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Taro Milk Tea

Polynesian mythology & ancient traditional history of the New Zealanders as furnished by their priests and chiefs by George Grey (1885, 1906 edition).

Most people know taro root as a health food staple, but it's also one of the oldest staple crops in the world and a key food source in the great Polynesian migrations. Read about this history of these epic voyages as filtered through the stodge of a late-1800s British aristocrat.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y7b63vel

Ginja

The Relic: A Novel by José Maria De Eça de Queirós (1887, 2012 edition).

Ginja is a potent Portuguese spirit, and so was José Maria De Eça de Queirós. His novel "The Relic" is as intoxicating as sacramental wine but far funnier, and if you didn't ask its age you'd have no idea it was 133 years old.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y7wzfcmj

Cheesesteak

The contagious city: the politics of public health in early Philadelphia by Simon Finger (2012).

The city of brotherly love looms large in American history, but even in its early days the city needed to clean up its act. The roots of public health and sanitation have never been more relevant, and the politicians involved are just as dirty then as they are now.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y989fofd

Earl Grey Tea

The Little Tea Book by Arthur Gray (1903).

While we may associate tea, Earl Grey, hot, with a utopian vision of the future that may never come to pass, Prime Minister Charles Grey boldly went where no host had gone before when he served tea with bergamot. This tea book by Arthur Gray (no relation) can help with the steep learning curve.

Permalink: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19392

White Claw™ Seltzer

The legacy of carbon dioxide: past and present impacts by Paul J. Karol (2019).

While fizzy water makes for sparkling conversation, the molecule behind the bubble has a checkered past. Necessary for life, but hardly an ideal gas.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ybnk7n63

Golden Flake™ Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips

Crunch: A History of the Great American Potato Chip by Dirk Burhans (2008).

While eating them is a snap, the history of everyone's favorite sack of spuds is as warped, twisted, and green as the weird chip left in the bottom of the bag. Remember: you can't read just one.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ybslssub

Crab

Fishing Yesterday's Gulf Coast by Barney Farley (2002).

Scuttlebutt has it that this legendary fishing guide had claws for alarm when he realized that the commercial shrimp and crab fishing boats were destroying his beloved waters. Follow his journey from consumer to conservationist as he tackles a problem that's even worse today than in the 1960s.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ybdqhov3

Oranges

Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice by Alissa Hamilton (2009).

Dive into this pulp romance and learn the sweet and sour truth about the 'healthy’ beverage that is America's main squeeze. Just don't blame us if it's a seedy story.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y7bl9wtg

Tacos

The informal American city: from taco trucks to day labor by Vinit Mukhija and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (2014).

The best tacos come from unregulated street trucks; the best bargains come from untaxed garage sales; the best Gucci purses are fakes spread out for sale. But why is this, and why is the trend accelerating in large American cities? We're in a time of uncertainty for these very cottage industries, and if we're not careful, the venerable taco truck may go the way of the dodo truck.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/yd6t99yq

Vegetarian Mezze

The vegetarian crusade: the rise of an American reform movement, 1817-1921 by Adam D. Shprintzen (2013).

While we tend to view leafing meat off the table as a recent innovation, many utopians in the 19th century were all-in on their own form of green movement. What brought on this first wave of vegetarianism, and why did so many vegetopias fail within their first few years? We know you've bean curious.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y98twjl7

Red Wine

French wine: a history by Rod Phillips (2016).

People enjoy wining about how nothing quite stacks up to a snifter of Merlot from Bordeaux, but how is it that France developed its mastery of sour grapes? And can any of us Yanks really tell the difference between a good red wine and melted popsicles without reading the label first?

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/yb72rk8z

Coffee with Italian Sweet Cream

Popes, peasants, and shepherds: recipes and lore from Rome and Lazio by Oretta Zanini De Vita (2013).

What makes Italian cream, Italian cheese, Italian bread worthy of that designation of origin? History, religion, and a healthy heaping of traditional recipes, that's what.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/yb8453xu

Chocolate

Chocolate: A Global History by Sarah Moss (2009).

How did a bitter drink of Native American kings become the world's favorite sweet? What steps lie between the humble cacao bean and the processed bar of chocolate we smoosh into a s'more? Unwrap these questions and more with this handy volume.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y7doye4u

Mashed Potatoes

The Vortex: A Novel by José Eustasio Rivera (1924, 2003 edition).

The Irish are most associated with potatoes in pop culture, but few know that spuds are native to South America, which has the most spudiversity of anyplace. But like the rubber trees of this epochal Columbian novel, the natural riches of South America ferment a potent brew of exploitation.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ybs5sgfm

Coffee and Pie

A Broad-Side Against Coffee, corrected and published, as very proper for this age by J.H. (1672)

Once upon a time, coffee was extremely controversial and seen as a moral and religious failing—something blamed in no uncertain terms on far-off and dangerous foreigners. Who knows what we, today, turn up our noses at in righteous indignation that may one day be accepted? Preachers on their second cup of the day would do well to take note.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ybw3tpm3

Bushmills Irish Whiskey

Writing Irish: Selected interviews with writers from the Irish literary supplement by James P. Myers (1999).

It's been said that great sadness and great libations make great writers, which may explain the many titans of literature that have come from Ireland, both Northern and Republic of.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/ycujjrjv

Chardonnay

A New Ballad: The Bottle of Wine and Butler, author unknown. (1800?)

Drinking songs have been big for ages, but after the invention of the printing press, songs of all kinds became big business, and were printed and sold in huge numbers. The actual musical notes were published starting in the 1850s, and were the most popular entertainment you could buy until recorded music arrived.

Permalink: http://umiss.lib.olemiss.edu/record=b4839135~S2

Hummus

Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel by Yael Raviv (2015).

Who owns a food? Who gets to say what is, or is with it? Everything, from humble chickpea spread on up, comes from somewhere and says something in someone's eyes. But who decides?

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y8q3sftg

Sweet Tea

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South edited by E. Patrick Johnson (2008).

Many northerners have never heard of sweet tea, never seen it, but it is there all the same, visible or invisible. The same is true of our people; you may not see them, or hear of them, but they are there, and they are worth celebrating.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/y7nl2uqg

Pinto Beans

New Border Voices: an Anthology edited by Brandon D Shuler, Robert Earl Johnson, Jr., and Erika Garaza-Johnson (2014).

We say that certain foods and tastes are "south of the border," but the plants themselves know no borders. They grow where they grow, and it's up to us to make meaning, and meals, from them.

Permalink: https://tinyurl.com/yc8v8rjk

Happy Reading!