Food History

My life is entirely void of food history insights. Maybe I should be a bit more accurate and say that my day is actually devoid of such things. My life is still more than a little bit oriented towards food history.

My usual way of dealing with thinking about other matters or being over-busy or way too stressed is to find some really interesting recipes and subtly place them instead of a post. I have bunches prepared in the background for such eventualities. The thing is, though, that after the long break you had when the server was out of operation, you don’t need an excuse for a post. You need something with a bit more bite.

One of the things that I see very often in pop history books and one of the things that I use a lot in teaching are the cool stories. Often they’re cool stories about cool people. The ideal cool stories have some intrinsic humour or some intrinsic gross-out factor. My favourite cool stories recently have been the Franklin Expedition and the Molasses Factory Accident.

John Scalzi is the cause of a minor food history incident. He has kindly traced its progress through internetland over the time since he taped bacon onto his cat, and today he points out just how it has affected his blog. Go read his blog and trace the bacon-cat story back to its inception and you can see how foodlore can develop and how it can entirely eclipse otherwise significant items in a life.

This is an extended version (become more extended because of changes in how we get our information) of local foodways and family stories. The tens of thousands of people who know about John’s cat are the equivalent of the town full of people who would have known about it three hundred years ago. Dissemination of foodways depends very much on who talks to whom and how.

So, that was your food history theory of the day – now go and mess with Scalzi’s brain. Tell him you’re using him as an example of how foodways are created and shared. I dare you.

PS There is no bacon picture on this post: I’m Jewish. Instead, I give you the moustache cup.