Download or read book The Rituals of Dinner written by Margaret Visser and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book: A renowned scholar explores the way we eat across cultures and throughout history. From the wild parties of ancient Greece to the strictures of an Upper East Side meal to the ritualistic feasts of cannibals, Margaret Visser takes us on a fascinating journey through the diverse practices, customs, and taboos that define how and why we prepare and consume food the way we do. With keen insights into small details we take for granted, such as the origins of forks and chopsticks or why tablecloths exist, and examinations of broader issues like the economic implications of dining etiquette, Visser scrutinizes table manners across eras and oceans, offering an intimate new understanding of eating both as a biological necessity and a cultural phenomenon. Witty and impeccably researched, The Rituals of Dinner is a captivating blend of folklore, sociology, history, and humor. In the words of the New York Times Book Review, “Read it, because you’ll never look at a table knife the same way again.”
Download or read book The Rituals of Dinner written by Margaret Visser and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2025-04-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most important books ever written about food."--Bee Wilson A New York Times Notable Book from one of our sharpest, most irresistibly witty writers, Margaret Visser's feast of fact The Rituals of Dinner is the definitive history of one of our most primal rituals: the meal The cult classic and New York Times Notable Book that solidified Margaret Visser's standing as a preeminent observer and scholar of everyday life, The Rituals of Dinner is a sweeping history of table manners, from the civilizations of ancient Greece and medieval Europe to the way that technology has altered, and continues to alter, our behavior over dinner. She writes of everything from cultural idiosyncrasies around preparation and consumption, to the surprising origins of tableware--forks took eight centuries to become common utensils, the plate began as a four-day-old slice of bread. Replete with a new foreword by British food journalist Bee Wilson, and a new introduction by the author, The Rituals of Dinner blends folklore, history, and humor in this feast of fact and observation on one of our most primal rituals: the meal. This is the book on the way we eat.
Download or read book Much Depends On Dinner written by Margaret Visser and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Course by course, Margaret Visser examines an ordinary meal—corn, salt, butter, chicken, rice, lettuce, olive oil, lemon juice and ice cream—to show the unexpected history, mythology and taboos behind what we eat.
Download or read book Dinner A Love Story written by Jenny Rosenstrach and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by her beloved blog, dinneralovestory.com, Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner: A Love Story is many wonderful things: a memoir, a love story, a practical how-to guide for strengthening family bonds by making the most of dinnertime, and a compendium of magnificent, palate-pleasing recipes. Fans of “Pioneer Woman” Ree Drummond, Jessica Seinfeld, Amanda Hesser, Real Simple, and former readers of Cookie magazine will revel in these delectable dishes, and in the unforgettable story of Jenny’s transformation from enthusiastic kitchen novice to family dinnertime doyenne.
Download or read book Dinner on Domingos written by Alexandra Katona and published by Barefoot Books. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This magical home turns a normal Sunday into domingo: the best day of the week.” Warm memories wash over a first-generation Latinx American girl as she experiences a typical Sunday night dinner at her Abuelita’s house. Readers are immersed in the rich ways love is expressed within this home: the delicious smells of Ecuadorian home cooking, dancing, hugging and playing games with aunts, uncles and cousins. As Alejandra thinks about all the good times her family has had there, she decides that she wants to be brave and try speaking Spanish with Abuelita so that they can deepen their bond. Based on the author’s own life, this timely tale reflects the experience of many families.
Download or read book The Book of New Family Traditions Revised and Updated written by Meg Cox and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers instructions or "recipes" for creating new family rituals or traditions, in categories such as "holidays," "family festivities and ceremonies," and "rites of passage."
Download or read book Home for Dinner written by Anne Fishel and published by AMACOM. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has your family dinner table become a landing spot for junk mail, homework, and bills? Is scheduled dinnertime in your home 6:00 for mom, 7:00 or later for dad, and . . . are the kids even home tonight or do they have another activity to get to? Because with sports, activities, long hours, and commutes, family dinners seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur . . . And it’s time to bring them back--before it’s too late!Studies have tied shared family meals to increased resiliency and self-esteem in children, higher academic achievement, a healthier relationship to food, and even reduced risk of substance abuse and eating disorders. Written by a Harvard Medical School professor and mother, Home for Dinner makes a passionate and informed plea to put mealtime back at the center of family life and supplies compelling evidence and realistic tips for getting even the busiest of families back to the table.Parents looking to make family dinnertime more than just a fantasy will find inside this invaluable, life-saving resource highly relatable stories, new research, recipes, and friendly advice to help them:• Whip up quick, healthy, and tasty dinners• Get kids to lend a hand (without any grief!)• Adapt meals to the needs of everyone--from toddlers to teens• Inspire picky eaters to explore new foods• Keep dinnertime conversation stimulating• Reduce tension at the table• And moreBoth parents and kids need a family mealtime environment that allows them to unwind and reconnect from the pressures of school and work. More than just offering them nutrition and energy for another intense day of jet-setting about, the incalculable family therapy provided for all will far surpass the small sacrifices it took to gather around the table for a short time.
Download or read book The Rituals of Dinner written by Margaret Visser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1992-07-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an acute eye and an irrepressible wit, Margaret Visser takes a fascinating look at the way we eat our meals. From the ancient Greeks to modern yuppies, from cannibalism and the taking of the Eucharist to formal dinners and picnics, she thoroughly defines the eating ritual. "Read this book. You'll never look at a table knife the same way again."—The New York Times.
Download or read book The Way We Are written by Margaret Visser and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved and bestselling “anthropologist of everyday life” turns her witty and insightful gaze to the oddities of living in our modern world Over the course of her time as a contributor and editor for Saturday Night magazine—a span during which she published her award-winning book The Rituals of Dinner—Margaret Visser specialized in thought-provoking columns capable of turning the banal into the extraordinary. From high heels to showers to the metamorphosis of Santa Claus, these essays span an eclectic and engrossing range of topics perfect for Visser fans and newcomers alike. With academic rigor and a warm narrative style, she takes commonplace facets of everyday life—crossword puzzles, fireplaces, paid time off—and digs into their peculiar origins and surprising social legacies. In examining some of the most ordinary elements of life, Visser sorts through historical facts and cultural implications to reveal the hidden assumptions behind our modern behavior.
Download or read book Three Squares written by Abigail Carroll and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are what we eat, as the saying goes, but we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our society as the food on our plates, and our national identity is written in the eating schedules we follow and the customs we observe at the table and on the go. In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern “three squares” emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual—as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result. The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares also explains how Americans’ eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.
Download or read book Guess Who s Coming to Dinner written by Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner examines how specific types of food were prepared and eaten during feasting rituals in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. Such rituals allowed people to build and maintain their power and prestige and to maintain or contest the status quo. At the same time, they also contributed to the inner cohesion and sense of community of a group. When eating and drinking together, people share thoughts and beliefs and perceive the world and human relationships in a certain way. The twelve contributions to this book reflect the main theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of food and feasting in prehistoric Europe and the Near East. The book is introduced by Ferrán Adrià, considered to be the world's greatest chef. Famed for his "molecular gastronomy", he invented the technique of reducing foods to their essence and then changing how they are presented, for example in the form of foam. In 2010, he was named Best Chef of the Decade by the prestigious Restaurant magazine.
Download or read book Mother for Dinner written by Shalom Auslander and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Foreskin's Lament, a novel of identity, tribalism, and mothers. Seventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother's last moments he is drawn back into the life he left behind. At her deathbed, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: "Eat me." This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical and emotional. Of practical concern, his dead mother is six-foot-two and weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds. Even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan, First hated her, and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, whose erratic understanding of their traditions leads to conflict. Seventh struggles with his mother's deathbed request. He never loved her, but the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels--to her and to his people and to his "unique cultural heritage"--is overwhelming. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, thousands of people long, stretching back hundreds of years. But, as his brother First says, he's getting tired of chains. Irreverent and written with Auslander's incomparable humor, Mother for Dinner is an exploration of legacy, assimilation, the things we owe our families, and the things we owe ourselves.
Download or read book Daily Rituals written by Mason Currey and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 150 inspired—and inspiring—novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians on how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do. Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” Kafka is one of 161 minds who describe their daily rituals to get their work done, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”.... Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day ... Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.” Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books ... Karl Marx ... Woody Allen ... Agatha Christie ... George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing ... Leo Tolstoy ... Charles Dickens ... Pablo Picasso ... George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.... Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).
Download or read book Food and Feasting in Art written by Silvia Malaguzzi and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malaguzzi's work describes the significance of food and feasts through the ages and discusses how artists have created allegories of gluttony and odes to the sense of taste, using, for example, artfully positioned fruits and vegetables in the still-life genre in painting.
Download or read book The Gift of Thanks written by Margaret Visser and published by HMH. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A scholarly, many-angled examination of what gratitude is and how it functions in our lives” from the bestselling author of The Rituals of Dinner (The New York Times). Known as an “anthropologist of everyday life,” Margaret Visser has won numerous awards for illuminating the unexpected meanings of everyday objects and rituals. Now she turns her keen eye to another custom so ubiquitous that it often escapes notice: saying “Thank you.” What do we really mean by these two simple words? This fascinating inquiry into all aspects of gratitude explores such topics as the unyielding determination of parents to teach their children to thank; the difference between speaking the words and feeling them; and the ways different cultures handle the complex matters of giving, receiving, and returning favors and presents. Visser elucidates the fundamental opposition in our own culture between gift-giving and commodity exchange, as well as the similarities between gratitude and its opposite, vengefulness. The Gift of Thanks considers cultural history, including the modern battle of social scientists to pin down the notion of thankfulness and account for it, and the newly awakened scientific interest in the biological and evolutionary roots of emotions. With characteristic wit and erudition, Visser once again reveals the extraordinary in the everyday. “An anthropological and philosophical account of how and why we give thanks. . . . All delivered in elegant, clear prose. A book to be thankful for—sympathetic to human foible, deeply learned and a pleasure to read.” —Kirkus Reviews “A delightful and graceful gift of a book, for which any fortunate recipient will be thankful.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Dinner The Playbook written by Jenny Rosenstrach and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Three signs you need this book: 1) Chicken fingers qualify as adventurous. (Hey, they’re not nuggets.) 2) You live in fear of the white stuff touching the green stuff. 3) Family dinner? What’s family dinner? When Jenny Rosenstrach’s kids were little, her dinner rotation looked like this: Pasta, Pizza, Pasta, Burgers, Pasta. It made her crazy—not only because of the mind-numbing repetition, but because she loved to cook and missed her prekid, ketchup-free dinners. Her solution? A family adventure: She and her husband, Andy, would cook thirty new dishes in a single month—and her kids would try them all. Was it nuts for two working parents to take on this challenge? Yes. But did it transform family dinner from stressful grind to happy ritual? Completely. Here, Rosenstrach—creator of the beloved blog and book Dinner: A Love Story—shares her story, offering weekly meal plans, tons of organizing tips, and eighty-plus super-simple, kid-vetted recipes. Stuck in a rut? Ready to reboot dinner? Whether you’ve never turned on a stove or you’re just starved for inspiration, this book is your secret weapon. Praise for Dinner: The Playbook “Your hard-to-please crew will wolf down these inventive ways to introduce ‘fancy’ foods. Jenny Rosenstrach created them for her family, and she swears you’ll be shocked by the clean plates. . . . Dinner: The Playbook mixes ‘You can do this’ inspiration, practical planning, and easy recipes [with] hard-earned wisdom for getting a kid-pleasing meal on the table, night after night.”—Redbook “The master of simple, low-stress cooking. You might know her from her blog, Dinner, A Love Story; her new book, Dinner: The Playbook, is full of the same secret strategies for busy women.”—Glamour “Families and novice cooks who accept Rosenstrach’s challenge will definitely find a few ‘keepers’ here.”—Library Journal “Jenny Rosenstrach has truly mastered the art of the happy family dinner. This is the most sensible advice on cooking for kids I’ve ever seen: no gimmicks, no tricks, just practical advice for working parents. I wish this book had been around when my son was small.”—Ruth Reichl “This book is for anyone who loves the promise of a home-cooked dinner but gets bogged down by the day-to-day reality of it: picky kids, picky spouses, the extinction of the nine-to-five workday, and the pressure—oh, the pressure—to get it on the table before everyone collapses into a hangry (hungry + angry) meltdown. Which is to say that this book is for me, me, me. And I bet it’s for you too.”—Deb Perelman, author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook “Well, Jenny Rosenstrach, on the behalf of my whole family, thanks for the most practical—and yet still inspired—cookbook on our shelf. You are singularly responsible for my return to the kitchen.”—Kelly Corrigan, author of Glitter and Glue “Jenny Rosenstrach is warm, wise and a genius when it comes to dinners.”—Joanna Goddard, blogger, A Cup of Jo
Download or read book See You on Sunday written by Sam Sifton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the New York Times food editor and former restaurant critic comes a cookbook to help us rediscover the art of Sunday supper and the joy of gathering with friends and family “A book to make home cooks, and those they feed, very happy indeed.”—Nigella Lawson NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • Town & Country • Garden & Gun “People are lonely,” Sam Sifton writes. “They want to be part of something, even when they can’t identify that longing as a need. They show up. Feed them. It isn’t much more complicated than that.” Regular dinners with family and friends, he argues, are a metaphor for connection, a space where memories can be shared as easily as salt or hot sauce, where deliciousness reigns. The point of Sunday supper is to gather around a table with good company and eat. From years spent talking to restaurant chefs, cookbook authors, and home cooks in connection with his daily work at The New York Times, Sam Sifton’s See You on Sunday is a book to make those dinners possible. It is a guide to preparing meals for groups larger than the average American family (though everything here can be scaled down, or up). The 200 recipes are mostly simple and inexpensive (“You are not a feudal landowner entertaining the serfs”), and they derive from decades spent cooking for family and groups ranging from six to sixty. From big meats to big pots, with a few words on salad, and a diatribe on the needless complexity of desserts, See You on Sunday is an indispensable addition to any home cook’s library. From how to shuck an oyster to the perfection of Mallomars with flutes of milk, from the joys of grilled eggplant to those of gumbo and bog, this book is devoted to the preparation of delicious proteins and grains, vegetables and desserts, taco nights and pizza parties.
