Feed Your Mind: The Warmest Room in the House

Now that the cold weather is likely here to stay, at least until the next freak 60 degree day, you might want to hunker down with a cozy-sounding book.

Steven Gdula's The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home ($29.95, Bloomsbury.), will warm you right up. This whirlwind tour of the past hundred years or so sheds light on how the kitchen was often a reflection of our society at any given time.

Gdula examines the evolution of ingredients, technology, and architecture as they relate to political, social, and economic developments in the country. Despite the severe economic conditions, Gourmet magazine premiered during the Depression era, home canning and preserving increased around the time of government rationing during World War II, and the advent of the crock pot coincided with an increase of women heading into the work force in the '70s.

You'll emerge armed with a wealth of kitchen-related tidbits -- did you know that garbage disposals were once called "kitchen pigs," or that the first microwave oven was unveiled in 1947? From Typhoid Mary to Martha Stewart, Gdula paints a portrait of America's culinary characters and how they fit into our changing sense of how to cook and eat.