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Yum

Written on: August 5th, 2009 by: in Reviews

After spending a day at the Delaware State Fair, you can’t help thinking about food and our connection to it! One of the goals of the State Fair is to make sure that people who are increasingly distant from agricultural life remain aware of where their food comes from and the people who provide it- I thought that the picture on the left nicely illustrates the way the farmer’s paradigm differs from the urbanite’s- in the end, Flossy and Mabel are still “the other white meat”, as cute as they look with ribbons in their tails.

The author of Cod and Salt, recently published a fascinating book based in part on the regional guides written by the WPA during the Great Depression. During research, Kurlansky had rediscovered WPA writer’s files on regional cookery and foodways, and has republished them as Food of a Younger Land. Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty were among the many writers who discussed such delicious sounding treats as Montana Fried Beaver Tail and Georgia Possum and Taters (Welty’s contributions included a recipe for Mint Julep along with the assurance that “Yankees are welcome to make these dishes”).

The book is more than just recipes, though- it’s an evocation of an America that existed before fast food and chain restaurants, when the food that people ate was enmeshed with their culture in a way that seems unimaginable today for many- as unimaginable as today’s ongoing debate about “eating locally” would have been to the contributors to this book. You can read an extract from the book here.

There is a chapter on diner slang in Kurlansky’s book, so if you need to know what “burn one, take it through the garden, pin a rose on it and give it shoes” means, this is the books for you (although I’m not sure why this mnemonic, taken from this web site on diner slang, is easier to remember than hamburger with lettuce, tomato and onion, to go!)