You thought you could finish all your shopping by Dec. 25, which, incidentally, is less than one week away? Hah! And no time to shop this week? Fret not. You can still have a copy of Watching What We Eat delivered to you or the cheerfully decorated doorstep of your loved one with time to spare.
Have a happy holiday season!
Hi! Thanks for visiting my blog and – I presume? – for buying or borrowing and reading Watching What We Eat. You can see that I have not been updating in a while, but I love the design of this blog so much (courtesy of the talented Brett Heckman) that I just can’t let it go. And just maybe I’ll have something to post every now and again. So keep visiting! Because I still like to look at the Google Analytics reports to see from whence my visitors cometh – all over the world, it turns out. Since April 2009 the top ten locations (excluding North America) were the UK, Germany, Australia, France, Philippines, Italy, Spain, India, Netherlands and Poland.
Ciao! Eet smakelijk!
The cacio e pepe I am about to eat in Rome
Dear Suffolk County people,
I will be talking about Watching What We Eat at the Sachem Public Library* on Monday, March 14 at 7pm. It would be lovely to see you there!
Yours truly,
Kathleen
* which began as an 18-book women’s suffrage collection in 1914 and is now one of the largest school district libraries in New York State
That’s the title of the panel that I’ll be moderating next. Sat., 2/18, as part of the IACP regional conference. Panelists will be Allen Salkin, Troy Patterson, Sara Moulton, Peter Naccarato and Katie LeBesco. It’s not too late to register. The conference itself is 2 days long and boasts a fantastic line-up of interesting topics and people. Take a look and register at the Culinary Trust.
One of my favorite sources for WWWE was a book I found in NYU’s Fales Collection – Cooking with the Experts by William Irving Kaufman. Published in 1955, it’s a true blue slice of an era, full of local TV cooking show recipes like fried rabbit, stuffed Colorado trout, cherry and almond gelatin salad and true Hoosier corn bread. In the back of the book are bios and photos of a slew of regional hosts like Betty Adams’ of “Sugar ‘N Spice” in Providence, Irene Lindgren from “Through the Kitchen Window” out of Indianapolis, and from my hometown of Rochester, NY, Trudy McNall from “Home Cooking.” Once legion, this local TV staple as gone the way of liver rolls in sour cream (p. 89).
I bought my own copy of Kaufman at an auction, the one known as eBay. Sherry Howard found hers at a regular auction and saw its gem-like qualities, too. She gives it (and WWWE) props on her Auction Finds blog. If you’re curious, you can get your own copy, too, dirt cheap.
Here’s a meager look inside:
Watching What We Eat loves to be useful. Case in point: David Silver, a media studies prof at the University of San Francisco, is using the book in his Green Media class this Spring. You can check out the syllabus on his blog.
High school teachers and college professors, I would love to know how you’re using the book with your students. Please jot a comment via the book’s Facebook page.
T is for teaching and TV
It’s like I’ve been telling you, there’s good stuff on the Internet. More than just shiba inu puppy cams. There’s cooking instruction and culinary heritage (like Clara Cannucciari). The author of this short from The Atlantic calls YouTube “the grand equalizer of the online masses.” That’s what they used to say about TV, minus the “online.” So you see the trend here, the writing on the screen, as it were. Grab your gram and your cam and get into the kitchen.
Sharing recipes the old-fashioned way caused handwriting deciphering issues down the line
I just finished a book by Josh Ozersky which I liked very much and so of course Google-stalked the author immediately. The book, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change 1968-1978, has nothing to do with food, but Josh’s web site Ozersky.tv has everything to [do with food]. There’s plenty to enjoy here, the least of which is the way the archived video images are black and white until you mouse over them, just like when Dorothy’s house lands on the outskirts of Oz. Hey, Oz…Ozersky…..hmmm. Maybe I’ll try listening to Dark Side of the Moon while watching Ozersky.tv, reading Archie Bunker’s America backwards and eating bacon donuts.
Inside Dr. Claw’s Lobster Den from Ozersky.TV on Vimeo.
Just try to watch this installment from Clara without your heart melting into a puddle. I suggest watching it once for the recipe and a second time to pay attention to her tchotchkes (I am partial to the winking owl cookie jar – I want one!) and nice old worn appliances and implements. Who needs a stainless steel blah blah blah? For more on Clara see my earlier post.
Thank you for visiting my blog this year. Happy everything, everyone!
I don’t get out much, especially on school nights. But my friend Jen (whose Gastronomy class at the High School for Math, Sci & Engineering got a shout out in the current issue of Gastronomica) invited me to the Piglet Party, and I couldn’t resist. It was hosted by Food52 people Amanda Hesser, Merrill Stubbs and Charlotte Druckman at the 92Y Tribeca. Some of the city’s best food purveyors were there with samples aplenty, including Van Leeuwen, Rick’s Picks, Liddabit Sweets, Theo Peck, Salumeria Rosi, Lush, Lucy’s Whey and Russ & Daughters.
Dorie Greenspan's piglet cookies
There was a slide show about the history of food porn and then a discussion on said porn moderated by Frank Bruni. The discussants – Deb Perelman, Ben Leventhal and Frank Falcinelli – batted around some ideas and opinions about what food porn is and isn’t, but you got the feeling from the audience that no one was really able to nail down a satisfying definition. I’m certainly not going to try. It’s just another example of a word/idea that so many of use cavalierly without thinking much about it. Think about it, will you? And post your thoughts on my Facebook page.
The whole point of the evening, by the way, was to reveal the winner of the Second Annual Tournament of Cookbooks. While there were many excellent cookbooks in the running, there could be only one to go home with a trophy, and that was Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce with Amy Scattergood.
Caramel corn with bacon by Liddabit Sweets
