Love Reading? Love Food?

Reading is probably the 3rd most popular activity at the Ham Sandwich household, just behind eating and drinking (or drinking and eating, depending how court went that day). For the last several years, this reading has been comprised of two major genres: 1) cooking magazines and 2) non-fiction books.

The cooking mags are obviously self-explanatory-- cometimes there's nothing better than thumbing through the latest issue of Gastronomica*/Bon Appetit/Saveur/Cook's Illustrated/King Arthur Flour Catalogue (ok, that last one doesn't really count as "reading"), planning menus, fantasizing about my dream kitchen and its appliances, and of course, trying out new recipes. Doing this with a glass of wine in hand, on the porch, makes the whole experience even better.

The second category, non-fiction books, stems from my nerdtastic fear of becoming "dumb." Seriously. After spending 10 years in a classroom getting new information poured daily into my head, I panicked somewhat when I realized that my day job, while challenging and educational on some days, wasn't quite cutting it in the need-to-learn-something-new-everyday category.

Basically, being an attorney isn't nerdy enough for me on its own.

Thus, I read a lot of non-fiction: history, art, science, and, of course, food. After getting some grief for reading a book on the history and uses of salt (AHEM, you know who you are), I thought that there might be other nerd-foodies out there who be interested in checking out some of my recent reads.

First, the aforementioned Salt, by Mark Kurlansky:

I was somewhere in the first few pages of the introduction of this book when I started quoting random facts to the person sitting next to me. (Don't worry, I knew the person.) It's that kind of book. The kind that makes you go "wow, who knew that up until the 1400s, the French salted their new newborns to protect them from evil?" Salt is full of random tidbits like that. Kurlansky's research includes explorations into salt's use as a preservative (for food AND bodies), it's importance in the herring/fishing industries and it's role in several wars. At a time when salt is being demonized as the cause of countless health problems in our modern age, its refreshing to read something that emphasizes how vitally important it was to shaping history and keeping human beings alive.

Delving deeeeep into my nerdtastic-ness, I'm currently reading Food: The History of Taste , edited by Paul Freedman and The Food of a Younger Land, also by Mark Kurlansky. (Yikes, between him and Michael Pollan, I need to find some new authors...)

Food: The History of Taste is a series of scholarly articles that examine the cuisine of various cultures, starting with prehistory and moving chronologically through time to the modern era. Currently, I've made it up to the essay on food in Medieval Europe, having explored the Ancient Greeks, Romans, China, and the Islamic cultures. It's a great read for learning how different cultures approached food--from a preparation aspect as well as its greater symbolic role in that given culture.

In Food of a Younger Land, Kurlansky dug up the ancient, unpublished files of the Federal Writer's Project, a Works Progress Administration project that gave unemployed writers jobs during the Great Depression. The FWP called for writers to research the food and eating traditions of all of America, and compile it into a great encyclopedia to be called America Eats. The FWP never completed this endeavor, and thousands of essays on New England cooking, Southern barbecues, and Native American feast traditions languished in the Library of Congress until Kurlansky dug them up and pulled together some of the best and most insightful pieces. If you've ever wanted to make squirrel stew, you'll find a recipe in this book.

Still on my to-read list are the works of M.F.K. Fisher, one of the 20th century's great food writers, and Marion Nestle's book, Food Politics. Happy reading, fellow food nerds!

*Gastronomica is probably the pinacle of food-nerdom--it's a scholarly journal on food and food culture, published by the University of California. A close second (and the journal my brother reads), is Meatpaper, a "print magazine of art and ideas about meat." How awesome is that?!?!