War and food, a timeless tale. Unfortunately. Today’s story is about beef, the meat – as we all know – that become synonymous with Britain and went on to become a major force in the American economy in the nineteenth century, as well as providing for a rather mythological view of the American West. (Hint:…
Category: Beef
Farming is NOT a Romantic Occupation
Farming is not a romantic occupation. In spite of pastoral memoirs like Tim Stark’s Heirloom and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, the reality of farming means backbreaking work and early mornings, poor harvests and lots of worry as Mother Nature hurls hail at a field of ripe corn. But it’s…
Boeuf (Beef) à la Mode: British Beef Made American
Cooking at the White House wasn’t always the glam job it is today. Thomas Jefferson’s French chef Honoré Julien – who’d cooked for George Washington, too – wanted to quit upon seeing the kitchen at the White House. And George Washington placed a want ad for a cook: ”A cook is wanted for the family of…
From Mother Russia with Love: Meaty Mushrooms and Relentless Lent
One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory…
A Cook in Colonial Africa
Esa nearly drops the wine bottle, all because of colonial British ideas about propriety in cooking and dining. That’s from an unforgettable scene in the film, “Out of Africa,” epitomizing the British way with food in their colonies. And their focus on the cooks, mostly male, who worked for them. Meryl Streep, as Baroness Karen…
Les Rêves de Julia (Julia’s Dreams): Meditations and Memories
Food and cooking serve as metaphors for life and love. Each plays a huge role in the way I see and photograph the world. I seek to nourish both eye and soul with my photography, in much the same way I feed bodies through my cooking. The work of food photographer Penny de los Santos…
Keep Calm and Carry On: Cows as Zen Masters
The cow stood there, stoically it seemed to me, chewing with lazy abandon, while I fumbled with the focus on my camera. She rolled her big weepy eyes, as cows are wont to do when confronted with something new. Coincidence or not? I pressed the shutter and peered at the tiny LCD screen, the sun’s…
The Meat of the Matter: A Question of Sacred Reverence
Meat eating presents modern society with a bit of a dilemma. How to raise and slaughter large numbers of animals under humane conditions, while keeping the price down and within wallet reach of most consumers? That’s the major issue, tinged with other, often moralistic, questions. First, right up front, I am not a vegetarian, and…
French Chefs Abroad: Alexis Soyer and His Irish Famine Soup Kitchen
It is to be regretted that men of science do not interest themselves more than they do on a subject of such vast magnitude as this; for I feel confident that the food of a country might be increased at least one-third, if the culinary science was properly developed, instead of its being slighted as…
