Category Archives: 20th century

Going Raw: Saturday and Wrap Up

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Breakfast

Grapes; Apples or Pears; Nuts; Dates; Milk +Hazelnuts

Breakfast was rather uninspired: Milk, a pear, and some hazelnuts.  It made me jones for the end of this experiment.

Lunch

Red Banana (very ripe) with Thick Cream; Pecans; Brazil Nuts; Seeded Raisins; Dates; Whipped Egg; Rich Milk +Hazelnuts, Apples, Almonds
Whole Foods has red bananas last week, but were out this week.  Boo.  I’ve never had one, and I hear they have a delicate, berry-like flavor.
I also had an apple with cream cheese for a snack.

Dinner

I went out for a beer after work, a small infraction against my diet, but managed to resist joining my coworkers for a hamburger.  I made my way home to Queens and fixed a salad from my remaining vegetables: lettuce, cabbage, celery, olives and almonds with a little dressing.  I have a new-found love for cabbage, I must admit.

For dessert, I made a bowl of apples, hazelnuts and cream, which has been one of my favorite meals this week.  Then I watched tv, went to bed, and woke up to a different life.

It always feels strange to shed one of these immersive experiments.  I made tea and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, then sighed with happiness at the sensation of warm food touching my lips and making its way down to my tummy.  But I didn’t miss cooked food as much as I thought would.

What I’ve Learned:

  1. One of the major complaints of a modern raw diet is you feel hungry all the time.  Although I did have some bouts of the munchies on a historic raw diet, in general I did quite well.  I attribute it to the additional of dairy in the historic diet: milk, cream, and cream cheese.  Although it’s pasteurized, I made an exception because I thought the inclusion of dairy was more historically appropriate.
  2. I didn’t notice a huge change in the way I “felt” this week, which is the number one question people asked me.  I eat a pretty healthy diet regularly, so I think I was in ok shape to begin with.  My friend Kat, who was also raw this week, said she felt more energetic in general.  I did enjoy having extremely regular bowel movements that were of a healthy consistency.
  3. Having my first cup a tea in a week this morning was extremely satisfactory.  I’ve somewhat unstained my teeth by abstaining from tea drinking, but I’ve still glad to have my cuppa back.
  4. I didn’t drink alcohol–until the beer I had last night.  Alcohol is really bad for me; it tends to trigger my migraines, which makes me feel awful.  So I have felt a lot healthier for not  drinking…but I do love drinking.
  5. I need to include more raw foods in my diet.  I want to go back to cooking, and I want to go back to eating meat.  But what this diet has taught me more than anything else is not to fuss over “preparing” raw foods.  A luscious apple or a pile of salad greens are good the wat they are; I don’t need to stress about finding a recipe.  I should just eat them, and enjoy them in their natural state.  And from now on, I will.

Other thoughts? What do you think?

 

Going Raw: Friday

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Breakfast

Sliced pineapple; Pecans; Protoid nuts; Evaporated Apples; Dates

I feel like the menu writers of Uncooked Foods began to run out of steam by the end of the week.  I ate dried apples from Russ & Daughters, most of my remaining pecans, and sliced pineapple.

Uncooked Foods is a big supporter of Fletcherizing: chewing you food at least 30 times per bite.  Try it sometime; you’ll find that every mouthful  disintegrates into a disgusting puddy, the taste and texture of which will make you spit it back out.

Lunch

Apples; Pecans; English Walnuts; Lettuce; Sweet Butter; Unfired wafers; Dates; Fruit and Nut medley; Milk
All packed up for lunch at work.  My coworkers have been incredibly supportive and interested.

Dinner

Oranges; Protoid Nuts; Black walnuts; ripe olives; sliced tomatoes; unfired wafers; cream cheese; prune whip with whipped cream; figs; milk +Hazelnuts
On this plate, you see my rather meager dinner; I felt so hungry and unsatisfied that I followed up by devouring a container of cream cheese and banana chips.  I was just so hungry.  And that’s what I got to eat while my boyfriend made a hamburger.
Now that I’m in the home stretch, it is getting harder.  I miss bread!  I’ve already decided what my first meal will be on Sunday: a bagel with cream cheese and a hot cup of tea with milk and sugar.

Going Raw: Wednesday

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Breakfast

Sliced sweet apples with cream; pecans; protoid nuts; sliced oranges; dates; egg-nog

Tasty, filling breakfast!

Lunch

Pears; pecans; english walnuts; tomato salad with hygeia dressing; fruit wafers; cream cheese; turkish figs with cream; dates; milk
I ate a pear for a mid-morning snack, then put together this little lunch.  I couldn’t figure out what they meant by fruit wafers, so I got banana chips, which now that I think about it, might be fried.  I’ll have to try to pick up some dehydrated fruit crisps from somewhere.
Hygeia dressing is a mayonnaisey-type dressing with raw eggs; since I’ve have a raw egg prohibition, I found a light ranch dressing that didn’t use vinegar, and I’ve substituted that instead.  Salad dressing and olive oil are the only two condiments I’m allowed to use.  Why, you ask?
The use of condiments, the pouring of some mixed-up mess of something over foods just before we eat them, in the vain hope of making them better, seems to be a sort of weird superstition….People will sit in a fashionable cafe, and dine upon an undrawn cold storage turkey, that has been a year dead, and pour over its ancient flesh a tar colored fluid that has been upon the shelf of a grocer several years, until it has reached that limit of delicious decay suggested by the green slimy mildew in Roquefort cheese.
Jesus.

Dinner

I abandoned my suggested dinner menu tonight because I was meeting a friend (Jess of Domestology!) after work.  Eating raw at home is one thing; trying to find appropriate foods in the world at large is another.  We agreed to meet at a vegetarian cafe in the Flatiron district–one that I’ve enjoyed even when I’m not on a restricted history diet–only to find that it was closed for good.  We wandered down 6th avenue, balefully searching for a place where I could eat.  Eventually, we ended up in a corner deli, where I ordered a veggie wrap.  I scraped a few cupfuls of shredded carrots out of the middle of a soggy pita.  It sucked, and really made me miss the flavorful food I’ve been eating.  Although the dinner was terrible, we had a great chat about the amazing embroidered book covers Jess been making (see them here).

After dinner, as I left to get on the train, I spied a Mr. Softee truck.  I remembered one of the foods that was on the suggested menu for today was ice cream.  So, a bit guiltily, I stepped up to the window and ordered vanilla soft serve in a cup.  It was cooked in the same way all the dairy products I’ve consumed this week are cooked, I reasoned.  I spooned it into my mouth on the train ride home, clasping the cup as though someone might snatch it away from me and deprive me of my treat.  Each mouthful was sweet, creamy and buttery.  I disposed of the empty cup before I got home.

When I walked in the door, I found my boyfriend doing dishes.  “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Do you need me to fix you something?”

“Hey,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to be raw anymore.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I don’t feel like I’ve eaten anything this week.  I feel like I’ve just been snacking.  I miss cooked food.  But I want to support you!”

“Don’t worry about it–it’s ok, I understand if you want to quit.  But,” I said, throwing my hands in the air, “I am powerless to fix you dinner.”

So I’m on my own now, with three days left.

Going Raw: Tuesday

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Breakfast

Apples; Pecans; Bananas and Cream; Unfired wafers; seeded raisins; milk

For breakfast, I had a big heaping bowl of sliced apples, bananas, and chopped pecans.

 Lunch

Apples; Pecans; Celery Salad; Unfired Crackers; Chestnuts; Date and nut Butter; Dates; Persimmons with Cream
Celery salad is made up of chopped celery, apples, and pecans dressed with olive oil.  The chestnuts were actually roasted, which I realized after I purchased them.  I ate them anyway.  Other than dairy products, they’re the only cooked food I’ve eaten this week.

Dinner

Sliced Pineapple; Pecans; Blanched Almonds; Ripe Olives; Celery; Unfired wafers; Combination Nut Butter; Sliced Bananas, Dates and Cream; Egg-nog

I had Raw Sea Crackers for a snack in the afternoon, and then had dinner of pineapple and banana slices slathered in almond butter–a favorite snack of mine, historic diet or no.  Later in the evening, I had almonds and dates as a snack.

Compared to other historic diets I’ve been on, this one is a breeze.  I’m not really craving anything–I would “like” bread and I would “like” a cup of tea, but it’s not a desperate situation.

I got to sit down to lunch with my boyfriend today, who is also sticking to a raw diet this week.  We’ve been working opposite schedules, so it’s been a couple of days since we’ve talked.

“How is this experience for you?” I asked.

“Fine. I’ve been eating enough.”

“How’s your poop?”

“Tan!”

“Me too!!  And it floats!”  And it’s frequent. I’ve got bowels John Harvey Kellogg would be proud of.

Going Raw: Monday

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Breakfast

Apples; Protoid Nuts; Filberts; Turkish pulled figs with cream +Raw Honey

I sliced my apple and smeared it with raw honey, then sprinkled the pine nuts over top.  The filberts–hazelnuts–I added to the figs and cream.

I would normally have a cup of tea with my breakfast, and two to three more throughout the day.  But Uncooked Foods advises against it:

It is impossible to keep alive the appetite for such stimulants as tobacco, fermented and distilled liquors, tea and coffee when the body is correctly fed.  A being who subsists upon clean elementary foods would have no more desire for stimulants and narcotics than a horse or a dog would have for a Manhattan cocktail.

In the end, it will be nice to break my caffeine habit.  But currently, I’m experiencing bouts of extreme drowsiness and headaches.

Lunch

Pecans; Olives; Vegetable Salad with Hygeia dressing; Unfired Crackers; Sweet Butter; Evaporated Peaches and raisins; Milk

I made most of my ingredients into a big salad, and packed the whole thing up for lunch.  The biscuits I’m eating are miserable little things:

Bread forms a very important part of the uncooked menu, but its production is not practical in the home, where this book is intended to be of greatest use, as it requires special machinery for flaking and grinding the different grains and nuts of which it is made. It also requires a special electric light oven for drying during the winter when the rays of the sun cannot be utilized.

To meet conditions that exist, we make an exception here and give two recipes for bread that requires cooking, but is unfermented.

I haven’t quite figured out why the book dislikes fermentation.  The recipe that they give for “unleavened gems” is 3 cups whole wheat flour to 2 cups cold water and 2 tablespoons of fat.  Then “Take up on a spoon and work all the air possible into the batter by vigorous beating two or three minutes in the open air.”  I had the benefit of my electric mixer.  I baked them for ten minutes at 400 degrees, and the result was something less edible than silly puddy.  I will suffer through them for another day or two, then I think I’m going to switch back to the raw crackers from Whole  Foods.

Dinner

Oranges; Apples; Pecans; Protoid nuts; Ripe Olives; Lettuce; Flaked Oats, Dates and Cream; Unfired Crackers; Sweet Butter; Fruit Salad; Egg Nog.

I had a very long day at work, so I ate dinner there, too–and forgot to snap a photo.  It was more of the same: a large salad with some fruit and unleavened breads.

Despite my kvetching, I’ve been generally very satisfied with my meals.  The food is good and fresh, and extremely healthy while remaining delicious.  I feel full at the end of a meal.  But I’m extremely flatulent.

 

Going Raw: Sunday

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Breakfast

Grape Fruit or Oranges; Pecans; Protoid Nuts (Pine Nuts); Dates; Whipped Eggs; Milk  +Raw Honey

Uncooked Foods gives some general guidelines for portion size: one large fruit, 2-3 smaller fruits, an ounce of nuts.

I’ve decided I’m not going to eat raw eggs:  Salmonella didn’t enter eggs until the 1970s ( New York Times article about it here), so raw eggs were a lot safer when this cookbook was written. I didn’t drink milk because my boyfriend drank it all the night before.

I drizzled raw honey over my grape fruit.  Raw honey is unpasteurized and minimally filtered, and has no additives.  It is solid at room temperature, and does need to be heated slightly to use it.  From what I understand, the sugar crystals are larger which also gives it a murky appearance.  It can also contain beeswax, pollen, and even bee pieces, if you have really fresh stuff.

 

Lunch

Bananas (ripe); English Walnuts; Protoid Nuts; Unfired Crackers; Dates; Cold Slaw with Olive Oil; Persian Prunes with Cream; Milk +Raw Sea Crackers

“Cold Slaw” is just shredded cabbage, which I doused will olive oil, and mixed up with the pine nuts and walnuts.  It was quite tasty and I ate it very happily.  The authors of Uncooked Foods mention that they have tried to provide food combinations that taste good together in the mouth.  I also added Raw Sea Crackers, because I haven’t baked any “Unfired Crackers” yet.  They came from the raw section at Whole Foods, and they’re some combination of flax seed and sea weed.  The blurb on the back of the package mentioned the company’s founder turned to a raw diet after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it has helped her manage her disease.  Looks like people are still turning to raw diets for a cure.

Uncooked Foods has some interesting things to say about milk: first, it says that good milk should have 12% milk fat, which is equal to Half and Half by today’s standards.  So, that what I drank: about four ounces of half and half, and it was sweet and delicious.   Here’s what Uncooked Foods has to say on the subject of milk:

The custom of cooking or sterilizing milk, due to ignorance is little less than criminal. Cooking milk is recommended by certain alleged dietetic authorities on the ground that it kills bacteria. They probably forget maybe do not know that all the five digestive fluids are strongly germicidal. The bacteria that may exist in milk, of which so much fear is entertained, could not live an instant after coming in contact with the gastric juice which is strongly aciduous, to say nothing of contact with the saliva bile and pancreatic and intestinal juices.

I’ve been asked if I’m going to consume raw dairy during this diet, and the answer is no.  I’ve got a bug up my butt about unpasteurized milk, and I will never stop linking to this article on swill milk to explain it.  Milk in the 19th century was filled with tuberculosis, amongst other things, and was a major contributor to the high infant mortality rate, particularly in New York City. Early veganism, which was contemporary to the raw foodists, rejects milk because of its association with disease (read more about that here).  In fact, in the chapter in Uncooked Foods on meat, it points out that 36% of cows have TB.  And TB does not die when it hits gastric juices.  So the milk I will be consuming will be pasteurized.

There is a raw milk movement in America today; Edible Manhattan just had a great article about it.

 

Dinner

Pears; Pecans; Black Walnuts; Ripe Olives; Celery; Flaked Wheat, Dates, and Cream; Unfired crackers; Combination Nut Butter; Fruit Jelly with Whipped Cream; Dates; Egg-nog

I felt like I had had enough nuts for one day, so I just had raw almond butter spread over pear halves.  I also ate the olives, which I don’t normally like, with the celery; it was a delightful flavor combination.  I had rolled oats, cream, and dates for an evening snack–I haven’t been able to find flaked wheat, although Bob’s Red Mill makes it, so oats will have to do.

As I walked through my neighborhood today, I felt particularly tuned in to the smells of cooking food.  Someone nearby was grilling outside and the scent of fat steaks sizzling above hot coals curled around corners and into my nose.  From the open door of a bakery, the sweetest smells wafted out, of cakes and pastries and other delights.  Then, carried on a breeze, I smelled the complicated spices of curry sauces, savory and inviting.

But when I returned home, I munched on my pear slices and felt satisfied.  As Uncooked Foods says, “The best foods need the least preparation.”

…Right?

Diets: Going Historically Raw

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Now and then, I like to immerse myself in the diet of another time and culture.  I’ve been hungry, vegetarian, kosher, vegan, and drunk.

Recently, my friend Sharon (of Starting from Scratch) emailed me a 1904 cookbook: Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them, by Eugene and Molly Griswold Christian.  It’s an early raw- foods manifesto and you can read it on Google Books here.  For the next week, my diet will be entirely “raw.”

What is a Raw Diet?

A contemporary raw diet is defined by “unprocessed raw vegan foods that have not been heated above 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius). ‘Raw foodists’ believe that foods cooked above this temperature have lost their enzymes and thus a significant amount of their nutritional value and are harmful to the body, whereas uncooked foods provide living enzymes and proper nutrition. ” (source)  There are several liberal offshoots of the raw food movement, wherein you include a certain percentage of raw foods in your diet, or simply always not cook foods that can be eaten raw, and cook foods that cannot.

Eugene and Molly Christian are both less specific, and more strict in their diet: it contains no heated foods, and although they do have a chapter on warm soup, the recommend against it.  There are additional prohibitions on vinegar, “fermented” foods (like alcohol), and leavened bread.  Their diet, however, is not vegan: raw seafood and meat are acceptable.

The raw food diet is the most primordial diet a person can eat: before man discovered fire, his diet was entirely raw.  Modern histories of the raw food movement begin with this ideal of early man, mention Pythagoras (who was vegetarian) and then skip straight to the 1930s, when a raw food clinic opened up in Switzerland.  There is no mention of the Christians and Uncooked Foods, despite the fact that this seems to be the earliest raw food “cook” book there is.

Why Go Raw?

According to Uncooked Foods, there are three reasons:

1. Simplicity and Economy.  Less ingredients and less time spent cooking equals more money and time for other things.

2. As a Remedy.  The Christians were “cured” of all their ailments by a raw food diet, which is what inspired them to write their book.  They say that most ailments are caused by a poor diet and eating nature’s perfect foods, uncooked, is the remedy.

3. Emancipation of Women.  The Christians argue that less time spent cooking  equals more time for women to do other things.  Preparing three meals a day is incredibly labor intensive; I’ve done it for the purposes of this blog.  As soon as I finished one meal it was time to get ready to make the next.  Freedom from these duties will “…Prove and important factor in lifting [women] mentally, morally and physically into an entirely different sphere.”  An intriguing idea–and not something I had envisioned as part of this early manifesto.

Uncooked Foods says that “raw” is a horrible, ugly word for this movement.  A ripe apple or peach is not “raw,” the authors argue: “These things are finished, ready for use; they are perfect, they are not raw, they are done; and when they are cooked, they are undone.”

The Menu for this Week

I’ll be posting about my experiences daily.

Sunday:
Breakfast: Grape Fruit or Oranges; Pecans; Protoid Nuts (Pine Nuts); Dates; Whipped Eggs; Milk
Lunch: Bananas (ripe); English Walnuts; Protoid Nuts; Unfired Crackers; Dates; Cold Slaw with Olive Oil; Persian Prunes with Cream; Milk
Dinner: Winter Nellie Pears; Pecans; Black Walnuts; Ripe Olives; Celery; Flaked Wheat, Dates, and Cream; Unfired crackers; Combination Nut Butter; Fruit Jelly with Whipped Cream; Dates; Egg-nog
Monday:
Breakfast: Apples; Protoid Nuts; Filberts; Turkish pulled figs with cream
Lunch: Pecans; Olives; Vegetable Salad with Hygeia dressing; Unfired Crackers; Sweet Butter; Evaporated Peaches and raisins; Milk
Dinner: Oranges; Apples; Pecans; Protoid nuts; Ripe Olives; lettuce; Flaked Oats, Dates and Cream; Unfired Crackers; Sweet Butter; Fruit Salad; Egg Nog.
Tues:
Breakfast:Apples; Pecans; Bananas and Cream; Unfired wafers; seeded raisins; milk
Lunch: Apples; Chestnuts; Pecans; Celery Salad; Unfired Crackers; Date and nut Butter; Dates; Persimmons with Cream
Dinner: Sliced Pineapple; Pecans; Blanched Almonds; Ripe Olives; Celery; Unfired wafers; Combination Nut Butter; Sliced Bananas, Dates and Cream; egg-nog
Weds:
Breakfast: Sliced sweet apples with cream; pecans; protoid nuts; sliced oranges; dates; egg-nog
Lunch: Pears; pecans; english walnuts; tomato salad with hygeia dressing; fruit wafers; cream cheese; turkish figs with cream; dates; milk
Dinner: Oysters on Half Shell; unfired crackers; ripe olives; stuffed peppers; pecans; chestnuts; sun-cooked corn; ice cream; fig and nut cake
Thurs:
Breakfast: Sliced Banana with Thick Cream; Pecans; Protoid Nuts; Dates; Egg-nog
Lunch:Oranges; Pecans; Cold Slaw; Persian Prunes with Thick Cream; Unfired Crackers; Combination cereal; Dates; fig butter; protoid nuts; milk
Dinner: Tokay grapes; Pecans; Unfired crackers; sliced cucumbers; cherry pie; sweet butter; brazil nuts; seeded raisins; ripe olives; milk
Fri:
Breakfast: Sliced pineapple; Pecans; Protoid nuts; Evaporated Apples; Dates
Lunch: Apples; Pecans; English Walnuts; Lettuce; Sweet Butter; Unfired wafers; Dates; Fruit and Nut medley; Milk
Dinner:Oranges; Protoid Nuts; Black walnuts; ripe olives; sliced tomatoes; unfired wafers; cream cheese; prune whip with whipped cream; figs; milk
Sat:
Breakfast: Grapes; Apples or Pears; Nuts; Dates; Milk
Lunch: Red Banana (very ripe) with Thick Cream; Pecans; Brazil Nuts; Seeded Raisins; Dates; Whipped Egg; Rich Milk
Dinner:  Grapes; Pecans; Peanuts; Lettuce with Olive Oil; Fruit and Nut Medley; Turkish Figs with Cream; Unfired Wafers; Cream Cheese; Dates: Egg-Nog

When Betty Draper Ate at Schrafft’s

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Note the Schrafft’s bag in her hands.

What to Serve at Your Madmen Watching Party

In anticipation of the premiere of Mad Men on Sunday, I’ve been re-watching the series from the beginning.  Mad Men is full of delightful details of day-to-day life in the 1960s.  One of these period touches caught my eye in the season two finale: Betty Draper clutched a bag from Schrafft’s.

Schrafft’s was probably the most popular chain restaurant in mid-20th century New York.  Geared towards women, it offered a space where it was considered appropriate and acceptable for ladies to dine together without the company of men.  It offered luscious desserts and boxes of chocolates (I bet Betty’s got some sweets in her bag), as well as waist-conscious salads and practical sandwiches.

Digression: For a deeper level of food nerdery, I noticed that one of the production managers for the show is named Dwayne Shattuck.  Frank Shattuck was the founder of Schrafft’s.  It’s not a common name, so I wonder if they’re related, and the careful placement of that Scrafft’s bag was a nod to Dwayne’s heritage?  Dwayne, if you’re out there, tell me if I’m right!

If you’re planning on serving a little gnosh at your Madmen watching party, why not serve some treats from Schrafft’s?  There is a great recipe book called When Everybody Ate at Schrafft’s.  It’s chocked full of tasty dishes from the iconic restaurant.   But the best Schrafft’s recipe I know is for their famous Cheese Bread, which was originally served stacked with slices of grilled ham.  I’m not a bread expert, but I’ve had great luck with the recipe and it is well worth making.  It’s warm, satisfyingly cheesey, and great in sandwiches or simply slathered in butter.  Get the cheese bread recipe here.

If you’d like to make a few more items from Schrafft’s, there are vintage menus available here, and here is a recipe for their butterscotch cookies.

Need a side-dish for your Mad Men feast?  How about Jell-O Vegetable Trio, a “…dazzling, delicious rainbow of fresh vegetables at you dinner table,” from 1962.   And for dessert, try a classic Baked Alaska.

Any ideas for your own 1960s Mad Men dinner?

Origin of a Dish: What Was So Great About Sliced Bread Anyway?

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We’ve got a guest blogger on FPF this week: Aaron Bobrow-Strain the author of the new book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf.  Below, Aaron gives us a little teaser history of sliced bread and the reactions it garnered when it was first released.

***

When Frank Bench, the owner of a nearly bankrupt bakery, and his friend Otto Rohwedder, an equally down-at-the-heels inventor, successfully ran the world’s first automatic bread slicer in Chillicothe, Missouri, they accomplished something nearly every member of the American baking establishment thought impossible—and utterly stupid.

By July 1928, when Bench and Rohwedder’s surprising product debuted, retail bakers had used machines to slice loaves at the point of sale for years, but few in the industry believed that bread should be automatically sliced as it came off the assembly line. Bread was too unruly. What would hold the sliced loaves together? How would slicing affect the chemistry of taste? What would prevent sliced bread from rapidly molding or staling?

Rohwedder’s designs for the automatic slicer dated back to 1917, but he found no takers for the idea and had almost given up hope. For Bench, installing the machine was a favor to his friend and a last shot in the dark. What did he have to lose?

The results astounded all observers. Sales of sliced bread soared 2000 percent within weeks, and a beaming Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reporter described housewives’ “thrill of pleasure” upon “first see[ing] a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows…indefinitely better than anyone could possibly slice by hand.” News spread rapidly. Sliced bread took off first in Missouri,Iowa, and Illinois, then spread throughout the Midwest by late summer 1928. By fall 1928, mechanical slicing had hit New York, New Jersey, and the West Coast. By 1930, 90 percent of all store-bought bread in the country was automatically sliced.

Some bakers dismissed sliced bread as a fad, comparing it to other Roaring Twenties crazes like barnstorming and jazz dancing. Nevertheless, as bakers wrote in frantic trade magazine articles, anyone who resisted the new technology would be crushed by the competition.

An automatic bread slicer. source: www.todayifoundout.com

While awaiting deliveries of mechanical slicers from hopelessly backordered manufacturers, bakers asked themselves a logical question: What’s so great about sliced bread? “Why does anyone want sliced bread anyway?” one baker wrote. “The housewife is saved one operation in the preparation of a meal. Yet, try as one will,the reasons do not seem valid enough to make demand for the new product.”

He had a point. How much extra work is it really to slice your own bread? And what about housewives’ “thrill of pleasure”? A little saved labor couldn’t explain a reaction like that. Why did so many people care so much about perfectly neat slices? What had sliced bread come to symbolize?

***

Aaron tracks down the answers to these questions in his new book, and the answers will surprise you.  He says “…It may get you thinking twice about our own confident visions of what counts as ‘good food.'”  Ok, my interest is piqued.

But I want to throw this question out to you, readers: What do you think was/is so great about sliced bread?

 

Community Eating via Buca di Beppo

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From the Buca di Beppo facebook page.

One of my colleagues at the LES Tenement Museum is collecting oral histories from Chinatown.  This excerpt about eating caught my attention:

Interviewer: I remembered when I came to this country, one day I was dining out in a restaurant in Manhattan Chinatown. I saw lots of people ate with a fork on a plate. I wasn’t very used to it. In Taiwan, we only used plates to collect bones we didn’t want.
Interviewee A: Ah…..that’s right.
I: In Taiwan, we ate from small bowls with chopsticks, not from plates with forks. (A & I laughed)
A: Yes, that’s a big difference.
Interviewee B:  In Chinese culture, we share dishes with everyone sitting at the table. The Westerners prefer to have their own dishes.
A: They prefer that everyone orders their own dishes and eats it separately.
B: It is individualistic. Sharing a dish with someone else is not something that would come to their mind first…… this is a cultural..uh..uh..
I: Cultural difference.
A & B: That’s right.
This conversation immediately reminded me of my experience with the opposite circumstance: seeing communal eating for the first time.  Sometime in the mid to late ’90s, a Midwestern chain restaurant called Buca di Beppo opened in the mall near my home town.   Offering “Italian Immigrant Cuisine,” the restaurant served  family-style meals: large dishes were brought to the table for everyone to share.  I remember my friends patiently explaining to me that I could not order my own, personal dish of cavatelli, that the table had to work as a whole to decide on several dishes everyone might enjoy.  As silly as it feels to me now, I know that night was the first time I had eaten out at a restaurant where the table ordered together and shared the food, as opposed to every individual ordering their own plate.  The concept was completely new to me.
Being young, I picked up on the method after the first time, and thereafter could laugh along with my friends when we told exasperated stories of how our parents and grandparents just didn’t get it.   I remember family members getting truly irritated: “But I want stuffed shells!” “Grandma, you’re going to get stuffed shells, but it’s too much for one person.  You share it with everyone.”  Many of my relations vowed never to return to that terrible restaurant, where they couldn’t order their own food.
Culinary historian Hasia Diner remarks on American eating habits in her book Hungering for America, a look at immigrant foodways in the United States.  Diner attributes the habit of eating individually to the bounty on food available in the US as compared to the relatively poor fare of the Italians.   She quotes the oral history of an Italian immigrant from the 1920s who said ” (back home) The meal was one dish, from which the entire family ate; here there is a variety of food and each person has his own plate and eating utensils.”
I believe that Buca di Beppo was the first chain restaurant to introduce communal eating to a main-stream audience.  It’s a way of dining that I still see as relatively uncommon in midwestern restaurants.  Since my teenage experience there, I’ve eaten Chinese, Indian, Greek and Ethiopian food;  styles that culturally require you to share dishes with the whole table.  Buca is not the perfect restaurant, but I do believe it gave me my training wheels to understand how other cultures eat communally.
Has anyone had a similar (or different) experience eating out?