Book Reviews
The Food of a Younger Land
How America used to eat.
By Bridget Huber | June 22, 2009 edition
Food was local, seasonal, and produced on a small scale. Social life revolved around harvests, public suppers, and feasts. And thousands of unemployed writers were given jobs chronicling, among other things, the way the country ate. Sound like heaven? Actually, this was the United States three generations ago.
The Food of a Younger Land, the latest book edited by Mark Kurlansky, is a collection of food writing that traipses in and out of kitchens, church suppers, and lumber camps to paint a portrait of American food culture in the 1930s and early ’40s, before it was forever changed by the advent of national highways, fast food, and industrial agriculture.
The book collects writing produced by the Federal Writers Project (FWP), a Works Projects Administration program that employed nearly 7,000 writers at its peak. Though most of its writers were novices, luminaries such as Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, and Zora Neale Hurston are among its alumni. FWP writers collected oral histories and wrote ethnographies and guidebooks.
In the late 1930s, the FWP turned its attention to food, beginning a book that was to be called “America Eats.” Food writing at that time was largely confined to recipe books and women’s magazines that “followed the belief that women were not interested in politics and social problems,” Kurlansky writes. In contrast, this book was to approach food seriously and divide its attention evenly between the food itself and the customs and culture that surrounded it.
But World War II changed all that. “America Eats” was abruptly abandoned after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the unedited manuscripts were sent to the Library of Congress. A few years ago, Kurlansky stumbled upon the boxes in the course of research for another book, and gleaned “The Food of a Younger Land.”
A highlight is Mari Tomasi’s essay, “Italian Feed in Vermont.” The city of Barre was a granite center and drew droves of skilled carvers from northern Italy. But the trade was a dangerous one and made widows of many young wives. To support their children, some of these women opened their home kitchens, cooking “Italian feeds” for truck drivers, bureaucrats, and other professionals.
Tomasi describes the scene in Maria Stefani’s dining room after the appetizers and pasta course: “The food looks good; it tastes better. Geniality expands. Stomachs gorge in leisurely contentment. Belts loosen. Maria’s daughter, in horror, lest glutted appetites fail to appreciate the joys yet to come, hints subtly to novices, ‘Will you have salad with your meat? And will you have fried chicken or chicken alla cacciatore?’”
Another gem is William Lindsay White writing on barbecue, Kansas-style, which means cooking a steer underground for 30 hours. The meat must be eaten within an hour of being carved, he warns, for “if the sun ever rises on Barbecue its flavor vanishes like Cinderella’s silks and it becomes cold baked beef – staler in the chill dawn than illicit love.”
Forget about finding barbecue at a roadside joint; the best is found at celebrations. White writes, “True barbecue, like true love, cannot be bought but must always be given, and so is found only as a part of lavish hospitality in the cow country.”
And then there’s Claire Warner Churchill’s venomous denouncement of the mashed potatoes served in restaurants: “No, I am not to be fooled by your whipped potatoes, your fluffed potatoes, your watered pastes that pass in many restaurants for honest to God mashed potatoes. I know them for what they are: horrible travesties upon a self-respecting dish of mashed, and I mean mashed, not macerated potatoes.”
Though many of the essays concern rural delicacies such as beaver tail, chitterlings, and maple sugar, city life is represented, too. There’s a snappy paean to a mechanical lunchroom called the Automat; an account of the famous Los Angeles chili and burger stand, Ptomaine Tommy’s; and a long list of soda fountain slang: “Nervous Pudding” is a gelatin dessert. A “pot walloper” is a cook. And “Yesterday, today, and forever” is hash.
The book’s biggest weakness is its unevenness – which is not too surprising, given that manuscripts were lost and many FWP writers were inexperienced. And though it does represent much diversity, Jewish and Asian food are missing.
Racism is also evident throughout. In many places, rural blacks are quoted in dialect, while their white counterparts, who surely also spoke a distinctive English, were not.
But overall, “The Food of a Younger Land” succeeds at giving a snapshot of the US’s food system just before it was radically altered by changes in infrastructure, culture, economy, and – sadly – the deterioration of the environment.
Kurlansky writes: “But the most striking difference of all was that in 1940 America had rivers on both coasts teeming with salmon, abalone steak was a basic dish in San Francisco, the New England fisheries were still booming with cod and halibut, maple trees covered the Northeast and syruping time was as certain as a calendar, and flying squirrels still leapt from conifer to hardwood in the uncut forests of Appalachia.”
Though the essays in this book were written some 70 years ago, the food system they depict is remarkably like the one the Michael Pollans and Alice Waters of the world today argue for so passionately – one that narrows the gap between consumer and producer, is sustainable, and resituates breaking bread together to the center of our culture.
Bridget Huber is a Monitor intern.
( More stories )
Comments
2. Olivia | 06.23.09
I don’t think harking back to the good old days is progress. One can’t look backward and move forward at the same time. That’s why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters aren’t really forward thinkers; they’re just regurgitating the thoughts and practices of a past era, coming across, to me, not as intelligent, but as unevolved, unenlightened.
If you want true revolutionary thinking, read The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle (www.worldpeacediet.com). Dr. Tuttle explains in eloquent, elegant prose how we humans have been conditioned for centuries to believe that killing and eating animals is a normal, natural, inevitable part of life. Such a mindset is part of the selfishness and greed that is debasing our mental environment and devouring our physical environment.
It may have been thought necessary at one time to eat animal flesh to survive, but we’ve long since learned that “meat” and “dairy” are in fact not needed for a balanced diet and a thriving body (see the scientifically sound “China Study” by T. Colin Campbell). Everything points to the fact that it’s high time to move beyond that obsolete thinking.
Speaking of sustainability, the best way to sustain the earth and its inhabitants (human and nonhuman alike) is to quit the cruel practice of breeding and raising animals only to butcher them for our sensual gratification.
As for breaking bread together, we can do that, literally and figuratively, without breaking the bones (and other body parts) of innocent creatures.
And we can narrow the gap between consumer and producer just fine with our vegetable and fruit crops. Compassionate people don’t have the stomach to kill animals, which is one reason hunting is on the wane. It’s only because the sanitized-looking wrapped flesh in grocery stores doesn’t look like it came from a living being that most humans are able to stomach it. (Before they are desensitized by the adults in their lives, children who learn the truth about where their “meat” came from cry and beg to be excused from eating their friends.)
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
3. DLKeur | 06.23.09
Gee, Olivia, do you have an agenda? Sure sounds like it. Smacks of vegan vigilantism. Do you also support imposing vegan diets on the populace by legislation and decree? Ah, that’s called tyranny, you know.
4. Dan | 06.23.09
Olivia,
Go play with the lions and frolic with the bears. Swim with the sharks and pet the anaconda. Better yet, go graze with your fellow intellects, the cattle, and await your fate. Run mindlessly with the grass-eaters, following the herd over cliffs and into raging rivers.
As for me, my eyes face fully forward. They are not on the side of my head like a herbivore’s, but frontally placed because I am a hunter– like dogs, cats, and all other meat-eaters. Predation got us where we are today, created our brains, built our civilizations. Some say you are what you eat. I say I eat what I am. And I am animal protein, so animal protein is what I shall eat.
Neither I nor my children have any qualms about killing and butchering the food we eat. It is as natural a thing to do as walking upright or speaking language. Pheasant, duck and rabbit is regularly on our menu. Humans have done the same for millions of years. You, dear Olivia, have watched ‘Bambi’ a few times too many I fear, and are completely out of touch with reality. Or perhaps you merely suffer from some kind of cognitive difficulties connected with protein deficiency. Go have a nice steak– and in the clarity of mind which might follow a bit of decent nutrition, perhaps you will be able to see yourself for the wild-eyed fanatic you have become.
And if none of that works, perhaps you should ride with me on my tractor while a field is being plowed to provide you with your vegetables and other non-meat food items. Those hawks circling above? They are eating the rodents and snakes whose land you are stealing for your precious food– and you are the real killer, not the hawks for you have stolen their hiding place. Wallow in shame as you see the millions of insects displaced for your gluttonous appetite for greenery. Thousands of mammals and reptiles– gone. Your hands are bloody– bloody with the dirt of the plow, which is as much a killer of animals as any arrow, spear, bullet, or slaughter-house hammer gun. In your righteous blindness, you simply cannot see. I pity you, but most of all I fear you, because you represent that characteristic mindlessness of mankind, our cursed tendency to place beliefs and ideology over pragmatism and reality, to believe what our “conscience” tells us instead of our eyes.
5. Olivia | 06.24.09
DLKeur: I’d say the animals, who were not made to be our slaves, consider my “agenda” freedom and your “agenda” tyranny.
Dan: I’ll take conscience (true sight) over physical eyesight any day, thanks. My models are forward thinkers and reformers, such as Copernicus and Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and this newspaper’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, all of who refused to believe conventional wisdom, despite the persecution they endured. Defending the status quo doesn’t help society progress. There will always be a few who see beyond their times, and I’d rather be accused of being ahead of the curve than behind the eight ball. As for mindlessness, I believe you’ve got it backwards, sir. It’s more witless to feed crops to animals so that humans can eat them indirectly (lots of wasted water, energy and land in that process) than it is for us to eat the crops directly. To do the least harm (and thus the most good) is the best anyone can hope for. When humans act unselfishly toward all species, it turns out there’s always plenty for all species — including the hawks. You write well, but you can’t really “see” anything except what you’ve been programmed by your culture to see, and that’s a pity.
To all: excuse my “hogging” the above space for comments; I thought I hit the submit button only once.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Leave a Comment
We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. The comments feature is a forum to discuss the ideas in our stories. Constructive debate - even pointed disagreement - is welcome, but personal attacks on other commenters are not, and will not be published.
Tip: Do not write a novel. Keep it short. We will not publish lengthy comments. Come up with your own statements. This is not a place to cut and paste an email you received. If we recognize it as such, we won't post it.
Please do not post any comments that are commercial in nature or that violate copyrights.
Finally, we will not publish any comments that we regard as obscene, defamatory, or intended to incite violence.
1. Olivia | 06.22.09
I don’t think harking back to the good old days is progress. One can’t look backward and move forward at the same time. That’s why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters aren’t really forward thinkers; they’re just regurgitating the thoughts and practices of a past era, coming across, to me, not as intelligent, but as unevolved, unenlightened.
If you want true revolutionary thinking, read The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle (www.worldpeacediet.com). Dr. Tuttle explains in eloquent, elegant prose how we humans have been conditioned for centuries to believe that killing and eating animals is a normal, natural, inevitable part of life. Such a mindset is part of the selfishness and greed that is debasing our mental environment and devouring our physical environment.
It may have been thought necessary at one time to eat animal flesh to survive, but we’ve long since learned that “meat” and “dairy” are in fact not needed for a balanced diet and a thriving body (see the scientifically sound “China Study” by T. Colin Campbell). Everything points to the fact that it’s high time to move beyond that obsolete thinking.
Speaking of sustainability, the best way to sustain the earth and its inhabitants (human and nonhuman alike) is to quit the cruel practice of breeding and raising animals only to butcher them for our sensual gratification.
As for breaking bread together, we can do that, literally and figuratively, without breaking the bones (and other body parts) of innocent creatures.
And we can narrow the gap between consumer and producer just fine with our vegetable and fruit crops. Compassionate people don’t have the stomach to kill animals, which is one reason hunting is on the wane. It’s only because the sanitized-looking wrapped flesh in grocery stores doesn’t look like it came from a living being that most humans are able to stomach it. (Before they are desensitized by the adults in their lives, children who learn the truth about where their “meat” came from cry and beg to be excused from eating their friends.)