poetry of food

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Cookbook Collection from the 1950’s

Metropolitan Cookbook

Metropolitan Cookbook

I’m sure you all have a shelf, many shelves, entire rooms of cookbooks. Isn’t it funny how we can never really say: “Okay, I have enough cookbooks. I don’t need to look at another one again.”

Of course, we can’t say that. Our cooking-brains, food-fingers, food-appetites, food-curiosity kicks in and there is always another cookbook that jumps into our arms.

I also like the practice of raiding the library shelf to see if there are cookbooks I’d like to own. First borrow them. Then decide. Or steal that one recipe that grabs my attention, bring back the book, and then I’m done. With no money spent.

Still…I have to admit. Owning is better. Full colorful shelves are better. Having these friends to hang around with at home indefinitely (with no due dates to return) is better.

So today I’d like to share with you some of my most obscure favorites. To start, these books I never cook from. I just LOVE the books. They’re old and years ago I found them in dusty baskets in used book stores at the foot of giant shelves piled with cookbooks. But these are soft-covered, perfect-bound, and more like thick pamphlets. I discovered that some books were published as a series. Here’s one from a series…

French Cookbook

French Cookbook

The illustration alone is totally enchanting! When I found the first one in this series I was ever-after on the lookout for more of the same. I now have 6 of them: French, Italian, Scandinavian, Creole, New England, and Hungarian.  Inside are brief classic recipes I’ve yet to try. I get so caught up just LOOKING at the books. They were published between 1954 and 1956 by the Culinary Arts Institute in Chicago.

Another couple of favs were put out by the Ford Motor company in 1954 and 1956: The Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Favorite Eating Places (2 volumes).  Each book is a collection of favorite recipes from restaurants all over the USA. (They only measure 5.5 inches by 7.) With each restaurant they include a wonderful illustration. A different style for each entry. The books are divided by parts of the country: Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, etc. It’s fun to find out if these restaurants still exist. I imagine it was Ford Motor Company’s way to get people on the road!

Ford Treasury of Famous Recipes from Famous Eating Places

Ford Treasury of Famous Recipes from Famous Eating Places

Nelson House & The Bird and Bottle Inn

Nelson House & The Bird and Bottle Inn

Second Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Favorite Restaurants

Second Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Favorite Restaurants

Gruber's and The Keys

Gruber’s and The Keys

I usually don’t haunt old book stores the way I used to. It was an obsession at one point in time. But now that my shelves are stacked with these wonders. I can sit back and dive into  any of these jewels and be entertained for an entire afternoon. Recipes are long-lasting. And just reading them is pure pleasure. Maybe it’s time to pick out a few to try. When I do, I’ll let you know about the standouts. Stay tuned!

Hungarian Cookbook

Hungarian Cookbook

Scandinavian Cookbook

Scandinavian Cookbook

New England Cookbook

New England Cookbook

Creole Cookbook

Creole Cookbook

Italian Cookbook

Italian Cookbook

 

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If Music Be the Food of…..

Music. It has a way of being part of our deeper selves. Music seems to find its way to our core. It leaves imprint and memories there. Music we heard as children, or teenagers, once heard again, can zap us back to that earlier moment, that earlier self.

When I was a baby, my parents tell me, my eyes would well up whenever the Bacarole from the Tales of Hoffmann played.  In that instance it could not have been a memory tug. Where did that reaction come from? I still cry when I hear that music. It overwhelms me with beauty. I just found this wonderful version on YouTube sung by soprano Anna Netrebko & mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča. Have a listen. I wonder how it sounds to you.

 

I’ve heard stories about my dad as a boy hiding under the ironing board while his mother ironed and sang opera arias. It was a memory he cherished. He also stood in line to get into the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC with his dad. My parents both loved music. My mom was a frequent fan at Frank Sinatra concerts. And my mom and dad met dancing on roller skates at the local rink in Brooklyn.

Music may be the food of love (as Shakespeare wisely educated us), but it is the food of food, too! My classes always have a music soundtrack playing in the background. The room, the kitchen, floats with more life when music is invited as well.

And, while we’re on the subject, memories of taste are just as strong, if not stronger, for transporting us to other moments in our lives. Ever have that experience? You taste something you haven’t had in a while and it immediately reminds you of a place, a person, a you of longer ago.

Our senses are wise companions. Let’s enjoy what they bring us.

Mom and me.

Mom and me.

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The Color of Christmas

Pomegranate jewels

Pomegranate jewels

Pomegranate. Its jewels the color of garnet. Its jewels the color of Christmas. There is no fruit more Christmas-y than pomegranate.

When I was a little kid, growing up in Brooklyn, I ate pomegranate. I remember pulling apart the peel and membrane to find the clusters of seeds and biting into them–taking a dozen or more into my mouth. The tart-sweet burst of every clean, almost-transparent, juicy seed flooding my taste buds with the clear flavor of “awake & sing!” I ate at the coffee table in front of the TV, sitting on the floor. I didn’t consider them exotic. They were Chinese Apples.

We called them Chinese Apples then. I don’t know why. But I looked it up. I found that Chinese Apple is British English for pomegranate. True? Don’t know.

Wikipedia says it’s an ancient fruit likely originating in the area of Iran. The fruit has been written of in Babylonian texts, the Bible, Homeric Hymns and the Quran.

The name, in Latin, means apple (pomum) with many seeds (granatum).  Carbonized pieces of pomegranate were unearthed from the Early Bronze age in the West Bank.  A whole pomegranate  was in the ancient Egyptian tomb of Djehuty, who was a butler to Queen Hathshepsut.

Ancient Greek mythology includes pomegranate as the “fifth business” in stories of the gods. For Persephone, eating 6 jeweled seeds condemned her to the underworld for 6 months every year causing her mother, Demeter (the Goddess of the Harvest), to mourn for 6 months, not letting anything grow–hence the explanation of the seasons. In ancient Greece pomegranate is considered the blood of Adonis.

And for us? In modern times? Do we just eat the fruit and count its nutritional properties? Void of magic and stories?

I see it as part of my personal history. A memory of first encounter that zaps me back to childhood bringing along with it feelings of being a child and what my child world-view was: Small. New. At the dawn of accumulating experience. The feel of the smooth seed in my mouth is as familiar as my years on earth.

And then…why not?…there’s still time to create a story of pomegranate. One that stars the fruit and makes it a hero. One that continues to add it to the conversation of myth, which is, after all, the stories of us.