"food writing" news and stories

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For me, it's cured fish or perhaps cold, leftover dark-meat chicken, gnawed bare-handed and shared with my minimally patient dogs.

For my husband -- who can't tolerate the smell of the pickled herring I down like a rabid porpoise -- it's almost inevitably the nearest Chinese joint's chicken and mixed vegetables sauteed in brown sauce, chased by a bourbon Old Fashioned, muddled from the unpretty orange that tags along in the delivery bag. The cocktail, I can fully support. The gloppily sauced crinkle-cut carrots have featured prominently in several of my nightmares.

These are rituals of a chosen solo cuisine, and Deborah Madison, author of "What We Eat When We Eat Alone", says it's not at all unusual that we're so diametrically opposed.

Deborah Madison: People eat what their spouses don't like a lot of the time. A number of men said of blood sausages, 'My wife doesn't like blood sausage, so when she's gone that's what I cook.'

Slashfood: How did you get started on this topic?

DM: Many years ago, I was invited to go with Oldways Preservation and Trust -- which is a food think tank out of Boston -- to a lot of Mediterranean countries. I got to bring my husband, who's an artist, and he was just a little awkward, I think. He didn't really know people but knew of them so he started asking this question kind of as a way of breaking the ice. He kept a little notebook and I never knew about this until I found it when we were moving a few years later.

SF: So many of the people you interviewed have common experiences -- they'll make a big steak or have herring. And then there were some that didn't fit the mold. What was the strangest thing you heard?

Read more about solo toast, herring and margarita mix after the jump.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to write about food and turn that knowledge into a career, then Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) has introduced just the thing for you. They've created the Center for Food Media, which offers a range of professional development classes dealing with food and media.

The Center for Food Media offers classes on all aspects of food writing (recipes, blogs, restaurant reviews), food history and pop culture, podcasting, and food styling. You can also learn about writing cookbooks and how to deal with agents, and how to be a TV chef. Coming next year will be classes on wine writing and recipe testing. Classes start at $75 (for a one session class), which is a quite reasonable amount to learn some things that should help further your career.

[Via Eater]

I've stumbled across something of an food writing crisis. Namely, my problem stems from the fact that I don't always want to feature cookbooks in a column that is clearly labeled "Cookbook of the Day." In the past, I've stretched the limits of the category, spotlighting books of essays that include a few recipes or even once writing about a cookbook that teaches you how to cook for your dog. Today's Cookbook of the Day is a volume written by Calvin Trillin, one of the greatest food writers to ever live. However, it does not contain a single recipe.

In spite of the fact that it doesn't offer the reader lists of ingredients and cooking instructions, Alice, Let's Eat is a book that is rooted firmly in the world of eating and pleasure. First published in 1978, it contains essays that were previously published in the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly as well as other publications. Despite that, it reads like a cohesive volume, taking the reader to barbecue joints in North Carolina, local markets in England and crawfish stands in Martinique.

This is one of the books that I turn to when I start to lose touch with my love for food, when the busy-ness of life prevents me from fully appreciating the process of shopping, cooking and eating. Lately I've been struggling to see food as a joy and have instead seen it as just one more thing I have to deal with. Trillin always sees eating as a pleasuresome adventure and his enthusiasm usually helps me shake off my malaise and jump back into the joy of food.

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Back at the end of January, I spent five days up in New York City, attending a writing conference and hanging out with my cousins in Brooklyn. One of the high points of the conference was the session I attended that consisted entirely of food writers reading from their work. One of the writers was Sara Roahen, and she read a piece about the Sazerac (a drink made from rye whiskey and bitters) from her about-to-be published book about food and life in New Orleans.

The book, officially titled Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, is now available and it should be winging its way to me even as we speak (thanks to the wonder that is Amazon.com). It contains recipes and stories (and we all know that's just about my favorite thing in the whole world). When I heard Roahen read, by the end of the chapter, I was nearly panting for a Sazerac (and I don't particularly even like whiskey). If that is any indication, I am certain the rest of the book will be as vividly descriptive and tantalizing.

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Here's another one that isn't exactly a cookbook, but it is a publication about food that I thought many of you might be interested in. It is called Alimentum and it is a literary journal devoted to food writing. It is published twice a year and includes poetry, essays, short stories and other creative pieces that in some way relate to food, eating and cooking. A few of the contributors also include recipes with their submissions, which tips the balance (at least in my mind) into the cookbook camp.

The current issue includes; a love letter to Fortified Oat Flakes, a cereal that the author loved but has now disappeared from the grocery store shelves; Richard Wile's remembrance of his daughter (who died at the age of 18) and the complex sandwich from the Moosewood Cookbook she used to make; and how to make lunch for a very picky eater.

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