Berger cookies. Photo by Domenica Marchetti/American Food Roots

Excited for Sunday’s Super Bowl? Learn more about this Baltimore delicacy from Bonny Wolf, writer for AmericanFoodRoots.com, where this story was originally published.

What the madeleine was to Proust, the Berger cookie is to Baltimoreans. When the French author’s narrator dips his shell-shaped cookie into a cup of tea, he is flooded with 3,000 pages of childhood memories.

So it is with the Berger cookie. (The company is called Bergers but to most Baltimoreans, when discussing the cookie, the ‘s’ is silent.”)

For nearly 200 years, this cake-bottomed cookie topped with a generous hand-dipped mound of dark fudge icing has sparked home-town memories for Charm City natives. For a very long time, the cookies were unknown outside the city.

“It was a great little business,” says Charlie DeBaufre, who has worked at the company for much of his life and became the owner in 1994. Customer demand and word of mouth led to incremental growth over the last 15 years. “We had two trucks,” DeBaufre says, “and then some of the major supermarkets said, ‘We wouldn’t mind selling your cookies.’ ”

People aged and retired or moved outside Baltimore, but they still wanted their Berger cookies. Those who moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore didn’t want to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to get their cookies, says DeBaufre. So he sent his trucks across the bridge with the goods. Then they got requests from northern Virginia, southern Pennsylvania and Frederick, Maryland. Now DeBaufre has seven trucks. He tried using brokers but, “They don’t care like you care,” he says. “I like having my own trucks and drivers. I like having more control over what’s going into the store.”

What’s going into the stores is an “unusual product,” says DeBaufre. “New Yorkers talk about their black and whites and it’s not a bad cookie, but it’s nothing like mine.”

The cookie is made using nearly the same recipe Henry Berger developed when he opened a bakery in East Baltimore in 1835. There have been a few modifications, according to DeBaufre. For example, vegetable oil has replaced lard in the recipe, reducing the saturated fat content considerably. “Some people say the cookie is just there to hold the chocolate,” says DeBaufre. “They eat the chocolate and throw the cookie away.” Bergers has even been asked to put together a Berger cookie wedding cake, which DeBaufre describes as a stack of cookies with a bride and groom on top.

Berger, a German immigrant, was a baker by trade and his three sons followed him into the business. The cookies were sold from stalls in the city’s public markets. Today, there still are Bergers’ cookie stands in Baltimore’s Lexington and Cross Street markets.

As they have been since the beginning, Berger cookies are hand dipped. Four employees dip them all – 36,000 cookies a day. DeBaufre says he’s considered new equipment but has resisted. “I have to keep the integrity of the cookie,” he says. Yes, they have trouble keeping up with demand and often run out. But he doesn’t do it just to make money, he says. “I take pride in what I do. When you tell me they’re good cookies, I’m proud.”

After World War I, George Russell, a young man who worked for the Bergers, bought the bakery. The DeBaufres – who had worked for the Russells – bought the business in 1969. In addition to expanding distribution outside Baltimore, Bergers cookies are shipped all over the country. DeBaufre says a woman from Baltimore who lives in California sent holiday tins of cookies this year to her clients – 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Steven Spielberg. “She wanted them to have something they wouldn’t have had before,” says DeBaufre.

Read more stories from the 50 States’ best culinary traditions at American Food Roots.

Waffle Houses are notoriously the last to close during a natural disaster, and the first to open in the aftermath. Image courtesy of Flickr user atmtx.

Some 3,000 people evacuated Plaquemines Parish outside of New Orleans early Wednesday as Tropical Storm Isaac quickly became a monster of another name: a Category 1 hurricane that slammed into Louisiana with 80 mph winds sending water over levees and flooding areas throughout the Gulf Coast. Things have calmed down—maximum sustained winds have since decreased to 45 mph—but a peek at the Waffle House Twitter account is one of the best ways to tell which region has been hit hardest by Isaac.

It’s no news that the Waffle House has got some moxie when it comes to natural disasters. During Hurricane Katrina, the chain shut down 110 restaurants from Tallahassee to New Orleans. Seventy-five percent of them reopened within a couple days of the storm. “We’re a 24-hour restaurant anyway,” Waffle House spokesperson and vice president of culture, Pat Warner says. “We don’t know how to close.”

FEMA Director Craig Fugate has joked that he watches a “Waffle House Index” to determine the severity of a disaster by the state of a Waffle House in a community. By seeing how much of its menu Waffle House is serving, he says he can tell just how bad it’s been with these three zones:

GREEN: Open and serving a full menu
YELLOW: Open but serving from a limited menu
RED: Location is forced to close

Furgate believes in it so much so that he owns a Team Waffle House Shirt.

But what started as a joke, has become something so much more.

“We started incorporating the social media last year with Irene and what we found was that people not only in the affected area but people who have family in these cities and haven’t heard from anybody look to that as another source of information about the storm.” Warner says. “We did it mainly to let our folks know which restaurants were open at first, but after Irene we realized what people were using it for so we really have paid attention to that.”

The crew has been tracking the storm since it was first spotted near Cuba and by Tuesday afternoon, the Waffle House response team including Warner, set out from Saraland, Alabama to bring aid to the 100 or so restaurants in the Gulf Coast region. The caravan includes two RVs equipped with satellite communication, a trailer with portable generators for restaurant coolers and a pickup truck with a fuel tank on the back.

While it’s great that the company has figured out a way to serve hash browns in a hurricane, what’s more important, Warner says, is the efficiency in informing communities in danger. From the “War Room” located in the company’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, communication specialist Meghan Irwin and her team monitor storms the minute they on spotted on the radar.

“With a title like “War Room,” the room itself might underwhelm you,” says Warner. “It is a conference room with the maps taped up on the wall, a speakerphone and about 7 computers to monitor local news reports. Meghan is constantly scanning government websites, closures and curfews and tweeting it out immediately.”

Here is a roundup of tweets from @WaffleHouse over the last three days that maps out the damage of Isaac:

While providing tactical support to their own stores may seem crassly commercial, the reopened Waffle Houses serve an important role for the devastated communities; often, its the only place in town to get a much-needed meal. “People see that we’re open and they say, ‘Okay, we’re working through this.’” says Warner. “Our customers want to regain that sense of normalcy.”

Warner and his team plan on checking on a restaurant near Lake Pontchartrain in Oak Harbor, Louisiana and then they’ll head back to the restaurant in Slidel that they are using as a command center.

Literary food bloggers draw inspiration from favorite books. Photo courtesy of Cara Nicoletti.

When James Joyce sat down and wrote, in Ulysses, “Her griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue and Queen Ann’s pudding of delightful creaminess,” he probably did not imagine that decades later, bloggers in the 21st century would be attempting to cook the very foods he described. But in the past few years a proliferation of literary food blogs have crept up all over the internet, claiming the recipes for literature’s most epic delicacies and culinary disasters.

With both real and invented recipes, today’s literary food bloggers attempt to recreate not just a dish, but also the scene surrounding a dish in its greater literary context. The chocolate cake in Roald Dahl’s classic Matilda, for example, is not just an ode to gluttony but also a symbol of the Trunchbull’s demented torture tactics as she forces poor Bruce Bogtrotter to gulp down the cake in its entirety.

Nicole Villenueve, author of the popular Paper and Salt literary food blog, digs deep to find the real recipes of famous authors and literary personalities.  “I can occasionally find the recipes that they used themselves,” she says, “whether in their letters or their collections of papers.” Villenueve focuses not only on the dishes in fiction but also on the real life favorites of authors like E.B White and Raymond Chandler. (Most recently she posted the recipe for Robert Penn Warren’s favorite cocktail).

The best way to get into a book is often to do as its characters do: eat. Photo courtesy of Cara Nicoletti.

Cara Nicoletti, a blogger, baker and butcher in New York, invents recipes inspired by literary food scenes on Yummy-Books, a blog that relies mostly on literary descriptions. “Most fiction novels don’t have actual recipes in them,” she says, “which is what makes them so creative and fun. My favorite literary food scenes are somewhat vague—like the unspecified red berry pie in Steinbeck’s East of Eden—because they leave me lots of space to interpret and imagine.”

On the other end of the spectrum is Nicole Gulotta, whose blog eatthispoem invites readers to try recipes inspired by basic fruits and seasons. She uses the framework of a poem and develops a recipe that “reflects the essence of the original text in some way.” The recipe follows the sentiment of the text as opposed to a measured formula. “The poem now lives on and off the page,” says Gulotta.

And why do this? What good is it to eat like characters from a novel? For most, it’s the chance to insert oneself into a favorite novel or poem by sharing in the most quotidian of human activities: eating. “Because I connected so deeply with these characters,” says Nicoletti, “eating the food they ate just seemed like a very natural way for me to be closer to them.” Cooking the food dreamed up by a favorite author can make us feel part of the bookwriting process, because, as Villenueve adds, cooking “is a very similar process to writing.”

The process works both ways; on the one hand, eating like a character from a novel invites readers into our favorite books, but it also beckons our favorite characters out into the real world.

No one has brought more attention to this theory than historian and curator Lucy Worsley, who performs the feats (most notably by cooking the same foods) of famous historical figures in an effort to experience what life must have been like in say, the days of Henry VIII. On any given day Worsley can be found buying pounds of pheasants and gulping gallons of saltwater. Lauren Collins, in her profile of Worsley in The New Yorker, describes this phenomenon precisely: “Food and drink are perhaps the most effective of Worsley’s tools for revivifying the past.”

Food scenes stand out to readers in the same way that food-related memories seem to triumph over even the grandest events in real life. Of all the scenes in a book, the most memorable are often the ones with visceral descriptions of food, the kind that leave you either starving or retching. “I remember certain scenes in books based soley on the foods that were eaten in them,” says Nicoletti, “but it goes the other way too. My memories of certain foods are bound up in my memories of reading certain novels, as well.”

If food is the way to a man’s heart, then descriptions of foods might be the way to a reader’s eyes. And cooking those descriptions brings them right to the table. “Food often allows you to step into the story just a little bit more than you otherwise could,” says Villenueve. “You may not have been to Paris, but with Hemingway you can down a few oysters and live vicariously through him.”

Cara Nicolleti’s rendition of Steinbeck’s red berry pie. Photo courtesy of Cara Nicoletti.

What food from literature would you most want to be able to cook for yourself? Let us know and we’ll pass along your requests!

Would you eat this bacon sundae? Image courtesy of Flickr user Sam Howzit

Everything tastes better with bacon, Sara Perry grandly proclaimed on the cover of her 2002 cookbook. Since then, the love of bacon has grown to surreal heights; it’s become a collective obsession. Should you get the urge, it’s easy to order some bacon ice cream, bacon-infused vodka, bacon soap, or even a monstrosity called the bacon explosion, which is essentially a loaf of bacon-wrapped sausage with yet more bacon.

So what, exactly, could be inspiring this cult of bacon-worship? And why won’t it die?

Well, it’s delicious.

Arun Gupta of The Indypendent explained that bacon has six ingredients with umami (savory) flavor. But that’s always been true, and while we’ve been eating bacon for centuries, the kind of mania that exists in America today is a new trend. A Chicago Mercantile Exchange report from September 2010 found a recent surge in pork belly (where bacon comes from) prices, which have climbed steadily since 1998. Earlier this year, the CME retired frozen pork belly futures after 40 years of trading. In the olden days, when bacon was a seasonal treat, buyers could store frozen pork bellies and sell them once demand was high. But in the past decade, our love affair with bacon has become a constant, year-round obsession. We don’t need pork belly frozen and stored, we want the fresh stuff right now and keep it coming. Now, bacon goes on everything, all the time.

It’s also very, very unhealthy.

In the diet-crazed 1980s and 1990s, bacon was mercilessly demonized. It even made the cover of Time Magazine in 1984 as the face of America’s cholesterol problems. Today, we care a bit less about the calorie content of our food and more about its wholesome origins. Three years after Everything Tastes Better With Bacon was published, Corby Kummer hailed a bacon renaissance driven by the production of artisanal bacon, which is “a perfect cherry-wood brown,” and has a “deep, subtle, lightly smoky flavor.” Standard supermarket bacon, by comparison, is “tinny and one-dimensional.” On the other end of the spectrum, you could argue that its popularity stems from the desire to fly in the face of all the trendy rules of food and health. As Jason Sheehan wrote in Seattle Weekly: “The phrase ‘Everything’s Better With Bacon!’ becomes like a challenge: Oh yeah? Watch what I can do…” Bacon is fatty freedom food. Putting bacon on everything (or, uh, wearing it as lingerie) is a statement of hedonism, pure and simple, a defiant stand against any movement that suggests we moderate what we eat.

It’s more American than apple pie.

Oscar Mayer started packaging pre-sliced bacon in 1924, and soon bacon became a staple of the American family breakfast. As Chris Cosentino, founder of Boccalone: Tasty Salted Pig Parts, pointed out: “You look at classic Norman Rockwell pictures of people at a diner, and what are they eating? Bacon and eggs.” Bacon is the iconic food memory of most people’s childhoods—which makes it the ultimate comfort food. The nostalgia for Mom sizzling up some bacon on Sunday morning—even if it didn’t actually happen to you—is a collective American experience. Bacon’s not just a delicious meat product anymore; it’s a shorthand for the fuzzy golden heyday of our past.

The most bizarre bacon products floating around the Internet:

Bacon mints: Doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose?

Diet Coke with Bacon: Hold the sugar, add the bacon.

Bacon Kevin Bacon: It was only a matter of time.

Bacon alarm clock: An alarm clock that wakes you with the real aroma of cooking bacon.

Do you have even weirder examples? Leave them in the comments.

Fuyu persimmons, courtesy of Flickr user outdoorPDK

The first time I tried a persimmon was a few years ago. I spotted the attractive fruit at the supermarket, and its smooth skin and deep orange color tempted me to buy one. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that the variety of persimmon I bought—hachiya—shouldn’t be eaten until it is extremely ripe. It tasted like industrial-strength cleaner. Since then, I’ve learned that fuyus, which are short and squat, are the variety to buy for eating fresh; pointy-bottomed hachiyas are better for baking.

Fuyus have a pleasantly firm, mango-like flesh. The most similar flavor I can think of is papaya—sweet, but not overly so, with a hint of floral or spicy tones. Both fuyus and hachiyas are usually available in late fall and early winter. Here are a few ways to use either variety:

1. In a salad. Despite originating thousands of miles apart, persimmons (from East Asia) and pomegranates (from the Middle East) harmonize nicely—both flavor-wise and visually—in a fall/winter fruit salad. For an even more colorful (and very nutritious) dish, toss them with sliced red cabbage, Romaine lettuce, Asian pear, hazelnuts and gorgonzola cheese, as in the Rainbow Chopped Salad from Epicurious.

2. As a condiment or accompaniment. Organic Authority suggests serving a fresh persimmon salsa with grilled fish or chicken. Or it can be cooked into a spicy chutney with apples and raisins, as Moscovore recommends. Firm fuyus can also be sliced and roasted to be served as a sweet/savory side dish, as in this recipe from About.com.

3. Dried. Hoshigaki, or dried persimmons, are a popular treat in Japan, where they are made through a labor-intensive process you’re unlikely to want to replicate at home. But even the shortcut method you can make in your oven—like this recipe from Martha Stewart—produces a yummy (albeit very different, I’m sure) snack.

4. In a drink. Just because I’m teetotaling for the next few months doesn’t mean you have to. Imbibe magazine’s recipe for a persimmon margarita rimmed with cinnamon salt is a novel twist on one of my favorite cocktails. On the nonalcoholic side, 101 Asian Recipes explains how to make a Korean persimmon tea.

5. In dessert. Nicole of Pinch My Salt shares her grandma’s recipe for sweet, moist persimmon cookies. And I would like to be in Denise’s Kitchen next time she makes this delicious-looking fuyu persimmon, pear and walnut rolled tart. Having spent only one very rainy day of my life in Indiana (on the interstate en route from Nashville to Chicago), I was unaware that persimmon pudding was a traditional regional food there. Joy the Baker explains how it’s made (including how to wheedle the fruits from your neighbor), describing the result as “sweet and super moist bread pudding meets spice cake.” Sounds good to me.

Bound. Image courtesy of Flickr user Tarter Time Photography.

I’m somewhat shocked and appalled that human behavior allows for recurring blog posts on criminal behavior involving food. Not that I’m one to complain about my muse. The month of September alone was rife with new shenanigans, and a couple of convictions, from society’s dark underbelly.

September, 2011. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The raw food movement?

On the afternoon of Monday, September 12, Wal-Mart security officers saw a man opening packages of raw hamburger and stew beef and eating some of the contents before putting the items back on the shelf. Police were contacted and arrested Scott Shover, 53, at taser point and charged him with felony theft. While only about $25 worth of meat was involved in this particular incident, Shover received the felony charge as this was his fifth retail theft offense.

September, 2011. Mount Prospect, Illinois. A Late Night Snack.

When most people get hungry in the middle of the night, they make a beeline for the kitchen. Hachem Gomez, 19, preferred to make a 3:00 a.m. trip out to Mr. Beef and Pizza. No matter that the restaurant was closed and the drive-through window was barred: Gomez broke through the security grating to gain access to the kitchen, where he began to prepare himself chicken tenders and fries in the microwave. Officers arrived on the scene at 3:30, and when asked if he worked there, Gomez simply said no and that he was just hungry. He was arrested and charged with burglary.

August, 2011. Denver, Colorado. Bring out your dead.

In the 1989 movie comedy Weekend at Bernie’s, two men, promised a ritzy weekend at their boss’ weekend home, arrive to find their boss dead, but decide to tote the corpse around so that they can enjoy the few days of luxury they felt entitled to. According to police reports, on the evening of August 27, Robert Young, 43, arrived at the home of Jeffrey Jarrett, only to find the man unresponsive. In lieu of calling 911, Young, along with friend Mark Rubinson, 25, piled the corpse into a car and went to Teddy T’s Bar and Grill. Jarrett was left in the car while the other two enjoyed libations charged to his card. Next stop was Sam’s No. 3, a diner, before they returned Jarret’s corpse to his house. Young and Rubinson next made a pit stop at a strip club, using Jarrett’s ATM card to withdraw $400, and before the night was over, they flagged down a police officer notifying him that they suspected their buddy was dead in his home. The pair was later arrested, and while they are not suspected of causing Jarrett’s death, they stand charged with abusing a corpse, identity theft and criminal impersonation. Both men were released on bail. Young has an arraignment date set for October 6. Rubinson has since been arrested again for drunk driving. He also happened to be driving in a stolen vehicle, but whether he was the one who snatched it has yet to be determined.

September, 2010. Denver, Colorado. Playing chicken.

To some, like The New York Times, raw chicken evokes l’amour in a big way. But 58-year-old lobbyist Ronald Smith was feeling less than amorous when he placed raw chicken in the heating ducts of his ex-wife’s home. (Other non-food-related acts of vandalism included wiping the hard drive of her computer, pouring bleach on her grand piano and marring her hardwood floors with mountain bike cleats.) Michelle Young, the former Mrs. Smith, discovered the damage on returning from a California vacation. It was allegedly the culmination of months of harassment, and while prosecutors could not produce eyewitnesses to definitively place Smith at the scene, they were, however, able to illustrate that the blue duct tape used to package the chicken pieces matched the roll of duct tape found in Smith’s home. Jurors deliberated for about six hours before arriving at their decision. Smith was convicted in September 2011 of second degree burglary and criminal mischief and is awaiting sentencing. He could face up to 18 years in prison.

January 2010. Leeds, England. A big break.

On the evening of January 30, Hussein Yusuf had been drinking at a local pub when he asked the chef, Roger Mwebiha, to cook him a meal. After repeatedly entering the kitchen asking if his food was ready yet, Mwebiha got fed up to the point where he returned Yusuf’s money. At 3:00 a.m. the following morning, Yusuf again asked the chef to prepare him some food and the two began to argue. Mwebiha went to take out the trash when he was confronted outside by Yusuf, who kicked the chef’s right shin, shattering both lower leg bones. Yusuf fled the scene while Mwebiha spent months recuperating from the injury. But about a year later, in a logic-defying move, Yusuf returned to the restaurant. The chef recognized his attacker and notified police. Yusuf, 23, admitted to the crime and was sentenced in September 2011. He is currently serving a 15-month prison term.

Colonel Sanders, a great Halloween costume idea. Courtesy of Flickr user gtrwndr87

Every year I try to plan ahead and think up a clever Halloween costume, only to end up rushing around the day before a party trying to scrape up something passable. It helps to have a theme; one year I was invited to a “one-hit wonders” party, to which I went as Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, with leg warmers, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt and a welding mask. The food world is also rife with costume potential. Although you could go as or with a food itself, like a bunch of grapes made out of balloons, I think character-based looks are more fun.

Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing while there’s still time:

Paula Deen: The Food Network’s high priestess of high-cholesterol food is easy to emulate. Just don a white, feathery-coiffed wig, a generous amount of mascara and a pastel-color collared shirt. To complete the look you’ll need some reference to her favorite ingredient, butter—maybe wrap a couple sticks of yellow-painted styrofoam in a butter wrapper (or waxed paper) and turn them into earrings.

The Swedish Chef: If only all cooking shows were as entertaining as this recurring sketch on The Muppet Show. And considering that a new Muppet movie is due out this holiday season, the cheerfully indecipherable chef is newly relevant. You’ll need a chef’s hat and either a chef’s jacket or a pin-striped shirt, bow tie and white apron, a bushy orange wig, mustache and eyebrows. If you ever run out of party conversation, you can always retreat into character, lilting, “Bork, bork, bork!”

Colonel Sanders: The KFC founder’s secret fashion recipe was simple—white suit, string tie, horn-rimmed glasses and a cane. And don’t forget the white hair, mustache and goatee. Bonus item: a classic red and white chicken bucket, which can double as a trick-or-treating basket for the kiddies. In fact, this look works for kids too—I mean, how cute is this?

Wendy and Jack in the Box—the couple: What if two of the burger world’s biggest celebrities got together? One half of the couple could go as freckle-faced Wendy, the other as cone-hatted Jack. The pièce de résistance: their globe-headed, red-braided baby. I thought I was pretty clever for thinking this one up, but it appears others have beat me to it. Oh well, chances are no one at your party will have seen the idea before.

The Unknown Restaurant Critic: The supposed anonymity of critics has been a topic of foodie discussion this year, with one Los Angeles Times writer outed—and kicked out—by an irate restaurateur. You could go two ways with this: either a paper bag over the head with eye holes cut out, à la the Unknown Comic, or a classic nose-mustache-and-glasses disguise. Either way, you’ll need accessories to indicate you’re a food critic—maybe a reporter’s notebook and pen, and a napkin tucked into your collar.

Anyone else have fun food-related costume ideas?

As long as you're careful not to spill, the computer can get you a great culinary education. Image courtesy of Flickr user Travelin' Librarian

Whether for career development or their own edification, the culinarily curious can gorge on all kinds of food knowledge online. Here are a few of the offerings:

Sharpen your cooking skills. Everything from nifty tips on peeling garlic to full-fledged cooking shows are available online. Saveur (source of the amazing garlic video), Epicurious, Chow and Cook’s Illustrated (for subscribers only) are good sites to check for short technique and recipe demonstrations. The Culinary Institute of America’s ciaprochef.com is full of recipes and videos. And a number of YouTube cooking shows have gained a loyal following, including Show Me the Curry, where Hetal and Anuja help you navigate South Asian and occasionally other cuisines; Great Depression Cooking, starring 96-year-old Clara; and the amusingly enigmatic Cooking with Dog (tagline: It’s not what you think…), where you can learn to make all kinds of Japanese dishes while the host’s coiffed poodle looks serenely on.

Get a culinary degree. Until someone figures out how to transport food via the Internet, you can’t actually attend cooking school online. But you can earn an online degree in a culinary-related subject that doesn’t involve cooking. Le Cordon Bleu USA offers a bachelor of arts in culinary management and an associate of occupational studies in hospitality and restaurant management. If you can’t move to Vermont (which you should consider, because it really is lovely), the New England Culinary Institute offers an online bachelor of arts in hospitality and restaurant management. And Virginia College Online’s culinary arts associate’s degree  is designed for those who have already completed cooking school elsewhere.

Feed your inner geek. One of the greatest developments in recent years for people like me who love to learn but live far from a big university is iTunes U. Institutions like Oxford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the National Portrait Gallery upload audio and video of lectures—and most of them are free to download from iTunes. A few of the foodie offerings are Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science’s public lecture series on science and cooking, with demonstrations from top chefs like Wylie Dufresne, on meat glue (transglutaminase), and José Andrés, on gelation; the University of Warwick on how to build a chocolate-powered race car; and culinary historian Jessica Harris speaking at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

Learn how to write about food. If you already know plenty about food and want to share your knowledge with the world, online food-writing classes can help tune up your presentation. Indian cookbook author Monica Bhide offers occasional e-courses covering everything from recipe writing to food memoir. The latest class started in September, but check her site for upcoming dates. Gotham Writers’ Workshop’s next 11-week course, which includes a Q&A session with a New York Times food editor, begins October 4.

Farming and new media are not mutually exclusive. Image courtesy of Flickr user IRRI Images

Conscientious eaters want to know all about where their food came from, how it was grown and who grew it. Part of the appeal of farmers’ markets is getting face time with those who spend their days with their hands in the dirt. Suddenly, consumers want to have a “relationship” with their small-scale farmers, ranchers and cheese makers — people who once toiled in obscurity. (This is still usually the case in the larger agricultural industry, where the vast majority of our food comes from.)

One unintended consequence is that, now, personality counts. A grower with a winning smile or the gift of the gab may get the sale even when the wares at the next table are just as fresh and succulent-looking. There’s a pair of young, attractive male farmers in my area whose tent always seems to be crowded with female customers.

Now, technology that wasn’t around a decade ago—blogs, smartphones, Facebook and Twitter—is taking the farmer-consumer relationship to another level. It’s how CSA members can find out what’s likely to be in their share soon, get recipes for what to do with bok choy or celeriac, and read cute little stories about how the farm animals are doing. The farmer gets to communicate with current and potential customers, and office-bound readers get to live vicariously through their computer or phone screens.

Ree Drummond, who has parlayed her rural life as the wife of a cattle rancher into a wildly successful site called The Pioneer Woman, gives a glimpse of the possibilities for savvy online self-marketing. She doesn’t quite qualify as a rancher herself—although she often rides along and helps out with the chores, she seems to usually have a camera in hand—but her gorgeous photographs and folksy anecdotes about life on the range are about as good an advertisement as any for making a living off the land.

Most farmer blogs are far simpler (and, some might argue, more authentic). The Dairyman’s Blog, written by a young Alabama dairy farmer, offers “MooTube” videos of life on the farm. Self-described farm wife Jill Heemstra focuses on the funny side of farming at Fence Post Diaries, with blog titles like “You Might Be a Farmer’s Wife If…” (example: “…you use the phrase ‘semen tank’ in casual conversation”).

Blogs and tweets are also providing a new platform for farmers of all stripes to express their views on agriculture and politics. Missouri hog farmer Chris Chinn advocates on her blog for fewer government regulations and conventional farm practices that she feels have gotten a bad rap, while small-scale farmer Gavin Venn tweets as @morethanorganic with his thoughts on animal welfare and genetically modified foods.

Social media has become a stand-in for the kind of conversations farmers have always had in person, about the weather, what’s growing, advice and opinions. The Twitter hashtag #agchat encompasses discussions of parenting on the farm, venting about too much or too little rain, links to agriculture news and just about everything else of interest to the ag-minded.

But tweeting from the tractor has its perils. As Stewart Skinner, a Canadian pig farmer with the Twitter handle @ModernFarmer tweeted recently about his gadget, “The blackberry can’t stand up to the rigors of the barn. RIM needs to come up with a smartphone for farmers.”

Ribs, a tasty gateway to moral turpitude. Image courtesy of Flickr user thebittenword.com.

Food is a basic human need and humans are prone to unusual behavior. That combination has provided fodder for several blog posts that take a look at people behaving badly with edibles. Once again we’re serving up a helping of criminal behavior involving food and the food industry.

Kalamazoo, Michigan. September, 2011. Dine, dash and defraud.

Stacy Skartsiaris, 65, had been the owner of Theo and Stacy’s restaurant for 38 years and had never had a problem with customer violence until the morning of September 1. Two women, Deaunka Lynn Dunning and Sheba Jean Kirk, both 30, stopped by the downtown restaurant for breakfast, but as they went to leave with doggie bags in tow, they complained about the quality of the food and informed Skartsiaris that they were not going to pay for the meal. Skartsiaris followed them as they left and said she was going to call police. That’s when the pair allegedly attacked her, kicking her in the midsection and striking her face, leaving her with bumps and bruises. The belligerent pair was eventually arrested and charged with aggravated assault and defrauding an innkeeper. They are due back in court on September 14 for pretrial hearings.

Carlisle, Pennsylvania. August, 2011. BYOB (Bring Your Own… Bag?).

In a push to cut down on plastic usage and be more environmentally friendly, many grocery stores are encouraging customers to bring in reusable bags. Some people interpret the term “reusable bag” fairly loosely, subbing their pants for a traditional shopping bag. Donald Noone, 65, is one of those people. While intoxicated, he went to a Giant grocery store and tried to secret about $20 worth of ribs down his trousers. He was arrested and charged with retail theft and public drunkenness. Turns out he’s also a repeat offender: he tried pulling the exact same stunt back in May. Noone plead guilty to the charges.

Patton Township, Pennsylvania. August, 2011. Something “borrowed.”

Planning what foods to serve at a wedding reception is a big deal—and can be a big chunk of your budget. One Pennsylvanian decided to try to avoid the financial burden. Married on August 18, Brittany Lurch, 22, and Arthur Phillips III, 32, stopped off at a Wegman’s after their ceremony to pick up food for a reception to be held two days later. Cops keeping a keen eye on security cameras observed the newlyweds piling over $1,000 of merchandise in their cart and casually walking out of the store. They were soon apprehended by police and sent to Centre County Jail with bail set at $2,500, more than twice what the reception spread would have cost them. Both were charged with retail theft and receiving stolen property and, of course, they missed their own party.

St. Louis, Missouri. August, 2011. She came in through the drive-through window.

At 2:50 in the morning, a car pulled up to the drive-through at the White Castle on Herbert Street and North Florissant. But instead of cash, the two attending White Castle employees were handed a note demanding all the money in the cash register from a woman who seemed to be packing heat. The two employees ran and locked themselves inside a nearby office and called police. Meanwhile the woman climbed halfway through the drive-through window to grab the cashbox before speeding away, dropping her weapon—a toy gun—in the process. Police were able to track the still-unnamed 33-year-old suspect to her home where, in a last-ditch effort to elude capture, she climbed to the roof and took a three-story leap to the ground. She was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries and now faces robbery charges.

Taichung, Taiwan. July, 2008. Watch what you write.

A blogger, identified only by the surname Liu, went to a beef noodle restaurant and wrote about her dining experience on her blog. Her words were far from glowing, describing the food as salty and the dining conditions unsanitary. When the restaurant owner learned about the review, he filed defamation charges against her. The court found that the salty food remarks were out of line as she had only one main dish and two sides at the establishment. Her cockroach criticisms, however, could not be classified as slander. Liu was sentenced to 30 days in detention, suspended for two years, and fined NT$200,000 (approximately $6,900 in American dollars.)

Green beans. Image courtesy of Flickr user Wally Hartshorn

Green beans are a workhorse vegetable: nothing flashy, rarely the star, but always dependable in a supporting role. They’re versatile, too—they’ll work well with just about any cuisine—which is a good thing, since I am probably not alone in having a mountain of them growing in my garden right now. They’re also abundant at the market, farmers’ or otherwise.

To prove their versatility, here are five out-of-the-ordinary ideas for cooking with green beans, each from a different culture:

1. Southern. Bacon grease “brings out the best in folks—and beans,” writes Christy Jordan on her Southern Plate blog, in a recipe for sweet and sour green beans that also includes vinegar and sugar. Unless you’re a stickler for authenticity, you don’t even have to “cook the living mess” out of them, as Jordan explains that Southerners are wont to do.

2. Greek. Ask three Greeks how to cook green beans and you’ll get three different fasolakia recipes, as recounted in an amusing tale at the site Mama’s Taverna. Most of them (including this one) involve stewing the beans in tomatoes, onions, and sometimes potatoes until sweet and tender.

3. Persian. In Iran, a kuku (or kookoo) is a popular frittata-like egg dish, packed with herbs and/or green vegetables. The Persian food blog Turmeric and Saffron uses those signature spices in a recipe for green bean kookoo.

4. Indian. The Book of Yum compiles gluten-free vegetarian recipes from around the globe. But an Indian-inspired dish of “ambrosial green beans,” with a spiced cashew-yogurt sauce, would appeal to even those without dietary restrictions.

5. Chinese. Dry-fried green beans or long beans are a common feature on Chinese restaurant menus. The cooking method results in ultra-flavorful beans that retain their snap— Cooking with Amy explains how to make them at home.

Pancakes from IHOP, courtesy of Flickr user ohdearbarb

A little over 25 years ago, some marketing executives at IHOP decided that one of their menu items should be named, yes, “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity.” It must have been a success. Not only is the fruit-topped pancake breakfast combo still on the menu, but the name is trademarked.

According to IHOP, “guests across the country have fun pronouncing the one-of-a-kind breakfast.” But is it fun, or just embarrassing? I guess that depends on your idea of fun.

Why would a company want to humiliate its customers? It’s not as if they don’t know it’s embarrassing; an old commercial for the breakfast showed customers wearing disguises to order the meal.

As someone observed on an online forum, “If you know people are embarrassed to say the stupid name of your product, then CHANGE THE NAME!!! I will NEVER order a “Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity” breakfast at IHOP. I refuse to live a lie like the guy in this commercial—I want to order my breakfasteses with confidence—I refuse to hide behind a fake mustache and glasses. I won’t live my life that way, and IHOP can’t make me!”

This person was clearly having a little fun—hey, maybe IHOP was right, it is fun—but I think a lot of people would agree (including me): I don’t want to look foolish while ordering my food, especially before I’ve had my coffee.

So why do companies do it? I used to be an advertising art director—in fact, I briefly worked on the IHOP account, long after the Rooty Tooty, etc. was born—and my best guess is that they are subscribing to the “anything that people remember is good for business” school of marketing. And they probably really do think it’s fun.

When I worked on the IHOP account, one of my jobs was to help brainstorm names for new menu items. My copywriter partner and I would crack ourselves up coming up with ridiculous, and often wildly inappropriate, ideas. We obviously never came up with anything as brilliant/stupid as Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n Fruity, because none of our names were trademarked, and even I don’t remember them now.

In no particular order, here are my top five most embarrassing things to order (not including the above, the clear winner):

1. Moon Over My Hammy: Even if I wanted an 800-plus-calorie, 51-grams-of-fat, 2,500-plus-milligrams-of-sodium egg-ham-and-cheese sandwich, I would have a hard time ordering this Denny’s classic with a straight face. In fact, maybe it’s actually nutritionists behind these goofy names, hoping they will be a deterrent.

2. Fudgie the Whale: In the 1970s, Carvel’s gave birth to a whale-shaped cake, and named it Fudgie. If Fudgie didn’t have ice cream for brains, he (for some reason, I assume it’s male) might feel bad that he has been repeatedly used as comedic fodder. Then again, he might think it was really cool. But not as cool as his friend Cookie Puss, who had a Beastie Boys song (with lyrics not as appropriate for children as the cake is) named after him.

3. Joey Bag of Donuts: The quasi-Southwest/Mexican food chain Moe’s is a double offender. They embarrass both their customers and employees, who are required to say, “Welcome to Moooooe’s” whenever someone walks in the door. The menu items are all named for pop culture references. Putting aside the fact that this menu item is a burrito that (thankfully) contains no donuts, I find this kind of forced fun tiresome. I guess I just don’t know how to have a good time.

4. Sex on the Beach, Screaming Orgasm, et al.: There was a time, thankfully passed (I think—though maybe I just go to a different class of bar now), when it seemed every cocktail had to be given a sleazy name. Most of these were for sweet “girly” drinks, and I can only imagine the rationale behind them was that ordering one (or offering to buy one) made a good pick-up line. Um, sure, you can buy me a drink—I’ll have a My Eyes Are Up Here, Buddy-tini, please.

5. Anything hard to pronounce: Despite four years of French class, there are certain words my mouth just can’t seem to form so that I will be understood by a waiter. The wine viognier, for instance. Or rooibos tea. Then again, depending where you are, sometimes the only way to be understood is by mispronouncing something. In a post I wrote last year about hard-to-pronounce foods, a commenter wrote that she had a hard time ordering Sprite in Chile until she learned to pronounce it with a Spanish accent.

What are some other examples of embarrassing things to order?

"Today's Menu." Image courtesy of Flickr user Neo.

Some readers out there may wonder how libraries kept track of all their goodies before the advent of computerized catalogs. You had one of two options: You could either consult a giant wood cabinet with drawers jam-packed with little 3 x 5 cards or, better yet, you could consult a reference librarian who could lead you to treasure troves of information. Cultural institutions now make their collections available digitally for people who are unable to do on-site research; however, for those places that have been building up resources for a century or more, digitizing their holdings is an overwhelming game of catch-up that requires time and money.

Such is the case with the New York Public Library’s menu collection, which contains approximately 26,000 pieces, about 10,000 of which have been digitally scanned. Specializing in the period between 1890 and 1920, the menus are especially useful to historians or chefs or authors—anyone trying to capture an era down to the dining details. One problem, however, is that it’s difficult to present the digital images in such a way that people can do searches across the entire collection. Searches are an easy way to look at trends in dining, which food fell in—and out—of favor, price fluctuations and other information of that ilk. And it sure beats flipping through the collection menu by menu if there’s only a nugget of information you’re after.

Some purveyors of digital information—like Google books—use optical character recognition software to convert the printed page into digital, searchable text. But many of the Library’s menus are handwritten or use ornamental typefaces that can’t be easily read by computers. And really, when it comes to dining, presentation is everything—even when it comes to menu typography.

Flesh and blood transcribers really are the best way to get the job done, and now anyone with an internet connection can lend the library a helping hand. If you’d like to lend your services, and get a taste—intellectually speaking—of American cuisine from a bygone era and enjoy some really stunning works of art, go to the project’s main site, select a menu that grabs you and dig in!

Dinner in the Sky over South Africa, courtesy of Flickr user Axel Buhrmann

When I read about Dinner in the Sky last week, I thought it was an early April Fools’ joke. But no, it’s for real—just really batty. From the company’s site:

Dinner in the Sky is hosted on a table suspended at a height of 160-180 feet by a team of professionals and may accommodate 22 people around the table at every session with three staff in the middle (chef, waiter, entertainer…). Events in the Sky, our partner in this event, is the worldwide leader for this type of activity.

The videos and photos I’ve seen defy belief. Dinner in the Sky looks like a mix between a cruise ship banquet and an amusement park ride with diners buckled into a harness, a combination that I wouldn’t think would bode well for a luxurious meal. Even if you are the opposite of an acrophobe, the mere excitement of it would cause my stomach to churn.

The costs seem to vary, from what I could find—the Las Vegas one is quoted at $289, and according to a Travel Channel segment, one in southern Florida costs upwards of $500. But if price weren’t a factor, would you climb into a harness and do this? Let us know in the poll and the comments below.

As I told my editor, you probably don’t want to over-eat for this dinner, as going down one notch on your belt could have dire consequences.

Homemade marshmallows, courtesy of Flickr user knitsteel

Listen up, boys and girls. In my day, bacon knew its place: squarely next to the scrambled eggs as part of “this nutritious breakfast.” No one dared to—or, for that matter, had occasion to—utter the words “artisanal” and “marshmallow” in the same breath. No one even knew what artisanal meant. And gorging yourself on an entire pizza the size of a garbage pail lid was considered a sign of an eating disorder, not a qualification for hosting a show on the Travel Channel.

But those days are over, and man, am I glad. All of the above are expressions of the same trend: America’s current infatuation with food. As annoying as the more obsessive-compulsive aspects of this food fetish have occasionally become, I think the net result has been positive. People are becoming more adventurous eaters, cooking and growing more of their own food, and thinking through important issues about where their food comes from and the effect it has on our health and the environment.

I am glad that even my tiny rural community in upstate New York now has places where I can get an horchata cocktail or gourmet poutine. I’m glad that I can read an entire book about the history of salt. (O.K., I haven’t actually read that one, but I’m glad it’s out there in case I’m ever curious about the subject. Which could happen.) And I’m especially grateful that I get to make part of my living researching, thinking about, writing about—and even occasionally cooking and/or eating—food.

The editor of the new food section at Good, Nicola Twilley, has been moderating a multi-site discussion this week called Food for Thinkers (of which this post is a part) with the following question as a jumping-off point:

What does—or could, or even should—it mean to write about food today?

For one thing, it means we have a lot of company. Have you noticed that suddenly every time you go to a restaurant people are photographing their meals? Food bloggers. We’re everywhere: on food magazine sites; on sites like this one, for magazines that aren’t specifically about food; on personal blogs. There are recipe sites, restaurant review sites, sites that explore the politics of eating local/organic/nose to tail/out of a Dumpster. And there are backlash sites devoted to mocking extreme foodies (which is kinda like shooting sustainably sourced fish in a barrel). “Please, stop talking about ramps,” urges the blog Shut Up, Foodies!

It’s a crowded field, to be sure. But, as reading the Food for Thinkers entries posted so far demonstrates, food is an endlessly versatile subject. An architect wrote about building models out of edible materials, and designs inspired by food. A librarian explored what old menus can teach us about demographic and cultural changes. And a Tibetan blog explained how food is “a tool of national identity and political resistance” there. I’ve discovered some new food blogs I’ll be following, and I hope some new readers discover this one. There’s a lot to talk about.

But, please, can we give the bacon a rest?

Food for Thinkers is a week-long, distributed, online conversation looking at food-writing from as wide and unusual a variety of perspectives as possible. Between January 18 and January 23, 2011, more than thirty food and non-food writers will respond to a question posed by GOOD’s newly-launched Food hub: What does—or could, or even should—it mean to write about food today? You can check out the conversation in full at GOOD.is/food, join in the comments, and follow the Twitter hashtag #foodforthinkers to keep up-to-date as archaeologists, human rights activists, design critics and even food writers share their perspective on what makes food so interesting.