James Beard Research Articles

The Myths of Tantatalus: a review of the "ShortDocs Feast", the culmination of the 2013 Third Coast ShortDocs Challenge put on by Third Coast International Audio Festival

A review of the the culmination of the Third Coast ShortDocs at the 2013 Third Coast FilmLESS Festival, put on by the Third Coast International Audio Festival. This article is available in RadioDoc Review: http://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr/vol1/iss1/1 The Myths of Tantalus By Neil Verma “It looks a bit like the last supper up here,” joked MC Gwen Macsai, host of Third Coast Audio’s Re:Sound, as she greeted an unmistakable crowd of radio enthusiasts in their trademark scarves arranged for indoors. “But no one will be crucified, I swear.” The icebreaker drew laughs but without expelling the subtle strangeness of the scene. As we took our seats in the theater at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music (where else?) for the October 19 program of short documentaries, we saw the stage spanned by a long table arranged with ten seats facing us behind crisp linen, flatware and uncorked wine bottles. It was dinner theater in reverse, as if we were the ones about to be watched, perhaps devoured. This “ShortDoc Feast” was part of the Filmless Festival, an event presented by Chicago’s Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF). The Filmless event runs each autumn when the biennial TCIAF conference is on hiatus, “screening” radio works in theaters and awarding coveted audio prizes sponsored by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. This year featured bold programming, including presentations by producers such as Jonathan Mitchell from The Truth, Lulu Miller of Radiolab and Laura Starecheski of NPR’s State of the Re:Union, as well as sold-out workshops with prominent names in broadcasting, including Roman Mars from 99% Invisible and Michael Garofalo from Storycorps. The Feast saluted winners of the ShortDoc Challenge, Third Coast’s yearly break from curation to inspire new audio, as outgoing Artistic Director Julie Shapiro explained. This time, TCIAF had partnered with the James Beard Foundation, a culinary organization, to solicit pieces on the theme of “Appetite” from producers and amateurs alike. To qualify, pieces had to be two to three minutes long, structured in three courses, and contain one of the five tastes – salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami – in its title. After 240 submissions, TCIAF tasked five chefs with responding to the winning audio morsels with a dish for its producer, what Shapiro called “food inspired by stories inspired by appetite.” Was all this a tad precious? Perhaps. It surely met the NPR demographic right where they are nowadays, in this halcyon era of food in which trendy chefs outclass hotshot artists, and culinary fashions – Kale! Gastropubs! Cronuts! – put those of mere apparel to shame. But as these supple and expertly-curated audio pieces proved, “appetite” is darker than it seems, designating neither culinary fancy nor its arts, but instead pointing to a gulf that separates wanting from obtaining, one that’s never truly bridged. I was reminded of the perniciousness of that gulf often that evening, as we waited in air-thickening pauses as each producer took the first bite of her dish. After listening to sounds of those who would not appear over the speakers, we watched that which could not pass our lips on stage. Indeed, it is no coincidence that tales of appetite, from the Last Supper to True Blood, are often parables of deprivation and yearning. The mythological King Tantalus, from whom we derive the term “tantalization,” is said to have killed his son and cooked his body to feed the Gods, and was condemned for this crime to perpetual hunger. Homer describes a stooped Tantalus in the underworld eternally straining at pomegranates, pears and swollen figs that are blown from his clutches at the last moment every time. As a predicament of withholding, maybe appetite is a little like radio, whose unique power as a medium lies in its propensity to give us much more than we realize, while paradoxically convincing us that we’re never quite getting what we want.

Food Blogging and Food-related Media Convergence

Food Blogging and Food-related Media Convergence

Long-lost relative claims orphan gene: oskar in a wasp.

“To us as embyrologists and men the formation of an embryo has appeared to be everything, the history of the germ cells a secondary item of no particular moment. Nature, on the other hand, reverses the relative importance of the two, setting the germ-cells in the place of honour, as linking the remote past with the distant future.” In 1902, the vertebrate embryologist James Beard wrote these words in his monograph on germ cells in the skate Raja batis [1]. Over 110 years later, germ line specification and development are indeed major areas of investigation in the fields of developmental biology and evolution. August Weismann's description of the germ line as containing “unalterable accessory idioplasm” [2] may sound suspiciously mythical to modern readers. Nevertheless, we now know that in some animals, a special cytoplasm containing conserved gene products is indeed transmitted from oocyte to embryonic germ cells, and again to oocytes in the next generation. This “germ plasm” is necessary and sufficient for germ cell formation, and its molecular basis is best understood in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Germ plasm in some form has been described in oocytes and embryos of most “higher insects” (Holometabola: e.g., flies, wasps, and butterflies) as well as in other animals such as frogs and fish. However, in “lower insects” (Hemimetabola: e.g., grasshoppers, mayflies, and cockroaches) and in most other animals, nothing like germ plasm or inherited germ line determinants have been reported. In mice, the best studied example of such cases, inductive signals from specific somatic cells cause neighbouring cells to adopt germ cell fate. Comparative analyses suggest that most animals may use inductive signaling rather than germ plasm to specify germ cells, including animals branching close to the base of the animal tree (e.g., sponges and cnidarians). This has led to the hypothesis that the ancestral mechanism for animal germ cell specification may have been based on inductive signaling, meaning that germ plasm-driven mechanisms would have evolved independently several times in animal radiation [3]. How such a novel mechanism could have evolved remains unclear. In a recent paper [4], Jeremy Lynch and colleagues provide evidence that a critical component of germ plasm in insects is more ancient than previously thought, and that the driving force for this novel mechanism was the evolution of a novel gene.

James Beard's Early TV Work: A Report on Research

Through the discovery at the Library of Congress of some surviving audio tapes and of NBC log books, this essay seeks to provide more detailed description than hitherto available of James Beard's contributions to cooking pedagogy on American television in the immediate postwar period (specifically, 1946––47). The essay examines the style and content of Beard's pedagogy on three series, Radio City Matinee, For You and Yours, and I Love to Eat. Beard's television efforts are situated in relation to his first efforts as a public propagandist for good American cuisine in his cookbooks of the first part of the 1940s.

Please Don't Call It Pound Cake

Research Article| August 01 2009 Please Don't Call It Pound Cake greg patent greg patent greg patent is an award-winning cookbook author, food journalist, and radio host and a former television cooking-show host and zoology professor. He grew up in Shanghai during World War II and immigrated to San Francisco at the age of eleven. Baking is his passion. His cookbook Baking in America won the James Beard Award in 2003. His most recent book is A Baker's Odyssey, winner of the 2009 Cordon d'Or Award. Pound cake is one of his favorite foods. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2009) 9 (3): 59–62. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.3.59 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation greg patent; Please Don't Call It Pound Cake. Gastronomica 1 August 2009; 9 (3): 59–62. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.3.59 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. ©© 2009 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Jean Lowe's Freudian Parslips

Research Article| February 01 2009 Jean Lowe's Freudian Parslips john c. welchman john c. welchman john c. welchman is professor of art history at the University of California, San Diego. He has written and edited numerous books on art, including The Aesthetics of Risk (2008), Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art (2009), and XX to XXI: Essays on European Art (2009). He is coauthor of Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook (1990) and Terrific Pacific (1995) and took the photographs for Fiesta!: A Celebration of Latin Hospitality (1997); the first and last won James Beard awards. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2009) 9 (1): 15–18. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.15 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation john c. welchman; Jean Lowe's Freudian Parslips. Gastronomica 1 February 2009; 9 (1): 15–18. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.15 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentGastronomica Search Keywords: Jean Lowe, Freudian psychoanalysis, comestibility, ““me”” generation, art and food This content is only available via PDF. ©© 2009 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Bourbon House: New Orleans

Research Article| February 01 2009 Bourbon House: New Orleans darin nesbit darin nesbit darin nesbit is the executive chef at both the Palace Caféé and Bourbon House in New Orleans. He uses local ingredients to create seasonal, contemporary, and classic Creole dishes with great depth of flavor. Nesbit has been a featured chef at the James Beard House, as well as at the Cal-A-Vie Spa in Vista, California. He has also appeared on the Today Show. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2009) 9 (1): 96–97. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.96 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation darin nesbit; Bourbon House: New Orleans. Gastronomica 1 February 2009; 9 (1): 96–97. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.96 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. ©© 2009 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Hearth and Hotmail

Hearth and Hotmail

The State of the State among Historians

During my first year of graduate school (1982–83), Louis Galambos congratulated me for having the courage to go into a dying field. Naïveté, not courage, had propelled me to leave my position as deputy director of income maintenance programs for the New York City Department of Social Services and study political history at The Johns Hopkins University. Although contact with the job market four years later would confirm my adviser’s warnings, at the time he issued this “heads up” I did wonder what Dr. Galambos had been smoking. After all, it seemed to me that politics, and particularly its bureaucratic incarnation, touched the lives of Americans more of ten and more forcefully than ever before. How could interest in this topic be declining? What’s more, by my third year in graduate school, I had mastered a rich body of literature that confirmed the centrality of politics.The Progressive synthesis, dating back to James Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Vernon Parrington, was under fire but still compelled elegant work that had begun to focus less on Progressive presidents and more on the fate of liberalism as it engaged racism, sought to reconcile local preferences with national agendas, and grappled with Americans’ increasing distrust of the centrally directed programs that the New Deal and the Great Society spawned (Brinkley 1982, 1995; Chafe 1980; Gerstle 1989, 2001; McGirr 2001; Sugrue 1996).

Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table

Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table

Olives: The Life and Lore of the Noble Fruit

Winner of the James Beard Award Until one stops to notice, an olive is only a lowly lump at the bottom of a martini. But not only does a history of olives traverse climates and cultures, it also reveals fascinating differences in processing, production, and personalities. Aficionados of the noble little fruit expect miracles from it as a matter of course. In 1986, Mort Rosenblum bought a small farm in Provence and acquired 150 neglected olive trees that were old when the Sun King ruled France. He brought them back to life and became obsessed with olives, their cultivation, and their role in international commerce.

The Health and Future of Division A‐5 and the Journal of Environmental Quality

The Health and Future of Division A‐5 and the Journal of Environmental Quality

The Health and Future of Division A‐5 and the Journal of Environmental Quality

The Health and Future of Division A‐5 and the Journal of Environmental Quality

Book Reviews: Theory and Practice of Good Cooking, by James Beard. Alfred A. Knopf, 201 E. 50th Street, New York, NY 10022. 1977. 465 pp. Hardcover, $12.95

Book Reviews: Theory and Practice of Good Cooking, by James Beard. Alfred A. Knopf, 201 E. 50th Street, New York, NY 10022. 1977. 465 pp. Hardcover, $12.95