I would get along well with Mark Kurlansky, author of The Food of a Younger Land. My sister says I remember all our vacations by the food we ate wherever we travelled. Kurlansky has long studied cuisines, and has a natural curiosity about what people eat.
This is how he came across the US federal government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). When the program was created in 1935 to find work for millions of Americans, the Federal Writers’ Project sent researchers all around the country to document what Americans ate. The writers then developed guidebooks that proved to be extremely popular. Imagine Kurlansky’s joy in finding those records in the Library of Congress one fine day.
Kurlansky is a food and entertainment writer, author of award-winning books, a James A. Beard award-winner, and a Bon Appetit American Food and Entertaining Award winner, among other distinguished prizes. He knows food, knows both how to do effective research, and how to convert it into fascinating reading.
In The Food of a Younger Land, Kurlansky gives us a map of America, through its food, long before the interstate highway system, before franchises and fast food. The chapters are loosely divide into five American regions: Northeast, South, Middle West, Far West and Southwest.
Born in the 1940s, Kurlansky recalls life in America without fast food, when all food was regional, and “home cooking” was the only road to eating. “The interstate highway system had not yet been built, and Americans traveled through dark colored cars with standard transmission, split windshields, and simple dashboards with radios that worked on occasion and clocks that never kept time.”
To write The Food of a Younger Land, Kurlansky tracked down Library of Congress documents including the files from America Eats, a compendium produced by the administrator of the Federal Writers Program, Katherine Kellock. Her book researched common food and eating traditions across America, covering the interesting local debates back when folks disagreed about the correct way to make clam chowder, rabbit, and traditional old recipes. It even included a transcript of a hilarious plan to outlaw serving mashed potatoes in Oregon restaurants. Sadly, Kellock's project was later abandoned due to WWII.
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