Friday, January 25, 2008

Good Reads: Kitchen History

With all the food posts as of late (Lori at Smoky Mountain History has a great one on cornbread, and who can forget Terry's Fruitcake Revisited post at Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi?), I wanted to point out a new book that will interest family historians.

The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home by Steven Gdula looks like a great read and it is on my order list right now at Amazon. This book focuses purely on the 20th century and includes segments on faddish appliances (from fondue pots, to slow cookers, to microwaves) as well as sections that document the rise of Julia Child, television cooking shows and more.

If you've seen my History of Food posts, I've tried to work backwards by decade on how my family has related to food. After reading this, I'll probably pick up that posting series again.

Now, in our post-holiday postings, how are we still stuck on food? I though we got this out of our system? How will Terry and the rest of us be able to stay on our diets?

1 comment:

Lori Thornton said...

My Amazon wish list just keeps growing and growing and growing. If I'm lucky, I'll find a few of them at cheap prices at McKays in Knoxville, but the cookbooks and culinary histories I want are hard to find sometimes! Every once in awhile I hit it after someone actually parted with the best books! I don't know where I'll fit another book on the kitchen bookshelf (aka baker's rack)!

Notice - I'm steering clear of the "diet" reference.