Lexicon of Real American Food


Book Description

For foodies, wordsmiths, and anyone who loves to eat, an illustrated guide to authentic American fare, from the beloved Roadfood team In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. In The Lexicon of Real American Food, renowned foodies Jane and Michael Stern record the lingo of American food as it is spoken—and enjoyed—across the nation. With their signature wit and exuberance, they define how America really eats—to the delight of food lovers and word aficionados everywhere. Fun to read and easy to browse, with spot illustrations and select recipes, this book will also become a valuable reference to document regional specialties and signature American fare. Since the first edition in their Roadfood series in 1978, the Sterns have reported on more than 100,000 meals at America’s tables and cafe counters alongside people of every stripe; and in doing so they have gained an unequalled sense of real American food. Thus, the food described in these pages is democratic, not elitist—from hoppel-poppel to puffy tacos, The Sterns see the nation’s diet like its language: endlessly, endearingly exuberant. Their Lexicon of Real American Food inspires a new and joyful appreciation of our country’s irrepressible foodways.




The Real Food Revolution


Book Description

Today a buck gets you a quick burger (or two), but what’s the real cost of that meal? The rates of chronic disease—specifically diseases like diabetes, caused by our lifestyles—have grown exponentially in recent years, edging medical expenses ever higher while threatening to give America its first generation to actually live shorter lives than their parents. Unfortunately finding good nutrition is no walk in the park, with more and more Americans living in cities, far from a farmer’s field. To overcome distance and undercut price, we rely on industry to put dinner on the table— yet this system has valued efficiency and short-term profits over our own health and the health of our environment. So how do we keep America thriving? Congressman Tim Ryan may have a soft spot for chicken wings and ice cream, but he also knows the joy of farm-fresh produce and the feel of soil between his fingers. Here he presents easy, actionable steps that anyone can take, from starting an herb garden on your windowsill to helping implement food education in your child’s school to petitioning your elected officials. Ryan also introduces some of the current food revolutionaries, who are shining examples of people who saw a problem with how we think about food today, rolled up their sleeves, and raised a crop of positive change. The commonsense ideas in these pages come big (replacing dilapidated neighborhoods with farms) and small (sitting down for a fresh, healthy meal with your family), and each will help you improve the quality of life for you and future generations.




Martha's American Food


Book Description

Martha Stewart, who has so significantly influenced the American table, collects her favorite national dishes--as well as the stories and traditions behind them--in this love letter to American food featuring 200 recipes. These are recipes that will delight you with nostalgia, inspire you, and teach you about our nation by way of its regions and their distinctive flavors. Above all, these are time-honored recipes that you will turn to again and again. Organized geographically, the 200 recipes in Martha’s American Food include main dishes such as comforting Chicken Pot Pies, easy Grilled Fish Tacos, irresistible Barbecued Ribs, and hearty New England Clam Chowder. Here, too, are thoroughly modern starters, sides, and one-dish meals that harness the bounty of each region’s seasons and landscape: Hot Crab Dip, Tequila-Grilled Shrimp, Indiana Succotash, Chicken and Andouille Gumbo, Grilled Bacon-Wrapped Whitefish, and Whole-Wheat Spaghetti with Meyer Lemon, Arugula, and Pistachios. And you will want to leave room for dessert, with dozens of treats such as Chocolate-Bourbon Pecan Pie, New York Cheesecake, and Peach and Berry Cobbler. Through sidebars about the flavors that define each region and stunning photography that brings the foods—and the places with which we identify them—to life, Martha celebrates the unique character of each part of the country. With all the dishes that inspire pride in our national cuisine, Martha’s American Food gathers, in one place, the recipes that will surely please your family and friends for generations to come.




Recipes for Respect


Book Description

Food studies, once trendy, has settled into the public arena. In the academy, scholarship on food and literary culture constitutes a growing river within literary and cultural studies, but writing on African American food and dining remains a tributary. Recipes for Respect bridges this gap, illuminating the role of foodways in African American culture as well as the contributions of Black cooks and chefs to what has been considered the mainstream. Beginning in the early nineteenth century and continuing nearly to the present day, African Americans have often been stereotyped as illiterate kitchen geniuses. Rafia Zafar addresses this error, highlighting the long history of accomplished African Americans within our culinary traditions, as well as the literary and entrepreneurial strategies for civil rights and respectability woven into the written records of dining, cooking, and serving. Whether revealed in cookbooks or fiction, memoirs or hotel-keeping manuals, agricultural extension bulletins or library collections, foodways knowledge sustained Black strategies for self-reliance and dignity, the preservation of historical memory, and civil rights and social mobility. If, to follow Mary Douglas’s dictum, food is a field of action—that is, a venue for social intimacy, exchange, or aggression—African American writing about foodways constitutes an underappreciated critique of the racialized social and intellectual spaces of the United States.




Mr. Food Cooks Real American


Book Description

The hugely successful Mr. Food delivers again with a new collection of simple and scrumptious recipes celebrating our country's culinary melting pot. From Tennessee to Texas, from California to Connecticut, Ginsburg serves up an all-American-caliber performance. "The best-loved TV chef in the country".--Newsweek.




American Food


Book Description

An illustrated journey through the lore and little-known history behind ambrosia, Ipswich clams, Buffalo hot wings, and more. This captivating and surprising tour of America’s culinary canon celebrates the variety, charm, and occasionally dubious lore of the foods we love to eat, as well as the under-sung heroes who made them. Every chapter, organized from A to Z, delves into the history of a classic dish or ingredient, most so common—like ketchup—that we take them for granted. These distinctly American foods, from Blueberries and Fortune Cookies to Pepperoni, Hot Wings, Shrimp and Grits, Queso, and yes, even Xanthan Gum, have rich and complex back stories that are often hidden in plain sight, lost to urban myth and misinformation. American Food: A Not-So-Serious History digs deep to tell the compelling tales of some of our most ordinary foods and what they say about who we are—and who, perhaps, we are becoming.




Soul Food


Book Description

2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and Scholarship Honor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library Association In this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity. Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.




Smokelore


Book Description

Barbecue: It’s America in a mouthful. The story of barbecue touches almost every aspect of our history. It involves indigenous culture, the colonial era, slavery, the Civil War, the settling of the West, the coming of immigrants, the Great Migration, the rise of the automobile, the expansion of suburbia, the rejiggering of gender roles. It encompasses every region and demographic group. It is entwined with our politics and tangled up with our race relations. Jim Auchmutey follows the delicious and contentious history of barbecue in America from the ox roast that celebrated the groundbreaking for the U.S. Capitol building to the first barbecue launched into space almost two hundred years later. The narrative covers the golden age of political barbecues, the evolution of the barbecue restaurant, the development of backyard cooking, and the recent rediscovery of traditional barbecue craft. Along the way, Auchmutey considers the mystique of barbecue sauces, the spectacle of barbecue contests, the global influences on American barbecue, the roles of race and gender in barbecue culture, and the many ways barbecue has been portrayed in our art and literature. It’s a spicy story that involves noted Americans from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama.




The American Way of Eating


Book Description

A journalist traces her 2009 immersion into the national food system to explore how working-class Americans can afford to eat as they should, describing how she worked as a farm laborer, Wal-Mart grocery clerk, and Applebee's expediter while living within the means of each job.




American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes


Book Description

In this groundbreaking anthology, celebrated food writer Molly O’Neill gathers the very best from over 250 years of American culinary history. This literary feast includes classic accounts of iconic American foods: Henry David Thoreau on the delights of watermelon; Herman Melville, with a mouth-watering chapter on clam chowder; H. L. Mencken on the hot dog; M. F. K. Fisher in praise of the oyster; Ralph Ellison on the irresistible appeal of baked yam; William Styron on Southern fried chicken. American writers abroad, like A. J. Liebling, Waverly Root, and Craig Claiborne, describe the revelations they found in foreign restaurants; travellers to America, including the legendary French gourmet J. A. Brillat-Savarin, discover such native delicacies as turkey, Virginia barbecue, and pumpkin pie. Great chefs and noted critics discuss their culinary philosophies and offer advice on the finer points of technique; home cooks recount disasters and triumphs. A host of eminent American writers, from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman to Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, and Langston Hughes, add their distinctive viewpoints to the mix. American Food Writing celebrates the astonishing variety of American foodways, with accounts from almost every corner of the country and a host of ethnic traditions: Dutch, Cuban, French, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Irish, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, African, English, Japanese, and Mexican. A surprising range of subjects and perspectives emerge, as writers address such topics as fast food, hunger, dieting, and the relationship between food and sex. James Villas offers a behind-the-scenes look at gourmet dining through a waiter’s eyes; Anthony Bourdain recalls his days at the Culinary Institute of America; Julia Child remembers the humble beginnings of her much-loved television series; Nora Ephron chronicles internecine warfare among members of the “food establishment”; Michael Pollan explores what the label “organic” really means. Throughout the anthology are more than fifty classic recipes, selected after extensive research from cookbooks both vintage and modern, and certain to instruct, delight, and inspire home chefs.