…that the people sitting behind me in the coffee shop are discussing Domesticity and National Identity. The woman is awesome and has done a bunch of research on this idea of interpereting women’s roles through cookbooks, and the guys being an ass and making jokes about it. This never happens in coffeeshops anyplace else in the world. For me, anyways.
That would have been an interesting conversation to listen to
I’ve got a serious collection of church and community cookbooks; cookbooks from apartment buildings, hospitals, school cafeteria workers, retirement communities and rest homes, martial arts studios, motorcycle clubs, high schools, and so on.
They’re fascinating: without intending to, they tell about how people (women mainly, not entirely) lived and the way they had to cook to fulfill their roles in the community. A cookbook, especially one written by a community, is a serious social document.
Would have loved to have been there. Everybody looks at me like I’m from Mars when I get excited about this stuff.