In 1820 a Quaker nurseryman and farmer in York, Pennsylvania, cultivated a deep red, lopsided apple that he christened "Jonathan Fine Winter." His neighbors savored its sweetness and appreciated its shelf life (it kept through the winter). These qualities quickened demand; Jonathan Jessop's Jonathan became the most sought-after apple in the area. With it the mild husbandman could be said to have struck gold. (more…) Read More...

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry." -- George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) Read More...

“Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.” -- B.C. Forbes         Read More...

I have an essay on The New Inquiry's main site on mushrooming in Providence, Rhode Island, wilding in Brooklyn and the work of now largely forgotten (but once beloved) illustrator William Hamilton Gibson. Read More...

Like the saint, the philosopher and the poet, the pig enjoys only posthumous appreciation. While alive, he finds himself scorned and derided. The public considers him vile, a creature of appetites and odors -- and little besides. "In aspect and general form he is not merely uninviting, but absolutely repulsive," writes H.D. Richardson in Pigs; Their Origin and Varieties (1847). "[E]very moment of his life-time is seemingly devoted to the attainment of sensual or disgusting objects, which constitute his enjoyments." Such apparent abandon to base pleasures explains his pariah status. Better tasted than seen or heard was the attitude most folks had toward him. (more…) Read More...

"Norman Bates: You -- ... you eat like a bird. "Marion Crane: [Looking around at the stuffed birds while eating] And you'd know, of course. "Norman Bates: No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression 'eats like a bird' ... it-it's really a fals-fals-fals-fals-fals-ity. Because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I-I don't really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things. You know ... taxidermy." -- From Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) Read More...

In 1786 Russia's Catherine the Great invited the Mennonites to leave their West Prussian farms and settle the vast, empty steppes she had seized from the Turks. She knew their reputation for hard work, which they made evident by excelling in dairying, crafts, trade and farming, and so prospering when others failed. Industriousness they had in spades; what they lacked was religious freedom. To sweeten her offer the good czarina promised them tolerance and the liberty to worship as they pleased. For good measure she also exempted them from military duty and granted them license to operate breweries, flour mills, stores and bakeries. (more…) Read More...

"Well, isn't Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else -- and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?" -- Djuna Barnes, "Becoming Intimate with the Bohemians" (1916) Read More...

Emboldened by the tales of kings Harald and Olaf, of their rude castles perched atop cliffs and their great fleets of small vessels, excited by their feats of valor and violence amid forests and fjords, former Illinois Supreme Court Justice John Dean Caton decided to set off for Norway. At the time of his decision in London for the first leg of what would become a months-long adventure, he asked how a body traveled to this rugged land. Only with difficulty, people told him; not too many journey as far north as he intended. (more…) Read More...

"Beware the hobby that eats." -- Benjamin Franklin         Read More...

Doonhamers (as the natives of Dumfries are called) marveled at the devotion and exactitude Tom Wilson displayed as he rang the mid-steeple bell of the town's belltower. The chief ringer, he braved winter freezes, summer storms and autumn deluges to discharge his duty three times daily, even on holidays, when other bell ringers hid under their bedclothes. (more…) Read More...

"Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food."  -- Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées (ca. 1760-1790) Read More...

We don't often hear of writers wrangling with their weight. But diet and fast they often did. Virginia Woolf never took a second helping. Fearful of his "morbid propensity to fatten," Byron subsisted on dry biscuits and soda water. Anaïs Nin merely nibbled. Franz Kafka adopted the advice of nutritionist Horace Fletcher, who advised his followers to chew (one hundred times per minute, to be exact) their way to optimal health. Kafka lost so much weight from this routine that he remarked, "I am the thinnest person I have ever known." (more…) Read More...

"Not a single Western food has a color that could be called beautiful -- the only exceptions I can think of are salad and radishes. I'm in no position to speak of its nutritional value, but to the artist's eye it is a thoroughly uncivilized cuisine. On the other hand, artistically speaking, everything on a Japanese menu, from the soups to the hors d'oeuvres to the raw fish, is beautifully conceived. If you did no more than gaze at the banquet tray set before you at an elegant restaurant, without lifting a chopstick, and then go home again, the feast for the eyes would have been more than sufficient to make the visit worth your while." -- Natsume Soseki, Kusamakura (1906) Read More...

A New York newspaper (the exact one is unknown) reported that one evening in the summer of 1907 a dinner was given thirty-five feet under the sea by the inventor of a submarine christened The Argonaut. Along with thirteen guests, he boarded the vessel, which was was anchored at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and sank below the waves to travel several miles along the ocean floor. Postprandial entertainment consisted of two divers exiting via a special compartment in order to display the virtues of "the patent diving suits" they had donned. (more…) Read More...