Thoughts and Ambitions
A year ago I began the Foodlore & More newsletter. I intended it as a place to air my thoughts and findings about culinary and agricultural history. From the beginning I thought that there should be clumps of essays on a single topic, and that each Issue should range from 5 to 8 individual pieces on a single subject. I wanted there to be a range of subjects, so over the course of the year I’ve been trying to discuss different things. Most of these 270 pieces have been free to general readers. Numbers of the longer pieces were available by subscription exclusively. Numbers of the free essays were items I had posted on Facebook over the past decade. There are perhaps 50 more such pieces to air in the future. But in the coming months more of the material will be written exclusively for this venue and will be longer.
There are many recipe blogs and numbers of culinary history blogs. My point of distinction has always been the extent to which agriculture has influenced my view of what was and is eaten and how things are prepared. This will remain my focus going forward.
My one regret in the past year was that I did not have time at my disposal to proofread or revise much. So numbers of the pieces were spontaneous effusions marred by spellcheck perversions and grammatical slippages. Unless someone wishes to volunteer to be my editor, I suppose this situation will not change, because I don’t see my schedule becoming more open until May of 2023.
If there are matters you wish me to discuss that I have neglected, please use the comment function below to inform me. I will open permissions to comment to everyone for this post to get your feedback.
Thank you for your attention in 2021.
David S Shields
Being from the South (East Texas) I have always enjoyed the food use and preparations. Raised on a farm with a one acre garden.