Presenting...

This is to be a very occasional blog, intended for what its title suggests: leftovers; items that is that for whatever reason have not ended up elsewhere. For the most part, items about food, hence also its name.

About myself: I am (among a few things) a food historian. My first foray into this area was in writing an essay on breakfast in eighteenth century France for the collection Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century: Narratives of Consumption, 1700-1900

http://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Culture-Long-Nineteenth-Century/dp/073914510X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326564586&sr=8-1

This in turn led to my self-publishing a book (August Zang and the French Croissant) on the history of the croissant which in turn prompted my interest in the French baguette and an on-line paper on its origin which caught the attention of the editor preparing the Dictionnaire Universel du Pain

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionnaire-universel-du-pain-French/dp/2221112008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326606908&sr=1-1

for which I ended up writing nine articles.

Meanwhile, my independent work has continued, resulting in two volumes of eighteenth century recipes, a translation of  the Viandier (How to Cook a Peacock) and, most recently, a translation from the Latin of Anthimus' 6th century dietetic, De Observatione Ciborum (How to Cook an Early French Peacock). I also am proceeding on some other research, as well as responding to queries from others and the items here will probably result primarily from these efforts.