Lessons in Domestic Science

I have been visiting DC every couple of weeks now since that's where the Boy lives, that is perhaps in part why the radio silence has persisted on this blog. I've since made DC almost a second home, where I build the same sort of routines that I cherish here in Brooklyn. Boy lives in Dupont Circle, where there's certainly no lack of things to do and a New Yorkishly accessibility to get things done. While most stores in dc close by the depressing hour of 1-pm, the 24-hour CVS pharmacy keeps the circle pumping with nightlife. Unfortunately, I'm only partially kidding.

But getting on, One thing that I almost always do when I am in DC is stop into Second Story Books. Located on the increasingly-posh strip of P Street that cuts across the circle, it's the Beacon's Closet of Bookstore. No, wait, it's slightly classier than Beacon's Closet, it's like... the Edith Machinist of Bookstores. With quite an eccentric group of personalities that work behind the desk- One day, it's a heaving 500 pound man with his butt glued to the rolling office chair, the next a elfish 20-something girl wearing a onesie, and once again, a studious rail-thin and stretched out carbon copy of Dwayne Wayne (from A Different World!). It's seriously bizarre, but somehow fitting in the bookstore. The bookstore carries the rarest of hard-to-find gems, copies of Goodnight, Moon seemingly teleported from their original publication date. Divided into sections (History: World War I. Cultural: Armenia. Cultural: Pre-colonail British), the bookstore is mostly a collection of non-fiction works, a place where you can get lost in any land, any culture, any story that's every been written.

I go for their lone food shelf. well, one-and-a-half shelves, technically. One full of cookbooks, the other half of food and cultural writings. I hit that, and have managed to find such jewels as Frank Bruni's recent memoir Born Round (didn't like it, more on that later I suppose), Harold McGee's essential On Food and Cooking, the James Beard on Pasta (check out those illustrations, for reals) book- not as seminole as Beard on Bread, but I'm on the lookout!) - and most recently, Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me With Apples. But my FAVORITE find has been this, Twenty Lessons in Domestic Science, originally published in 1916by Marian Cole Fisher.

A lady in a petticoat, punching on a typewriter with her glasses falling to her nose to pen this "lesson book" is exactly the image that is conjured when I flip through its contents. To get a full scope of its contents you need not turn further than the table of contents, where, rather than chapters, the book is divided into "Lessons". Lesson II is entirely devoted to "LEAVENING AGENTS", among them (in order listed) - Baking Powder, Acid Phosphate, Cost of Baking Powder, How to Measure, Leavening Agents....(and more!). Mostly an almanac of cooking rather than a recipe book, this small, 108-page hardcover pretty thoroughly = covers every food group, why we should eat, what we should eat, and where we should get our raw materials from. It's, I imagine, everything the traditional housewife should have known. The book also references the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. more than once through the course of the book- leading me to imagine what sort of campaigns our government was trying to enact in the 40s, and the 50s, perhaps when this book may have been its most popular.

I don't think I'll be taking this book too seriously, but it does provide such an interesting peek into the history of our culture. Plus, the diagrams are pretty f'ing amazing.