A Couple of Books for Foodies

APHRODITE
by Isabel Allende 
Chilean author Isabel Allende has served up something different in this gorgeous book about food. I was especially interested in the anthropological aspects of the book: ancient and modern uses of plants and other foodstuffs to excite the passions. The recipes look decadently delicious! The book is printed on slick pages and illustrated with really unique artwork (mostly from the late 20th century).

THE FOOD OF A YOUNGER LAND: A Portrait of American Food---from the Lost WPA Files by Mark Kurlansky
          This history of American food was tremendously interesting to me for two reasons. Even though I don't like to cook, I love to read about food --- and I love to sample regional foods when I travel. I was also interested in the back story of how this book came about.
          During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government put millions of unemployed Americans to work through the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Work Projects Administration): constructing roads, parks and public buildings, as well as a number of cultural projects for artists, photographers and writers to document American life during those years of severe economic struggle. It's amazing to read the list of now famous actors, artists and writers who survived those lean years thanks to WPA projects.
          The FWP (Federal Writers' Project) employed out-of-work and wanna-be writers and sent them out all across the country to compile travel guidebooks of all the states. Then someone came up with a project to do a book on the regional cuisine of America, and they called it AMERICA EATS. A lot of material was collected, but when America entered WW2, the WPA was discontinued and the book was never written and published. The manuscripts, letters, interview materials, etc. collected for the project were turned over to the Library of Congress, where they were "lost" for decades until Mark Kurlansky discovered and edited them into this book published in 2009.
          So the stories in this book come from the 1930s, with updated/background material added by the editor. We get to see what the nation's dietary practices were back before there were interstate highways, supermarkets, fast food chain restaurants, frozen and packaged foods, and all the other commercial conveniences that make much of our food today so uniform and uninspired. We get to return to the days when food was traditional, seasonal, regional, and real.
          The book is divided into five regions: the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, the Far West, and the Southwest. I especially enjoyed reading about food of the Midwest, the food I grew up on. But all of the regions and their old-time cuisines fascinated me. I learned why hush puppies were called that. That a Minnesota booya is a lot like our own local burgoo. There's even an organ-meat stew called Son of a Bitch. I learned all about clam bakes and lamb fries, chowders, mint juleps, ethic foods brought here by immigrants, Native American foods, slave foods, pioneer cooking, cowboy chuckwagons, etc. Recipes were written right into the stories, so it didn't feel at all like reading a cookbook.