Comments on: Hard, yet fruity, times

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:34:29 +0000

I bet Buckeye farmers didn’t mind seeing those annoying “chucks” taken out of their fields, either. In a random agricultural and foodways note, this week I happened on a 1790s British traveler’s journal in which the author categorically but not wholly pejoratively, it seemed, referred to the young women who he met in Connecticut as “corn-fed,” a usage that during the next two centuries found its way out across the American corn belt, from Zanesville to Nebraska. Those Brits didn’t know too much about American “corn,” though.

By: HistoryMaven

HistoryMaven — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:07:05 +0000

From my research on the Great Depression in Ohio (courtesy of the Hamilton Hamilton Daily News, July 7, 1932:

“TASTY”
ZANESVILLE, O., July 1—
(AP) The unemployed and poor hereabouts are getting a break. With plenty of garden truck,and blackberries, they are hunting groundhogs of which there is an abundance.

Groundhog meat, especially that of young animals was described as “tasty.” Baby ones,now one-third grown, are prepared in the same manner as rabbits, eight pound
ones are roasted with sweet potatoes, while old ones weighing 12 pounds are pickled and put inside for the winter.

By: Oroboros

Oroboros — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:34:05 +0000

Speaking of kitchens, 9News has a segment coming up in a minute on the “chore wars” and gender stereotypes. I don’t see the report on their website yet, but it may be posted soon.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:28:47 +0000

I think an “orchard” history of the Great Depression might be a very interesting and useful thing; throwing real cultural light on foodways, class relations, property rights, &c. Remnant urban orchards; seasonal secondary labor migration flows; a Twentieth Century vestige of struggles over the use of the commons, customary gleaners’ rights, tramps eying cooling pies on Grandma’s windowsill, swing sets, courtship rituals, and who knows what not else? And all of this viewed through a shimmering, quivering, translucent twenty-pound mound of pastel gellatin, what’s not to like? Let’s eat (‘specially as the same-old leftovers become noisome).

I picked up a minced “meat” pie the other day, and while it was good, “hard [but] fruity” sort of describes it. As one of Philadelphia’s great columnists, Clark DeLeon, used to point out, no one notices how many Minces lay down their lives annually to sustain this gory ritual. BTW, I didn’t notice the Prez. pardoning the national first bird this year. Did that gobbler have to pay full price as a sacrificial offering for that cheeky couple who crashed the big tent party the other evening?

By: Oroboros

Oroboros — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:34:35 +0000

Strange.... I referenced a form of proto-porn called "Stag Magazines" in a post here within the last couple weeks and thought about linking to the Lileks stag collection (NSFW). There's a lot of bizarre stuff across his site. I've been in the Gallery of Regrettable Food before and it has elements of both thisiswhyyourefat.com and regretsy.com.