We humans have a complex relationship with our food. Nowadays it seems that every food-related decision we make is a loaded statement. Whether conscious on our part or not, our edible purchases are rife with political, economic, and social commentary, and by implication, pass judgments on the choices of others. It’s interesting to look back at periods of history when perspectives on food were different, or maybe not as different as we might think. Two of today’s selections focus on America during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The third covers a broader extent of time and space, from the beginnings of farming in prehistoric civilizations across the globe to the population boom spurred by the “green revolution” in the last half of the 20th century. Dig in!
“A chaotic and energetic assortment”
Food of a Younger Land
Edited by Mark Kurlansky
In the late 1930s, as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s effort to put more Americans to work, the Works Progress Administration created the Federal Writers’ Project to employ out-of-work writers, editors, and reporters. One of the projects the FWP planned was to be called America Eats. Writers were to gather information about foods and culinary traditions from five regions across the country which would eventually be condensed into a single essay for each region with a few shorter pieces included to add local flavor. The project was pulled up short, however, when Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941. Over the next six months the administrators of the project frantically tried to gather together whatever work had been completed, even though the book could never be finished. Food of a Younger Land is a compilation of the most interesting pieces from this fragmentary project, “a preserved glimpse of America in the early 1940s.”
Mr. Kurlansky points out in his introduction that “we know little about what Americans eat and less about what they ate” partly because food writers “prefer to focus on fashionable, expensive restaurants” rather than the everyday fare of average people. Consequently, this book contains a fascinating perspective on history in more than just a culinary sense. The essays included encompass culture, language, everyday activities, and politics. As I was reading, I found that those areas of the country where I’ve lived kept my attention better than others, particularly when addressing an experience I’ve shared or food I’ve tried, as I’m sure they will when you read them. All the same, each section has some stand-out, memorable pieces.
A raging controversy in the Northeast section debates the proper style of clam chowder, and the New York soda-luncheonette slang dictionary is just pure fun. (Next time I’m at a diner, I’ll have to try ordering blinded bull’s eyes on a raft with a houseboat for dessert and see what I get.) “The South Eats” includes pieces by Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston. The poem “Nebraskans Eat the Weiners” in the Midwest section made me chuckle. In the Far West, I liked the story of “Depression Cake” – no eggs or butter involved – and the passionate tirade from Oregon against mashed potatoes. And finally in “The Southwest Eats,” there’s a colorful, though not very appetizing, description of how to prepare “Oklahoma Prairie Oysters,” making use of what is cast off when a bull calf becomes a beef steer.
While this book is limited in its scope by what was turned in to the FWP almost 70 years ago, it still covers an impressive spectrum of life in the United States just before World World II. It provides a snapshot of a very different time period from our own “before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food.”
“Eat this mush, or I’ll throw you out on your tush”
Clara’s Kitchen
By Clara Cannucciari & Christopher Cannucciari
Ms. Cannucciari and her grandson have created an absolutely delightful little book. About three years ago, Christopher started filming (and posting on Youtube) brief videos of his grandmother cooking while talking about her life as a young woman during the Great Depression. Large sections of the book are taken directly from her running commentary on those videos, so the text has a real oral storytelling quality. Occasionally, it’s a bit repetitive, but rather than being annoying that just adds to the authenticity and charm. After all, how many times did you hear the same story or tidbit of memory over and over from your grandparents?
An aggregation of this 94-year-old’s simple family recipes from the Great Depression and recollections from her younger days, this is less a cookbook than a memoir focused on food.
Most of the recipes feature few ingredients – cheap foods like potatoes, pasta and eggs appear frequently – interspersed with cooking tips and life lessons. In particular, the recipe for homemade ketchup was a revelation and I might have to try out the cooked dandelion leaves since I have an overabundance in my own yard! Ms. Cannucciari reminds her readers (and viewers) of the pleasures of basic foods prepared simply and the difference between wants and needs. And she does it with a no-nonsense, spunky attitude. Refreshing!
“A series of transformations caused, enabled, or influenced by food”
An Edible History of Humanity
By Tom Standage
Starting with the advent of agriculture, Mr. Standage traces food’s role in the emergence of complex societies, the international communications and cultural exchange through spice routes, industrialization, and as a weapon of war. It seems so revolutionary at first that something as simple and ubiquitous as food would have such a great impact on the flow of world history, but it actually would be more surprising if it didn’t. After all, everyone needs to eat.
Each of the five sections focuses on one overarching role that food has played in the past, but balances the explanations of the grand sweeping movement of history with fascinating bite-sized pieces of information that provided numerous “a hah!” moments. For example, chili peppers are called peppers because Columbus was trying to convince himself (and others) that he really had found the far East, Europe’s supplier of black pepper at the time. I’ve wondered about that for decades! Mr. Standage also debunks the myth that spices were popular in the 1500s mostly for the purpose of masking rotten meat. The people who were wealthy enough to purchase the extremely expensive spices certainly had the money to buy fresh meat, too, he points out.
The humble potato, I learned, got quite an inauspicious start in Europe. Discovered in the 1530s by Spanish conquistadores conquering the Inca Empire, potatoes were brought back to the Old World where they were subject to suspicions and even religious edicts. The Bible didn’t even mention the tuber, so obviously “God had not meant men to eat them” some clergymen claimed. Not only that, but it was thought that they vaguely resembled the hand of a leper, leading to a widespread belief that they actually caused leprosy. Eventually the potato’s merits including its dense caloric yield, hidden growing location (which made it harder for passing armies to plunder), and reliability when other crops failed, won over the governments and populace of northern Europe. But it also led to an overreliance which manifested itself tragically in the Irish Potato Famine of 1845.
The most eye-opening section, however, is “Food As a Weapon.” Over the course of history the logistics of feeding an army dictated strategy and success more often than principle or rectitude did. The weakness of Britain’s food supply in the American colonies was a major factor in the vastly better trained army’s defeat during the Revolutionary War. “Unless an army is properly fed,” Mr. Standage states, “it cannot get to the battlefield in the first place.” Food was also used as an ideological weapon during the Cold War starting with the Soviet Union’s blockade of West Berlin and the resulting Allied airlifts in 1948 and 1949. The chapter continues with heartbreaking tales of the widespread starvation caused by Stalin and Mao in their single-minded quest to prove to the rest of the world that communism was better than capitalism. An estimated 7 to 8 million farmers and peasants, mostly in the Ukraine, died during Stalin’s self-inflicted Soviet famine in the 1930s. More than two decades later, Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” modeled on Stalin’s failed agricultural policies, resulted in 30 to 40 million deaths.
Mr. Standage draws parallels between historical events and contemporary food issues as well, such as his discussion of local vs. global food which caps his chapter about exploration and the spice trade. There’s also a thought-provoking chapter discussing current food shortages around the world and biofuel made from food crops. As he did in his A History of the World in Six Glasses, (reviewed in my 6/17/2010 column) Mr.
Standage has written an illuminating book about world history supported by the scaffolding of one of humanity’s most basic needs.
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Next column, we’ll continue looking at food, this time with a more contemporary focus.
What great books about food or eating have you read? What’s currently on your reading list? Suggestions, comments, and feedback welcome at [email protected].
