Food & Drink

Why we all love Mrs Beeton

By Nicola Humble
BBC 2 has rediscovered Mrs Beeton, with Sophie Dahl tramping the streets of Cheapside and Epsom looking for the real woman behind Household Management. It is worth the shoe leather – Mrs Beeton’s is certainly a story well worth telling. The author of the most famous cook book ever published began work on it at the age of twenty-one and finished it at four years later. Her book was first published in volume form in 1861 and has never been out of print since. Isabella herself died seven years after its publication of puerperal fever, contracted during the birth of her fourth child. She was 28.

Why the Trenta?

“So, why did we launch the Trenta? We listened to you,” says Starbucks. Really?
Looking for more answers, I asked my friend Greg Dietrich for his thoughts on the matter. Greg works at Paragon Coffee Trading, which means he imports coffee and collaborates with members of the New York commodities coffee trade. Oh and he gets to roast beans and cup all day (see picture below on right). Below is a conversation (via Gmail’s instant messaging service) we had about the Bucks’ latest creation.

On nuts, spoons, and the metaphors borrowed from sex & food

By Anatoly Liberman

Last week I mentioned the idiom to be (dead) nuts on ‘to be in love with’ and the verb spoon ‘to make love’ and promised to say something about both. After such a promise our readers must have spent the middle of January in awful suspense. So here goes. The semantic range of many slang words is often broad, but the multitude of senses attested for Engl. nut (see the OED) is amazing. I will reproduce some of them, both obsolete and current: “a source of pleasure or delight” (“To see me here would be simply nuts to her”), nuts in the phrases to be (dead) nuts on “to be in love of, fond of, or delighted with,”

Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth

Young children in the US are often taught that the tradition of Thanksgiving began with a friendly meal between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. In school, they make buckle hats out of construction paper and trace their hands to make turkey drawings, all in anticipation of the great Thursday feast. If asked, I’m sure most Americans wouldn’t actually know the origins of the Thanksgiving tradition as we practice it today. Below is an excerpt from The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (edited by renowned food historian Andrew F. Smith) which explains just how the modern holiday came to be. Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!

From “Breast” to “Brisket” (Not Counting Dessert)

By Anatoly Liberman
It seems reasonable that brisket should in some way be related to breast: after all, brisket is the breast of an animal. But the path leading from one word to the other is neither straight nor narrow. Most probably, it does not even exist. In what follows I am greatly indebted to the Swedish scholar Bertil Sandahl, who published an article on brisket and its cognates in 1964. The Oxford English Dictionary has no citations of brisket prior to 1450, but Sandahl discovered bresket in a document written in 1328-1329, and if his interpretation is correct, the date should be pushed back quite considerably. Before 1535, the favored (possibly, the only) form in English was bruchet(te).

Memo From Manhattan: Age and the City

By Sharon Zukin
I’ll tell you what’s “very strange”: the population of New York City is going to get a whole lot older very fast. The city’s age spread is now about the same as that of the U.S. population. Around 7% are children too young to go to school, almost 25% are under eighteen years of age and half as many (fewer than 12%) are over sixty-five.

But according to demographers’ projections, after 2010 New York will be a rapidly aging city. Some reasons for this are natural (baby boomers aging), others are social (medicine and changes in cultural practices keeping us alive longer) while still others are a mix of both (fertility rates declining). All in all, though, the city’s older population will increase dramatically in the next twenty years.

Booze! – Episode 1 – The Oxford Comment

In the premiere episode of The Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle talk to Benjamin Carp about the drinking habits of the Founding Fathers and visit brewmaster Garrett Oliver at the Brooklyn Brewery.

BOOYAH!

Yesterday, I was flipping through my (very heavy) copy of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, and I found…an entry on BOOYAH!

What is booyah? I’m glad you asked.

Do Farm Subsidies Cause Obesity?

Robert Paarlberg, author of Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, is a leading authority on food policy, and one of the most prominent scholars writing on agricultural issues today. He is B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. He was invited to testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture on May 13th, and shared his thoughts with us here last week. Now, after presenting his testimony on obesity, Paarlberg reflects on the experience.

Food Politics: Invited to Testify

Robert Paarlberg, author of Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, is a leading authority on food policy, and one of the most prominent scholars writing on agricultural issues today. He is B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Soon after his “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” article in the May/June 2010 issue of Foreign Policy, Paarlberg was asked to testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture. Below, he shares his thoughts on this invitation.

Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer to Eat?

Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape. Politics in this area have become polarized and Robert Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food. In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.

The Impact of Social Injustice on Nutrition

An excerpt from Social Injustice and Public Health.

The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook: Hints on Camp Life

An excerpt from 1888’s The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, recently reprinted in the Oxford World’s Classics series.

Cranberries: A Thanksgiving Favorite

A celebration of Thanksgiving and cranberries!