Formalities aside (photo: Luigi Crespo Photography/Flickr)

Ever since the presidency of John F. Kennedy, America has gotten glimpses of life at the White House for a First Family with kids. Caroline and John Kennedy, Jr. were super young and left abruptly, as we well know. Amy Carter came with her parents to Pennsylvania Avenue a decade later, followed by Chelsea Clinton a decade after that. With the Obama daughters Malia and Sasha, we’re back again with a First Family in residence at the White House.

There’s extraordinary privilege involved for the children of our presidents, but undeniable challenges as well — not simply for them, but also for the President and First Lady as they define together what family life will be like in that very particular setting.

Below, PRK contributor Anne Fishel speaks with reporter Jodi Kantor of the NY Times about the Obamas’ commitment to a perfunctory but increasingly challenging activity for many American families – eating dinner together. More…

Photo: GranniesKitchen/Flickr

On this day in…

1885
Good Housekeeping begins publication.

(© 2011 Michael V. Hynes)

The Backstory
We in New England can proudly claim Good Housekeeping, that icon of a women’s interests magazine, as our own. The magazine was founded May 2, 1885, by Clark W. Bryan in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

In 1910, the headquarters of the Good Housekeeping Research Institute (GHRI) formally opened. This included the Model Kitchen, the Domestic Science Laboratory and the Testing Station for Household Devices, where those products vying for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval (with its 2-year limited warranty) met their glory or their doom. More…

Photo: Courtesy of ScribnerTracie McMillan.

America’s obesity rate is still the highest in the world. The government knows this – it spends more than a billion dollars every year on nutrition education. And we, too, know this. We know that fruits and vegetables and whole grains and olive oil are healthy; we know that sweets and saturated fat aren’t. In other words, we’re a country that knows how to eat well.

So why don’t we?

“One reason that it’s hard, I think, is that junk food is easy, cheap and everywhere,” said Tracie McMillan, author of the new book The American Way of Eating. “Healthy food is none of those things.”McMillan knows this deeply. For the book, she worked undercover at three typical food industry jobs – at Walmart, Applebee’s and a peach farm. Predictably, her diet suffered.

“I definitely saw how if I stayed in those jobs longer, it would have gotten worse,” she said. “The less control I had over my work life, the less empowered I felt to make decisions over diet and health. When I worked shifts at Walmart – which I would say was my most unpleasant job – I really was getting to the point where I was like, ‘screw it, I don’t care.’” Frozen meals, she said, felt “easier” than salad on days when she felt exhausted.

McMillan, a fellow at Brandeis’ Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, thinks the problem with how America eats isn’t entirely our fault. Instead, the fault lies with our institutions. More…

Photo: PhotoCo./Flickr

Today on Radio Boston, co-host Mehgna Chakrabarti speaks with Charlotte Silver, daughter of Upstairs on the Square co-owner Deborah Hughes, about Charlotte au Chocolat, Silver’s new memoir recounting her childhood years at the iconic Harvard Square eatery Upstairs at the Pudding.

It’s a thoughtful interview, with Silver recalling the Pudding as “…a fabulously theatrical place” where she used to nap underneath the bar and eat pheasant for dinner. Yet beyond the period specific, back-in-time look at Harvard Square when the subway had just been built and Pudding chefs such as her dad could still smoke cigarettes behind the line, Silver feels her memoir carries a universal message — one that transcends the exotic-sounding details of her restaurant girlhood. It involves education, fun and magic, those quintessential ingredients of childhood.

Listen to the interview.

Sara Remington © 2011 Sara Remington © 2011

Yet another study came out this week touting the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet rooted in whole grains — and like every other such study, the news was greeted with a collective “meh.” Every time I hear that this diet is good for me, I use it as an excuse to drink red wine and eat dark chocolate — and change very little else.

Maybe this is why Cambridge’s Maria Speck is such a good ambassador for the Mediterranean way of eating — she doesn’t care about the health benefits. Speck, the author of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, eats whole grains simply because they’re delicious. When she talks about grains, she rhapsodizes about the nuttiness of buckwheat, the bite of quinoa, the warmth of amaranth — but the word “fiber” never once comes out of her mouth.

Even though this February has been absurdly mild, New Englanders still face another couple of months of long, dark nights and grey-tinged days. At this time of the year, a bowl of warm grains is a comforting thing. Because of this — and in anticipation of her upcoming lecture at Boston University, which is open to the public — we spoke to her about weeknight cooking, easy baking, and good German bread. Plus — a recipe! More…

Photo: ugod/Flickr

Radio Boston host Meghna Chakrabarti recently visited Harvard’s Schlesinger Library to speak with curators Barbara Ketcham Wheaton and Marylene Altieri about the Schlesinger’s rich archive of cookbooks.

As many of you may know, Harvard is home to one of the world’s most outstanding collections of historical cookbooks, including its most famous possession: the papers, recipes and cookbooks of Julia and Paul Child.

But did you know of the African American cookbooks in the Schlesinger’s collection? Or its holding of Eskimo cookbooks from Sarichef Island off the Alaskan coast, an island now literally disappearing due to warming trends? Besides documenting recipes, such cookbooks document historical milestones and ways of life from the past and in the present.

Food — very much like art — serves as a unique historical lens. Through it we view gender and race relations, immigrant communities, social behaviors and changing social norms. We understand the impact of economies, politics and religion. Specifically, we learn what foods were available, which were prized, how food was prepared, how it was preserved, and how it was served at the table.

According to curators Wheaton and Altieri, however, the careful reader of cookbooks also gleans “…fantasy, practicality and attitude” from its authors. Their voices from the past are ones we might not otherwise hear. And, to the curators’ mind, the printed cookbook won’t disappear any time soon.

Listen to the interview.

Photo: mawphoto/Flickr

AMC’s Emmy-award winning drama, Mad Men, is consistently regarded as one of the most detail-oriented programs on television. From the decor of the homes and offices to the fashion trends, not to mention the actual historical events that occurred in America throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Mad Men never skimps on any facet of historical detail.

Applying such fidelity to an era to the art of cooking and entertaining (think: the perfect roasts Betty Draper serves up, and all those martinis!), cookbook writer Judy Gelman and nonfiction author Peter Zheutlin combined their skills to craft The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook, on shelves now.

Intrigued, PRK contacted Gelman and Zheutlin to get the story behind their creative endeavor. More…

In America's Test Kitchen (Photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)

I kept waiting for the call, “Camera, Rolling, Action!”

A mix of Boston bloggers and myself were in America’s Test Kitchen, the set where all the magic happens for the most watched cooking show on public television, and where all the recipes for Cook’s Illustrated magazine are painstakingly tested. Right there was Christopher Kimball, editor and founder of the whole Brookline-based cooking conglomerate, who had before this been a mere black in white head-shot in my collection of Cook’s Illustrated issues.

Based on the number of tweets issuing from this tech-savvy crowd, the other bloggers at this Brookline mixer on Wednesday night were similarly enthralled. (The Broiled Shrimp Cocktail with Coriander and Lemon wasn’t a bad touch, either.)

The purpose of this organized mixer was two-pronged: first, to reach out to the Boston blogger community in an acknowledgment of their influence over the habits and tastes of Boston-area foodies; and, to promote the new Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, a comprehensive edition of 20 years’ worth of Cook’s Illustrated magazine-tested recipes.

Inviting the online community to the test kitchens was a first for Christopher Kimball. Like many corporations who already have a good thing going, the changing social media landscape presents a major challenge to ATK. As Kimball admitted, up until last year they hadn’t done anything by way of social media. “I grew up with direct marketing, and I think that still works,” Kimball told me. “But I think now the world is becoming more and more about indirect marketing.” More…

Debra Samuels signs copies of her cookbook (photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)

Take a minute to think about your lunch today. Was it well balanced, nutritious and seasonal? Was it portioned correctly, so that you ate it all without inadvertently overeating? Was it beautifully constructed, with bright colors and funky designs? And, most importantly, did your lunch produce no food, plastic or paper waste?

Before attending the recent book launch for Debra Samuels’ latest cookbook, My Japanese Table: A Lifetime of Cooking with Friends and Family, sponsored by the Japan Society of Boston, I would have assumed that a lunch following so many guidelines would be too time-consuming to make, too expensive to buy day after day, and too unattainably ideal to be both beautiful and delicious. But after Samuels’ palate-engaging introduction to the Japanese Bento box this past Wednesday at the Children’s Museum, Boston, I will never look at a brown paper bag lunch the same way again.

My Bento Box (photo: Elizabeth Hathaway)

To begin the evening, Samuels voiced a common myth circulating among American kitchens: “For many people, Japanese food is unapproachable, with small, beautiful, expensive portions.” But as I learned throughout the evening, Japanese Obento features principles of eating that Americans are valuing more and more and promoting to others.

“Japanese Obento is about small portions, a lot of variety, seasonality, balance, presentation and quality,” she explained. What’s more, according to Samuels, the Bento box, and all of the healthy and yummy goodness it contains, is extremely accessible to American families.

More…

Photo: Girl Interrupted Eating/Flickr

Like many people, most of my cooking takes place before dinner, in the span of an hour or so. And almost all of the food that I make is consumed immediately after. Cooking, for me, has never been about the long term.

But cooking solely on impulse, on the desire to make food for tonight alone, limits my ambition. I’ve always bought ketchup and mustard from the store, never seen the point of homemade yogurt, and had no desire whatsoever to brew my own beer. I’ve read enough food websites to know that there are large and passionate groups of people who freeze pounds of pesto, make 10 jars of jam in one day, hoard food for winter like they’re hibernating squirrels – but I’ve never made the effort.

Why? I suppose because I’ve never been convinced that the upfront costs (weird, hard-to-find ingredients! pounds of fresh berries, or mustard seeds, or vinegar!) and the usually lengthy time required were worth it. Often, these projects create food that, ultimately, only serves as an accessory to a meal. How fast is that mustard going to go bad? How many hot dogs do I have to eat to use up that single jar of relish?

So maybe I wasn’t the intended audience for Karen Solomon’s new cookbook, Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It and Other Kitchen Projects. Still, I enjoyed it. A sequel to Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It – her previous guide to kitchen crafts – it’s a very fun and even funny book, designed to avoid provoking intimidation.

On that ground, it fails somewhat – the time required for these recipes is often measured in days, not hours, even if most of that time is inactive. And you may occasionally be left scrambling for ingredients like brewer’s malt and candied fennel seeds. Still, the recipes aren’t really hard, and the final product usually is quite special. More…