The Bread of Idleness
Since antiquity, it has paid to work for the government
Simplicity, Voluntary or Otherwise
In colonial America, something as simple as a bed or spoon divided the haves from the have-nots
Quiet in the Kitchen
Illustration from A Book About Travelling, Past and Present (1877) I'm in the midst of preparing for a cross-country move that I have to make…
An Embarrassment of Citrus
"A great liquid bite ... covers the lower part of his face with pip and drip"
The Benevolence of the Butcher
Dressing meat and stuffing sausage meant being a cut above the rest
Fair Prices and Fowl
Quœ virtus et quant, boni, sit vivere parvo
Bleak House
Bringing the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people meant bringing greater misery to the already wretched
Peccaminous Peckishness
Sailing from the Tropic of Cancer to the Delta of Venus shouldn't be done on an empty stomach
Diner Forty Niner
There may have been gold in "them thar hills," but there wasn't much to eat
No Taste for Industry
Corporate hegemony bites
The Great Hog-Eating Confederacy
Tobacco and cotton may have enriched the American South, but pork and corn fed it
Ill-Digested Plots
"Nature does not smile upon the consumptive and dyspeptic"
The People's Kitchen
Does the modern workplace cafeteria owe its existence to one 19th-century activist's effort to feed the laboring multitudes?
Batter of Perception
The virtue of unleavened impressions
Hex Before Marriage
Turning on the charm used to mean something quite different
Social Habits
A stay at a medieval monastery often featured a lavish meal hot from the friar