The Food Studies Collection at New York University’s Fales Library began at Marion Nestle’s behest. In 2003, Nestle approached Marvin Taylor, director of the Fales Library and Special Collections, suggesting he build a cookbook collection supporting NYU’s new program in food studies. Taylor, an avid cook, agreed to the idea.

The two visited Cecily Brownstone, longtime Associated Press food reporter. In 2003 the aged Brownstone lived in a four-story townhouse filled with cookbooks. She agreed to sell her 7,000 book collection to the library.  Thanks to a donation from chef Rozane Gold, The Fales also acquired Gourmet Magazine’s library just days before Condé Nast planned to throw it out.  (Note to S.I. Newhouse, again. Bring back Gourmet!!). 

The Ladies’ Home Journal donated their cookbook collection, as did the James Beard Foundation. Numerous private citizens with amazing collections followed suit. The result is a much-used, comprehensive collection of cookbooks, pamphlets, and writings about food. And 101 Classic Cookbooks.

“I have tried a few recipes for pig’s ears and feet… But I will not make them again.  They are difficult to buy, especially ears; most butchers don’t sell them… these days people eat them at restaurants and rarely cook them at home.”
—Claudia Roden The Food of Spain

I read April Bloomfield’s A Girl and Her Pig in one rapid sitting, charmed by Bloomfield’s voice. Then I sat down to write about it and grew increasingly flummoxed. I realized I’d likely never cook from it, yet still considered it a good book. The question is, what kind of book is this?

Twenty years ago, when I set up adult housekeeping, my mother gave me a blue Pyrex mixing bowl.

The bowl is a turquoise four-quart capacity mixing bowl with white scrolled trim. Such bowls, often in nesting sets of three or four, were commonly found in most American kitchens from the ‘40s through the ‘80s. My blue bowl is approximately 40 years old, special not for its age, but because it belonged to my mother’s mother, who died when I was 13.

“I urge you to cook from this book with abandon, but first read it like a memoir, chapter by chapter, and you will share in the story of a modern-day family, a totally unique and extraordinary one.”
—Patricia Wells

Nancy Singleton travelled to Japan 20 years ago to study Japanese language and food. There she met Tadaaki Hachisu, a third-generation farmer. The couple fell in love, married, bore three boys, and restored the Hachisu family’s farmhouse while Tadaaki farmed and Nancy ran an English language immersion school. All the while, the couple has cooked from their farm’s bounty. Tadaaki raises chickens, eggs, wheat, and numerous vegetables. What the couple doesn’t grow themselves is carefully sourced from fellow farmers, fishmongers, and butchers as committed to sustainable food practices as they are.

Along the way, Hachisu became active in the Slow Food community, creating a worldwide network of friends in the cooking world, including the folks at Chez Panisse and coobkook authors David Lebowitz and Patricia Wells. At their urging, she wrote Japanese Farm Food, a chronicle farming life two hours outside Tokyo.

“I am not by nature a calm person, and, much as I love Christmas, I can be kyboshed by it.  I know from experience how easy it is to be overwhelmed by the sheer workload and the burden of expectations, one’s own above all.”
—Nigella Lawson, Nigella Christmas

Many are the Jews who secretly long to celebrate Christmas. Yes, we have Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, the Menorah, the tasty fried foods. And yes, we do exchange gifts. But there’s no big deal fancy meal, no stockings, no tearing awake at 4AM to see what Santa left under the tree.

Ah, the tree. There are Jews who shudder at this ancient pagan symbol and others who want one themselves: that lovely piney scent, those cunning decorations.