Apparently I'm not back to blogging full-time these days...but I still might pop in occasionally. Like now, to share the project that's been taking up lots of my time recently: Lost Restaurants of Baltimore.

Lost Restaurants, which came out at the end of last month and is published by Arcadia Publishing, is a collaboration between Suzanne Loudermilk and me. We loved writing it. It's a collection of stories about 35 beloved - but now closed - Baltimore restaurants.

It was a total joy to research and write and, now that the book is out, people are sharing even more of their memories of meals at bygone restaurants. I love hearing every story.

Well, I know now...and I also know what I want for Christmas. Taschen is publishing Dali's 1973 cookbook, Les Diners de Gala...and I want a copy. It sounds insane and fabulous and exactly like what you'd imagine Salvador Dali's cookbook + 1973 would, could and should be.

Buy it (for me) here.

Fastnachts - a Pennsylvania Dutch doughnut also called kinklings in Western Maryland. They're traditionally eaten before Lent...but to me they look like they'd be great anytime. Photo courtesy of Old Line Plate.

Every once in a while, I'll come across an article or a book or a blog that makes me angry...because I didn't write it myself.

That's how I've been feeling these days about Old Line Plate, a food blog focused on Maryland's culinary history, written by Baltimorean Kara Mae Harris. Isn't the name alone so great?

On Old Line Plate, Harris dives into old Maryland cookbooks, preparing recipes from bygone eras - one each week - and explaining how they fit into the world during their heyday. It's the kind of delicious cultural history study that is my catnip.

Harris is quick to point out that she is not an historian - in that she didn't spend a million years getting a PhD. in history. But as far as I'm concerned, she's doing the work of one, bringing to light recipes that are interesting and important pieces of the cultural history that has made Maryland what it is today.

Harris first made a name for herself in the early part of the 21st century, when she started writing about the history of burlesque. Her interest in food sparked about a decade ago and she started the blog in 2010, though she didn't really pick up speed posting until about a year ago.

The first historic cookbooks she explored were her mother's volumes from the Southern Heritage Cookbook Library, a series of cookbooks of traditional southern recipes (including Maryland!) published in the early 1980's. "I thought it would be neat to try out all these different, old-timey, weird foods," Harris says.

Some of those foods are weirder than others. Paw paw cream pie might not make it onto many tables anymore, but cranberry muffins still feel pretty current.

Harris doesn't simply find a recipe, make it, and post a couple photos. She delves into the history behind the recipe and its ingredients, providing context for the food. She heads down rabbit holes that are both interesting and important - a recent post about the people involved in the creation of the 1975 book 300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary's County is a great example of how illuminating that can be.

That post alone suggests Harris might be Maryland's Michael Twitty - though she's far too modest to make that kind of comparison herself (she calls herself "lucky to have his website" as a reference).

Harris's collection of cookbooks featuring vintage Maryland recipes now hovers around 30 or 40 books, including everything from series like the Southern Heritage collection to local one-offs. "They're not all the most significant things," she says. "Some were published as recently as the '90s. Some are church or hospital or fundraiser cookbooks."

She's built the collection organically, starting with her mom's books, combing the bibliography section and hunting down sources mentioned there. She finds other books here and there, and uses Google books to explore the content of books that are online.

Most recently, she's become especially interested in the international roots of Maryland food. One particular author - Mrs. Benjamin Chew Howard, who wrote Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen - was exploring international flavors back in the mid-19th century.

"It seems like she's really interested in Indian food, with curries and something that's like a spicy pork vindaloo," says Harris. She notes that Howard was a wealthy and well-connected woman who would have had access to imported spices.

If those flavors were apparent in the middle 1800's, why did they fade from Maryland tables later, Harris wonders. "By the time we were growing up in the '80s, they seemed novel," she says.

That's the type of question that can only be answered by studying lots of texts, over time, to look for patterns and subtle clues. Fortunately for those of us interested in Maryland's culinary history, Harris is on the case - and clearly up to the challenge.

As much as I love cocktails, it's possible that I actually love books about cocktails even more. I can't stop buying them.

Two of my most recent acquisitions are a vintage copy of Playboy's Host and Bar Book by Thomas Mario and a brand new copy of The Architecture of the Shot by Paul Knorr, with illustrations by Melissa Wood.

The Playboy book was first published in 1955; my copy was printed in 1971. The architecture book, on the other hand, was hot off the presses in 2015. Both books about booze...but they couldn't be more different. I love them both.

Though at first glance the shot book seems like it could be gimmicky, really, it's not. The recipes are precise and descriptions are genuinely interesting. The book includes about 70 different shots, both classics and drinks that are new to me. It's a good mix. Plus, the graphics...I love them.

Seventy sounds like a lot of shots, until you open a book like the Playboy tome, which is truly encyclopedic, with some pretty fab pictures of '70s parties and all manner of cocktail information and advice, from glassware to etiquette.

"But while a host should be active and should generously offer his punches, his pitchers or trays of cocktails, he should remember at the height of his wassailing that he's a host and not a hustler," Mario writes in the first chapter, titled "The Code of Conviviality." In addition to Mario's extremely strong, non-holiday season use of the verb "to wassail," he offers some good advice here. And there's a lot more where that came from.

But also...there are drinks. Dozens and dozens and dozens of drinks, from straightforward martinis to so many that require egg whites, I couldn't even count them all. If this book is any indication, mid-century entertainers really got their arm workouts in, what with all the cocktail shaking.

Despite their different angles - one uber-precise and succinct, one lengthy, comprehensive and swinging - both books are pretty incredible. And both promise hours and hours of good times...followed by a hangover or two.

Chef Bryan Voltaggio's Wit + Wisdom contribution

Earlier this year, the weather was miserable. Remember February? Then March? Winter seemed like it was, truly, never going to end.

Then it did. Just like it always does.

And in those first, gorgeous weeks of Spring, my mind always drifts in the same direction. Straight to the bar.

There's just something fabulous about a break in the weather that makes me want to whip up a batch of fabulous drinks. Or have someone else whip some up for me.

This year, we kicked off outdoor drinking season at the Wit + Wisdom patio opening party, which featured drinks created and mixed by handful of great local chefs. The party raised a bunch of money for Share Our Strength and was a great time all around.

On my work front, I spent a few weeks chatting with bartenders about their favorite local watering holes and what they like to drink there. Writing that article was, obviously, a good time.

This year, even my intellectual side is all about the booze. When I got my copy of Forgotten Maryland Cocktails in the mail, I nearly squealed. Maryland + history + drinks - it is so full of things I love to read and think about. The section on Southsides, alone, is worth the price of the book. Really, it's fantastic - well-researched and super interesting and engaging. I love it.

This past weekend, after a long, nearly beer-less winter, I got back on the summer brew train. While the Labbatt Shandy cans that Alicia brought us from Keuka were slightly disappointing (they just didn't have much flavor - unlike Labbatt's Blue Light Lime, which is magical), we discovered that Leinenkugel's newish Grapefruit Shandy is FANTASTIC. Seriously. I wish I was drinking one right now.

Adorable illustration of glasses for different bevvies.

I'm working on something - a short article - that has me pulling out all the vintage cookbooks I've collected over the past few years.

I keep them stacked upstairs in my office. They're out of my usual line of sight, so sometimes I even forget they're there. Until I need some historical perspective on something...then I go digging. And that's when I remember, all over again, how totally entertaining and awesome old cookbooks can be.

For this project, I'm looking at recipes for winter cocktails (I know - some days it's hard to be me). In the search, I pulled out a big binder of a book called the Look and Cook Cook Book. It was written by Lillian Langseth-Christensen and Tatiana McKenna and was published by Brown and Bigelow in 1956. I picked it up a few years ago from Etsy, on the recommendation of my old friend Tracy.

The book is pretty comprehensive, including a wide variety of recipes plus several sections dedicated to menu planning, party-throwing and general fabulousness. I love this bit about menu planning:

We live in an era of scant clothing and great diet consciousness. [Ed note: You ladies hadn't seen anything yet!] There are no vast skirts or flared coats under which the results of too much roast goose can be hidden. Our entire eating habits and thus the making of Menus, must be adapted to giving nourishment, health an all the pleasures of eating, without the penalty of a roll about the waist.

And this, about planning a cocktail party:

The frequent answer to this question is...ask everyone you know, make some spreads and dunks, and have something in the refrigerator for the people (they are no longer friends at this point) who will not go home. Then fall exhausted into bed; and never, never give another Cocktail party - for at least a week.

Pure hilarity.

Longtime M&G readers know that I love me some food-related intellectualizing. And yesterday was a banner day for just that.

First, I ran across this FWx article about a recent academic paper, authored by a team from the University of Arizona, that examines Twitter language related to food. The map below, which shows, by state, the food term that was "trendiest" between October 2103 and May 2014. (Yes, I know that "trendiest" is not really scientific - and it's my word, not the authors' - but it's the quickest way to describe what they're trying to achieve. They eliminated words used broadly on a national scale but this study does show where words spike regionally - it's not one of those maps that shows the most distinctive word by state.)


The big finding in the map above? It's all about the grits.

The paper itself is wonky but for research and/or food geeks (or both, like me) worth a read. There are some findings related to politics and health matters. Nothing wildly surprising...but interesting, nonetheless.


But that wasn't the end of yesterday's nerdy food and language reading. Last night, Cail sent me a link to this totally interesting Financial Times article about menu and review language. The article's author, Dan Jurafsky, is a linguistics and computer science prof at Stanford. He has recently published  book called The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, which I just - a few minutes ago - downloaded to my Kindle.

I can't wait to read it, as the article has some great teasers. Like this: when describing food that's delicious, people use the language of sex to describe expensive foods ("seductive" or "voluptuous" for example) but when they're talking about cheap foods, they use the language of addiction ("craving" or "like crack").

That kind of finding is my favorite. I read it and thought, "Of course! That's exactly what happens!" - but I'd never noticed it, even though I do it in my own writing.

I am working on a post that wraps up all the fun things we did and cool places we ate in May (SPOILER ALERT: Le Garage is pretty awesome and we still love Keuka Lake). But that's taking longer than I'd like, mostly due to pesky things like the having to write things for people who pay me. The horror. Writing for money.

In the meantime, here are a couple thing that are fun, new, and that I can write about quickly:

• Over the past, oh, six months, I've written multiple articles about oysters. The first two came out this week - this one in Chesapeake Home + Living and this one in The Sun. A third runs next week in The Sun. Writing these has been so great. You know how Julia Child said that people who love food are the best people? Well, as far as I'm concerned, people who love oysters are the best people among those people. And I got to talk to a lot of them this winter and spring.
• Kathy (aka the Minx) and Neal Patterson's new book, Baltimore Chef's Table, just arrived at my house this afternoon - and it is gorgeous. I have to admit, though, as I was flipping through the pages, reading recipes and admiring the really fantastic collection of restaurants included, all I could think about was how much work it must have been to get all those chefs to send in their recipes and schedule photos. I love chefs - I truly do - but being a great, creative mind in the kitchen does not always translate to being an efficient emailer. That said, it's a great book. Buy it.
• I have decided that Seattle mixologist Anu Apte would be my BFF if she lived in Baltimore. You know how I know? This Food and Wine article, in which she mentions her love for Lumosity. ME TOO.

(Yes, I know it's Wednesday, not Tuesday. I blame snow.)

Today, home cooks are inundated with cookbooks written by celebrity chefs or books focusing on all the magical ways to cook one trendy ingredient. Both types make the marketers happy.

Marketing people have always known that cookbooks do more than educate - that they sell food. Or wine.

Wine sales were the impetus behind Gourmet Wine Cooking the Easy Way, a book published by the Wine Advisory Board in 1968. Written to promote US wines - nearly a decade before the Judgment of Paris and well before California super cabs came on the scene -  the book works California wines into everything from soup to pudding.

Unsurprisingly - since it was 1968 - much of the food sounds revolting. Beets with cornstarch, cloves and claret, anyone? And unfortunately, even the cocktails section - usually the day-saver in old cookbooks - is filled with things that barely sound drinkable. Why - WHY - would you think to mix Chablis, tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce, then garnish with dried dill? WHY?

But it does include some cute illustrations. And, as always, a brutally honest slice of mid-century culinary life.

(This was an Etsy find for me - bought a few years ago after my friend Tracy spotted it online and sent me a link. She thought I'd like it. Oh, did I ever.)

This week must be our manliest on record. And, let's face it, things are often pretty manly around here.

Most of the action took place last weekend, when we hit the trifecta. First, our friend Adam took second place in the Swallow at the Hollow's annual chili cook-off. And how does this relate to us? OK, we weren't actually even there (a combination of DRP stomach flu and bad weather and work kept us housebound) but we did contribute a pound of ground venison to his mix. Which sounded awesome. I'm pretty sure the winning ingredient was a puree of spicy pepper and tomato that went into the broth. Also: three meats. You always win when you go mixed media on the meat.

Same day, I made these burgers - straight from Papa Hemingway's recipe. I can't resist anything Hemingway - he's one of my favorites. Between the Paris years, the Key West house (with its Picasso), his all-around bad-assery - and his killer, straightforward writing - I cannot get enough of the man (further appreciation documented here). As a bonus: his burgers are great. I didn't even use any condiments and they rocked.

Plus, when you make Hemingway's burgers, you talk about Hemingway at dinner. He is someone Cooper and I can agree on, though we've read completely different books and stories.

Finally, on Sunday, Cooper made a big batch of jerky, turning our kitchen into a, well, jerky-scented jerky room. The dehydrator I got him for his birthday last year has come in handy on more than one occasion - and thanks to his jerky-making prowess, we've been much been really good about using all of the venison we have packed away (he's had a good year, too, on the hunting front).

Turns out, we're also on trend with that whole jerky thing. I even got a Food and Wine email about jerky-making, just this morning! I probably should've realized when my brother told me he went to a jerky superstore while he was in LA on business. I mean, if it's happening in Los Angeles...it must be a thing.

Up this week: More manliness on the cooking front, with goose breast in the fridge, ready for smoking. Oh, and a long weekend for Dixon, who has Monday and Tuesday off. Me, I'm just ready for him to go to school for a full week, with no snow days or sick days or holidays. Gah.

As promised, here it is: my first official "vintage" post, a weekly feature in which I highlight one interesting vintage cookbook or kitchen or entertaining item from my collection per post.

I'm starting with my newest acquisition which, like many of these cool and funny things, comes directly from my mother-in-law, who found it at an auction some time ago, and just re-found it in her own collection and passed it on to me.

This gem, the Rolls-Royce Owners Cookbook, was published by the Atlantic Region Rolls-Royce Owners' Club in 1975 and was compiled by Emily Walker and Jacqueline Mintz.  The "Atlantic Region" included Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts - and it looks like it's still going strong.

The recipes included were collected from club members - much like your standard Junior League or garden club cookbook. What sets this one apart is the artwork - photos of the members' cars are sprinkled throughout.

Also like the standard JL or garden club cookbook published between the '50s and '80s, many of the recipes sound, well, kind of gross. Sardine finger sandwiches? Hot beef dip made with cream cheese, sour cream, dried onions and "one envelope dried chipped beef"? London broil smothered in havarti? Seafood a la king that doesn't actually specify what type of seafood it includes? All there. And, of course, numerous Jello salads.

But I wouldn't expect anything less. It was 1975, after all. The year of my birth...and of many a Jello salad.

I have a tendency to buy small things that I think might be cool blog fodder, use them, then forget to write about them.

That happened recently - well, within the past six months - with two things I picked up after reading about them via Garden & Gun emails: Shrub & Company sipping vinegars and the book To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion.

I bought both last spring and dove into them right away. The shrub - I got the grapefruit flavor - adds an interesting dimension to drinks. But maybe too interesting for me. I get it, but honestly, I might not be sophisticated enough as a drinker to truly appreciate it. I liked the drink I made, but I didn't love it. (Or maybe I just need to spend more time playing with the shrub to make something better.)

The book, on the other hand, I loved. It's an encyclopedic look at pretty much everything Hemingway - or Hemingway's characters - drank. It includes quotes from books, excerpts from letters, and other fascinating tidbits about the life of Hemingway and his friends and family.

It inspired me to reread A Moveable Feast and The Great Gatsby, both of which are old favorites of mine. (It's wild to compare Hemingway and Fitzgerald as writers while you read about how their lives intersected, but that's another post. On a different blog, probably.)

It's great stuff, exploring Heminway's life and works via his drinks. Plus, the book is full of cocktail recipes - and you know I like that.

Craig Claiborne was quite a guy. Dramatic, damaged, smart, ambitious - characteristics that make for a difficult life, but an interesting one. They also make for an interesting story and Thomas McNamee's biography of Claiborne, The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat, is certainly that.

Claiborne had a difficult childhood in Mississippi, thanks to his social climbing mother, and he carried much of that difficulty with him throughout his life. In some ways, dealing with early adversity made him stronger and more ambitious - this is a man who essentially created the modern restaurant review and you don't do that without some serious willpower. But McNamee's book makes clear that even at the top of his game, Craig was, in some respects, a delicate man.

The book is well-researched and a must-read for anyone interested in the twentieth century explosion in American food. Occasionally, I found McNamee's writing a touch self-conscious - I noticed the writing more than the content - but that's a small complaint. Overall, it's a good book.

I especially enjoyed this passage, talking about the burst in food awareness, circa 1961:

"Luncheons, picnics, brunches, new restaurants, dinner parties. All of a sudden, it seemed, these were what people were doing for entertainment. You didn't stop going to the theater or the ball game, but now, a meal with friends was a whole evening's pleasure, and you had a whole new thing to talk about - best of all, unlike family or politics, one without danger - the food."

Sounds familiar. And it's a nice reminder that, much like sex, our generation didn't invent food.

But Craig's generation did invent food writing as we know it. I have to admit, though, the writing that's excerpted in the book...it's on the flowery side. Rambling at times. Idiosyncratic and, often, not very specific. He doesn't seem to have done much following up - when describing dishes, he sometimes guessed at the ingredients. That would never fly in my reviews!

McNamee's descriptions of Craig's trips and expense reports is jarring, as well, if only because we currently live in a world without travel budgets. In April, Food52 maven (and former New York Times restaurant critic) Amanda Hesser got much publicity for her blunt and not particularly rosy column titled, "Advice for Future Food Writers." Her advice basically boiled down to this: Food writing is a hobby, not a moneymaking venture. Budding food writers reading that, then reading about Craig's numerous trips to Paris, might not be able to choke back their tears.

But even through the tears, it's a good read. Entertaining, educational and an interesting look back at the roots of today's food-obsessed culture.

A Taschen coffee table book on American menu design? Yes, PLEASE!

(via the Tory Burch blog, where they've pulled some pretty choice visuals from the book)