food museum blog

"The Amazing Mrs.Pritchard"

Masterpiece Theatre once again has doled out a (tiny)  food dollop in its new presentation starring Joan Horrocks, about the manager of a supermarket in Leeds who decides to run for Parliament.  She runs as an independent, rallies the nation, and, faster than a runaway shopping trolley, becomes Prime Minister,  all the while being shown peeling carrots, and ( we think) doing something with spuds. And, of course, the first episode opens with her zipping around her store, Greengages Supermarket,  efficient, friendly and ever on the alert.

( Don't turn this on for the food, however, but for the tight writing and fine acting. Dilys Laye has a brief, gemlike scene as QE II--brilliant, worth the price of Public Broadcasting membership.  )

Mrs. Beeton Couldn't Cook?

Public Television's Masterpiece Theatre debuts The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton this Sunday, and the writeup on line sounds more like an upcoming series on Mystery. 

We will be glued to the tale of the Victorian era young woman, Isabella Mary Mayson, who did not cook, yet is famous still as the author of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, often considered the most famous English cookery book. She died young, after giving birth to her fourth child---as yet we have no clue as to her "secret life."

Here's her recipe for, of all things, "Pineapple Chips."

PINEAPPLE CHIPS.

1577. INGREDIENTS. -- Pineapples; sugar to taste.

Mode. -- Pare and slice the fruit thinly, put it on dishes, and strew over it plenty of pounded sugar. Keep it in a hot closet, or very slow oven, 8 or 10 days, and turn the fruit every day until dry; then put the pieces of pine on tins, and place them in a quick oven for 10 minutes. Let them cool, and store them away in dry boxes, with paper between each layer.

Time. -- 8 to 10 days.

Seasonable. -- Foreign pines, in July and August.

Astonishingly, TV Food Ads Aimed at Kids are Less Than Ideal

No big surprise here as we read in the Washington Post  that half the tv ads aimed at children in the US are for food, most of it in the lousy column. After analyzing 1600 hours of tv programming either specifically designed for kids, or likely to have a large child or teen viewing audience, the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that " 34 percent marketed candy and snacks, 28 percent were for cereal, and 10 percent promoted fast foods. No commercials promoted fruit or vegetables. " ( Duh.)

In an ideal world young people would be fed well at home, never introduced to junky fast food, and tv would be an occasional diversion.

Tra la.

You can read more at the Kaiser site here.

( Cartoon from calorielab.com)

Doesn't Anyone Know How to Cook Anymore? Food TV

Bill Buford takes a look at "the rise of food television," in the current issue ( October 2, 2006) of The New Yorker. ( A long gluttonous look, as apparently Bill watched 72 hours of continuous food tv.)

In all fairness, you should know that I have only glimpsed in passing some of the food shows, as our house invites in only very limited cable. At other full throttle cable-invaded homes, I have flitted past some food shows, utterly unengaged by the sight of a person chopping,  stirring, or blending, and always wondering why on earth anyone would want to watch someone  on a screen cook. No aromas, no chatting, no nibbling possible as when, say, watching a friend cook live and in person. 

Now indeed, I may have learned to cook by hanging around the kitchen while my mother did so, maybe by osmosis, as I was not taking notes or even particularly paying attention. As a student in Italy, I also lingered in the kitchen observing the preparation of  what then were to me utterly exotic artichokes. Later on, when I lived in Belgium, my cooking was influenced by two American expats who really knew their stuff.  Perhaps today's socially detached citizens are looking to teevee when once they relied on actual people.

In any event, I want to pass on to you  Buford's final words :

"Never in our history as a species have we been so ignorant about our food. And it is revealing about our culture that, in the face of such widespread ignorance about a human being’s most essential function—the ability to feed itself—there is now a network broadcasting into ninety million American homes, entertaining people with shows about making coleslaw. " ( Thanks to www.boston.com for the illustration.)

SpongeBob's Food Connection Explained

Travel is enlightening indeed. While visiting  a three year-old pal, Foodie discovered that SpongeBob SquarePants, a big-eyed tv character whose bizarre physiognomy is everywhere these days , ( even on my Holiday Inn room "key",)  is a fry cook at a local joint beneath the sea called the Krusty Krab. Now Foodie had vaguely wondered how a sponge could become a key player in a cartoon but she never dreamed that said sponge would work deep in the briny frying up, what?  Who knows? Probably clams.  Seems SBSP lives in a pineapple, too. In the Pacific Ocean.

Quoth the Craven Cookie Rapper...

Okay, so while we're on cookies, some of you may have missed the Denver Post piece by Electa Draper about the Durango, Colorado girls who decided to bake cookies last July and drop them off  at neighbors' houses, anonymously, just for fun. Each batch of cookies came with the words, "Have a great night."
Well-- a 49 year-old woman was so alarmed by the rapping on her door at 10:30 at night, she went into an anxiety lather and ended up in the emergency room, albeit the next morning. (??)  And then sued the girls. ( Evidently there was nothing wrong with the cookies.)
A judge awarded the woman $900 to cover her medical bills.

Hue and cry!  Hue and cry!  Pls read the Denver Post story linked to above.

Fear, people.
"  Suddenly there came a tapping,
   As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "

Okay, so it was 10:30, not "late" to an 18 year-old,  but later than the norm for a social call. But has Poe indeed ruined us all for anything akin to "gentle rapping?"

A colleague of mine --we both served on our cozy community's civic association board--told me once that he keeps a loaded gun next to his bed, as does his adult daughter.
But why, I asked him.  "You can never be too careful with strangers," he answered.