[Mail call] 2017/02/24 – the Navy Foods book

With the stuff on the front page, I figure I should explain what the Navy Foods book is.

One of our largest audiences happen to be Chinese speakers, and I wrote – almost two years ago – a series of posts on the nature of military food. I mostly used the primary reference “Cookbook of the United States Navy” (you can find this on a lot of sites if you search for that exact title) and gave some fun examples of the different kinds of foods you’ll be able to eat on a ship.

What I did is honestly just explain some basic cooking principles. I like to cook myself (though I wouldn’t say I’m at all good or anything along the sort), and I cook the vast majority of my meals. Coming out of a redneck family helps too, since we did a lot of hunting and fishing and gardening.

For me, I think the interesting here is less the recipes (though of course I think they’re really neat), but rather seeing how different it is that the Asians cook in comparison to us. For instance, I didn’t realize that a baking oven is not as common as it is here. We have very different styles of preparing things like rice (we tend to bake, they tend to steam or use rice cookers), and sometimes even terms with similar meanings (braising) mean different things contextually. Ingredients that we take for granted such as certain sauces are again, very uncommon, and oftentimes they need to get it from western-styled markets if they wanted to try the same recipe.

Fast forward to today, and St. Bernard (one of our artists) liked the idea enough that she’d like to illustrate it. In all honesty, it’s pretty basic stuff. I assume most of us here in the English-speaking countries know how to roast meat or to make pies, so I don’t think we’ll really be localizing it unless there’s demand.

But, I love her art style. It’s pretty adorable and it fits the book really well. So you’ll definitely be seeing more of it.