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August 12, 2009

Tim's thoughts: I know, right? It fulfills all of my criteria for synthetic (instead of analytic... >>

The Box Lunch Project

Tom Devaney, a terrific poet and friend of mine, teaches a perennial seminar at Penn on writing about food, variously titled "Food For Thought" or (in the advanced version) "The Art of Eating." The University of Pennsylvania Libraries recently put together a book based on writing and research from his courses, making use of a unique archive:

The boxes contain more than 3,000 recipe booklets from church organizations, small to mid-sized companies, food manufacture PR departments, and far-flung community groups. Every sturdy box is labeled with the implacable title, Victus Populi. The items in each box are not high-end cookbooks, but are all over the map: stapled together mimeograph copies, eye-catching (often kitschy) promotional pamphlets, one-off recipe booklets.

The boxes intrigued me. Each Victus Populi case was an archive in its particular a category: Bread, Fruits, Nuts & Olives, Seafood, Cheese, Meats, International Foods, Condiments: Herbs & Spices, Salads & Sandwiches, Health & Diets, Leftovers: Quick & Easy, Chocolate, Ice Cream, and one devoted solely to JELL-O.

And so the assignment took shape. Each student would choose a box to write about. The student essays would chronicle their journey and search of the primary source materials. They would use both large brush strokes (to provide an overview of the box) and develop one or two finer points in greater detail. To finish, they would find and cull all but two recipes from hundreds in each box.

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The Art of the Box Lunch contains four of these essays, plus a generation selection of images from the collection, and a long introductory essay by Tom. I'm really stunned by how gorgeous it is - and also now feeling quite shamed into coming up with a similarly cool project for my seminar students in the fall.

And I know you were waiting for the best part: The Art of the Box Lunch is also now available as a free PDF.

Tim-sig.gif
Posted August 12, 2009 at 5:32 | Comments (2) | Permasnark
File under: Books, Writing & Such, Gastrosnark, Learnin'

August 5, 2009

A Fine Vintage In the Kitchen

Tim says,

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff; Regina Schrambling praises vintage stoves:

So many other essentials in life are clearly improved in their latest incarnation: Phones are smaller and portable; stereos are downsized to ear buds; cars are safer and run on less fuel. But stoves are a basic that should stick to the basics: The fewer bells and whistles, the less need for bell-and-whistle repairmen. Motherboard is not a word that should ever be associated with the kitchen—put computer technology in a stove, and you're asking for a crash. Google "I hate my Viking" these days, and you get a sense of how many things can go wrong with techno-overload. Some of these ranges combine electric and gas elements, which is a recipe for trouble, as is microwave or convection capability. This kind of overdesign is what killed combination tuner/turntables—one goes, and the other dies from neglect.

I get kind of excited about things like self-updating blenders and coffee makers that I can control from my Blackberry, but there's also, sometimes, something to be said for saying, "You know, I think we've kind of figured this out. Maybe we'll work the kinks out on what's next in another few decades, but until then, let me have my dumb appliance."

This sort of dovetails with Michael Pollan's essay about Julia Child and food TV -- there's something about the convergence of cooking with electronics that transformed it into entertainment, that elevated it into something harder than most people could or would do at home, that left us with celebrity chefs and high-powered gadgets and a vastly reduced proportion of us actually cooking anything on them.

Which in turn makes it harder for technology to help us - we'd have to actually KNOW what we were doing to actually make a better (as opposed to shinier, or more convenient) device.

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 6:48 PM

August 3, 2009

It Really Is Snark Week

Tim says,

... but that doesn't mean Christopher Shea isn't right:

I'm as big a Julia Child fan as the next person... But how many pieces about Child's cultural significance can media outlets run before it starts to look as though reporters and editors have a financial stake in the forthcoming Nora Ephron movie about her?
Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:44 PM

June 24, 2009

A Living Wage for Living Literature

Tim says,

If you hang around with me long enough that we get a chance to go to a fancy restaurant together, you might get to hear this parable. It used to be possible to be a professional waiter - one who thought of service as a career. And the service you received was service from a career professional. But as wages declined, so did service. A rotating cast of college students and twentysomethings can sometimes surprise you with their talent or enthusiasm, but they can't make a career of it. You come in, you do your best, and you rotate out, and what you end up with are a lot of chain restaurants where it's good to be a college student or twenty-something, good to drink a lot and eat a lot, but comparatively few places were you can feel like a gourmand.

The New Yorker's The Book Bench tells a similar story about wage cuts among younger workers in the publishing industry. The impetus to the post are cuts at William Morris, where entry-level workers saw their pay cut from 13.50/hour to 9.50/hour.

Tiny salaries in the low ranks of publishing are miserable for the young workers, but they’re probably worse for literature (You can insert “movies” for “literature,” if that’s the prism through which you want to read this.) It’s a truism of the industry that most of these jobs are held by people who can afford them—people with some parental support and no student loans. Often they’ve had unpaid internships, that most pernicious example of class privilege. Their superiors are the same people, ten years later. They—we!—are smart, cultured people with good intentions, but it’s easy to see how this narrow range could lead to a blinkered view of literature.

So, if you’re sick of coming-of-age novels about comfortable young men, a little solidarity with the lowly assistants might help.

Although now I'm scratching my head: the privilege thing I get, but are publishing companies and talent agencies overrun by dudes? I've never gotten that vibe.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:36 AM

June 11, 2009

Our Daily Bread

Matt says,

Today Lifehacker brings us a ridiculously good idea. You make and refrigerate a week-or-two supply of no-knead bread dough. When you're ready for a fresh loaf, you pull off a chunk and stick it in the oven for half an hour. Voila! Cheap, convenient, delicious, homemade bread! These folks turned this idea into a cookbook.

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 6:06 PM

March 26, 2009

March 9, 2009

Retronovation

Tim says,

Don't get dizzy now: Jason Kottke picks up on a word I kind of made up in response to one of his posts and runs with it:

Retronovation n. The conscious process of mining the past to produce methods, ideas, or products which seem novel to the modern mind. Some recent examples include Pepsi Throwback's use of real sugar, Pepsi Natural's glass bottle, and General Mills' introduction of old packaging for some of their cereals. In general, the local & natural food and farming thing that's big right now is all about retronovation...time tested methods that have been reintroduced to make food that is closer to what people used to eat. (I'm sure there are non-food examples as well, but I can't think of any.)

No sooner does Jason oh-so-gently throw down the gauntlet than Waxy, who almost certainly meant nothing of the kind, answers the question by linking to an amazing post about a transcript of a story conference between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan about Raiders of the Lost Ark:

(Key: G = George; S = Steven; L = Larry)

G