Food & Cookbook Resources

Gastronomy- (1) The study of food (2) The science to art of good eating

A few resources that I constantly use to research gastronomy are listed below.

The Food Timeline
A great timeline on the history of man and food going back to caveman times.  Great resource and definitions of foodstuffs and when they became important to mankind.

Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
A collection of classic cookbooks on American cookery archived by the Michigan State Library.  It has provided me many sleepless nights and hours of enjoyment.  Browse through this collection for your gastronomic enjoyment.  Most of the offerings are available to view in PDF.

Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
A collection of searchable restaurant menus by cuisine, date, and restaurant.  Check it out to view vintage menus.

Food, Wine, & Drink (Gastronomic) Foundations

(1) Gastronomy is the study of food. (2) A restaurant is a reflection of democracy on a local and cultural level. (3) We utilize our dexterous talents to minimally transform foodstuffs into a symphony of flavors, textures, and experience.

The purpose of these writings is to share the creative process involved with food, wine, and drink. It’s not that we just wake up on any random morning and come up with creative ideas, but we continuously study how food has evolved over the millennia. Not to be too serious, it is just food. We have a sense of humor and like vegetable gardens.

We study how man began to eat and discovered fire. Through history and anthropology we gain perspective of hunter-gatherers arising into an agrarian society domesticating crops and livestock. We then begin to understand how cooks, servants, and sommeliers came to be in the feudal and guild systems.

A restaurant, as we know them today, have only been around a few hundred years. With the onset of the French Revolution, many of the top cooks, sommeliers, and vineyard owners were taken to the guillotine! They were not viewed favorably by the commoners. They fled their masters, started cooking for the peasants (especially pheasant) and started the first restaurants. They served mostly stews and table wine, printing the first a la carte menus. They served regional foodstuffs that could only be procured within the local community--mostly within a day’s walking distance. (There wasn’t much refrigeration back then and fresh apples were not available in the spring!)

With an Aristotelian view of where restaurants, food, and drink come from, our foundations are set. With strong edifice we begin to cook with the dexterity of all five senses. The bounty from the fields is manipulated minimally to express the true essence of nature. We observe the optimum-instant of when products are at their best, serving them with sincerity, respect, and passion.