Rachel Laudan

1. Not food, but fabrics.  Scroll through to look at the photos.

2. A special way of preparing young rice from the Philippines. And while you are at it check out Robyn Eckhardt’s EatingAsia, evocative and informative about (mainly) the street foods of Southeast Asia.

3. Who knew?  The USDA still sends out plant collectors.

In the months ahead, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists plan to collect walnuts from Kyrgyzstan, grasses from Russia, and carrots and sunflowers from fields across the Southeastern United States in efforts that will enhance one of the nation’s most effective tools for protecting the food supply.

Hat tip to Jeremy Cherfas.

4. Almost Italian by Skip Lombardi is full of acute observations on American Italian food.  My only quibble is that I think he should call it A Different Italian.  Anyway Skip has now published a book about his Sicilian grandparents’ kitchen,  La Cocina dei Poveri on Kindle.   A plus for all us potential self publishers out there.  He figured out how to do it on Kindle not through a self-publishing companies.

5. On the subject of Italian, here is a lovely piece on stamped pasta by Laura Schenone.

6. Lots of interesting resources on Asia at asia-www-monitor@anu.edu.au

Such as this.

http://academic.reed.edu/formosa/formosa_index_page/Formosa_index.html

Peter Scholliers just reminded me that I really should add the journal he edits to Getting Started in Food History.  Absolutely.   He and the other two editors are at the very forefront of food history.  Here’s his note and the link.

Dear Rachel,
Perhaps an addition to your section with journals: Food & History (edited by Grieco, Montanari and myself, published twice a year, mostly about Europe (but inbedded in world history -naturally). Published by the Institut Europeen de l’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation (Tours, France). All information via: http://www.iehca.eu/IEHCA_v4/food.html/.
Best,
Peter

Acueducto de Querétaro

Originally uploaded by laap mx

In a couple of weeks we are leaving Guanajuato, moving to Queretaro. The photo shows part of the eighteenth century aqueduct that supplied the town with water.

Querétaro (Ker-ET-a-ro) is a lovely city of one and half million people about two hours’ drive north of Mexico City.

It was the third city of colonial Mexico, the crossroads for the area north of Mexico City, a market and educational center so it had a very different past from the mining and industry of Guanajuato.  (Now they’ve rather changed position, with a cleaned up Guanajuato relying on tourism, state government and university, and Queretaro a booming industrial town, with university and government too).

If you are American, you may have felt its influence. This was where the missionaries who set up the California missions were trained.

It still has a lovely, spotless, well restored historic center, full of good restaurants, markets, museums, and churches.

We won’t be there until April. In the meantime we are off to Austin, Texas for a couple of months.

While there I hope to give my blog a shiny new appearance. And better catch up on the back log of posts that I am itching to put out.

Meantime I’ll post when I can.  But don’t expect much!