and with colleagues. Nescafe is perfectly fine and has stuck with me ever since. In my new world, isolated in the suburbs, I drink instant coffee with heavy cream. In Brooklyn, neighborhoods offer coffee shops with freshly brewed coffee around every walkable corner and eclectic choices from Gimme Coffee, Konditori, Cafe Grumpy, and Starbucks. Coffee became popular in the 16th century in the Middle East and later Europe and in the late 18th century in America; it turns out that coffee is an American source of rebellion and pride, stemming back to the Boston Tea Party when American revolutionaries protested against the British by snubbing tea and patriotically switching to coffee. Coffee, of course, is also deeply embedded in colonialism and systems of slavery and rich countries exploiting the poorer nations. "In the fields of Latin America... European and North American demand led first to an intensification of slavery and then, in various places, to the appropriation of village lands, the expulsion of native peoples, and coerced labor." (Topik). Big producers of coffee included the Dutch, which colonized Java, and the French, which occupied Haiti. "The first Brazilian coffee bush was planted in 1727... it was cultivated by slave labor." (Trang). These days, Brazil and Vietnam produce the most coffee. Starbucks is now active in the fair trade movement, which "...seeks to establish more egalitarian patterns of commerce by linking marginalized producers in the world's South with consumers in the affluent North. "(Southerton). Starbucks has also helped reestablish community centers in towns across America, "the popularity of Starbucks has resulted from its ability to supply, along with coffee, a "third space" between the isolation of the suburban home and a workplace that no longer provides the security and predictable socialization of the past." (Southerton) As someone experiencing the isolating experience of living in the suburbs versus an urban city, I think the coffee shop as a community center is vital for a healthy society. Throughout history, the coffee cafe has been the center of culture and discussion and "the birth of civil society." (Topik) Yet cafes have repeatedly become victims of attempts at tyrannical persecution and closure, "by the sixteenth century, Arab coffeehouses were popular meeting places… the governor of Mecca banned the coffeehouses in 1511..." (Pendergrast) During the French revolution, "one of the first responses to threatened revolt was to close down the cafés" (Topik). Revolutionary beatnik culture also dominated the coffeehouses of the 1950s and 1960s in New York and San Francisco. "Coffee was often at the center of political turmoil... where people could congregate and discuss ideas in an atmosphere conducive to (literally) stimulated conversation." (Topik). These days, Starbucks is the go-to cafe in America; other prominent American companies producing coffee include Folgers, Arbuckle's (until the 1930s), Maxwell House, Eight O'Clock Coffee, Peet's Coffee & Tea, and Starbucks. "Today, coffee remains one of America's most consumed beverages." (Smith)

• Southerton, D. (Ed.) (2011). Coffee in Encyclopedia of consumer culture. (Vols. 1-3). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412994248 
• SMITH, A. F. (2013). The Coffee Experience in Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/smit15116 
• Topik, S. (2000). Coffee. In K. Kiple & K. Ornelas (Eds.), The Cambridge World History of Food (pp. 641-653). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521402149.074
• Trang, C. (2003). COFFEE in Katz S. H. & Weaver W. W. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of food and culture. Scribner.

Jessica B. Harris

February 24, 2023

Jessica B. Harris is a food historian born and raised in Queens, a lifelong academic at Queens College, and a friend of James Baldwin and Dr. Maya Angelou. Harris is the author of the book High on The Hog, which was turned into a spectacular Netflix documentary about African cuisine crossing the Atlantic Ocean to America. My Soul Looks Back is a memoir of Harris growing up as a brilliant mind with brilliant parents in a world of brilliant friends. She lived a glamourous cosmopolitan life during her days, hanging out in bohemian society. However, Jessica B. Harris, much like Patti Smith in Just Kids, lost many friends to the eighties AIDS epidemic, including her partner, Sam Floyd, James Baldwin's good friend. James Baldwin, like many gay men at the time, would not survive the 1980s. James Jimmy Baldwin, one of the best New York writers, writes about what it's like as a black man in a white man's world and as a black man secretly sleeping in the quarters of men kind of world. With works such as If Beale Street Could Talk and Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin has touched my heart through his words. Harris's other lifelong friend was Dr. Maya Angelou, the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a definitive book about the black female experience that I find deeply traumatic. Jessica B. Harris is probably the most important food historian, especially for African American heritage. She is actively developing food programming at American museums, a prolific writer at Essence and New York Amsterdam News, a noted scholar, and an extensive award winner. She has published books such as Vintage Postcards from the African World: In the Dignity of Their Work and the Joy of Their Play, My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, and The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent. My favorite food quote is by Jessica B. Harris, "There's no bad news on the Food Network, and in these times, food offers us a potential for good news in a world where good news is increasingly rare." (Harris)

• Harris, Jessica B. Serve It Up Proudly! Some Food for Thought on The Intersections of Food Studies and Museums. (2012, December 4). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f_EgBJrIi8
• Harris, J. B., & Harris, J. B. (2015, May 1). Cafeteria Connections: Some food for thought and thought for food. American Alliance of Museums.  https://www.aam-us.org/2015/05/01/cafeteria-connections-some-food-for-thought-and-thought-for-food/ 

American Diners

February 23, 2023

Who doesn't love a Diner? It turns out New Jersey is the Diner capital of America - where I live - and I've been to just a handful of diners during my short-term residency. Growing up in Maryland, diners were cheap restaurants I could go to with my friends, sit for hours, chat, drink a bottomless cup of coffee, bond, and make memories. My art school college diner experience fused Seinfeld's Tom's Restaurant with Edward Hopper's famous painting Nighthawks; recreating an early 21st-century 24-hour diner environment in New York City. However, the prices for meals at diners have increased over the years, and my middle-class earnings have somehow decreased. In my experience, guests are always rushed out the door for owners to cash in on the next paying customer; the concept of a leisurely meal, where you can casually talk without interruption, is less common. The diner experience has become more like a nostalgic novelty, with tourist prices for plates that smell like they were rinsed in runny eggs. After watching so many Kitchen Nightmares episodes with Gordon Ramsey, I cannot help but picture unhygienic kitchens, moments away from grease fires, the occasional dropping of food on the floor, applying the five-second rule, and nonchalantly replating. Unfortunately, I suspect some diners also have a racist seating policy, tending to put white people in the front and black, brown, and children under 10 in the back (i.e., my personal experience at Denny's). Feel free to test out this theory and publish your findings. Diner cuisine includes all-American breakfast dishes, pancakes, omelets, cheeseburgers, sandwiches, soup, cake, and pie. "In New Jersey, the Taylor Ham, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich [also known as a pork roll] is a feature of many diners." (Wiki). Some restaurants are unique, like the Silver Diner in Maryland, with gourmet food, vegetarian options, and plenty of fresh vegetables added to the menu. My go-to diner dishes have been fried chicken strips with honey mustard and curly fries, a Rueben sandwich, or a Greek gyro. I've always wanted to order the old-timey dish of liver and onions, but this is still on my wish list... The concept for the Diner originated in Rhode Island in the late 1800s by a gentleman named Walter Scott, who "converted a horse-drawn freight wagon into a self-contained food-service facility." (Garbin). In the early 20th century, Jerry O'Mahoney from Bayonne, Jersey, and Patrick Tierney from New York built the diners we still see today. "The O'Mahony Diner Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, produced 2,000 diners from 1917 to 1952." (Wiki). Some diners were initially constructed to look like railroad cars, and later the retro stainless steel diner popped up along American roads in the 1940s. (Garbin) During the 1950s, Diners became Greek-owned establishments. Three gentlemen and greek immigrants during the 1950s iconized the American Diner we experience today. If I could return to my experiences of my youth, I would continue to love these greasy spoons. Perhaps I'll give New Jersey another chance and start exploring the Diner capital of America; I'm sure some hidden gems can be found nearby.

• Garbin, R. (2012). Diners. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. : Oxford University Press. 
• Kraig B. (2015). Diners in Albala, K. (Ed.) The SAGE encyclopedia of food issues. (Vols. 1-3). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346304 
• Wikipedia contributors. (2023, February 20). Diner. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diner 

Breaking Bread

February 22, 2023

During the pandemic, I missed the sourdough baking trend. As usual, I'm belatedly joining the movement and just began my breadmaking journey using four simple ingredients "flour, water, salt, yeast"(Katz). My fourth loaf is - as I write this - rising and proofing in the kitchen. Every loaf is different yet unlike any I've ever purchased commercially. My first home-baked loaf was airy with a dark and crunchy crush; the second loaf was dense with a chewy crust, and the third loaf, covered in olive oil, was a thick white bread with a flaky golden crust. I'm on a roll. Each time I use different yeast and the same No Knead Bread Mark Bittman Recipe, which has 17 thousand five stars on NYT Cooking. Growing up, I remember visiting San Francisco as a child and slurping clam chowder soup out of a sourdough loaf. My parents preferred rye and sourdough. I appreciate darker bread, like pumpernickel or Russian black bread, "In medieval times bread baking became a status symbol in Britain. The upper classes preferred fine, white loaves, while those of poorer status were left with the whole wheat, bran, and coarser breads... ...darker whole wheat and bran breads were for the masses, an attitude that persisted well into the twentieth century in Europe and North America." (Katz) After a century of processed American bread like Wonderbread and other white sandwich bread stripped of nutrients, those 'poor loaves of bread' have become more desired by the upper crust. According to the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, "The trend back to more wholesome and historical breads began in the United States in the 1980s. Some bakers who wanted to be more mindful of the process and their ingredients returned to their baking roots. They produced freshly baked, wholesome, rustic breads that benefited from longer fermentation periods, and they eschewed all chemicals and additives." (Katz) Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California was part of this bread revolution, returning fresh, natural loaves with simple ingredients to the people. Although other food movements are fighting against bread, such as the gluten-free and Keto diets, bread remains one of the most popular transnational foods, "bread is the quintessential human food. Its history underlies a large part of the history of the human race, the simplest perhaps in the history of everyday life and eating."(Katz) Many books are devoted to breadmaking, such as The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, Beard On Bread by James Beard, and The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. To learn more about the history of bread, read, Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History by Heinrich Eduard Jacob.

• Katz S. H. & Weaver W. W. (2003). BREAD, SYMBOLISM OF in Encyclopedia of food and culture. Scribner.
• Katz S. H. & Weaver W. W. (2003). Bread in Encyclopedia of food and culture. Scribner.

West African / American Experience

February 21, 2023

It's been a few years since I read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is about a woman from Nigeria undergoing what it's like living in America as a black woman, immigrant and student attending Princeton. The book comments on hardships, such as dehumanizing employment opportunities, the painful struggles to afford rent, subpar educational opportunities for children, and difficulties around hair care for Black women. Although I have few memories of the food mentioned in Americanah, The Little Library Cookbook highlights a passage about the popular west African dish Jollof Rice, "She made him the kind of jollof rice he liked, flecked with bits of red and green peppers, and as he ate, fork moving from the plate to his mouth..." (Adichie) Another West African and American novel is Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, about the Ghanaian-American experience in Christian America, Alabama, and Ivy League academia. The book is a tragedy dealing with modern-day health concerns like opioids and depression and the effects of discrimination on mental health. Food is woven into the relationship between a daughter and her mother. A mother left defeated and curled up in a bed, unable to eat, withdrawn from the world, suffering from severe depression resulting from her son's death, abandonment by her husband, continuous suffering due to racism, and barely making enough money to survive. The main character, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, also neglects her diet and eats frozen American foods and canned soups— while processing memories of fights around food and lack of money. As a child, her mother would hide food to prolong food budgets. Notes From a Young Black Chef is a memoir about Kwame Onwuachi's upbringing in New York City and Nigeria. Kwame was a bright, ambitious, somewhat privileged, yet self-destructive mind who struggled with an abusive father, harsh external influences, and existential grievances. His mother, Jewel Robinson, is a chef and has a catering company called Catering by Jewel. At ten, Kwame was sent to live with his grandfather in Nigeria. After two years, Kwame returned to New York; however, he continued his adolescent descent into the violent life of men trapped in concrete apartment buildings without legitimate opportunities. In a struggle to evade poverty, Onwuachi made selfish and instantaneous entrepreneurial choices. Later, he became a candy man, selling chocolate bars on the New York City subway to launch a catering company and, eventually, finding his way toward a more rewarding and socially acceptable form of consumption. Kwame's entrepreneurial spirit led him to become a leading Black chef and author who surely will lead an extraordinary life.  In 2022, Kwame Onwuachi published My America, Recipes From a Young Black Chef. 

Walker Evans

Black Panthers' Breakfast

"We want land, bread, housing, education…" (The Black Panther Party, 1972) 

February 18, 2023

In the mid-sixties, social welfare programs blossomed during the civil rights era. The Free Breakfast for Children Program was a Black Panther conception born in a harsh and brutal world of systemic unfairness formed by dominating forces that persistently suffocated marginalized communities. Growing up, the only stories I heard about the Black Panther movement were about guns, radicalism, and violence. I.e., "…with the false, government-generated, negative image of the Black Panther Party that misled most Americans, the government effectively destroyed the organization through covert and overt operations." (Cook) Like most of my public schooling - the history curriculum was meshed in winning majority politics; therefore, I learned very little about the country other than the endless list of 'great' white Christian men winning wars. The Black Panther Party was never credited or recognized for having a transformative influence on public school students' academic and nutritional well-being. The Black Panther Party was established in 1966 in Oakland, California, by grassroots activists Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton to help empower urban black communities oppressed by systemic racism and forced ghettoization due to America's long history of white supremacy and capitalistic slavery-based policies. "Many urban Black communities during the 1960s remained as ghettos due to concentrations of poverty, unemployment, crime, substandard housing conditions, racist housing practices (such as redlining), and overcrowded public schools." (Lateef) The Black Panther Party was created in response to organized violence and brutality inflicted on black American citizens and civil rights activists. The hungry panthers instinctively defended their cubs against abuse by authorities, the raiding and pillaging of Black homes, and southern lynchings. The Black Panther's grassroots organization helped establish other social welfare programs, called Survival Programs, which included servicing the African American community with many basic needs, such as complimentary breakfast for children, free dental services, employment, safety, and food.  The Black Panther children's food program was established in the late sixties and first served breakfast at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Oakland "to combat academic underachievement among poor, hungry children" (Araiza). Volunteers staffed the kitchens and pantries to help feed children breakfast before school. The Black Panthers established program guidelines and sample menus, including "eggs, home fries, ham, toast with jam, and milk or juice" (Lateef). Local religious organizations, parents, businesses, and neighbors donated food to sustain the program. The breakfast program fed "250,000 kids five days a week each morning before school." (Holt-Giménez) By 1971, the program had spread to "36 cities at its peak." (Lateef) With all the good and success the program had on children and neighboring African American communities, the higher white power system took this as a threat. The Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children Program was subjected to constant harassment by local authorities through an anti-activism program called COINTELPRO. Ironically, the federal government, which should be supporting the American public's advancement, did the opposite during the post-civil rights era; the notorious J. Edgar Hoover led a highly unethical, illegal, swift, and all-mighty takedown of the thriving children's food program. Hoover's anti-social welfare program targeted African American and civil rights organizations and used tactics to discredit such organizations from gaining popularity. One tactic was spreading lies within black communities, such as the complimentary breakfast program used "poisoned food." (Lateef) Hoover felt the Free Breakfast for Children Program was a significant and dangerous threat and "…described the long-term goals of COINTELPRO as preventing coalition building among Black organizations, which was energizing the Black movement…" (Lateef) The authorities proved more potent than the well-meaning grassroots organization and squashed the Free Breakfast for Children Program through illegal white power tactics. The fact that authorities would target children is unacceptable and cruelly inhumane. After the free food programs were shut down, fortunately, such ideas "...planted the seeds for future food-based resistance efforts…" (Marek), and "the example of the Free Breakfast Program is an inspiration for contemporary social movements within the Black community." (Lateef) The Free Breakfast for Children Program later became a federal program to provide complimentary breakfast for students in America; it "predated the nation's school breakfast legislation of 1973." (Holt-Giménez) Hoover, the dirt devil who vacuumed up breakfast programs for African American children, is hopefully roasting near some piping hot coals where he belongs. Reading about the Black Panther Party's rise during the civil rights movement and fall due to governmental powers' attempt to squash African American organizations which sought better opportunities and living conditions is deeply disturbing. Such unfairness lays the groundwork for decades of distrust and a demand for an apology, reparations, and retribution. However, the story's moral is that fighting for equality may not be an immediate success; it may feel like a failure, but in the end, justice will prevail, children will be fed, and the fight for equality will continue its long battle against the abuse from higher powers. 

• Holt-Giménez, E., & Wang, Y. (2011). Reform or Transformation?: The Pivotal Role of Food Justice in the U.S. Food Movement. Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5(1), 83-102. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/462931. 
• Lee, S. (2001). A Huey P. Newton story: Community Survival Programs. UrbanWorks Entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-N-fjVpDvA 
• Araiza, L. (2009). "In Common Struggle against a Common Oppression": The United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party, 1968-1973. The Journal of African American History, 94(2), 200–223. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25610076 
• Marek, E.U. (2018). The Post-Incarceration Kitchen: Food-Based Community Organizing and Employment after Imprisonment. American Studies 57(3), 57-79. doi:10.1353/ams.2018.0047.
• Cook, W. S. (2019). Social Justice Applications and the African American Liberation Tradition. Journal of Black Studies, 50(7), 651–681. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26824335 
• Lateef, Husain and Androff, David (2017) ""Children Can't Learn on an Empty Stomach": The Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast Program," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 44 : Iss. 4 , Article 2. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol44/iss4/2 
• Potorti, M. (2017). "Feeding the Revolution": the Black Panther Party, Hunger, and Community Survival. Journal of African American Studies, 21(1), 85–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44508193 

African Cookbooks

Aquamanile

February 16, 2023

Washing your hands before a meal has never been so delightful! Aquamaniles are metal ewers in the shape of animals used for rinsing dirty hands during the Middle Ages. "The word aquamanile is formed from two Latin words, aqua, meaning water, and manus, meaning hand."(Swarzenski) Aquamaniles were initially used as vessels for holy water to rinse the hands of priests during religious services, "church documents refer to aquamanilia as early as the 5th century... after the beginning of the 11th century, the term became transferred to a type of vessel, usually in the shape of an animal." (Hourihane)  Forks were less known during the middle ages, so "everything was eaten with the fingers" (Swarzenski); fragrantly infused water poured from the mouth of the aquamanile was used to cleanse guests' hands throughout European banquet meals. Aquamanile vessels came in many beastly shapes, such as lions, mounted knights on destriers, birds, dragons, griffins, unicorns, and dogs. Aquamaniles were made in Franco-Germanic Europe; however, they have roots in Persian-Islamic art. "Persian aquamaniles predate any zoomorphic aquamaniles known in Europe."(Wiki). The metal vessels from Europe have survived, but the aquamaniles found further south have not been so lucky, "Islamic law forbids the use of animal depictions in religious settings, and few examples of Islamic aquamaniles survive." (Wiki) 

• Nelson, P. (1915). Equestrian Aquamaniles. In Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, v.67 1915. Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Liverpool. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000534252 
• SWARZENSKI, G. (1949). ROMANESQUE AQUAMANILE OF THE GUENNOL COLLECTION. Brooklyn Museum Bulletin, 10(4), 1–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26457966 
• Hourihane, C. (2012). Aquamanile. In The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. : Oxford University Press. 
• Devonshire Jones, T. (2013). Aquamanile. In The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture. Oxford University Press. 
• Wikipedia contributors. (2022, December 31). Aquamanile. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquamanile