How modern food helped make modern society between 1870 and 1930: stories of power and food, from bananas and beer to bread and fake meat. The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers trace our eating habits to World War II, but this book shows that our current food system began to coalesce much earlier. Modern food came from and helped to create a society based on racial hierarchies, colonization, and global integration. Acquired Tastes explores these themes through a series of moments in food history—stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more—that shaped how we think about food today. Contributors consider the displacement of native peoples for agricultural development; the invention of Pilsner, the first international beer style; the “long con” of gilded sugar and corn syrup; Josephine Baker’s banana skirt and the rise of celebrity tastemakers; and faith in institutions and experts who produced, among other things, food rankings and fake meat.
Peterson explores a change in French cooking in the mid-seventeenth century - from the heavily sugared, saffroned, and spiced cuisine of the medieval period to a new style based on salt and acid tastes. In the process, she reveals more fully than any previous writer the links between medieval cooking, alchemy, and astrology. Peterson's vivid account traces this newly acquired taste in food to its roots in the wider transformation of seventeenth-century culture which included the Scientific Revolution. She makes the startling - and persuasive - argument that the shift in cooking styles was actually part of a conscious effort by humanist scholars to revive Greek and Roman learning and to chase the occult from European life.
May the best chef win... After four years at the country's top culinary school and several years as head chef in her mother's restaurant, Rowan Townsend has built a notable reputation. Her farm-to-table collard greens have long been bringing everyone to the yard, but limits on the restaurant's size have led to long waits. Looking to expand the restaurant, she enters a televised chef competition. The problem? Her infuriatingly-talented nemesis from culinary school also enters. To the culinary world, Knox Everheart is restaurant royalty. As much as Rowan wants to deny it, he's a gifted chef. Rowan knows her arrogant arch-nemesis is confident he'll win-he's certainly given her a run for her money more times than she'd like to admit. But this time, she's ready to show him who's boss. Their rivalry soon sparks fireworks in the kitchen and, as the competition heats up, so does Rowan's attraction to Knox. And somewhere between pasta and gumbo, they both need to decide what's worth fighting for.
In Acquired Tastes, Peter Mayle, the erudite sojourner and New York Times bestselling author of A Year in Provence, sets off once more, traveling the world in search of the very best life has to offer. Whether telling us where to buy the world’s best caviar or how to order a pair of thirteen-hundred-dollar custom-made shoes, advising us on the high cost of keeping a mistress in style or the pros and cons of households servants, he covers everything the well-heeled—and those vicariously so inclined—need to know to enjoy the good life. From gastronomy to matrimony, from the sartorial to the baronial, Acquired Tastes is Peter Mayle’s most delicious book yet—an irreverently spiced smorgasbord of rich dishes you’re sure to enjoy. Praise for Acquired Tastes “Mr. Mayle is a writer who never fails to entertain. If he were told to go forth and write about doorknobs, he would return with a witty, perceptive essay.”—The New York Times Book Review “One of the finest modern writers on matters that deal with taste.”—Craig Claiborne “Much, much fun—and best read with a magnum of Dom Pérignon and a four-pound tin of Beluga caviar.”—Kirkus Reviews “Witty and stylish . . . These hilarious essays are vintage Mayle.”—James Villas, author of The French Country Kitchen “This delightful celebration of the little (and not-so-little) extravagances that make life worth living scintillates with wit, brio and trenchant observations”—Publishers Weekly “Intriguing.”—Chicago Sun-Times
Magazine articles, news items, and self-improvement books tell us that our daily food choices – whether we opt for steak or vegetarian, a TV dinner or a sit-down meal – serve as bold statements about who we are as individuals. Acquired Tastes makes the case that our food habits say more about where we come from and who we would like to be. This intimate portrait of eating habits and attitudes towards food in over one hundred Canadian families in both rural and urban settings reveals that our food choices never solely reflect personal tastes. Age, gender, social class, ethnicity, health concerns, food availability, and political and moral concerns shape the meanings that families attach to food and their self-identities. They also influence how its members respond to social discourses on health, beauty, and the environment, a finding that has profound implications for public health campaigns.
Dubbed the undisputed “Indiana Jones of food science,†Professor Massimo Marcone ventures into the bizarre world of food delicacies with this follow-up to his much lauded previous book, In Bad Taste. Part travelogue, part scientific journal, Pass the Food goes where no other book has gone before. Dr. Marcone describes his journeys into remote regions around the world, often risking life and limb in his quest to explore and explain why people eat what they eat. Whether it's shark-fin soup, maggot-infested cheese, ant eggs, scorpions, fried grasshoppers, or seal-flipper pie, Marcone approaches his subject with the zeal of a scientist, but also with flabbergasted amazement at what human beings are willing to eat to sustain themselves. His investigations lead to fundamental questions: Why do people eat this food, and what makes it a delicacy? Is it a delicacy simply because it is rare or odd? Why is it so expensive? Is it truly quantifiably different or better than their more conventional varieties?
The exhibition features twelve established and emerging contemporary artists whose work focuses on our reciprocal relationship to food: what we consume, how we consume it and how it consumes us. In recent years, the culinary arts have seen a rise in popularity through cable television cooking shows; increased public awareness of food politics; and the explosion of impassioned food movements such slow food, pop-up restaurants and gourmet food trucks. In Acquired Taste, visual artists use a variety of mediums to address the underlying issues surrounding food and consumption: Greg Stewart (TM)s living sculptures and oeMoveable Gardens envision sustainable agriculture as both utopic and democratic; Jennifer Rubell (TM)s playful, participatory work uses food as a vehicle for social interaction; and Dustin Wayne Harris (TM)s oeCake Mixx photographs offer a humorous, narrative take on first encounters. Artwork in the exhibition ranges from site-specific installations to sculpture and oil paintings. In addition, curators Alyssa Cordova and Heather Richards are collaborating with local food enthusiasts to offer exciting programming and events: cooking demonstrations by chef Jonathan Dye; KCRW Good Food contributor Delilah Snell (TM)s oeJam Van of preserves and other goodies; lectures by featured artist-in-residence Greg Stewart, and more Artists include: Sita Bhaumik, Shannon Faseler, Dustin Wayne Harris, Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Knox, MyersBerg Studios, Mary Parisi, Justin Perricone, Victoria Reynolds, Jennifer Rubell, Stephen Shanabrook, Greg Stewart and Tattfoo Tan. Accompanying Acquired Taste: Food and the Art of Consumption is a full-color exhibition catalog of artwork and essays slated to be published October/November 2011. Essayists include freelance writer and blogger Nicole Caruth (Contemporary Confections); art historian and blogger Megan Fizell (Feasting on Art); and Pulitzer prize-winning writer Jonathan Gold (LA Weekly, KCRW (TM)s Good Food).
"The Philosophy of Furniture" is an essay written by American author Edgar Allan Poe published in 1840. An unusual work by Poe, whose more typical works include horror tales like "The Tell-Tale Heart," the essay is essentially Poe's theories on interior decorating. Poe begins by suggesting that the English are the "supreme" examples of internal decoration, above the Italians, French, Chinese, Scotch, Dutch, Spanish and Russians. "Yankees," he says, "are preposterous." He blames this American failing on a lack of aristocracy by blood, having instead "an aristocracy of dollars." Because of that, decoration in America has become a "mere parade of costly appurtenances" to create an "impression of the beautiful." He contrasts this with England, where wealth is not the loftiest ambition to constitute "nobility." As a result, Poe says, "there could be nothing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist than the interior of what is termed the United States... a well-furnished apartment." Because decorating rooms is a form of art, it should be judged similarly to any other work of art. The elements of a room should work well together, just as in a painting. Poe begins giving his advice, starting with curtains. Excessive drapery, he says, is "irreconcilable with good taste." Curtains should be chosen based on the general character of the room. He puts strong emphasis on carpets, which he calls "the soul of the apartment." From the carpet, the colors and forms of the rest of the room can be determined. He recommends patterns "of no meaning," as "the abomination of flowers or representations of well-known objects of any kind should not be endured." Carpets, curtains, tapestry, or even ottoman coverings and upholstery of any kind should be "rigidly Arabesque." Gaudy patterns "glorious with all hues" are a cloth version of a kaleidoscope and only serve worshipers of Mammon. Gas lighting is "inadmissible," Poe says, because it is harsh and unsteady. "No one having both brains and eyes will use it," he says. He also dismisses large chandeliers as "the quintessence of all that is false in taste or preposterous in folly." Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian." With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan.
Revenge is said to be a dish best eaten cold, but when plump, spinsterish academic, Alicia Binns, is betrayed by her best friend, TV producer Vanessa, Alicia discovers she has a taste for revenge not only eaten cold, but smothered in chocolate and whipped cream.The worlds of tabloid TV and academia collide in a tale of lust, sexual fantasy and revenge.Reviews:'Tom Sharpe in Tights' - Marie Claire'Summer sizzler' - Woman's Own'A light-hearted comedy with bonk busting tendencies' - Time Out'Acquired Tastes' was originally published in 1996 by Mandarin Paperbacks, an imprint of Reed International Books. This is a revised edition.
