We love getting glimpses into the lives of some of our favorite writers, especially when it comes to their tastes in food! Did you know that Walt Whitman loved oysters and meat for breakfast? Or that Allen Ginsberg had a famous and "uncompromising" Borsch recipe? Read on for these secrets and more, including a roundup of terrific food journals, a peek inside a literary food-themed dinner party, and Beatrix Potter's recipe for gingerbread. More

Usually, once a word makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary, it remains, even if it loses popularity. However, between 1972 and 1983, the then-editor of the OED deleted thousands of words, an unheard-of practice. Many of these were Americanisms, and there were a good number of food-related words that were almost lost forever. More

When you sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner in two days, you'll probably be sitting down to a meal that includes what we've come to view as holiday classics: turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, a few pies (pumpkin, pecan, apple). But how close is this to the menu at the so-called first Thanksgiving? More

Ever wondered where the expression "piping hot" comes from? Or maybe "easy as pie?" The Village Voice recently dug into the history of these expressions, and here are their (somewhat inexact but plausible) origins for 10 common food idioms: More

Maria Popova of the blog Brain Pickings always unearths the most interesting stories, tidbits, and other tidy pieces of information from history and the far corners of the internet. Yesterday she revealed excerpts from John Keats's Porridge: Favorite Recipes of American Poets, a 1973 book by poet and self-taught chef Victoria McCabe. The book contains 117 favorite recipes from some of that era's most illustrious literary minds, including Allen Ginsberg, Edward Abbey, Claire McAllister, and Joyce Carol Oates. More

Meet Shimizu San, a Japanese restaurant owner who grows his own wheat and makes his own udon. Take a moment and watch his ode to udon — a simple and centered take on sustainable living and eating. And it looks delicious! More

This year Thanksgiving in the country's most famous house will be based around a familiar theme: tradition. Even presidents wants the good ol' standards at Thanksgiving! But beyond the turkey, stuffing, and pies, there are interesting things to be gleaned from history's presidential Thanksgiving menus. More

Why would someone tuck a recipe for Chicken and Spaghetti Casserole in the pages of Michael Crichton's Sphere? Could that Dutch Apple Cake be someone's long-lost family recipe? Michael Popek has spent years with these mysteries while collecting recipes from the used books at his shop, first for his blog Handwritten Recipes and now for this cookbook. If you covet your grandma's recipe box and love paging through old church cookbooks, Handwritten Recipes is one more source of vintage recipes you'll definitely want to check out. More

For your Friday morning enjoyment: a brief look at coffee culture in America, starting with post-war instant coffee and moving through Starbucks and the beginning of a coffee vocabulary to today's coffee "refinement," the ritualization of coffee and the heightened awareness of terroir, roast, and method. (Note: video best enjoyed while drinking a cup of coffee, obviously.) More

I recently discovered a blog called Handwritten Recipes. Have you heard of it? You can probably imagine what it's about, given the title, but there's a twist: the blog, written by a bookseller, is all about the handwritten recipes he finds stuck between the pages of old books. It's fun and also strangely moving to discover these forgotten recipes again, and in the most unusual of places. More