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The Food of a Younger Land A Portrait of American FoodBefore the National Highway System Before Chain Restaurants and Before Frozen Food When the Nation Food Was Seasonal Mark Kurlansky 9781594488658 Books

Download As PDF : The Food of a Younger Land A Portrait of American FoodBefore the National Highway System Before Chain Restaurants and Before Frozen Food When the Nation Food Was Seasonal Mark Kurlansky 9781594488658 Books

The Food of a Younger Land A Portrait of American FoodBefore the National Highway System Before Chain Restaurants and Before Frozen Food When the Nation Food Was Seasonal Mark Kurlansky 9781594488658 Books

I liked this book. Like the author, I was born in the late 1940s, and I remember what food was like before McDonald's when hamburgers were thick with good beef, before the highway system when you drove on two-lane roads through all the towns (and got to read Burma Shave signs), before chain restaurants, when you never knew exactly what you were going to get. I remember eating abalone steaks on the wharf in Santa Cruz on Friday nights for $4, which was very expensive but it was the only seafood I would eat. I haven't had an abalone steak for 50 years, nor have I seen their big shells scattered on beaches. There were no "ethnic" restaurants in Santa Clara, where I grew up, except for one Chinese place where the waitresses wore red kimonos and served fried rice pressed in a round bowl and upended on the plate, and you hated to disturb this smooth dome with your fork. I didn't have pizza until I was well into my teens--it was too foreign for my mother--she pronounced it inedible at the time, and never did come to like it. And the hamburgers--I was in high school when the first McDonald's opened in town. On their sign they showed the actual number of hamburgers sold, and incremented it regularly--it was in the hundreds of thousands then, then the number rolled over a million, and climbed...and eventually they gave up and went to "millions and millions" and now "billions and billions." My friends and I didn't like the hamburgers--we thought they were of poor quality meat and too thin--"nothing to them." But we liked the french fries very much. So this book brought back memories. And it also confirmed a recipe--my mother always made enchiladas stuffed with chopped olive, hard boiled egg, cheese, and raw onion. One never sees an enchilada like that today and people think the recipe is weird...but in the book was mention of enchiladas stuffed with raw onion and cheese. Not weird at the time.

This must have been a really interesting project for the author, and frustrating as well because of the missing bits and unevenness of the material. For example, there is so much about the south and not very much at all from California. Maybe that says something about the different nature of southerners and Californians, about who had time to write about cooking and who did not. California was a very different place before and just after the war, and this book helped me think about it, right down to the strawberries that were sold in little wooden baskets from the acreage just down on the El Camino, under the eucalyptus trees, strawberries that you could smell before you even got out of the car. And the icebox in my grandmother's summer cabin, which had to be stocked with a big block of ice that you bought by putting 25 cents in a slot in a big wooden container the size of the back of a truck, and the block came sliding down a ramp. The expressions, the language of the essays reminded me of the way my parents spoke--a much cleaner language than we hear today, from a society much more concerned with the delicacy of women. I don't know that the book would strike the same chord with younger people who didn't know the U.S. "before," just like it must be difficult to imagine the world without laptops, cell phones, microwaves, and women in the office who are perfectly comfortable with four-letter words.


Tags : The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal [Mark Kurlansky] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>A remarkable portrait of American food before World War II, presented by the New York Times</i>-bestselling author of Cod</i> and Salt</i>.</b> Award-winning New York Times</i>-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities,Mark Kurlansky,The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal,Riverhead Books,1594488657,Social History,United States - General,Cooking, American.,Cooking, American;History.,Food habits;United States;History.,Cookery,Cooking,Cooking History,Cooking Wine,Cooking, American,Food habits,Gastronomy,History,History Social History,History United States General,Regional & Ethnic - American - General,United States

The Food of a Younger Land A Portrait of American FoodBefore the National Highway System Before Chain Restaurants and Before Frozen Food When the Nation Food Was Seasonal Mark Kurlansky 9781594488658 Books Reviews

I love history and I enjoy older cookbooks. This book is a wonderful combination of both. It is not a regular cookbook but a rambling history of food and of the life in the US of A before, during and even after the depression and WW II.
This is a great mix of food and history and a delightful read besides. We are even trying out some of the recipes and adapting them from the original into modern equivalents. Just sitting down to read the book is fun. But if you really want some fun, try re-creating the recipes! And then try updating them into something that is still as tasty as it was back then but is much healthier than some of the old recipes. (Who wouldn't skip a pound of lard in a recipe?)

This book is a discussion of a depression era project of the WPA. Kurlansky discusses the origins of the project and then gives us a readable and delightful synopsis of it.
Kurlansky has culled WPA collected recipes and essays on the foods of different regions of the US in the 1930s. At that time we had no fast food chains or interstate highways, so food was based on seasonable available resources and cooking from scratch. Fascinating look at how we made do.
I picked up this book because from the description it seemed like there would be an interesting editorial voice that tied together stories about food from the era, but it really read like a cookbook after a while. I only made it through 2 regions before I called it quits and I rarely leave books unfinished.
Mark Kurlansky can do no wrong it seems. I love his choice in publishing these former WPA writings without editing them or summarising. Its fascinating to read the recipes and food pairing from a bygone era, especially because cooking/eating seasonally was the norm then so certain foods were only eaten in certain regions. What shines through is the social aspect of these meals as the consuming of meals was never something you did alone. Really a lovely record of American cuisine if you will, and a very entertaining read because these documentors were first and foremost writers.
I liked this book. Like the author, I was born in the late 1940s, and I remember what food was like before McDonald's when hamburgers were thick with good beef, before the highway system when you drove on two-lane roads through all the towns (and got to read Burma Shave signs), before chain restaurants, when you never knew exactly what you were going to get. I remember eating abalone steaks on the wharf in Santa Cruz on Friday nights for $4, which was very expensive but it was the only seafood I would eat. I haven't had an abalone steak for 50 years, nor have I seen their big shells scattered on beaches. There were no "ethnic" restaurants in Santa Clara, where I grew up, except for one Chinese place where the waitresses wore red kimonos and served fried rice pressed in a round bowl and upended on the plate, and you hated to disturb this smooth dome with your fork. I didn't have pizza until I was well into my teens--it was too foreign for my mother--she pronounced it inedible at the time, and never did come to like it. And the hamburgers--I was in high school when the first McDonald's opened in town. On their sign they showed the actual number of hamburgers sold, and incremented it regularly--it was in the hundreds of thousands then, then the number rolled over a million, and climbed...and eventually they gave up and went to "millions and millions" and now "billions and billions." My friends and I didn't like the hamburgers--we thought they were of poor quality meat and too thin--"nothing to them." But we liked the french fries very much. So this book brought back memories. And it also confirmed a recipe--my mother always made enchiladas stuffed with chopped olive, hard boiled egg, cheese, and raw onion. One never sees an enchilada like that today and people think the recipe is weird...but in the book was mention of enchiladas stuffed with raw onion and cheese. Not weird at the time.

This must have been a really interesting project for the author, and frustrating as well because of the missing bits and unevenness of the material. For example, there is so much about the south and not very much at all from California. Maybe that says something about the different nature of southerners and Californians, about who had time to write about cooking and who did not. California was a very different place before and just after the war, and this book helped me think about it, right down to the strawberries that were sold in little wooden baskets from the acreage just down on the El Camino, under the eucalyptus trees, strawberries that you could smell before you even got out of the car. And the icebox in my grandmother's summer cabin, which had to be stocked with a big block of ice that you bought by putting 25 cents in a slot in a big wooden container the size of the back of a truck, and the block came sliding down a ramp. The expressions, the language of the essays reminded me of the way my parents spoke--a much cleaner language than we hear today, from a society much more concerned with the delicacy of women. I don't know that the book would strike the same chord with younger people who didn't know the U.S. "before," just like it must be difficult to imagine the world without laptops, cell phones, microwaves, and women in the office who are perfectly comfortable with four-letter words.