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9781496810847

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-What a comfort it is to know that scholarship can be relevant to our everyday lives as well as classrooms! Readers can get answers to questions that appear specific--the lure, loathing, and linkage of certain foods labeled as comforting for one reason or another--and those that loom much larger. Those large questions, maybe outside our comfort zone, are about the discontents of modernization, individualism, and consumerism. The result is a rich menu of essays profoundly challenging us to find meaning in our morsels.---Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, The Pennsylvania State University, and author of Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture

What a comfort it is to know that scholarship can be relevant to our everyday lives as well as classrooms! Readers can get answers to questions that appear specific--the lure, loathing, and linkage of certain foods labeled as comforting for one reason or another--and those that loom much larger. Those large questions, maybe outside our comfort zone, are about the discontents of modernization, individualism, and consumerism. The result is a rich menu of essays profoundly challenging us to find meaning in our morsels. --Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, The Pennsylvania State University, and author of Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture This book explores the nature and significance of comfort foods through fascinating case studies. Some chapters center on the foods themselves--such as Rhode Island 'doughboys' and Newfoundland bologna--while others focus on the ethnic, family, or cultural constructions of iconic comfort foods--like the Jewish American 'egg-in-the-hole' and the Finnish American fermented milk viili. Still other chapters consider comfort foods broadly--like soul food for African Americans or nostalgia dishes for culinary tourists. The chapters raise important questions about why certain dishes become comfort foods, their nutritional and health consequences, their relationships to family and identity, and their ability to connote trauma as well as care. --Carole Counihan, editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways and author of A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado

This book explores the nature and significance of comfort foods through fascinating case studies. Some chapters center on the foods themselves--such as Rhode Island 'doughboys' and Newfoundland bologna--while others focus on the ethnic, family, or cultural constructions of iconic comfort foods--like the Jewish American 'egg-in-the-hole' and the Finnish American fermented milk viili. Still other chapters consider comfort foods broadly--like soul food for African Americans or nostalgia dishes for culinary tourists. The chapters raise important questions about why certain dishes become comfort foods, their nutritional and health consequences, their relationships to family and identity, and their ability to connote trauma as well as care. --Carole Counihan, editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways and author of A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado What a comfort it is to know that scholarship can be relevant to our everyday lives as well as classrooms! Readers can get answers to questions that appear specific--the lure, loathing, and linkage of certain foods labeled as comforting for one reason or another--and those that loom much larger. Those large questions, maybe outside our comfort zone, are about the discontents of modernization, individualism, and consumerism. The result is a rich menu of essays profoundly challenging us to find meaning in our morsels. --Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, The Pennsylvania State University, and author of Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture

What a comfort it is to know that scholarship can be relevant to our everyday lives as well as classrooms! Readers can get answers to questions that appear specific--the lure, loathing, and linkage of certain foods labeled as comforting for one reason or another--and those that loom much larger. Those large questions, maybe outside our comfort zone, are about the discontents of modernization, individualism, and consumerism. The result is a rich menu of essays profoundly challenging us to find meaning in our morsels. --Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore, The Pennsylvania State University, and author of <i>Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture</i></p>

Author Information

Michael Owen Jones, Venice, California, has authored more than 160 publications and served for many years as editor of the Folk Art and Artists Series published by University Press of Mississippi. For forty years he taught at UCLA on food customs and symbolism, folk art, organizational symbolism, folk medicine, and other topics. Lucy M. Long, Bowling Green, Ohio, taught ethnomusicology, folklore, popular culture, American culture studies, international studies, and tourism for over thirty years, primarily at Bowling Green State University, where she pioneered food and culture courses beginning in the mid-1990s. In 2011, she founded the nonprofit Center for Food and Culture.

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