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[twospots]

The link to the "Foodie Food Storage" article got me wishing I had more info about a few things. Sharon Astyk writes:

[I]t is worth remembering that the peasant cuisines that we base much of our best food upon never contained meat, milk and eggs in the quantities we have them now, never ate them all year round. That is, no one ever ate osso buco

Comments

[sheafrotherdon]

Mark Bittman's new book, [Food Matters], sounds right up your alley. He's advocating a way of eating that relies on much less animal protein, as the current rate of consumption - especially in the US - is completely unsustainable. He spends quite a bit of time talking about the way in which people raised and used vegetables, fruits, grains, and animals before WWII, and also - crucially - includes 77 recipes at the end of the book that demonstrate how to eat the way he's advocating.

Boiled down to its essence, his approach is - plants first. Whatever meal you consume, make sure the vast majority of it is constituted from plants of some kind or another, and that animal proteins are not the focus on the dish. (He's made the decision for himself to be more or less vegan until dinner time, and then to eat whatever he likes so long as he's following the 'mostly plants' guideline.) I followed his guidelines for a frittata yesterday, for example. Where I would usually eat an egg and cheese omlette, using two eggs in one serving, I instead sauteed a red pepper, a green pepper, onion, and a sliced sweet potato in a little oil, and poured two beaten eggs over the whole thing when the veggies were soft. I ate half for dinner, so the majority of my meal was vegetable based, and my animal protein was cut by half.

Does this help?

[twospots]

Yes! That book is on my wishlist, but perhaps I had better move it up the list a bit. And yes, it sounds like he does some of what I'm looking for: some kind of decently-researched historical perspective.

[sheafrotherdon]

This might be worth looking at? http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=TlIFy8jEppYC&dq=social+history+of+food&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=raMxWSrPFs&sig=KDErBFa-8MrZEzu2G6dBMrTGMms&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPR5,M1

That said, I have a government-issued guide to food preparation and storage, published in Britain in the 1930s, and it advises boiling carrots for up to an hour. So perhaps Britain isn't the way to go . . .

[twospots]

Ooh, yes, that does look interesting. I think that the overboiling thing is more characteristic of the 30s that of Britain, maybe. Both my grandmothers (who learned to cook in the 20s and 30s in New York City and the wilds of northern Ontario) were very fond of well-boiled veggies...