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    From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals
    From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals
    From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals
    Ebook334 pages4 hours

    From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals

    By Barbara Haber

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Barbara Haber, one of America's most respected authorities on the history of food, has spent years excavating fascinating stories of the ways in which meals cooked and served by women have shaped American history. As any cook knows, every meal, and every diet, has a story -- whether it relates to presidents and first ladies or to the poorest of urban immigrants. From Hardtack to Home Fries brings together the best and most inspiring of those stories, from the 1840s to the present, focusing on a remarkable assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who determined what our country ate during some of its most trying periods.

    Haber's secret weapon is the cookbook. She unearths cookbooks and menus from rich and poor, urban and rural, long-past and near-present and uses them to answer some fascinating puzzles:

    Why was the food in Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's White House so famously bad? Were they trying to keep guests away, or did they themselves simply lack the taste to realize the truth? It turns out that Eleanor's chef wrote a cookbook, which solves the mystery.

    How did food lure settlers to the hardship of the American West? Englishman Fred Harvey's Harvey Girls tempted them with good food and good women.

    How did cooking keep alive World War II Army and Navy POWs in the Pacific? A remarkable cookbook reveals how recollections of home cooking and cooking resourcefulness helped mend bodies and spirits.

    From Hardtack to Home Fries uses a light touch to survey a deeply important subject. Women's work and women's roles in America's past have not always been easy to recover. Barbara Haber shows us that a single, ubiquitous, ordinary-yet-extraordinary lens can illuminate a great deal of this other half of our past. Haber includes sample recipes and rich photographs, bringing the food of bygone eras back to life.

    From Hardtack to Home Fries is a feast, and a delight.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFree Press
    Release dateMay 11, 2010
    ISBN9781439137598
    From Hardtack to Homefries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals

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    Reviews for From Hardtack to Homefries

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Engaging collection of food history essays. Haber draws on cookbooks, memoirs and other archival sources to tackle a number of topics, most of which I hadn't known or thought much about. (I most enjoyed learning about the Harvey Girls and the improvement of food along the railroads -- which also made me think, with a sigh, of Terry Pratchett's last book "Raising Steam.") I only wished the pieces weren't as short -- most of the subjects seem like they're worth a longer article or even a book of their own.
    • 4/5
      Funky history of food in the U.S.- but not necessarily chronological. I enjoyed the discussion of the horrible food in the Roosevelt White House and how the Harvey girls came into being.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Haber selects different aspects of American life from which to analyze our relationship to food. Some of her choices are intriguing, such as the Irish Potato Famine, which sent floods of immigrants to the US, and sent at least one American reformer to Ireland to try to help feed people. Gently humorous--particularly in the chapter about food reformers--always interesting, this book combines cookery with sociology.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Engaging collection of food history essays. Haber draws on cookbooks, memoirs and other archival sources to tackle a number of topics, most of which I hadn't known or thought much about. (I most enjoyed learning about the Harvey Girls and the improvement of food along the railroads -- which also made me think, with a sigh, of Terry Pratchett's last book "Raising Steam.") I only wished the pieces weren't as short -- most of the subjects seem like they're worth a longer article or even a book of their own.

    Book preview

    From Hardtack to Homefries - Barbara Haber

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