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Hunger Gamesmanship
Thanks to the new machines, the money that had allowed a hundred weavers to live safely and comfortably could now be saved by the factory owner, or spent on himself. Of course, he still needed workers...
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Poet-Taster (2): Jay Baron Nicorvo
Deadbeat’s Recipe for Lamb Take two flights of stairs. Behind the kitchen’s swinging door, inside the walk-in, find a skinned lamb, hanging. With steel and oak fisted, cleave limb from limb. Hack as...
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The Austerity Kitchen at Large
Oh, that land of Cockaigne is so good. It rains there in all fair parts Sweets, pastries and cooked tarts. In that land flows a river Of good wine, of good beer, Muscatel and fine claret, Sherry for...
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Social Habits
A stay at a medieval monastery often featured a lavish meal hot from the friar During a trek through the Bavarian Alps, German troubadour Walther von der Vogelweide paid a visit to the famous cloister...
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Hex Before Marriage
Turning on the charm used to mean something quite different Whatever loneliness or boredom the workers of Salzburg’s famous salt mines endured they eased with an unusual pastime. They would find a tree...
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Batter of Perception
So mucked up with kneading dough she is she has to use her wrist to push her hair back from her eyes. –Kobayashi Issa (translated by C.K. Williams)
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The People’s Kitchen
Does the modern workplace cafeteria owe its existence one 19th-century activist’s effort to feed the laboring multitudes? Though the phonograph and the funicular railway were the two marquee...
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Ill-Digested Plots
“Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce corresponding sensations of the mind, and a great scene of...
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The Great Hog-Eating Confederacy
Tobacco and cotton may have enriched the American South, but pork and corn fed it Of the many miles Swedish merchant and man of letters Carl David Arfwedson traveled throughout the United States some...
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No Taste for Industry
Sometime in 1910, renowned opera singer Feodor Chaliapin returned to his native Russia after completing a season with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. His homecoming he capped with an audience with...
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Diner Forty Niner
There may have been gold in “them thar hills,” but there wasn’t much to eat Lewis Manly wanted nothing more than to be back at the dinner table in his father’s Michigan home, a heaping plate of beans...
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Peccaminous Peckishness
“A full spirit creates an appetite throughout all parts and members of the body…. I would have relished anything at that moment which was rich, succulent and savory. Sinful food, that was what I...
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Bleak House
Bringing the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people meant bringing greater misery to the already wretched The indignities suffered by Joseph Merrick, who would later become known...
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Fair Prices and Fowl
“The stomach’s angry roar with bread and salt. Whence can this rise, you ask, from whence the fault? In you consists the pleasure of the treat, Not in the price, or flavour of the meat. Let exercise...
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The Benevolence of the Butcher
Dressing meat and stuffing sausage meant being a cut above the rest A schoolmaster’s kindness spared Henry Mayhew from a night spent under the stars. The 19th-century British journalist had been...
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An Embarrassment of Citrus
“Enter an unreflecting young gentleman who has bought an orange and must eat it immediately. He accordingly begins by peeling it, and is first made aware of the delicacy of his position by the...
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Quiet in the Kitchen
I’m in the midst of preparing for a cross-country move that I have to make soon, so The Austerity Kitchen will be a little quiet. I’ll continue to post tidbits and vignettes when I have the chance....
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Simplicity, Voluntary or Otherwise
In colonial America, something as simple as a bed or spoon divided the haves from the have-nots I will soon pick up stakes for a new home some 2,000 miles away. In preparing for what will be my third...
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The Bread of Idleness
“Tillers of the soil have few idle months; In the fifth month their toil is double-fold. A south-wind visits the fields at night: Suddenly the hill is covered with yellow corn. Wives and daughters...
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The Inn Crowd
Bad food and lousy beds didn’t keep early American taverns from turning a tidy profit Verminous hotels, lackluster eateries, dubious rest stops: the open road has its perils. I remember a night I spent...
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