The Food of a Younger Land: A
Portrait of American Food---Before
the National Highway System, Before
Chain Restaurants, and Before
Frozen Food, When the ... and
Traditional---from the Lost WPA Files
by Mark Kurlansky
Fascinating
Bestselling author Mark Kurlansky paints a detailed picture of Depression
Era Americans through the food that they ate and the local traditions and
customs they observed when planning and preparing meals.

Personal Review: The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of
American Food---Before the National Highway System, Before
Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the ... and
Traditional---from the Lost WPA Files by Mark Kurlansky
Oh, how they ate!
Long ago, up to just after WWII, the United States was a land of regions.
New England was separate and distinct from the South, for example, and
the Plains States very different than those two. Culture and cuisine were
influenced by local likes and dislikes, mores and folkways. Likewise,
refrigerated railway cars and to a far lesser extent weren't nearly as widely
used today, so many of the fruits and vegetables we take for granted in
grocery stores anywhere in the country today simply weren't as widely
available back then.
In short, there was a culinary America before McDonald's and what
people ate and why they ate it varied widely across our great land.
During the 1930s, the federal government struggled to put people to work
during the Great Depression. One of the make-work outfits was the
Federal Writer's Project, called by poet W. H. Auden "one of the noblest
and most absurd undertakings ever attempted by any state". Unemployed
writers were hired to write.
Mark Kurlansky, who has written utterly enthralling histories of salt and
the cod fish, went through the archives of the FWP project on what
America ate ("America Eats"). It was the successor to the highly successful
series of FWP guidebooks to the various regions of the United States.
Kurlansky provides a thorough and informative history of the FWP as an
introduction to the book. Some of the best known writers in America were
on the government payroll during those dark days.
"America Eats" was never completed. WWII put everyone to work and
budgets for the FWP disappeared.
Kurlansky has created an anthology of many of the articles from "America
Eats". The quality of the writing goes from dreadful to superb. Many of the
articles include recipes, some of which are mouth-watering, while not a few
make you want to hold your nose or worse. The differences between the
regions is grandly apparent. I particularly enjoyed the story of how "hush
puppies" came to be and how they got their name. (I also became
ravenously hungry for the best hush puppies I've ever eaten, in a small
town in Minnesota.)
Some of the articles, particularly those from the South, reveal how
ingrained racial biases were, with language that would never be allowed to
see the light of day in a government sponsored project today.

Kurlansky writes an introduction to each region's articles. The book is
culinary history, but also cultural history as well, of a land before
nationwide restaurant chains, thousands of frozen and canned food items
and a concern with sodium and carbs. The differences in our society, the
massive class of factory workers in the Northeast, the agrarian society of
the South, the robust farmers and laborers of the Midwest are all
separated by rich detail.
This is a book for browsing. With several dozen articles divided into five
sections, this is a wonderful book for just opening to a page and reading.
Make sure you don't do it when you're hungry, though: many of the recipes
will leave you on the verge of making gluttony a life goal. The great tragedy
is that nearly all this great, carefree cooking and eating has disappeared
from our land.
Jerry
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