吉姆·卡萨达的《捕鸡:烟熏食物回忆录》(书评)

Laura Michelle Diener
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In an effort to preserve and celebrate those traditions, Casada has authored and coauthored multiple books relating to hunting, [End Page 118] fishing, and storytelling. In his latest, Fishing for Chickens, Casada has produced a hybrid work that blends several genres—childhood memoir, regional history, folk study, and cookbook—into a toothsome concoction of mass appeal. One could easily do a quick taste to sample the recipes, but the rich flavor derives from the memories behind them. Forgive the puns, but Casada’s easy folksy language promotes an informal intimacy with the subject, one of the book’s many charms. Fishing for Chickens serves as an homage to his mountain boyhood as well as a love letter to his mother and grandmother, whose “recipes” feature throughout the book—recipes being in quotes because he never recalls those women measuring or writing anything down. Their cooking thus can’t truly be replicated, and in all honesty, much of it probably shouldn’t be, at least for regular consumption; most of the foodstuffs aren’t suitable for today’s population—office workers, tech employees, people who drive cars and watch TV. These dishes are high calorie, high fat, high carb—anathema to twenty-first-century American health standards, but perfectly reasonable and even essential for people who worked their fingers to the bone sunup to sundown. Traditional cooking is rooted in traditional living, so while most of the recipes included here are friendly enough for replication in a modern kitchen, Casada points out that simply buying your meat in a grocery store reduces the whole experience to immediate gratification. Eating, however satisfying, is merely one stage in a long relationship with the earth, one strengthened by raising and slaughtering your own animals. The recipes thus serve as a recording of history far more than practical instructions. That being said, living historians, reenactment groups, and museums would truly benefit from the authentic directions. Each chapter focuses on a food staple—pork, domestic fruits, corn, chickens, etc.—and begins with a brief prose memoir about how his family raised, hunted, gathered, cultivated, slaughtered, prepared and ate said staple. Whether the substance at hand was elderberries, pigs, or trout, the ability of Casada’s family to squeeze every last bit of fat or juice out of anything edible is truly a lesson in labor history. A hog slaughtering, for example, would involve his entire extended family and yield a cornucopia of sausages, cured ham, canned ham, gravy, tenderloins, streaky bacon, and fatback. There are also several chapters dedicated to individual holidays and one centering around traditional foods of the Cherokee, “the original mountain people.” The book concludes with a highly informative “further reading” section. This is a book that could comfortably sit on the shelves of a museum giftshop but also works as a source of mountain life from a bygone era, and thus could benefit the scholar or the research student equally well. It serves [End Page 119] as a lively addition to Casada’s oeuvre for longtime readers as well as an introduction to the foodways of a fast disappearing portion of America. 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Jim Casada, a former historian at Winthrop University, has devoted the second half of his career to promoting the unique regional flavor of the Smoky Mountains, a distinct area too often lumped into the umbrella of southern Appalachia. Using the geographic description posited by nineteenth-century explorer Arnold Guyot, Casada argues that the Smokies of western North Carolina and east Tennessee along with some neighboring mountain chains such as the Blacks and the Snowbirds, possess a unique subculture, one dying out as the conveniences of modernity replace traditional folkways. In an effort to preserve and celebrate those traditions, Casada has authored and coauthored multiple books relating to hunting, [End Page 118] fishing, and storytelling. In his latest, Fishing for Chickens, Casada has produced a hybrid work that blends several genres—childhood memoir, regional history, folk study, and cookbook—into a toothsome concoction of mass appeal. One could easily do a quick taste to sample the recipes, but the rich flavor derives from the memories behind them. Forgive the puns, but Casada’s easy folksy language promotes an informal intimacy with the subject, one of the book’s many charms. Fishing for Chickens serves as an homage to his mountain boyhood as well as a love letter to his mother and grandmother, whose “recipes” feature throughout the book—recipes being in quotes because he never recalls those women measuring or writing anything down. Their cooking thus can’t truly be replicated, and in all honesty, much of it probably shouldn’t be, at least for regular consumption; most of the foodstuffs aren’t suitable for today’s population—office workers, tech employees, people who drive cars and watch TV. These dishes are high calorie, high fat, high carb—anathema to twenty-first-century American health standards, but perfectly reasonable and even essential for people who worked their fingers to the bone sunup to sundown. Traditional cooking is rooted in traditional living, so while most of the recipes included here are friendly enough for replication in a modern kitchen, Casada points out that simply buying your meat in a grocery store reduces the whole experience to immediate gratification. Eating, however satisfying, is merely one stage in a long relationship with the earth, one strengthened by raising and slaughtering your own animals. The recipes thus serve as a recording of history far more than practical instructions. That being said, living historians, reenactment groups, and museums would truly benefit from the authentic directions. Each chapter focuses on a food staple—pork, domestic fruits, corn, chickens, etc.—and begins with a brief prose memoir about how his family raised, hunted, gathered, cultivated, slaughtered, prepared and ate said staple. Whether the substance at hand was elderberries, pigs, or trout, the ability of Casada’s family to squeeze every last bit of fat or juice out of anything edible is truly a lesson in labor history. A hog slaughtering, for example, would involve his entire extended family and yield a cornucopia of sausages, cured ham, canned ham, gravy, tenderloins, streaky bacon, and fatback. There are also several chapters dedicated to individual holidays and one centering around traditional foods of the Cherokee, “the original mountain people.” The book concludes with a highly informative “further reading” section. This is a book that could comfortably sit on the shelves of a museum giftshop but also works as a source of mountain life from a bygone era, and thus could benefit the scholar or the research student equally well. It serves [End Page 119] as a lively addition to Casada’s oeuvre for longtime readers as well as an introduction to the foodways of a fast disappearing portion of America. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

书评:钓鱼鸡:烟雾食物回忆录吉姆卡萨达劳拉米歇尔迪纳钓鱼鸡:烟雾食物回忆录。吉姆·卡萨达著。(雅典:佐治亚大学出版社,2022。第9页,336页。)温斯洛普大学(Winthrop University)的前历史学家吉姆·卡萨达(Jim Casada)将自己的后半段职业生涯致力于推广烟山(Smoky Mountains)独特的地方风味,这个独特的地区经常被归入阿巴拉契亚南部的保护伞中。卡萨达引用了19世纪探险家阿诺德·盖约提出的地理描述,他认为北卡罗来纳州西部和田纳西州东部的烟雾山脉以及一些邻近的山脉,如布莱克山脉和雪鸟山脉,拥有一种独特的亚文化,随着现代化的便利取代了传统的民间习俗,这种亚文化正在消亡。为了保护和庆祝这些传统,卡萨达撰写和合作撰写了多本关于狩猎、捕鱼和讲故事的书。在他的最新作品《钓鸡》中,卡萨达制作了一部混合的作品,融合了几种类型——童年回忆录、地方历史、民间研究和烹饪书——成为一部美味的大众吸引力的混合物。人们可以很容易地快速品尝一下这些食谱,但浓郁的味道来自于它们背后的回忆。请原谅这些双关语,但卡萨达轻松的民间语言促进了与主题的非正式亲密关系,这是这本书的众多魅力之一。《钓鸡记》既是他对山区童年的致敬,也是写给母亲和祖母的一封情书。整本书中都有母亲和祖母的“食谱”——食谱都加了引号,因为他从来没有回忆起那些女人测量或写下任何东西。因此,他们的烹饪无法真正复制,老实说,其中大部分可能不应该复制,至少对于经常食用的人来说;大多数食品都不适合今天的人群——办公室职员、科技员工、开车和看电视的人。这些菜都是高热量、高脂肪、高碳水化合物——对21世纪的美国健康标准来说是令人厌恶的,但对那些从早到晚拼命工作的人来说是完全合理的,甚至是必不可少的。传统烹饪植根于传统的生活方式,因此,虽然这里包含的大多数食谱都足够友好,可以在现代厨房中复制,但卡萨达指出,仅仅在杂货店买肉就会使整个体验减少到立即满足。吃,无论多么令人满意,只是与地球长期关系中的一个阶段,通过饲养和屠宰自己的动物来加强这个阶段。因此,这些食谱与其说是实用的指导,不如说是历史的记录。话虽如此,活着的历史学家、重演团体和博物馆将真正受益于真实的指南。每一章都聚焦于一种主食——猪肉、国内水果、玉米、鸡等——并以一篇简短的散文回忆录开头,讲述了他的家庭如何饲养、狩猎、采集、种植、屠宰、准备和食用这些主食。无论手头的物质是接骨木果、猪还是鳟鱼,卡萨达一家从任何可食用的东西中榨出最后一点脂肪或果汁的能力,确实是劳工史上的一堂课。比如,屠宰一头猪,他的整个大家庭都会参与进来,并得到大量的香肠、腌火腿、罐装火腿、肉汁、里脊肉、条纹培根和肥背肉。还有几章专门介绍个人节日,其中一章围绕着“原始山区人民”切罗基人的传统食物。这本书的结尾有一个信息量很大的“进一步阅读”部分。这本书可以舒适地放在博物馆礼品店的书架上,也可以作为过去时代山区生活的来源,因此对学者或研究学生同样有益。它为长期读者提供了卡萨达作品的生动补充,同时也介绍了美国一个快速消失的部分的饮食方式。劳拉米歇尔迪纳马歇尔大学版权所有©2023西弗吉尼亚大学出版社
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir by Jim Casada (review)
Reviewed by: Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir by Jim Casada Laura Michelle Diener Fishing for Chickens: A Smokies Food Memoir. By Jim Casada. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. ix, 336.) Jim Casada, a former historian at Winthrop University, has devoted the second half of his career to promoting the unique regional flavor of the Smoky Mountains, a distinct area too often lumped into the umbrella of southern Appalachia. Using the geographic description posited by nineteenth-century explorer Arnold Guyot, Casada argues that the Smokies of western North Carolina and east Tennessee along with some neighboring mountain chains such as the Blacks and the Snowbirds, possess a unique subculture, one dying out as the conveniences of modernity replace traditional folkways. In an effort to preserve and celebrate those traditions, Casada has authored and coauthored multiple books relating to hunting, [End Page 118] fishing, and storytelling. In his latest, Fishing for Chickens, Casada has produced a hybrid work that blends several genres—childhood memoir, regional history, folk study, and cookbook—into a toothsome concoction of mass appeal. One could easily do a quick taste to sample the recipes, but the rich flavor derives from the memories behind them. Forgive the puns, but Casada’s easy folksy language promotes an informal intimacy with the subject, one of the book’s many charms. Fishing for Chickens serves as an homage to his mountain boyhood as well as a love letter to his mother and grandmother, whose “recipes” feature throughout the book—recipes being in quotes because he never recalls those women measuring or writing anything down. Their cooking thus can’t truly be replicated, and in all honesty, much of it probably shouldn’t be, at least for regular consumption; most of the foodstuffs aren’t suitable for today’s population—office workers, tech employees, people who drive cars and watch TV. These dishes are high calorie, high fat, high carb—anathema to twenty-first-century American health standards, but perfectly reasonable and even essential for people who worked their fingers to the bone sunup to sundown. Traditional cooking is rooted in traditional living, so while most of the recipes included here are friendly enough for replication in a modern kitchen, Casada points out that simply buying your meat in a grocery store reduces the whole experience to immediate gratification. Eating, however satisfying, is merely one stage in a long relationship with the earth, one strengthened by raising and slaughtering your own animals. The recipes thus serve as a recording of history far more than practical instructions. That being said, living historians, reenactment groups, and museums would truly benefit from the authentic directions. Each chapter focuses on a food staple—pork, domestic fruits, corn, chickens, etc.—and begins with a brief prose memoir about how his family raised, hunted, gathered, cultivated, slaughtered, prepared and ate said staple. Whether the substance at hand was elderberries, pigs, or trout, the ability of Casada’s family to squeeze every last bit of fat or juice out of anything edible is truly a lesson in labor history. A hog slaughtering, for example, would involve his entire extended family and yield a cornucopia of sausages, cured ham, canned ham, gravy, tenderloins, streaky bacon, and fatback. There are also several chapters dedicated to individual holidays and one centering around traditional foods of the Cherokee, “the original mountain people.” The book concludes with a highly informative “further reading” section. This is a book that could comfortably sit on the shelves of a museum giftshop but also works as a source of mountain life from a bygone era, and thus could benefit the scholar or the research student equally well. It serves [End Page 119] as a lively addition to Casada’s oeuvre for longtime readers as well as an introduction to the foodways of a fast disappearing portion of America. Laura Michelle Diener Marshall University Copyright © 2023 West Virginia University Press
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