My current food book distraction. Yes, it is as good as everybody is saying it is. Tasty-sounding recipes, lovely pictures, and text that ties food and people together. Devouring....
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2016
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
More library fun!
My goodness! How did I miss Michigan State University's Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project?
Or the Nicole Di Bona Peterson Collection of Advertising Cookbooks at Duke University?
Or Service Through Sponge Cake, a collection of cookbooks at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis?
And Kitchen Historic has a list of links to cookbooks that makes me drool.
As if I didn't already have enough reading to do!
Or the Nicole Di Bona Peterson Collection of Advertising Cookbooks at Duke University?
Or Service Through Sponge Cake, a collection of cookbooks at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis?
And Kitchen Historic has a list of links to cookbooks that makes me drool.
As if I didn't already have enough reading to do!
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Libraries are your friend!
Okay, first...I'm alive.
Second...libraries are your friend. I expect you knew that already. However, over the weekend I was reminded of the joys that are University libraries. A couple of librarians from the University of Iowa were speaking at a conference/convention I was at, and mid-way through their presentation a lightbulb went on over my head. Louis Szathmary...University of Iowa special collections. I asked and was told that yes, they had his collection. The best part? Some of it is digitized.
Louis Szathmary was a Hungarian chef and bibliophile who emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became one of the early celebrity chefs, though his television appearances were limited to other peoples' shows. He amassed a collection of 18,000 or so food and cookery books, pamphlets, manuscripts and menus.
Szathmary's collection, in his own words, with links
While looking at the UI special collections, I was pleased to see that they also have Evelyn Birkby's papers. Evelyn Birkby was "Iowa's Best-Known Homemaker"...she had a radio program starting in 1950, and continued on the radio until 1991. During that time she also wrote newspaper columns and books.
A link to the digitized portions of her collection
Other University collections that might be of interest (but who don't seem to be quite as into digitizing and sharing online -- I may be wrong, I haven't poked around as much as I should have before writing this) are
Kansas State University, Clementine Paddleford collection
University of Michigan, Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive
Have any other suggestions for me?
Second...libraries are your friend. I expect you knew that already. However, over the weekend I was reminded of the joys that are University libraries. A couple of librarians from the University of Iowa were speaking at a conference/convention I was at, and mid-way through their presentation a lightbulb went on over my head. Louis Szathmary...University of Iowa special collections. I asked and was told that yes, they had his collection. The best part? Some of it is digitized.
Louis Szathmary was a Hungarian chef and bibliophile who emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became one of the early celebrity chefs, though his television appearances were limited to other peoples' shows. He amassed a collection of 18,000 or so food and cookery books, pamphlets, manuscripts and menus.
Szathmary's collection, in his own words, with links
While looking at the UI special collections, I was pleased to see that they also have Evelyn Birkby's papers. Evelyn Birkby was "Iowa's Best-Known Homemaker"...she had a radio program starting in 1950, and continued on the radio until 1991. During that time she also wrote newspaper columns and books.
A link to the digitized portions of her collection
Other University collections that might be of interest (but who don't seem to be quite as into digitizing and sharing online -- I may be wrong, I haven't poked around as much as I should have before writing this) are
Kansas State University, Clementine Paddleford collection
University of Michigan, Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive
Have any other suggestions for me?
Friday, July 29, 2016
Masters of American Cookery as a speed bump
So I have this website....
On this website, I'm supposed to be talking about things I have collected over the years. And I'm supposed to do it regularly. This requires a bit of focus and organization, and I'm...SQUIRREL! Um...yeah, I'm not the most focused and organized person in the world. But it shouldn't be too hard. Pick a book off the shelf, come up with a couple of paragraphs about it, piece of cake!
Except....
Those darned, insidious public libraries! The first one's free...heck, all of them are free! And now I get distracted by books NOT IN MY HOUSE. And library books take up reading time! And then I think about buying them (or, occasionally, flinging them across the room)!
I come before you today to complain about Betty Fussell's Masters of American Cookery. I stumbled across the title while looking around for information on Mrs. Rasmussen's Book of One-Armed Cookery. Google said it was mentioned a few times in the text, so I thought I'd take a look at it. The library obliged me by finding a copy, and from the cover, I thought it was just a four part biography on Fisher, Beard, Claiborne and Child, but it's not. Oh, it is so much more! Yes, she starts out by giving each of the four their own chapter. This takes up less than one-fourth of the book. Then she goes on and tackles American Cookery itself, over 300 pages of classic (more or less) recipes and discussion on each one of them, talking about the history of the recipes, the variants that have been done (frequently accompanied by quotes from one or more of our four "masters"), and finishes by giving her preferred recipe. For me this is not a fast read, but a slow, delicious one. I think I'm going to have to make space on my shelf for this one.
Masters of American Cookery on Amazon
On this website, I'm supposed to be talking about things I have collected over the years. And I'm supposed to do it regularly. This requires a bit of focus and organization, and I'm...SQUIRREL! Um...yeah, I'm not the most focused and organized person in the world. But it shouldn't be too hard. Pick a book off the shelf, come up with a couple of paragraphs about it, piece of cake!
Except....
Those darned, insidious public libraries! The first one's free...heck, all of them are free! And now I get distracted by books NOT IN MY HOUSE. And library books take up reading time! And then I think about buying them (or, occasionally, flinging them across the room)!
I come before you today to complain about Betty Fussell's Masters of American Cookery. I stumbled across the title while looking around for information on Mrs. Rasmussen's Book of One-Armed Cookery. Google said it was mentioned a few times in the text, so I thought I'd take a look at it. The library obliged me by finding a copy, and from the cover, I thought it was just a four part biography on Fisher, Beard, Claiborne and Child, but it's not. Oh, it is so much more! Yes, she starts out by giving each of the four their own chapter. This takes up less than one-fourth of the book. Then she goes on and tackles American Cookery itself, over 300 pages of classic (more or less) recipes and discussion on each one of them, talking about the history of the recipes, the variants that have been done (frequently accompanied by quotes from one or more of our four "masters"), and finishes by giving her preferred recipe. For me this is not a fast read, but a slow, delicious one. I think I'm going to have to make space on my shelf for this one.
Masters of American Cookery on Amazon
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Tempt Me: The Fine Art of Minnesota Cooking
Just a quickie here, as this isn't my book. It's a recent release from the Minnesota Historical Society Press, and I got it out of the library. Very pretty, but the focus is more on the literal art of the food -- seed catalogues, labels, promotional cookbooks -- than on the food itself. But there are recipes, and I wanted to hold onto one, so I thought I'd share. I'll let you guess which recipe it is.
Tempt Me: The Fine Art of Minnesota Cooking at Amazon.com
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