Teaching history through food, now isn’t that creative? Many a junior-high teacher has likely tried out this lesson plan, and I would bet the results were quite positive. We all love to eat, after all. But there is something a bit too elementary about the concept and how it plays out in Andrew Caldwell’s Their Last Suppers: Legends of History [...]
I have always believed that if you’ve got a cake, you’ve got a party. Cake is one of those defining elements that can turn an ordinary get-together into a celebratory event. Of course it goes without saying that the same rule applies to booze. So, my friends, behold: I may have just come across the most festive recipe book ever [...]
If I were to be honest with myself, I would have to admit that I learned how to cook from television, plain and simple. I picked up a few tips from my dad during Law & Order commercial breaks, yes, but really it was all those hours sitting in front of cooking shows learning how to make things I wasn’t ever going to make. It never really sunk in that cooking, baking, or assembling a feast could possibly require more than 30 minutes of work — with the exception of Thanksgiving, of course. So reading The Food of a Younger Land, Mark Kurlansky’s compilation of essays and tidbits from the pre–World War II files of the Federal Writers’ Project, was a revolution of sorts for me. In order to make pickled butternuts...
