罐头，我们最熟悉的食品包装，也是食物保存方式。它能长期存放又便于运输，跨越季节和地区限制，满足各种环境的需求。 但是在150年前，当它第一次出现在美国时，美国人对它满是疑惑：一个不透明罐子里的食物安全吗？此后，又是什么原因让罐头逐渐成为美国人不可或缺的生活必需品？跟着本书作者来一次“罐头之旅”吧： · 美国南北战争带动了罐头牛奶的产量，促进了罐头产业的发展。 · 豌豆罐头经历了罐头商、农民和科学家们的共同努力才有了现在的美味。 · 罐头工业的第一次危机居然是因为橄榄罐头中的肉毒杆菌！ · 番茄罐头上的等级便签能让消费者满意吗？ · 金枪鱼罐头代表了“二战”后美国罐头食品的热潮。 · BPA导致了金宝汤公司开始放弃“罐头”产品。 在美味的罐头背后，是否还藏着其他不为人知的秘密？ “这是一段引人入胜的重要历史，展示了罐头食品的加工、营销与政治化过程，这也是如今厨房中加工和包装食品的由来。” ——本杰明•科恩，《耕耘笔记：美国农村中的科学、土壤与社会》作者。 “读罢此书，再打开豌豆、西红柿或金枪鱼罐头时，你便能品味到其中蕴含的历史。” ——格雷格•米特曼，《呼吸空间：过敏如何塑造我们的生活与景观》作者。

风味层出，绝不瞎扯。明星主厨张锡镐带朋友们展开令人垂涎的跨文化猎食之旅，寻觅全世界最令人满足的佳肴。

Less than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. For older people in rural areas, food now symbolizes everything from misery and extreme want to relative abundance. Young people, on the other hand, have a different relationship to food. Many young rural Chinese are migrating to rapidly industrializing cities for work, happy to leave behind the backbreaking labor associated with peasant agriculture. Bitter and Sweet examines the role of food in one rural Chinese community, as it has shaped everyday lives over the course of several tumultuous decades. In her superb ethnographic accounts, Ellen Oxfeld compels us to reexamine some of the dominant frameworks that have permeated recent scholarship on contemporary China, work that describes increasing dislocation and individualism and a lack of moral centeredness. By using food as our lens, we see a more complex picture, one in which connectedness and sense of place continue to play an important role, even in the context of rapid change.

From New York City to the farmlands of the Midwest, there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., yet one dish in particular has conquered the American culinary landscape with a force befitting its military moniker—“General Tso’s Chicken.” But who was General Tso and how did this dish become so ubiquitous? Ian Cheney’s delightfully insightful documentary charts the history of Chinese Americans through the surprising origins of this sticky, sweet, just-spicy-enough dish that we’ve adopted as our own.