Mastering the Art of Food Writing | The Rambling Epicure

Book Review: A Hastiness of Cooks, by Cynthia Bertelsen

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, August 12, 2019 Permalink 0

Cover A Hastiness of Cooks, by Cynthia Bertelsen

Book Review: A Hastiness of Cooks

by Margie Gibson

I’ve flirted with historic cooking for years, but somehow, the relationship never took off. I would get frustrated by arcane language and ingredients and turn to something more familiar and easier to cook. Cynthia Bertelsen’s new book, A Hastiness of Cooks, has provided the catalyst that just may spark a beautiful relationship.

This slim volume’s subtitle, A Practical Handbook for Use in Deciphering the Mysteries of Historic Recipes and Cookbooks, For Living-History Reenactors, Historians, Writers, Chefs, Archaeologists, and, of Course, Cooks, precisely summarizes the book’s aims and audience. Courtney Nzeribe’s many illustrations remind the reader that the book’s ultimate subject is food and its preparation.

Bertelsen has provided the organizational structure and clarity that will help the reader analyze recipes from earlier centuries. This volume concentrates on the food on European tables from the Middle Ages to the 1700s. Spanish and English recipes get prime attention—after all, the territories that Spain and England conquered were huge and were the source for a steady stream of new foods entering the European repertoire. Interestingly enough, England, whose early cooks were influenced by France, Italy, Persia, the Iberian peninsula, and Turkey, led the way in the production of manuscripts on cooking—which suggests to me that British cooking may have gotten a bad rap in the years since World War I.

Relaunching of The Rambling Epicure E-zine

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, April 25, 2018 Permalink 0

I launched The Rambling Epicure e-zine, this website, nearly ten years ago as a literary culinary electronic magazine with a host of well-known food writers and photographers, all of whom are still active members of the related Facebook groups Culinary Travel and Mastering the Art of Food Writing. Editing and publishing this on my own required an incredible amount of gratifying work and because I was busy with my personal projects, I have left it semi-dormant for the last year or two. Today, I would like to relaunch it in a different form as part of an effort to encourage conversation about food, cooking, and writing.

My primary goal is for The Rambling Epicure to become a wellspring of enlightening epicurean essays and culinary fiction. We all have captivating personal and family tales about what we cooked and what we ate through many generations, during good times and bad. These memories are part of our food culture—and our food heritage—and should be an effective way to transmit our experiences and values beyond our front doors.

But my ambitions are greater than just memoir: I’m also interested in publishing articles and essays related to historical research in the field of gastronomy and in reviews of food books.

I would like to make this a cooperative effort that opens the door for us to share our potential as cooks, diners, and writers. Together, we will create a literary culinary site unlike any other, with information and stories that can be passed down to future generations.

The Rambling Epicure Book-a-Month Club

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, September 11, 2017 Permalink 0

THE WINNER IS “WHAT SHE ATE” and we’ll start discussing it from September 15 to 30, 2017.

Click here to join.

In The Rambling Epicure threads, it’s become clear that many of us like reading about food as well as cooking it, eating it, talking about it. With that in mind, it seemed like a sort of “foodies’ book club” (with apologies to those who hate the word “foodie”) might be an interesting thing to try. Jonell has a ton on her plate right now, and I’m always looking for an excuse to avoid work, so I’ll start off by moderating, but that’s just for convenience and for the moment.

As a beginning, we thought we would suggest four books. Pick the one you’d most like to read and discuss, vote for it in the comments, and on Friday, September 1, we’ll announce a winner. We’ll give everybody time to acquire and read the book, and we’ll open things up to chat and argument on Friday, September 15 and continue until September 30.

If there are other books you’d like to suggest, that would be great. Please note them in the comments and I’ll keep a list, then we’ll run the most popular suggestions for the next cycle.

For this opening cycle, please vote for ONE of the following:

What She Ate, by Laura Shapiro
Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong
Start the Fire, by Jeremiah Tower (also available as California Dish, in an older, cheaper edition)
The Making of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman

Since this is our first attempt, please feel free to add any suggestions about dates, timing, books, and how might generally build this reading group together.

All these books are available as ebooks.

Click here to join.

Maggie Topkis

P.S. We are now taking suggestions for books for the next The Rambling Epicure Book-a-Month club in October.

Free Phone Call

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, September 8, 2014 Permalink 1

Thinking about your food writing? As in, how to make it more real and vivid? Or how to improve the quality of your commitment to it?Contact us to set up a free consultation. We want to talk with you, and 20 of our minutes are yours for the asking.

We also offer free one-hour conference calls for students once a month. That’ll be a whole bunch of us on the phone together, and we will announce the topic far ahead of time. Contact us with topics that will be especially useful to you.

Food Writing Prompts: Your Own Desk is a Prompt

Published by Elatia Harris + Wednesday, August 13, 2014 Permalink 2

by Elatia Harris

So many great writers need their writing rooms to meet precise specs. E.B. White preferred a rough-hewn, minimalist space, with nothing but a typewriter. Virginia Woolf needed lots of green around her, and took some serious kidding about it from her sister. I have noticed that a writing room is almost never gender-neutral, even when the writer is going for a low-key, orderly space that gives little away. There’s something I need, that I’ll give up things I like to get: a window. Looking at photos like the National Trust photo above, of Vita Sackville-West’s writing table at Sissinghurst, I always notice — does the writing table face a window, or a wall?

Which leads me to wonder — how much of a writing prompt is your desk itself? It has four corners, like the ancient Chinese idea of the Universe. Within that space, you can put anything you have that helps. When you look up from your work, are you still seeing with the mind’s eye? What could you arrange to see, physically, that would give you the most of what you needed to keep writing?

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Book

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 28, 2014 Permalink 0

Our first book, Mastering the Art of Food Writing, under our own imprint, The Rambling Epicure LLC, will be out as an ebook this coming spring.

Mastering The Art of Food Writing is an up-to-the-minute guide not only to writing well about food, but to finding out where you fit into the broad spectrum of food writers. If building a readership for your writing — whether or not you already have a platform — is as important to you as writing well, then you will benefit from the innovative teaching we do in these pages.

Mastering the Art of Food Writing is a book for the seriously ambitious. Watch this page for updates. And, using the form below, please write to us, meanwhile, about your own experiences in getting a food writing career off the ground.

Food Writing Prompts

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 28, 2014 Permalink 0

How to Use a Food Writing Prompt

Schedule a minute or two with a prompt, whenever you feel stuck. Whether you sense the deep need of a new idea, or you want to feel more centered by clearing space around you before you write, using a prompt is the very opposite of procrastinating.

We have gathered a selection of prompts for your pleasure and productivity – some with stories of their own, some with an implicit demand that you write the story, some for clearing your mind, others for the experience of sheer marveling. We’ll keep adding to it, too.

To build your own collection of prompts, look around you differently — right now! Are there photos, sea shells, paperweights, bottles of perfume, spiritual symbols, or even baseball cards that are special to you? Maybe you walk by them every day, and they’ve been in the same place long enough to be invisible to you unless you look for them. Gather a few of these things onto a little tray. Handle them. Sniff them. If you feel a little less bogged down now, and sense a re-set, then you have been prompted.

That’s how it works. It’s tiny, but powerful.

About

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 28, 2014 Permalink 0

The Rambling Epicure was founded by Jonell Galloway in 2009. From its inception, it has showcased professional and high quality food writing and photography.

Jonell grew up on Wendell Berry and food straight from a backyard Kentucky garden. She attended Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris as well as the Academie du Vin. She ran a cooking school in France, and owned a farm-to-table restaurant, The Three Sisters’ Café, with her two sisters in the U.S. Jonell is a freelance writer who has worked for the GaultMillau guides The Best of France and The Best of Paris and for CityGuides, amongst others. She has collaborated on many projects including Le tour du monde en 80 pains with Jean-Philippe de Tonnac in France, At the Table: Food and Family around the World with Ken Albala, Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne with Christophe Certain, André Raboud: Sculptures 2002-2008, and the biography of Pierre Gagnaire.

Food Writing for Beginners

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, June 16, 2014 Permalink 0

Program for Beginning Writers

A. Start where you are (Beginning Writer)

Dear Diary

Writing about the things you wouldn’t talk about if someone asked you casually: How was your trip? How was the big dinner?

Dear Friend

In the world as a writer

Writing a letter to a dear, or even an imaginary, friend

Dear Reader

Building a repertoire of work for readers who don’t know you yet

How to engage them

Craft of Writing Checkpoints

Making sure the nuts and bolts are in place – this is grammar, spelling, word count, formatting, proper computer use, and other issues that ignoring will deal you out.

B. Becoming More Vivid and Unmistakable as a Writer (Next after completing Beginning Writer, or Jump in here for people who skip beginning writer)

Sensuality Upgrade

Good Observer Upgrade

Story-telling and suspense building

Building your brand as a writer, building a body of work (your own blog)

Classes one-on-one or very small group

Critique, edit, get a finished product, develop a plan