Chestnut Economics

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When this staple food didn't roast on an open fire, it sparked an urge to increase profit and stoked flames of popular revolt
Chestnut season has passed. No more do the dusky, burnished hulls brim from bins in supermarkets and gourmet shops. No longer does their sweet, musky scent tempt passing shoppers to buy them -- a good thing, perhaps, when today they command a price too high for the budget-minded; but a strange development when you consider that for centuries chestnuts fed hapless farmers, friendless students, luckless gamblers and helpless children. (more…) Read More...

Poet-Taster (1): James Arthur

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Culinary verse to nourish you through the work week
New for 2013, The Austerity Kitchen's "Poet-Taster" series features culinary verse from contemporary poets.   The Kitchen Weeps Onion The kitchen weeps onion because the cook is dead. Pans strike chorus and the ladles keep a knock-kneed stride. Burners gleam more brightly. Chives, chives, and chives. Everyone seems so tired but the diners can't sleep. The kitchen tonight weeps onion, so everyone else must weep. What's the use in talking? Let's touch, and turn apart. The cook is quiet, cold, unearthly, and the turnip breaks its heart.   "The Kitchen Weeps Onion" appears in Charms Against Lightning, the debut collection from James Arthur published in November 2012 by Copper Canyon Press (reprinted with permission). Read More...

Gut Reaction

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The pleasure of the table surpasses even that of the text
"Food provokes an internal pleasure: inside the body, enclosed in it, not just beneath the skin, but in that deep, central zone, all the more primordial because it is soft, tangled, permeable, and called, in a very general sense, the intestines." -- Roland Barthes Read More...

Hive Minds

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The many honey hunters swarming the American frontier present a classic case of failing to see the forest for the bees
Of the various sorts of men blazing trails through the American frontier the honey hunter stood out as unique. Bold, elusive, secretive, he wandered much of the year, living off the land as he searched vast unclaimed forests for the pine stumps and oak hollows whose recesses harbored his liquid gold, and whose location, once discovered, he jealously guarded. (more…) Read More...

Turkey Day in the Land of the Garuda

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A New York medical woman of the fin de siècle recalls her first Thanksgiving among Indians of the non-American kind
No visions of turkey cutlets, mashed potatoes, jellied cranberries, rum punch or pumpkin pie danced in Arley Isabel Munson's head one Thanksgiving morning at the turn of the last century. Rather, her day's duties filled her thoughts as she rose before dawn in a small Indian village. (more…) Read More...

Bun of Contention

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"The people will never listen to reason on the subject of dear bread."
Pass some dinner rolls their way and today's weight-obsessed gastronomes, ever mindful of carbohydrates and calories, will likely demur. Yet such reticence history shows to be unusual; the attitude prevailed for centuries that a meal without bread was no meal at all. Peasants, burghers, artisans, beggars -- each alike clamored for a crust to munch with their meat. Two to three pounds of bread the typical working-class Parisian would consume, the typical Spaniard even more. Any fruit or vegetables on their tables appeared as accents, barely more than condiments. (more…) Read More...

The Cult of the Chafing Dish

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Convenient and easy to use, this storied piece of cookware won the devotion of everyone from confirmed bachelors to college co-eds
Bachelor, spinster, pensioner, penniless artist, yachtsman, marksman, shift worker, stockbroker, picnicker -- each prized his chafing dish. A forerunner of the fondue pot, the chafing dish, with its small spirit lamp and nickel-plated pans, catered to those whose needs were modest. Though it rendered Lilliputian portions, it could cook anything from deviled lobster and macaroni rarebit to fig cups, peanut drops and wine punch. This versatility made the chafing dish the favorite of lonely hearts, transients and other solitary sorts, who esteemed its ability to elevate dinner from mere utility to true tastiness. (more…) Read More...

Iambic Spooktameter

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Nothing says Halloween like hauntingly bad doggerel
"Bring forth the raisins and the nuts -- To-night All-Hallows' Spectre struts Along the moonlit way. No time is this for tear or sob, Or other woes our joys to rob, But time for Pippin and for Bob, And Jack-o'-lantern gay." -- J.K. Bangs, "Hallowe'en" (1910) Read More...

Morpheus Descending

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The various sleep-inducing beverages drunk throughout history represent humanity's quest for an effective knockout punch
Those winter nights on which Benjamin Franklin couldn't get to sleep, he'd hop out of bed, open the windows, turn down the bedclothes and wait until both they and he were thoroughly chilled before climbing back in. (more…) Read More...