"food history" news and stories

Cheer up, Linus: if you lived in Ukraine, you'd be glad the Great Pumpkin never showed up.

That's because, according to NPR, for centuries women in the former Soviet republic have used pumpkins to send a not-so-subtle message to would-be fiancés: essentially, "no."

A man would visit the home of a woman he wanted to marry. If the woman said yes, the family would break out the vodka. If her answer was no, "the poor guy was silently handed a pumpkin" and turned away.

Really, it's this image of youthful romance being dashed without a word, only the hand-off of an unwieldy gourd, that makes the whole thing sort of priceless. No apologies, no awkward explanations: just take your pumpkin and go home.

Summarizing what Christmas celebrants used to serve at their festive dinners is no simpler than listing what eaters today consider requisite holiday foods: For various families on a single city block, it might not feel like Christmas without getting drunk on eggnog; slicing up a pannetone; gorging on baccala; tucking into a roasted goose; slurping down glogg or munching on stollen.

Americans' conception of Christmas dinner has always turned on such inalienable attributes as ethnic heritage and birthplace: A first-generation Vietnamese-American living in Louisiana probably doesn't set the same Christmas table as a fourth-generation Swedish-American with a home in northern Minnesota.

Still, it's possible to get some sense of what early Americans deemed standard Christmas fare by examining what they served their society's least fortunate members. Holiday menus from prisons provide a pretty good guide to which foods Americans thought of as so indispensable that even robbers, counterfeiters and killers deserved to enjoy them come Dec. 25.

It took Hanukkah celebrants more than 2,000 years to hit upon the dish that's now considered the quintessential holiday food.

Potato latkes, as inextricably linked to the wintertime festival as dreidels, menorahs and chocolate gelt, are such a relatively recent addition to the Hanukkah canon that food writer Mimi Sheraton -- who grew up in a Jewish family in Flatbush -- was 30 years old before she realized the oily pancakes were connected to the holiday.

"Though my family observed that holiday with the weeklong lighting of the silver candelabra ... I never knew those marvelously crisp, hot, onion-scented latkes had anything whatsoever to do with the celebration," Sheraton wrote in 1981.

For many years, they didn't. While food plays a ritual role in many Jewish holidays, the only edible tradition associated with Hanukkah was the rather loosey-goosey custom of eating something with oil in it.

You've got just over three weeks left to submit a paper for the next Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The symposium was co-founded by Alan Davidson, whose name you may recognize from the spine of your copy of Oxford Companion to Food, which, if you are indeed a budding food historian, should certainly occupy a few inches on your bookshelf. Each year, food experts gather in, well, Oxford, England, to explore from every angle some theme in food history. The theme for 2009 is "Food and Language."

Anyone with a deep interest in food history may submit a paper (no later than March 15). If your paper is chosen, you get to attend this veritable who's who of the food world, with the added bonus of partaking in the culinary offerings of Raymond Blanc of Michelin-starred Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in England. Oh, and you have to present your ideas and respond to questions.

Check out the website as nothing I could say in this abbreviated space would do justice to the incredible range of scholarship presented at past symposia. And no, I've never been. Nor have I yet divined a topic for this year, even though I couldn't hope for a richer and more personally arresting topic than "Food and Language." But there's still time for me, and for you!

• Comforting economic woes with foods like apple pie.
• Chives: indoor herb for the winter.
• The Toronto Reference Library hosts a look into the history of food.
• Gordon isn't the only Ramsay -- get the deets on Tana Ramsay.
• Should Ontario farm workers get unionized?
• Recipes: Freddie's Bang-Bang Chicken, Peanut Noodles, Chicken and Pork Stew with Plantains and Potatoes, Jamie Oliver's Lamb Tartare, and Tortilla Espanola
• Wine: Go green with biodynamic wine and Nouveau Beaujolais time in Toronto.
• Ever wanted to taste a Dead Guy of the ale variety?
• A guide to Yuletide cheer.