As We Eat

As We Eat continues its exploration of seminal cookbooks with tried and true attempts at some of the recipes from Clemtine Paddleford’s “How America Eats.” This monumental volume (Kim’s revised edition weighs in at 500 recipes and nearly 900 pages!) chronicles Clementine’s journey around the United States to gather stories of real people and the recipes of what they love to eat, making it a unique and fascinating cookbook worth discussing.

Published in 1960, How America Eats draws what is perhaps the first culinary roadmap of its kind, capturing the diverse flavors and traditions of American cuisine from coast to coast, from city to country. The cookbook emerged during a significant moment for food in post-World War II America when prosperity and hunger for new culinary experiences were abundant. Unlike many contemporary cookbooks, "How America Eats" focused on whole ingredients in a proto-farm-to-table manner, reflecting a prevailing attitude about food that primarily featured ingredients largely available within the communities where they were collected.

For her recipe trials, Kim selected dishes reflecting the unique food cultures from her former home state of Ohio. With rich immigrant and settlement stories of people coming from Western and Eastern Europe as the Northwest Territory takes shape and Ohio achieves its statehood and African-American and Black “Great Migration” from the southern United States, Ohio becomes a veritable “melting pot” of food traditions.

It was Clementine's visit with the Dorcas Women’s Guild of the Magyar Evangelical and Reformed Church in Elyria, where she encountered Hungarian immigrants who preserved their culinary traditions while blending them with the new American influences, that inspired Kim to attempt Stuffed Cabbage, Chicken Paprikas, and Nokedli, which was met with certain challenges and some wild success!

We conclude this episode with a vivid discussion about how Clemtine’s efforts with "How America Eats" not only showcased the vast array of American dishes but also celebrated the people and communities eating this food. The cookbook offered a glimpse into the mid-century American culinary landscape, which we conjecture may someday inspire a scholarly interest in mid-century menus.

Sources & Books We Found Helpful for this Episode How America Eats by Clemetine Paddleford, first edition

The Great American Cookbook: 500 Time-Tested Recipes; Favorite Foods from Every State by Clementine Paddleford, revised by Kelly Alexander

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Chicken Paprikash with Nokedli - my nokedli looked NOTHING like this!

Transcript

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We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

Giving voice, using our voice, and listening are key to community building. Leigh and Kim explore how the art of sharing recipes can give voice to a nation, as they discuss how Clementine Paddleford documented the voices that satisfy hometown appetites in her seminal cookbook, How America Eats.

All Who Wander…

Join us on a journey with Clementine Paddleford and her seminal cookbook, How America Eats. Kim and Leigh discuss how sharing recipes can give voice to a nation, by highlighting Clem’s remarkable achievement of collecting regional recipes through her extensive travels -  800,000 miles of travel! 

To both of us, How America Eats is a culinary masterpiece that deserves a place on every American cookbook shelf. Though sadly, due unfortunate events and dare we say poor timing she has been overshadowed by other prominent food writers like Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, and James Beard. 

From a small town, teenage journalist to Paddleford's successful career as the food editor of the New York Herald Tribune where her weekly column reached an estimated readership of 12 million people, we discuss her accomplishments, codification of regional cuisine, and impact on food writing.

Authenticity v Accuracy - yep, that topic again

If you’ve listened to any of our podcasts, you know that this is a food touchstone topic for both of us. And this episode is no different. Clementine gives us some great fodder to engage in a thought-provoking discussion about the concept of authenticity versus accuracy in cooking. We explore how cooking at home and experimenting with different cuisines may not always prioritize strict authenticity. Instead, we believe that home cooks are more concerned with satisfaction, enjoyment and maybe a bit of entertainment as well as exploring new flavors and relishing the cooking process.

To that end, we ask a thought provoking question about authenticity and accuracy when it comes to cooking. 

In the End

What we would really love for you to do after listening to the podcast is go out and get this cookbook. Let’s all celebrate the accomplishments of Clementine Paddleford by listening to the voices that she so thoughtfully recorded as she documented How America Eats. 

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode Hometown Appetites by Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris

Clementine Paddleford: The Badass Lady Pilot Who Revolutionized the Art of Food Writing

Clementine Paddleford’s ‘How America Eats’ Chronicled the Tastes of a Nation

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

How America Eats by Clementine Paddleford

A Flower for my Mother by Clementine Paddleford

Hometown Appetites by Kelly Alexander and Cynthia Harris

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Episodes We Think You’ll Like

EP 43 Food Pioneers: Life and Career Highlights of People Who Make Food Great

EP 55 Refinding Home: Edna Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking, and Me

EP 64 Recipes for Cookouts and Culture Identity

Transcript

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Kim and Leigh explore two recipes from Nicole Taylor’s cookbook Watermelon & Red Birds that not only give a glimpse into a culture’s culinary history, but look into future culinary explorations of black culture and influence.

Episode Transcript

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We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Summer is full of reasons to celebrate - either for our personal victories of graduation or fatherhood but also on a more profound scale with federal holidays like Independence Day. In this new episode of As We Eat, Kim and Leigh explore how one author is not only bringing attention to the food traditions of Black celebrations like Juneteenth, but also challenging readers to look again at tradition.

Food & Celebration

For the month of June, we decided to focus on food and celebration, and to us there was no better choice than a relatively new title - "Watermelon & Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations” by James Beard-nominated food writer Nicole A. Taylor. It was the premise of this book that really caught Kim’s interest as it is the first broadly published cookbook to focus on the foods of Juneteenth. What we found is not only a collection of recipes, but a sincere effort to explore culinary traditions that connect food-centric celebrations to a rich heritage while also making room for those traditions to bend and accommodate change.

A Bridge Between Tradition and Culinary Evolution

In this space, Taylor aims to bridge the gap between traditional African American dishes and the evolving culinary landscape of the twenty-first century, encouraging readers to engage in conversations about Black American contributions to the country while celebrating their own cultural heritage.

While Taylor's own culinary journey began at a young age, she came into her celebration of Juneteenth as a young adult and it fueled her interest in documenting the DIY and urban food scene around her home in New York. Her debut book, "The Up South Cookbook," aimed to help home cooks recreate Southern cuisine in the North.

A critical element in Taylor’s approach is her theory that food belongs to everyone, not just professionals, and by capturing the cadence and culture of Black celebrations in her cookbook, we are offered a gateway to American history and Black American traditions. What we perceive as traditional may have evolved over time, and she invites readers to explore flavors, food, and techniques that may be either familiar or unknown, and in doing so foster discussions about how culinary traditions - especially Black food traditions - might evolve while remaining rooted in their origins.

Episode Transcript

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Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

• Nicole A. Taylor | Southern Foodways Alliance
• Nicole A. Taylor's cookbook puts a spin on traditional African American food
• Nicole A. Taylor's 'Watermelon & Red Birds' Is an Ode to Black Joy

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

• The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen by Nicole A. Taylor
• Watermelon and Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations by Nicole A. Taylor

Recipes You Really Need to Try

• Nicole A. Taylor’s Recipe for Weekend Sweet Potato Hash @ The Splendid Table
• Nicole A. Taylor's Black Pepper Strawberry Slab Pie @ Dash of Jazz
• Nicole A. Taylor shares her Juneteenth recipes for Black celebrations @ Los Angeles Times
• Juneteenth Recipes Curated by Nicole Taylor @ NYT Cooking

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

s a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

In this episode, we continue As We Eat’s journey exploring "How to Cook and Eat in Chinese" by Buwei Yang Chao, an esteemed author who invited readers to experience what it means to both cook and eat Chinese food. As we continue our dive into the world of Chinese cooking, we peel back the layers of stereotypes that have often misrepresented this diverse and complex culinary tradition.

As We Eat Episodes Mentioned

EP 40: Sailing the Umami Seas - Fishy Origins of an Ancient Recipe, Proper Pronunciation of a Pantry Staple, and our favorite Bloody Marys

EP 48 Dumplings Around the World: Pan Asian Dumplings from Chinese Medicine to Dim Sum

EP 49: Dumplings Around the World: European Dumplings from Saints to Holy Justice in Just One Bite

EP 50 Dumplings Around the World: The Great American Dumplings Showdown

EP 51 From Temple to Table: How Rice Built Communities Around the World

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao

How to Order and Eat in Chinese to Get the Best Meal in a Chinese Restaurant by Buwei Yang Chao

Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao

Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen

Other Sources

FOOD; Chinese Characters (with recipes) by The New York Times

Red-Cooked Meat and Table Manners: Decoding How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by The Margins

The Forgotten Chinese Chef Who Taught America to Stir-Fry by Mother Jones

Transcript

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Today we’ll journey through a fascinating cookbook whose purpose was to inform, educate and break through ingrained stereotypes. How to Cook and Eat in Chinese is a cultural road map into Chinese culture through its food and culinary traditions with some humorous and personal twists and turns along the way.

From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, Kim and Leigh discuss the political and social constructs that informed the creation of, if they do say so themselves, a spectacular piece of culinary literature.

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese is so, so, so much more than a book filled with recipes for Peking duck, spring rolls, and congee. It’s guide book through Chinese culture and tradition.

Written in Chinese by a Tokyo-educated female women’s doctor, translated by her English-speaking daughter, and edited by her Boxer-Indemnity-Scholarship educated husband, this book, as you might expect, is rife with multi-generational and cultural perspectives. And in the case of the footnotes, familial banter.

Buwei and crew brilliantly set the table to aid in understanding a culture through the lens of its food. As Mrs. Chao reminds us, “a little thinking and and little willingness to experiment will go very far.” Oh, what wise words!

Resources we found helpful for this episode

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao

Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey by Anne Mendelson

Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), National Archives

Boxer Rebellion, History

Red-Cooked Meat and Table Manners: Decoding How to Cook and Eat in Chinese

Books we think you should read

How to Cook and Eat in Chinese by Buwei Yang Chao

Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey by Anne Mendelson

Autobiography of a Chinese Woman by Buwei Yang Chao

Episodes We Think You’ll Like

EP 59: Bon Appétit! How Julia Child Made America Fall in Love with French Food

Episode 60 Coq au Whatever: Mastering an Iconic French Provincial Dish

Episode 33 How to Be A Good Host: Don’t do These Seven Things, Horses and Good Manners, and the Death of Vocabulary

Episode 41 Brothers in Spoons: Odd Intersections of Food, Military, and War

As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

 Grab your favorite glass of Burgundy and settle in as Leigh and Kim discuss what Leigh learned about making an iconic dish that epitomizes the warmth, hospitality, and culinary traditions of French culture. Leigh even shares what she discovered about herself when making coq au vin from Mastering the Art of French Cooking while Kim talks about the traditional wine used in making this dish.Cook with any wine you have

We’ve talked at length about how Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a cookbook based on technique. Techniques that make the art of French cuisine and cooking available to the general public. And though there are prescriptions for iconic dishes, there is also some freedom granted by Julia and Co. 

Coq au vin - rooster in wine - is traditionally made with red wine, but I love the fact that in the introduction of the recipe Julia notes that you can use whatever wine you cook with. This comes from a lady who painstakingly tested, re-tested, and re-tested all of the 524 recipes in the book. She understood that in order for people to cook these dishes, it was important to grant some ownership in the creative process.

On being intentional

This recipe is not for the faint of heart. Within the recipe for Coq au Vin there are an additional 3 recipes for ingredients used. But rather than look at the recipe with trepidation, I chose to recall a visit to France where I learned to understand the importance and intention that the culture places not only on ingredients but meal-times and community. 

This is a country where businesses and schools shutter for two hours each day during lunch so that citizens can enjoy a meal with family and friends. Where suppers last well into the late evening hours. And where conversations are considered entertainment.

So, to dedicate a full day of intentional cooking wasn’t a hardship. It was a pleasure. A pleasure that elicited some interesting revelations about some of my cooking habits and one of the most delicious meals we had all week.

What about the wine

Although Julia and Co. indicate that you can use “whatever wine you use for cooking,” traditionally, coq au vin utilizes a wine that is local to the region, Burgundy. Kim takes us on a little tasting tour of this earthy wine made in the region since the Romans annexed this area into their empire. 

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme  

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Coq au Vin

Episodes We Think You’ll Enjoy

Episode 14 Casseroles: Tuna Noodle, Green Bean, and Gleaming Vessels

Episode 38: Fire & Ice: Two Modern Kitchen Technologies that Changed Our Kitchens and Diets

Episode 59: Bon Appétit! How Julia Child Made America Fall in Love with French Food

Transcript

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It’s no secret that Leigh and Kim are fans of Julia Child - a culinary icon who revolutionized the way Americans think about food and cooking. Julia Child made cooking accessible and fun, and her legacy lives on today through her timeless recipes, television show episodes, her cookbooks, and through the work of the many chefs and food lovers she inspired.

For todays’ episode, we take a good look at Julia Child’s fascinating life and the start of her storied culinary career - the 1961 publication of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode Julia Child’s Kitchen at the Smithsonian Institute

Julia Child Biography from National Women’s History Museum

FOOD: Transforming the American Table at the National Museum of American History

Julia Child Video Collection at PBS

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (1961) with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle

"The French Chef Cookbook" (1968) 

"From Julia Child's Kitchen" (1975) 

"Julia Child & Company" (1978) 

"The Way to Cook" (1989) 

"In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs" (1995) 

"Baking with Julia" (1996) 

"Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" (2000) 

"My Life in France" (2006) with Alex Prud’homme

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Beef Bourguignon 

Coq Au Vin

Cassoulet

Julia Child Recipes from PBS

Transcript

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As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes.

Today, Kim shares her experience with a recipe intended to ease the strain of entertaining and leave time for more important matters, like gaining votes for women.

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

You may know that the woman suffrage movement played a significant role in winning women the right to vote. But are you aware that an important tool that they employed to educate,  persuade, and build community was cookbooks? 

Kim and Leigh discuss how one of the movement’s self-published community cookbooks would serve as a testament to the suffragettes’ commitment to their cause and their desire to build a better world for themselves and their families.

No Ordinary Cook Book

The Woman Suffrage Cook Book is not your ordinary cookbook. Published in 1886, edited by Hattie A. Burr with recipe contributions by suffragettes, supporters, and women across America it served as a tool for fundraising, with proceeds supporting the movement. But it served an even greater purpose. It was a way to educate the public regarding the suffragettes’ goals and aspirations. By sharing family recipes and offering tips on household management and care of the sick and infirmed, it demonstrated that they were not just political activists but also wives, mothers, and homemakers.

The recipes provide a glimpse into the food culture of the time and serve as a reminder that food is more than sustenance. It can build community, shape culture, and be a catalyst of social change.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode All Stirred Up, Laura KuminBooks We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

All Stirred Up, Laura Kumin

The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, edited by Hattie A. Burr

The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, edited by Hatties A. Burr PDF version

Transcript

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