Google's Superbowl Ad
Sound Off! An Underage Battle
Simple Rules for Watching the Super Bowl
Pullin' Shots: Soulfood Books, Music and Organic Coffeehouse in Redmond
An Interview with Dawes, Tonight's Tractor Headliner
Author Mark Kurlansky doesn’t always write about food, but it has been the subject of two of his bestselling books (Cod, Salt) and his newest book, The Food of a Younger Land (he's reading at Elliott Bay tonight, 7:30 p.m., free admission). But don’t call him a food writer.
“What interests me is the sociology of food,” he said. “How food shapes societies and history. Food is a great tool of anthropology.”
Subtitled, “A portrait of American food--before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation’s food was seasonal, regional and traditional--from the lost WPA files,” which is a real mouthful in itself, the book is a series of articles and essays from the Federal Writers Project (FWP), a New Deal Program by the Roosevelt Administration to employ out-of-work writers.
The FWP was formed in the mid 1930s during the Great Depression as part of the the larger Works Project Administration (WPA). Like other New Deal projects, the goal was jobs for the unemployed. The FWP put writers to work creating, among other projects, a series of excellent guidebooks for every state (many have be republished and they remain fun and fascinating to read). After the guidebook project was completed, it was decided to create a new series called America Eats, which would include details about what and how Americans cooked and ate their meals.
The project was underway when it was stopped cold after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the onset of World War II. The files were packed into boxes and stored in the Library of Congress.
“I had heard about the project here and there over the years, and in fact had used a small essay from the project that had been published in the papers of Nelson Algren for an earlier book,” said Kurlansky. “When I went to Library of Congress to view the files, they brought out a cart full of dusty boxes that few, if any, people had seen since the 1940s. It didn’t take me long to see there was a lot of great material there.” (Here's Kurlansky on NPR.)
In his excellent opening essay, Kurlansky reviews the motivations of the Roosevelt administration, the history of the FWP and the origins of the American Eats project.
The Food of a Younger Land is a series of these essays, many punctuated with insightful introductions by Kurlansky. Highlights include an essay about lunching at an Automat, a treatise on luncheonette slang and jargon, articles about footwashing in Alabama and eating Georgia possum and taters, and four pieces on creating mint juleps. But all the essays are interesting, though many are just quick anecdotes or blurbs, understandable since they were created for a project that was never completed.
There are also many recipes in the book, some of which Kurlansky has tried.
“The Depression Cake (created by a young woman who didn’t have the luxury of eggs in those hard times) is really great,” he said.
Reading the book, you get a sense that America has lost its truly regional cooking roots. On tour, Kurlansky reports that people he’s met tell him that most of the food in the book, even some of the oddball, backwoods foods, can still be found. Still, he points out, the food outlined used to be the American cuisine, and now it’s hard to find and has become a niche.
Kurlansky points out that much has been gained over the ensuing 70 years.
“In the '30s, families would spend most of September and October canning preserves for the winter when no fresh fruit and vegetables were available,” he said. “Now, you can get fresh produce year round.”
But the overall tone of Younger Land is wistful. Today, local food is a neighborhood restaurant that may serve Thai, Greek or Italian food. In the 1930s, families had to make everything from the ingredients on hand, there was a homemade quality to food. Reading the book, you get a sense of how different people were and how times have changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
“What I like is to travel somewhere and have a meal that tells me where I am and what season it is,” said Kurlansky. “That’s getting harder to do.”
In conversation, Kurlansky is enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Head down to Elliot Bay tonight and enjoy a discussion on North Carolina chitterling strut, Rhode Island Jonny cakes and our own geoducks. You may never look at your dinner the same way again.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Elliott Bay? Please?
You squirrels and your extra Ts! There's a recession on. You know how much an extra T costs?