She Dined on Black Pudding

16 July 2017

‘The connection between food and biography feels firmest in the chapter on Eleanor Roosevelt, who presided over the most infamously bad meals in White House history. Roosevelt insisted on hiring a hardworking but completely inexperienced and ill-suited housewife from upstate New York, Henrietta Nesbitt, to run the West Wing kitchen, chiefly because she trusted the woman, but also because Nesbitt’s family was in bad straits. During the Depression and World War II, Nesbitt produced ostentatiously frugal dishes like chipped beef on toast, jellied bouillon salad, “Eggs Mexican” (rice topped with bananas and fried eggs), and something called “Shrimp Wiggle.”

Laura Miller reviews Laura Shapiro’s new book What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories,

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2017/07/what_she_ate_by_laura_shapiro_reviewed.html

 

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Paul van Reyk
According to Mum, my first attempt at cooking, at 6 or 7, was a ‘curry’ of leaves and twigs stirred up in kids' versions of earthenware pots still used in Sri Lanka - chatties. I've broadened my repertoire since, and upgraded the utensils, but stuck with leaves and twigs, Now, though, they’re likely to be spices and herbs used in my specialty, the food of South Asia – Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. I eat it, I cook it, I cater with it, and I take people on tours to find it – at home in Australia and back in South Asia.