On the Table - the curious home of Gary Allen, Food Writer & Dillettante

With this issue, we’ve completed twenty-one years of these updates. Who knew there would be so much constantly-changing verbiage about food floating about on the interwebs?

You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook (where, among other things, we post a lot of photographs), and Twitter. Still more of our older online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. There’s even an Amazon author’s page, mostly about our food writing.

A few love apples, plucked from On the Table’s culinary quote collection:

It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato. Lewis Grizzard

A world devoid of tomato soup, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup and tomato paste is hard to visualize. Could the tin and processed food industries have got where they have without the benefit of the tomato compounds which colour, flavour, thicken and conceal so many deficiencies? How did the Italians eat spaghetti before the advent of the tomato? Was there such a thing as tomato-less Neapolitan pizza? Elizabeth David

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can’t eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as “progress,” doesn’t spread. Andy Rooney

A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad. Jane Grigson

Gary
July, 2021

PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those who have pointed out corrections or tasty sites (this month we’re tipping our hat to Bob DelGrosso), thanks, and keep them coming!

PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again.

— the new sites —

America’s Finest Restaurant, Revisited

(the story of Delmonico’s—from Jan Whitaker’s blog, Restaurant-ing through History)

Cocktail Science: All About Foams

(Kevin Liu gets physical—and a little chemical—at Serious Eats)

CSA’s Roots in Black History, The

(it’s more than forty-acres-and-a-mule; Shelby Vittek’s article in Modern Farmer)

Flavor Science: How We Taste Sweet, Sour, Salty, and More

(Daniel Gritzer’s explanation, at Serious Eats)

Food Additive

(PDF of the 2012 book, edited by Yehia El-Samragy)

Gatekeepers Who Get to Decide What Food Is “Disgusting”, The

(Jiayang Fan’s New Yorker essay about The Disgusting Food Museum, in Malmö, Sweden)

Gum Arabic. The Golden Tears of the Acacia Tree

(PDF of Dorrit van Dalen’s 2019 book about an ingredient used, commercially, in everything from candy, to chewing gum, to fillings, icings, soft drinks, and assorted other sweeteners and flavorings)

In Praise of Pastrami, The World’s Sexiest Sandwich

(Josie Dunlap will have what she’s having, in The Economist)

It’s Not Delivery, It’s...

(Ernie Smith’s history of frozen pizza, at Tedium)

Meet the Appalachian Apple Hunter Who Rescued 1,000 “Lost” Varieties

(Eric J.Wallace’s profile of Tom Brown in GastroObscura)

Quiet Rescue of America’s Forgotten Fruit, The 

(Anne Ewbank’s GastroObscura article about C. Todd Kennedy and the rare stone fruits being grown at Morgan Hill, CA’s Arboreum Company)

Tracing the African Diaspora in Food

(Helen Rosner’s New Yorker article about the making of the Jessica B. Harris Netflix special)

Welcome to Vegetable Produce Converter!

(measurement tool for recipe writers)

Who Were the First Humans to Start Cooking Meat? And Why?

(Alex Bezzerides stirs the hot coals for Literary Hub)

Wine and Romance: The Eternal Connection

(Dwight Furrow waxes rhapsodic in his valentine to wine, at Edible Arts)

— inspirational (or otherwise useful) sites for writers/bloggers —

Alice Waters Says People Who Call Her Elitist Just Don’t Get It

Delectable Digest

Eating Your Way Through Art History

Food Is Us

Introducing “Food Grammar,” the Unspoken Rules of Every Cuisine

On Ideas; and the Business of Being an Independent Writer

Pitch Guidelines for the VICE Culture Desk

Rise of the Climatarian, The

Snacks That Get Us Through the Work Day

— podcasts, etcetera —

Eat Y’all

Extra Spicy

Food 360 with Marc Murphy

Honoring Your Heritage—and Improving Your Health—Through Food

Oil & Water

Rachel Laudan on Cuisine, Culture, and Empire

— changed URL —

Mustard Manual

— that’s all for now —

Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:

As an Amazon Associate, this newsletter earns from qualifying purchases made through it. These include our own books (listed below), and occasional books mentioned in the entries above. If you order anything via those links, the price you pay is not increased by our commission.

Occasionally, URLs we provide may link to commercial sites (that is, they’ll cost you money to take full advantage of them). We do not receive any compensation for listing them here, and provide them without any form of recommendation—other than the fact that they looked interesting to us.

Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose. Ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs for our own books:

Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier

Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...

...for the moment, anyway.

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The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #249 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author’s prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.

Copyright ©2021 by Gary Allen.