Kitchen Things: An Album of Vintage Utensils and Farm-Kitchen Recipes

Many home cooks—and professionals, as well—swear by the tried-and-true implements they’ve used for years: the Foley Food Mill that works like a charm every time; the manually operated juicer that’s a tradition of family breakfasts; the cast iron skillet that’s been handed down through the generations. For serious cooks, there’s nothing like a familiar implement, a thing that works exactly as you expect it to.

Similarly, most people usually have a library of favorite recipes on which they rely: some passed along from relatives and friends, others from mentors and teachers. These are the recipes cooks return to time and time again, in part because they evoke memories of the people who have enjoyed them and prepared them in the past.

Kitchen Things, by master photographer and respected novelist Richard Snodgrass, celebrates these well-loved objects and recipes and showcases them in an unexpected way—a way that touches upon the science of food, the physics of cooking, the sensory pleasures of eating, and indeed the very nature of life itself.

In his reflections, the author is aided by his patient, persistent, and very perceptive wife, Marty, and her mother, from whose Western Pennsylvania farmhouse kitchens the objects and recipes were sourced. The gentle, often humorous repartee between the author and these wise and knowing women forms a running narrative throughout the book.

Richard Snodgrass has been artist in residence at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, and at LightWork, University of Syracuse. He is also the recipient of a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His photographs are included in the permanent collection of the Oakland Museum of Art and in private collections and galleries nationwide. His books include the critically acclaimed novel There’s Something in the Back Yard and the photographic commemoration of the Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, An Uncommon Field. Selections of Kitchen Things originally appeared in TABLE magazine, where he is a regular contributor. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Marty, and two indomitable female tuxedo cats, raised from feral kittens, named Frankie and Becca. For more information, go to www.rsnodgrass.com.

Christina French is a publisher, writer, and communicator dedicated to changing the way we think about food. Christina started TABLE Magazine in 2006 to introduce a fresh way of thinking about the quality and character of regional food culture. She commits time to programs and community efforts to support a healthy food supply, economy and culture.