Except: "It soon became clear that she didn't want a resaurant experience; she wanted to eat in an Amish home. I explained to her that such places are not regulated by the state and hard to find out about, and that the menu will be little different; there is no particularly distinctive Amish cuisine. 'Yes, yes,' she interrupted, 'but doesn't it taste better down on the farm?' As this interaction demonstrates, tourists often seek farm-table meals. They bring particular expectations to eating in an Amish home. A mystique surrounds the experience. Food is expected to taste better; eating is deemed more authentic, and cooking the outcome of traditional, hard-working labor. It is as if food cooked and served by Amish on the farm takes on the positive qualities often associated with the Amish themselves: simplicity, old-fashioned (in the best sense of the word), time-consuming (Amish as the original 'slow food' movement), and wholesome (presumed to be organic, but usually not). It amounts to a kind of Amish 'gastro-authenticity,' if you will...An extended vignette from my research elaborates on this theme."
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography ; v. 142, no. 3
Summary
Abstract: Sophisticated mid-twentieth-century food critics --those who ate where Chinese Americans ate and ordered the dishes Chinese Americans ordered-- wrote disparagingly of the chop suey that middle America adored. In the half century that followed, the story goes, white American taste slowly caught up with the critics. This paper changes the familiar story arc by beginning in the early twentieth century, an era of virulent anti-Chinese prejudice, when white Americans first took note of Chinese dishes and looked beyond their image as reviled immigrant food. Laundrymen exchanged their ironing boards for woks and opened Chinese American restaurants in cities and towns across the commonwealth, servindg real Chinese food adapted to white American tastes. Pennsylvanians loved the food, but they were reluctant to patronize establishments they perceived to be dens of vice. Chinese Americans launched a systematic, coordinated effort to overcome the racist stereotypes. Despite their best efforts, few restaurateurs were successful. Chop suey eventually took its place on Pennsylvania tables, but it did so in the form of a deracilized concoction sold in the canned food aisle of grocery stores.
This is a transcript of a Pennsylvania German talk presented at Muddy Creek Farm Library, Farmersville (Ephrata), Pennsylvania, on September 4, 2015.
Excerpt: "The main thing this evening will be [another] nice talk by...Alan Keyser having to do once again with old Pennsylvania Dutch foodways...Now, the last time I spoke...I described where folks used to eat and how they ate. This time I want to talk a bit about where and how they cooked their food and did their baking, and also about the use of smokehouses." The conversation discusses hearth cooking and all it requires: firewood, pots and pans, and chimney cleaning.
