Culinary Anthropology

     So I love history and archeology. I actually considered archeology has a career at one point in my life. While that’s not the direction I went, it still remains a passion of mine.  I recently discovered two wonderful news sites for keeping up on the latest archeological discoveries.  Archeological News from Archeology Magazine  and Discovery News

The discovery.com one also has interesting stories about earth, space, dinosaurs, and tech in addition to my archeology and history love.

       A recent article in Discovery News was discussing a recent discovery that showed that early humans were “grinding their own flour and preparing vegetables for meals at least 30,000 years ago” Evidence suggests that they made their flour mainly out of ground cattails which apparently tastes similar to corn. It was probably made into some type of flatbread cooked on a hot stone.   Reading this article I can’t help but think- I wonder what that tasted like?

     Another love of mine is food and cooking. I read a little blurb in my October 2010 edition of Trader Joe's “Fearless Flyer” that their Bavarian Bratwursts are in- they are “made in Germany in the traditional style. Very traditional. So traditional that the recipe hasn’t changed since 1313!”  How cool is that? So I get this brilliant idea of- I wonder if there is a field of study on the history of food, historical recipes, perhaps a food historian? It turns out there is- it’s called a Culinary Anthropologist. It’s definitely not a mainstream for anthropology but there seem to be some anthropologists out there that do have expertise in said field.  

      A little more research and I undercover a website, with ancient recipes and links to Roman, Medieval, Elizabethan, and the list goes on and on into other cultures- modern and of old.  http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/ The ancient recipe section, claims: “These are all recipes from the 'ancient' periods of human history; essentially the Stone, Bronze and early Iron ages. These recipes are either re-created from archaeological evidence or they are based on traditional cooking methods still used by peoples elsewhere on the globe.” It does give the limitation that while we can know the ingredients are authentic through archeological evidence, knowing how they were precisely put together remains to our best estimation. Unfortunately cave drawings do not include recipe books.  Still despite it’s limitations I still find the site and recipes listed fascinating.  Sign me up for Celtic Pork and Apple stew, or maybe some Sweet Bean Cakes.

      So who’s coming over for dinner?

Food: the Language of Love

Eagerly anticipating the return of my husband after a week long business trip- my first thoughts go to- “I should make him a nice dinner.  I should make sure he has his favorite cookies.”   I have discovered that like many women –including my mother in law, I show my love through food.  If I cook for you, then you are dear to me.  Keep this in mind my friends and family: spontaneous gifts of food means that you are special. =)  To clarify, not receiving gifts of food usually means I’m just very busy and not that I don’t like you.  Love and Hugs to all my friends and family! Today, if I could cook for you I would make you: Peanut Butter Cookies  -except for Toby, m’love, you get Chocolate Chip.

“Gerber Funny More”

So back to Disney’s Mulan- one of the songs the soldiers sing while encamped is about having “a girl worth fighting for”. While singing with my darling daughter, who had taken an interest in said movie, I sing the line “a girl worth fighting for.”  She promptly corrects me saying that the line is in fact “A Gerber Funny More.” In my wisdom I try to reason with a 4 year old explaining that those lyrics don’t really make sense, going on to explain what the song is about and why they are saying “a girl worth fighting for.”  As you probably already know, reasoning with a 4 year old is pretty much a useless endeavor.  She continued to stubbornly and vehemently disagree with me. That day we both learned a lesson about “agreeing to disagree” and I for the first time saw that my daughter was going to be as stubborn and strong willed as me.  Yikes!