In doing some research recently, I realized just what an amazing treasure we food-and-book-lovers have with all the food/culinary memoirs that have been surfacing for years. And as luck would have it, as is wont to happen these days with a few clicks and the right keywords, I came across an amazing bibliography compiled by Jessica … More A Plethora of Food/Culinary Memoirs for Your Reading Pleasure
To set the mood for the journey: In describing art/literature/photography, we English speakers are limited by our language. Other cultures, other languages contain words conveying succinctly what it took James Elkins 28 pages – or 14,000 words – to describe in “What Photography Is”. In Spanish, he could have just said, “Duende”, a word loosely … More The Armchair Traveler’s Spain: Books and Stories Guaranteed to Saturate Your Soul with Duende
I’d like to introduce you a most interesting woman, Sarah Rutledge. Call her Miss Sally, as did her kin and her friends. She wrote a cookbook, The Carolina Housewife, published in 1847, which tells a most remarkable story. Unlike Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife (1824), which tended to focus more on the victuals cooked and … More Introducing Sarah Rutledge, a Cookbook Author You’re Going to Get to Know Very Well!
If you’ve ever tried to read Chaucer in the original language, you know what you’re up against when you tackle a recipe dating from the poet’s time period. Actually, when you read The Canterbury Tales, you have it fairly easy, for there’s a multitude of resources to help you as you plunge through Chaucer’s Middle … More What’s That You Say??? Medieval Culinary Terminology Unmasked*
As I mentioned, albeit briefly, in “A Hastiness of Cooks”: A Practical Handbook for Use in Deciphering the Mysteries of Historic Recipes and Cookbooks, For Living-History Reenactors, Historians, Writers, Chefs, Archaeologists, and, of Course, Cooks, transcription is one of those things that makes all the difference when you’re trying to recreate historic recipes or analyzing … More Transcription of Medieval Documents, or, What an Online Resource!
Cousin Connie Atherton, or Constance as she wanted to be called – she always said it sounded more grownup, you know – inherited Grandma’s large coffee-brown eyes. Grandpa’s curly black hair went to his great-grandson Jake , whose sister Mildred emerged from their mother Flora’s uterus with long tapered fingers, a Doppelganger of Uncle George, … More Many Different Faces: Bibliography’s Extended Family
“Let me take your coat, my dear.” I heard her voice as I stepped off the elevator, into the penthouse suite at the Chicago Hilton on a snowy day in late December. The tall, white-haired woman standing there, holding out her hands to me, drew me over the threshold, welcoming me. The color of Forget-Me-Nots, … More Prelude to a Bio-Bibliography
