A Different Kind of Market Report: Wild Ducks and Shorebirds

Canvasback Ducks from Audubon's Birds of America - from NYPL nypl.digitalcollections.919e7c30-c5f9-012f-3108-58d385a7bc34.001.w

Reports about seasonal food from the farmers market are common today: for example, KCRW’s Good Food has a weekly farmers market report, the San Francisco Chronicle covers seasonal produce in the Sunday Food and Home section, there are apps about seasonal produce for your phone, and guides printed on paper.  I have been following these reports for a […]

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Taco Innovation: Two Early Tortilla Frying Patents

Detail of illustration page from US Patent US2570374

I recently finished reading Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, an interesting combo platter of history, personal stories, and food culture. In his detailed overview of the history and evolution of Mexican food in the U.S.A., Arellano recounts many fascinating stories, like how the first English-language taco recipe got into print, the invention of the frozen margarita machine, […]

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Two Distinctive Fruit Crate Labels

Berkeley Apricots fruit crate label from California Historical Society Flickr collection

In this post, a look at two distinctive fruit crate labels. “Don’t Worry” Apples Fruit Crate Label I doubt that “Don’t Worry” brand apples would be a successful brand today.  It’s easy for me to come up with a bushel of worrisome questions when choosing your food.  Organic? Local? What pesticides? Imported? In season? By buying the trendy […]

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The First Taco Recipe in English

Cover of California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, by Bertha Haffner-Ginger, 1914

I’m reading Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, a deluxe combo platter of history, personal stories, and culture. Something from the taco chapter that jumped out at me was a mention of the first taco recipe in English.  Arellano claims that it was in the California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, a 1914 book by Bertha Haffner-Ginger. Haffner-Ginger grew up in […]

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A Curry Powder Recipe from 1818

The Universal Receipt Book - 1818 - curry powder recipe - splice of pages 153 and 154

On one of the rare occasions when the Bloglovin’ web interface works with my complicated browser set-up, I ran across a fascinating piece of data visualization. It was a Data Visualization of Eight Flavors from the Four Pounds Flour blog in which the author used the Google Ngram Viewer to highlight the eight flavors in her […]

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