Traces of Use

On ephemera and the ghosts of meals past

I am continuously amazed by the intersections of food history and book history. In my writing I often not how, in very tangible ways, one helps me more deeply understand the other. As I've returned to a more mindful, meditative writing practice (in this cozy writing cave), I've been contemplating these connections more deeply, particularly after writing about the body as a microbial archive for the Food, Feminism, Fermentation abecedary.

In the world of special collections (rare books + archives), ephemera refers to materials that were not meant to last: a playbill, a calendar, an advertisement on a notice board. All things that are tied to a brief period of time, are typically made cheaply (though not always), and because people often toss them after the play is done or a new year starts, they tend to not survive.
While Merriam Webster defines ephemera as "of no lasting significance", this couldn't be further from the truth. Ephemera informs us of a moment in time in one specific location. Ephemera reminds us that change is the only constant, but that those fleeting moments we experience leave their mark on us.

Food is, by its nature, ephemeral. We cannot, and do not, keep all of what we ingest, and much of it passes through us. However, like ephemera we encounter in writing or art, it leaves us altered: by interacting with the ephemeral, we come away changed.
Likewise, we exist within larger food cycles, ourselves becoming ephemeral nourishment to others: all living things on this earth eat and are in their time eaten. As what has nourished us shapes us, so too in this cycle do we go on to shape others.

These cycles also ask us to consider the multitudes within our own bodies: A microbiome teeming with as many beings as there are stars in the sky. We nourish and are nourished, we protect each other, live our whole lives in an invisible but powerful partnership, existing in a cycle that's ever-constant yet ever-changing. Like the macro- and micro-nutrients we eat, probiotic microbes don't necessarily take up residency in our gut: many die along the way. but their very presence reverberates within us. Leaving a fingerprint on our bodies.

Food also helps us consider the ephemerality of a moment, particularly when we work with with fermentation microbes that are ever-changing, living collaborators.

Last autumn I went beach camping on the Atlantic coast. I gathered seawater in jars, and when I returned, I used it to ferment persimmons from a friend's farm. In part, using seawater was an effort to hold onto that moment: a way to capture the flavor of a place. But fermentation, using seawater or otherwise, means collaborating with living beings, who change the environment (and flavor) you're seeking to preserve: If it's not eaten or shared, the ability to enjoy that moment disappears. It's like a culinary equivalent of those life advice columns that urge you to "use it or lose it": Use the fine china, go on that vacation, tell your friend you love them because some day it will be too late.    

Put another way, the food that represents a memory can shift, just like our memories themselves.

Traces of use

So if change is the only constant and we, and our food, and our world, are forever in a state of evolution, then why do I keep mentioning the marks we leave on the world?

Here, too, another term from book history comes in handy. "Traces of use" is one of my favorite concepts, because it treats the marks we leave behind on the world, simply through the act of living our lives, as worthy of our attention and our scholarship.

Traces of use are, as you might guess, the traces a person leaves behind on a book that help us understand how that book was used. An underlined passage, a thumbprint on an often-turned-to page, a splatter of sauce next to a recipe. Rather than detracting from the value of a book formerly "in perfect condition," traces of use asks us to consider what the marks we leave upon the world mean. What do they tell us about how someone used this book? And what does that use tell us about the world then, or now?

Trace of use are like talking to a ghost. A ghost fingerprint of a meal, a ghost fingerprint of a book, left in our minds and bodies. Traces of use are a reminder that even our fleeting interaction with something, whether a book or a dinner plate, can leave a noticeable impact. I like T.C. Lethbridge's account of images on a TV as "a manmade ghost". Fleeting, ephemeral, but still very real, and leaves its mark on us, however big or small, for us having interacted with it.
(If you want to dive down a really interesting rabbit hole, Colin Dickey's Ghostland talks about ephemerality through the lens of haunted houses, though perhaps not in those terms. Here, our ghost stories become the traces of use, mapped onto haunted houses and our collective memory as an outlet for our fears, anxieties, and morbid curiosities.)

I thought about this while writing about the body as an archive: basically, that our body holds the stories of our meals and experiences and, just like the traces of use on a book, these are worthy of our attention and our reflection.
Plenty of studies show that our microbiome leaves traces of use upon our bodies. But so too do the living foods we eat, which impact our microbiome even if the individual microbes themselves do not survive and set up shop in our digestive tract. But, unlike the traces of use on a book, these traces are more flexible: My microbiome can change considerably after, say, a round of antibiotics, but the notes I wrote in the margin of a book are most likely going to stay there.

Traces of use in book history is additive: new traces appear, sometimes they disappear if a page is torn out/damaged (itself a different trace of use). Traces of use when it comes to food are transformative: Our bodies hold the memories of meals past, to be sure, but the archive of our bodies is always in flux. In other words, the body as archive is a body informed by the past but actively shaping the future, adding new stories, rearranging things, or dusting off the metaphorical shelves, with each bite or sip we take.

To read

I am so excited to be a part of Food, Feminism, Fermentation's abecedary (an A-Z book) mentioned earlier: The ABCs of FFF.
Read my entry, A is for Archive, and check out my illustrations for A is for Archive and S is for Symbiosis (maybe) at the link above!

My latest for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on my process of using recipes to spark creativity, and the joy I find in watching readers take recipes I write and add their own flourishes to take them places I never imagined.

While this piece is 20 years old, I always enjoy reading about Mother Noella Marcellino, whose oft-used nickname of "The Cheese Nun" does little to convey her expertise and passion for cheeses and her impact on cheesemaking.

Speaking of fermentation, this study gives a good overview of the health benefits of Bacillus species found in fermented soy products.

This piece on "the pizza effect" and the changing role of pizza in Italy (which was not, contrary to popular belief, a terribly popular or widespread food until recently).

The ever-wonderful historian Julia Fine discusses the many faces of Madras curry powder.

To learn more about the life and work of a rare food bookseller, check out this interview with Don Lindgren of Rabelais Books.

I love this article, featuring some of my fermentation favorites, by Kiki Aranita all about the past and future of garum.

Robert McFarlane's Underland mentions a subterranean horticultural society, founded a century or so ago, under the streets of Paris. Unfortunately while searching around for it I haven't found out more about the society itself, though I found this article about the city's underground secret societies writ large, as well as this Parisian subterranean urban farm.  

Books from my recently read/re-reading/to read shelf:

Anita Ganeri (author), Andy Wilx (illustrator): Star Stories: Constellation Tales from Around the World

Emily Friedman: Reading Smell in Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Rebecca Solnit: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Sarah Robinson: Kitchen Witch: Food, Folklore, & Fairytales

Anne Braude: Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

Lars Marius Garshol, Historic Brewing Techniques

Sean Williams, The Ethnomusicologist's Cookbook

Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl

News

I’m thrilled to be the 2022 recipient of the Wisebram Culinary Distinguished Fellowship from the Hambidge Center. I’m there writing, reflecting in nature, and letting new ideas percolate as we speak (thank you, auto-publishing features). I can’t wait to share what I learn when I return!

This year, I’m inviting readers to join me in brief vision journaling exercises each month to help us intentionally craft a meaningful and hopefully joyful 2022. You can learn more and see the year’s prompts here.
This month’s journaling prompt is:
What does a creative, joyous practice look like for me? What happens when I give myself permission to pursue and to focus on the parts of my work that I love? How does my work look when I’m tapped into my creative stream, letting ideas and information flow freely?

If you, like me, are enjoying digging into mindfulness this year, I'm offering this class on bringing your mindfulness practice to the kitchen.

I'm not a fan of the commercialism of Valentine's Day, but I do love love. So as a bit of love to y'all, I'm giving a 30-day free trial of my paid newsletter to new subscribers. If you've wanted a paid subscription but aren't sure what you're getting, now you can see!

Paid subscribers are also getting a series of gifts from me as a thank you, in addition to the paid-only recipe posts and class discounts. The first is a digital guide to preserving family cookbooks and recipes (found in this recipe post on an/aphrodisiac Medieval and Victorian food).
Soon, you'll also be getting a digital cookbook. I hope you enjoy both!

To make: Homemade vapor balm

I am addicted, truly, to the cooling, soothing smell of vapor rub. But I'm also trying to move away from petroleum-based health/beauty products for a number of reasons, which means I'm not buying vapor rub at the store any longer.

Thankfully, vapor rub (and other balms) are super easy to make at home: just melt together your oil (which you can infuse with herbs on a double boiler, if you wish), any essential oils/menthol crystals, and grated beeswax.

My ratio is to use 1 ounce of grated beeswax to 1 cup of oil, use more beeswax for a denser balm (or for chapstick), less for one that's soft and spreadable. For a vegan version you can substitute out other waxes, though NB I have not personally tried this so can't offer exact ratios (the internet knows, though).

To make your own homemade vapor balm, the recipe I use is at this link

As it says, make sure to add your menthol crystals after taking your balm off the heat, and don't put your face right in it unless you want to be very...refreshed.

It's also very helpful to have all the jars/other containers you want to fill out and ready before you start. Make sure to have an extra 2-3 jars at the ready: they always fill up faster than you expect!

You can find everything you need to make it from Mountain Rose Herbs (affiliate link: I may get $ if you order through it).