More Fun From Mimi

I'm still making my way through Mimi Sheraton's epic tome, 1000 Foods to Eat before You Die. While I'm resisting the urge to quote from every page, now that I'm in the American and Canadian section (it's arranged geographically, which is instructive in its own right as you observe how some foods have evolved and traveled around the globe), there are some tidbits that are too cool to pass up. For instance, I didn't know that the slow cooking times of both Boston baked beans and Boston brown bread date back to the Puritans observing the Sabbath by preparing them the night before for slow simmering to avoid cooking the next day. Also that the beans were dried navy ones, the same as went into my slow cooking Tuscan pork and beans that sat all day yesterday in my crock pot. And eons ago I used to bake brown bread from scratch in coffee cans (do those still exist?). I bet my beloved original 1896 Fannie Farmer Cook Book has excellent guidance on this if I somehow got ambitious again.

Another revelation came in the entry for clams casino. I always thought they were everywhere, without any particular provenance. But from Mimi I learn that their name comes from its reported invention (or at least naming) at the Narragansett Pier Casino, a long-gone establishment on the shore of one of my favorite childhood haunts in Rhode Island. No wonder they always seemed to be everywhere, when you're sitting in the epicenter of their creation. Now on to more discoveries.