An essay in today's New York Times Magazine muses on the cookbooks of James Beard, the pioneering American chef and food writer.

There seem to have been two Beards, writes Aleksandra Crapanzano - the sophisticated gastrophile with a taste for sea urchin mousseline, who awakened mid century Americans to the pleasures of fresh, high-quality ingredients, and the shameless crowd-pleaser and businessman, writing recipes for tomato soup cake and signing countless endorsement deals for kitchen products.

A new edition of "Beard on Food" loses the bad Sloppy Joe recipes found in Beard's seminal "American Cookery," and is instead full of the exuberant eater's musings - tales dining of pheasants in Provence, a digression on the history of fondue in Switzerland, Crapanzano writes.

It never fails.

You create a stunning tablescape a la Sandra Lee in the dining room. You set out a well-stocked bar in the hallway between the dining room and the living room. You even put plates of delicious snacks on the coffee table in the living room. Your dinner party is out there, and yet...

Every one of your guests ends up standing around the kitchen while you are still waiting for the last course to come out of the oven, holding their plates, clutching their cocktails, having the time of their lives. In the kitchen.

Why? Why, unappreciative-of-all-your-entertaining-efforts guests, why?!?!

A book entitled The Warmest Room in the House might have the answer. It studies the evolution of the kitchen over decades through to the 20th century. The book is available from Amazon for $16.47.

One of the podcasts I subscribe to is Hidden Kitchens, produced by the Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva). Typically what happens to me with podcasts is that I let them build up for a while and then I go through a binge, listening to one after another. This is what happened while I was sitting in the Chicago airport around 5 am on Sunday morning, waiting for my connecting flight that would get me back in Philly. I was looking for something entertaining and interesting and so started listening to the back log of Hidden Kitchen episodes on the pod.

I listened to several episodes, but there was one in there that I think that every food lover should check out. Originally aired in October 2007, this one is all about the invention of the Frito. It is fascinating because it consists almost entirely of interviews with the daughters of the man who innovated Fritos. He was something of a health food evangelist and was trying to create a side dish, not a snack/junk food. It is an interesting listen and made my wait in the airport far more interesting than it could have been.

A team of archaeologists has recently made a discovery that, while it probably won't make it into may children's picture books - unlike many of the discoveries about past civilizations - could very well make it into a cookbook someday. They discovered the remains of the world's first home-grown chili peppers in what is now western Ecuador. The discovery derailed the long-standing belief that residents of higher and more arid areas, like what are now Peru and Mexico, were the first to grow chilies by more than 1,000 years. There is no question about the time frame for the existence of the chili plants that were identified by "microfossils from grinding stones and charred ceramic cookware" because there has been so much study done of the pottery that "the dates [are] all very tight."

This discovery shows that chili peppers were one of the oldest domesticated foods in the world. More research is planned to try and discover exactly how the people living in villages in Ecuador at that time used the chilies.

Historians have recently made a claim that is rather upsetting to the British food community, disputing the origin of the famous Cornish pasty, a handheld pie usually filled with meat, for anyone unlucky enough to have missed out on them). It was long assumed to have originated in Cornwall, from where it takes its name. It turns out, according to Dr. Todd Gray, chairman of the Friends of Devon's Archives, that they actually originated in Devon.

Dr. Gray apparently discovered an historical document that references the making of pasties as early as 1510, while the first recipe of record in Cornwall didn't appear until 1746. As you might expect with any regional icon, emotions run high on the subject, especially for those in Cornwall. Most other experts, including that author of The Official Encyclopedia of the Cornish Pasty and the spokesman for the Cornish Pasty Association, seem to think that it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the first instance of a pasty being made and, since pastry/bread vessels were fairly common "as early as the 1100s," the fact that there is a dated, "official" recipe for the modern pasty proves little about the actual origin.

Somehow, the fact that August 10th is National S'mores Day managed to sneak by us, but these delicious treats are worth a mention, even if it is a bit belated.

If you're not familiar with s'mores, they are made by sandwiching a toasted marshmallow and a piece of chocolate in between two graham crackers. The name of the treat comes from the two words "some more," clearly combined because people often wanted to have at least a second serving after having one s'more. The treat was developed by campers in the early part of the 20th century, making use of the fairly new mass-produced marshmallows. Marshmallows were easy to transport, as were candy bars and graham crackers, and the marshmallows could be warmed easily over a fire to make a delicious treat in a situation where other types of sweets would have been difficult to come by.

As we've seen, there are museums for all sorts of food-related items: sake, Pez, mustard and moist towlettes, just to name a few. So, it should come as no surprise that there's also a banana museum. Yep, the Washington Banana Museum is in Auburn, WA. Their "virtual museum" features tons of banana ephemera from the collection, including lots of vintage ads, clothing, photographs and assorted tchatckes. According to the website, the museum features around 4,000 banana-related items, all of which are overseen by curator Ann Mitchell Lovell. Everyone needs a hobby...

Baker's Chocolate is one of the most famous chocolate brands in the country, though it is not the kind of chocolate bar that you pick up for a snack. Just like its name implies, almost all of Baker's Chocolate is used for baking. This means that it is a product that is often tossed into a shopping basket without a thought, when it turns out that it is one of the most interesting things on the shelf.

The business began in 1765, when Dr. James Baker went into the chocolate making business with a young man named John Hannon. They formed the Baker's Chocolate Company in 1780 and the company has been doing business ever since, making it America's oldest chocolate company. Their chocolate was also one of the country's first packaged and branded products that were nationally available, as many other goods did not travel or store well.

Originally, their product was primarily used for making sweetened chocolate drinks, grating the solid chocolate into hot water. In 1870, the company came out with their first baking booklet, which was 12 pages long and given away with many products. From that book sprang numerous other recipes and baking books and culminated in a collection of one-bowl recipes that made the chocolate well-known to time-pressed home chefs in the 1990s, over 200 years after the company began production.

Ice cream cones are an American invention - at least, they were invented in America. The original source of the concept is up for debate. Generally the story goes that a waffle vendor was next to an ice cream vendor at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. When the ice cream vendor ran out of cups, the waffle vendor - a Syrian named Ernest A. Hamwi, who sold a crispy pastry actually known as zalabis - rolled his product into a cone to hold the ice cream.

This is not the first time an ice cream cone was seen in the US, though. The idea was patented in New York in 1903, a full year earlier by an Italian man named Italo Marchiony, who is said to have been making the cones since 1896. The ideas were independently conceived, but it is interesting to note that the time was clearly the right one for the ice cream cone.

St Louis, as a town, is the reason for the success of the cones. Bakeries with special equipment started to produce the then-named cornucopia cones. As factories looked for easier ways than hand-rolling to produce the cones, batter-based cones, which were poured into molds and are now often known as sugar cones, were developed. Sales of cones of all kinds took off and the rest, as they say, is history.

Actually, according to The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, nutria is a red meat, but it supposedly tastes like rabbit or dark meat turkey. More than a little confusing, I know. What is clear is that Louisiana has a surplus of these 20 pound South American swamp rodents, which the LDWF kindly dubs "fur bearing herbivores." As some of you may know, Louisiana has, for several years, had a campaign going to try to cut down on the population (the nutria population, that is) by convincing people to eat to eat these critters, which were originally brought in for their fur, but then escaped and wreaked havoc on the local greenery. Also known as coypu, the nutria is apparently also a host for a type of nematode that can infect human skin and cause 'nutria itch,' according to Wikipedia. Nevertheless, the LDWF has plenty of recipes for the little guys, the names of which are too good not to mention: there's Heart Healthy 'Crock-Pot' Nutria, nutria sausage, nutria chili, "Stuffed Nutria Hindquarters," and "Enola's Smothered Nutria." The site also has over 20 photos of how to butcher a nutria, but we don't need to get into that right now.

New versions of history textbooks for primary and middle schools in India have been updated to omit mention of the beef-eating practices of ancient Hindus, according to The Toronto Star. Previously, many historical texts used in Indian schools made note of how cows were slaughtered and eaten for festival meals and also used as ritual offerings by people of both upper and lower classes in ancient India. These sections were omitted under pressure from Hindu activists who found the historical references insulting, the Star reported. The piece also quotes several noted historians who feel that the sections should remain in the textbooks, as there are a variety of historical documents supporting the carnivorous claims.

The networks must have tired of having reality show contestants battle for rewards of bagged Doritos and beer when stranded on deserted islands because they're taking the challenge of survival even further. The eight contestants on the weight loss show Man's First Diet (working title) will live with bushmen in the Kalahari desert and follow their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The men will hunt with the tribesmen while the women will "have to live according to the San Bushmen's strict social rules, looking on the ground for tubers and learning how to process and pound them to make them edible."

One of the goals of the show is to regain the knowledge of "the essential evolutionary link between food and effort." In other words, the contestants will hopefully realize that they should appreciate the food that they have at home, rather than inhaling packages of chips in front of the television. Whether the experiment, which will be monitored closely by experts evaluating their physical and mental health, will be a successful one remains to be seen, though it does seem likely that the participants will have difficulty transferring their new skills to life at home.

It is unknown how long the contestants will be out in Africa, but the show is planned to air over four 1-hour time slots on BBC3 in England.

 

Zinfandel grapes are one of the first types of the fruit that were grown in California, with some vineyards dating back over 100 years and still producing fruit from the "old growth" vines. Generally, the zin grapes were first used only for blending with other grapes in wine making, but during the 1960s and '70s, pure zinfandels produced in California came into great popularity. The fruity, light flavor of white zinfandel introduced many people to wine, while potent red zinfandels continue to gain in popularity. Celebrating its heritage as the "original" California wine, state senators voted to make zinfandel California's official historic wine. The first draft of the bill actually called to make it the official wine of California, not qualifying the designation with the word "historic," but lawmakers did not want to single one wine (or grape) out over the others that are grown in the state.

 

History buffs with a sweet tooth can now get an idea of what chocolate tasted like to American colonists. American Heritage Chocolate, made by Mars, aims to recreate the chocolate of yore by using centuries-old methods and recipes. Stone ground cocoa beans result in a grittier chocolate infused with spices such as cinnamon, anise, nutmeg, red pepper, orange and vanilla. The chocolate comes in bars, sticks and a drink mix. As is fitting for a historical chocolate, American Heritage is available only at Fort Ticonderoga, Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, Mount Vernon and The Smithsonian. An AP story has more.

[Via USA TODAY]

Yes, those creepy little pebbles of carbon dioxide have been around, in various forms, for 50 years, according to a recent press release from Pop Rocks, Inc. I was never a big fan of the seltzer-in-your-skull feeling that Pop Rocks provided, but I found some of the history in the release pretty interesting. Apparently they were originally developed by a General Foods chemist in an attempt to create instant carbonation for soft drinks. PopRocksCandy.com has more history and background on several rumors involving CO2 candy and exploding kids. To celebrate the anniversary, Pop Rocks, Inc. is re-releasing the candy in retro packaging like the one you see here.