A special series on cookbooks as cultural objects.
By Michaela D.E. Meyer I grew up in a small farm community in Nebraska. Our food intake relied largely on what our farm (or neighbor’s farms) produced – beef, pork, corn, soybeans. Farming culture followed a very specific food rhythm – load up as much caloric intake as possible in the morning, work all day …
By Angela Glaros I have been reading cookbooks since childhood (along with Heloise’s Household Hints, another leisure reading genre). Much later, when I began studying anthropology, cooking and keeping house seemed like essential areas of ethnographic focus, regardless of the purported topic of one’s study. While I did my dissertation fieldwork on a small Greek …
By Daniel Miller Of all the bad habits I have passed on to my daughter, reading at the dinner table is the one I am least ashamed of. It puts a damper on conversation, but it ensures the appropriate caloric intake, and so it goes. Her end of the table is stacked with Harry Potter …
by Jennifer Shutek Every religion has its origin myths and sacred texts; so, too, does my faith in the goodness of the kitchen. While I grew up in a family in which communal eating around a dining table was a daily event, my own involvement in food preparation began in earnest with restaurant owner Audrey …
+ Read More Memories of Playing with Food in a West Coast Kitchen