Food for Thought

April is Immigrant Heritage Month. In New York City, April 17th to 24th is Immigrant Heritage Week. In honor of both celebrations of Immigrant Heritage, this blog will focus on the multiculturalism of the 7 train.

If you live in Queens, New York, and you work in midtown like me, there might be a possibility that you often take the MTA train to work, particularly the 7 line which runs from Main Street, Queens to Times Square, New York.

One of the most interesting things about this line is that it runs into various ethnic pockets of Queens. The train brings and transports a multicultural group of people from all over the world from Queens to Manhattan on a daily basis. Here 

A Food Network Star! I am a big fan of the Food Network, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover that TeenLIVE at the NYPL was hosting Johnny Iuzzini, head judge of Top Chef: Just Desserts, "Pastry Chef of the Year" in 2006, and author of Dessert Fourplay: Sweet Quartets from a Four-Star Pastry Chef at the Jefferson Market Library.

E. coli in spinach. Salmonella in peanut butter. Pink slime. Horse meat! It seems like every year there is a new food safety scandal, and efforts made to reform the enormous industry that delivers calories (good ones and bad ones) to our mouths.

If you are like me, then the one thing you would like about Valentine's Day is the day after: chocolates on sale!

Godiva, Ferrara, chocolate truffles, M&Ms, you name it — all those brand name sweets at 50% off or on a buy-one-get-one-free basis totally makes up for this senseless tradition.

Carliss Pond, author of Taste of Broadway and Sizzle in Hell's Kitchen spoke at the Columbus Library last year. It was great to have an author speak about the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, which has come to be known as Clinton in recent years. Sizzle in Hell's Kitchen chronicles the diverse restaurants available on Ninth Avenue, including 38 different restaurants representing 27 different cuisines.

Is NYPL obsessed with food? Maybe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The popular Lunch Hour NYC exhibition at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building opened June 2012 and runs through February 17. It celebrates over a century of New York lunches. Don't miss the online exhibit and the menu collection. In conjunction with the exhibit, NYPL has hosted multiple programs, events, and blogs about food, including book talks by cookbook authors on everything from pizza to the history of salad, cooking demos, and food-related lectures ranging from Civil War rations to Jewish delis in America.

I like to cook, but I am not much of a baker. There is one yearly exception... the transition to autumn and then the holiday season usually puts me in a baking mood. For the past few Christmases I've made biscotti — Italian cookies flavored with nuts, spices, or dried fruits. They are something of a tradition in my family. This year when I got out my mixing bowl I grabbed a dry measure for the flour and sugar, but then I put it away. I decided not to use it.

Musical recipes... a soul food journey... a history of peanut butter... food bloggers... urban farmers and foragers...Dirt Candy... Julia Child... America's banana king... the hidden financial and political aspects of food... the astrological signs of the delicatessen... foodways of the African diaspora... cooking on TV. The Lunch Hour NYC exhibition currently at the Schwarzman Building has inspired us to offer some truly varied food related programs at the Mid-Manhattan Library. If you haven't seen this fascinating exhibit, which looks back at a century of New York lunches, why not combine a visit with one of our upcoming programs?

Although the rapidly approaching holidays usually only induces feelings of anxiety, I do look forward to getting out the cookware and making my tried and true holiday desserts and side dishes such as English trifle, Danish rice pudding (risengrød a la mande) and sweet potatoes baked in a sauce of maple syrup, butter and BOURBON!

I am a vegan, natural health food nut, and now I am on a gluten-free diet, so I was interested to see what food libraries are out there. I used to be a big fan of the Food Network Channel; I loved watching the Food Network Challenge show, which I believe has been discontinued. I cook natural grains and I made my own bread and apple pies as a teenager. I love vegetables, fruit, and health food stores. Below is a selection of the food libraries and museums that I found.

Did you know that some of your favorite dishes from a Chinese take out restaurant have interesting stories behind them? The origin of their names, the ingredients used and how they were conceived and transformed in America all make fascinating tales in food history.

A confession: I've never cooked a turkey. Sides, yes. Desserts, of course. But a turkey? Nope. I leave that to the experts. For me, turkey is the least exciting part of Thanksgiving. Sure, it may be the perfect vehicle for cranberry sauce. And turkey leftovers do make for a tasty soup, but if I had my druthers, I'd just as soon stick to chicken.

All this turkey bashing is just my way of explaining why you won't find any turkey basting in my Thanksgiving picks below. Everyone has their own method of preparing the bird, and I certainly wouldn't want anyone taking advice from a turkey novice, like myself. But, based on the delicious — and decidedly non-turkey — recipes 

This post was written by former Lunch Hour NYC intern Caitlin Dover. Caitlin is a writer and editor based in New York City; she recently received her master's in material culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York.

How do you pack your lunch? Chances are, you and your kids rely on an assortment of reusable plastic containers that you tote daily to work or school. That practice of packing one's midday meal goes back at least as far as the first half of the nineteenth century, when industrialization prompted workers to find ways to eat their "dinner" in or near their places of work. But the form of lunch containers has shifted; tin "kettles" or 

I had the honor of meeting Marlene Koch, author of the cookbook: Eat More of What You Love, at the Book Expo America event held this June at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. Marlene was all smiles as I told her how much I appreciate the publishing of this cookbook because not only does it reduce the length of time in the kitchen but substitutes the unnecessary calories from our daily diet. As she autographed my personal copy, I promised her that my next blog recipe would be from her book. So Marlene, this one is for you!

The following post was written by guest blogger Vanna Valdez, Benefits Outreach Worker, NYC Hunger Free Communities Consortium.

The New York City Hunger Free Communities Consortium (NYCHFCC) is a collaboration of New York City’s leading anti-hunger, nutrition, and aging organizations (AARP Foundation, City Harvest, Council of Senior Centers and Services of NYC, Food Bank for NYC, Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, NYC Coalition Against Hunger, NYC Department for the Aging, Public Health Solutions, and United Way of New York City). This project works towards the creation of a hunger free New York City, with a particular focus on aiding the especially vulnerable  

The first time I made my own cheese, it was a revelation. It was so simple and easy, it was ridiculous to me that I had spent years buying it at the store like everyone else.

With the upcoming NYPL exhibit Lunch Hour NYC on the horizon, we can look forward to an in-depth look at the world of cafeterias, Automats, workers' lunches, lunch at home (including tenements), school and charity lunches, and power lunches too. Kids will get a glimpse of lunch in all its myriad forms, and we've whipped together a booklist of lunch-related titles they'll really enjoy. Today, let's examine one of those books for kids on the younger end of the scale. Have a toddler or preschooler who won't touch their food? Introduce them to this omnivorous rodent with tummy filling on his mind in Denise Fleming's magnificent (and strikingly beautiful) Lunch.

With the upcoming NYPL exhibit Lunch Hour NYC on the horizon, we can look forward to an in-depth look at the world of cafeterias, Automats, workers' lunches, lunch at home (including tenements), school and charity lunches, and power lunches too. Kids will get a glimpse of lunch in all its myriad forms, and we've whipped together a booklist of lunch-related titles they'll really enjoy. Today, let's examine one of those books and we may as well begin with that most horrorific of all lunch-related themes: school cafeteria food! [insert dramatic music here]

If you are a huge fan of The Hunger Games Trilogy like I am, then The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook should be your next read. This book is filled with some of the most amazing dishes described within each novel (including Catching Fire and Mockingjay).