Blog on the Language of Food

Thanks to a Slate article on the etymology of macarons, I just discovered this blog on the language of food by a Stanford linguist, Dan Jurafsky. Now, this essay, and the blog in general, really appeal to my sensibilities: medieval history, cultural mixing, word change, and the contrast between sweet and savory. I'll be reading Jurafsky's other posts soon (and hoping that he posts some more), but for now, enjoy some macarons with me:

The Language of Food: Macaroons, Macarons, and Macaroni

Christmas on Lake Constance

In the Southern-German city of Konstanz, you can begin dinner with a light salad of mâche grown on the nearby Reichenau (also known as the Gemüseinsel, or "vegetable island"), continue with fried trout that was caught in the Bodensee that very morning, and pair it with a Konstanzer white wine. In the village where I'm spending Christmas, the butcher and his slaughterhouse are in the middle of the town, so you really know where your meat comes from and how it got to your plate. None of this requires an elaborate ideology or a well-advertised locavore movement. Nor does it require outrageous effort or an enormous investment of cash. It's just, well, it just happens to be normal to eat food that grows nearby, and when it's in season.

I write this because as attractive as I find the idea of eating locally, organically, and seasonally, I do wish it were less of a hassle. Grocery shopping and daily cooking are work enough on their own, without having to do a Master's thesis on the sourcing of pork butt before I even start the marinade.

Medieval Romanian Cookery in translation: "Add in a foot of veal for inquiring"

One of the neat things about having a counter is that I can see how people reach this website. One reader, for example, searched for "medieval romanian cookbook" and, because I mentioned Nicholas Orme's Medieval Schools in a previous post, was offered this blog as a first-page result on Google.

This made me, of course, do the same search, which led me to a couple of websites, both associated with Society for Creative Anachronism activities. One offers some page scans from a 1997 edition of a seventeenth-century cookbook. (And yes, the seventeenth-century was still the Middle Ages in Romania. Long story.) The modern edition, by Ioana Constantinescu and Matei Cazacu, is titled, "O lume într-o carte de bucate: manuscris din epoca brâncovenească." For those of you who read Romanian, David D. Friedman offers a section on fish preparations here.