Vermont author Abigail Carroll visits the Galaxy on Tuesday, October 22nd, 7 P. M. for a discussion, slide show, and signing of her new book Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. In Three Squares Ms. Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable -- far from it, in fact. We asked Ms. Carroll a few questions to get to know her better.
Q: Galaxy Bookshop: How did you come to write Three Squares?
A: Abigail Carroll: When I was researching connections between obesity and snacking as a consulting curator for the Indiana State Museum, I realized that no one had written a book about the history of snacking in America, so I decided to write it. I wanted to know what snacking was like in centuries past—Did the Puritans snack? What about the founding mothers and fathers, Lower East Side tenement dwellers, westbound pioneers? But soon into my research I learned that the story of the snack is wrapped up in the story of the American meal. They are two sides of the same coin, and you can’t tell one story without the other—so in Three Squares, I tell both.
Q: When did your interest in food and food history start?
A: When I was a child, my family visited historical houses whenever we traveled, and I always found myself drawn to the kitchen. The past seemed so foreign, and yet here, at the hearth or in front of an old iron cookstove, I felt I could relate to the people who lived in these houses so long ago. I imagined that food meant something to them, just as it did for me--though I wasn't sure the meanings were the same. In many ways, my career has focused on unraveling those meanings.
Q: What book or books are your favorites and why?
A: In terms of food titles, I keep coming back to Laura Shapiro’s fun and ingenious Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America and Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century as well as William Woys Weaver’s elegantly written and illustrated America Eats: Forms of Edible Folk Art and The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide Sweets. These books contain such art and insight that I always pick up on new ideas when I re-read them.
Food history aside, I was riveted by Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet Spy (Eric Metaxes) when I read it last year. I have since loaned my copy to many friends who have found themselves similarly moved. This is the story of a gentle and yet inspiringly courageous modern-day hero, and it’s the kind of book you can’t read without being changed.
Q: What's your favorite passage or line from a book?
A: I have always loved poetry, and I’m grateful for my sixth grade English teacher who required us to memorize poems and recite them in class (to the dread of most of my classmates, but to my utter delight). My favorite lines from books today are the poems I committed to memory way back then because they have remained close friends ever since: “I wondered lonely as a cloud…” “Whose woods these are I think I know…” “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness…” “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…” "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree…” “The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees…”
Q: What are you reading currently?
A: I’m currently reading Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A History of Transformation, which asks some timely and relevant questions about the place of cooking in American culture—its decline and its future. Pollan argues that what we eat is less important to a healthy diet than whether we cook it, and I find this concept intriguing. In Three Squares, I propose a similar notion—that meals have a protective quality. When we eat together, we always eat better.
