​Gustav Stickley, the furniture manufacturer and spirited salesman who helped translate the European Arts and Crafts movement for American homes, had definite ideas about dining rooms.

Like his fellow Arts & Crafts practitioners, Stickley had little patience for the fussy, ornate table settings and baroque food that Fannie Farmer's contemporaries equated with good taste. He envisioned eating areas where craftsmanship and culinary simplicity were celebrated, where a do-it-yourself ethic prevailed over imported luxury. Years before millennial gourmands were shedding French trappings and embracing locavorism, Stickley endorsed a family-centered, farm-to-table philosophy -- and designed a dining room to showcase it.

That model dining room, which made its debut at a 1903 Arts & Crafts Exhibition in Syracuse, has been meticulously recreated for a new Dallas Museum of Art exhibit opening this weekend. Billed as "the first comprehensive examination" of Stickley's life and work, Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement features more than 100 works, many of them with edible implications.

But Margot B. Perot Curator of Decorative Arts and Design Kevin W. Tucker, who organized and curated the exhibit, says the dining room provides the clearest picture of Stickley's influence on the way Americans eat.

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Denver Westword

​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining what's wrong with me.

It has been dismissed as a white Snickers. The company that makes them has changed hands so many times it's near impossible to keep track. And when I went to the 7-Eleven by our posh, teak-lined office suites to pick one up, the clerk told me they didn't bother to reorder.

Seems few people buy Zero bars anymore.

But when I was a kid, the strip of nougat, caramel and white chocolate was so different than anything else on the market that you just had to love it. Zeros were, in fact, my favorite candy bar--and not only because for the unique luster when you first ripped into that space age wrapper.
 
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Knutux

​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining what's wrong with me.

It's a common dish in Lithuania, though not one that really sells the cuisine.

The dish consists of wet dough grated from raw potatoes, molded around gristly meat and boiled for however long it takes to turn the dough into porridge and meat into dripping gray stuff. Call them dumplings if you will, but each one weighs about 45 pounds.

Well, maybe they just seem that heavy.

I had "zeppelins" (that's how it translates) for the first time on a visit to the city of Alytus, cooked in a tiny private kitchen. The family wanted to introduce me to the cepelinai because--according to the country's tradition--the massive blobs of potato and meat were served to guests and working men. And I was a guest.

They also told me men sometimes engage in cepelinai eating contests, which probably explains why life expectancy was so much lower there, at least at the time.

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​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining what's wrong with me.

God how I despise pickled beets.

You know, those slices of bright magenta mush that come from a can...or is it jar? Since I won't allow them in the flat, I've forgotten.

My hatred ran so deep as a child that when I spotted a serving tray of the vile root on the Detroit Lions dinner table in the film version of Paper Lion--Alan Alda's breakthrough feature which, by the way, we were watching at an actual drive-in--I reportedly said "that does it! I'm not going to play pro football after all."

Beets ruined a potential All-Pro career...assuming the NFL still takes free safeties who run the 40 in 5.7 and measure their vertical leap in the single digits.

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Recipe Shoebox

​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining what's wrong with me.

Every year around the holidays, my mom sends a tin of what she calls "Secret Toffee."

Actually, I learned the name of this chocolate-toffee cookie thing just last week, having spent a few decades requesting it by description whenever I'd make a trip to see the folks. But if forced to list what I really like about the season, Secret Toffee would rank ahead of vacation days, time with family and bowl games.

It's so good, in fact, that well-behaved kids from strict families confronted with a tray of Secret Toffee will forget such niceties as sharing, honesty and that it's wrong to bludgeon other people--toddlers especially--with a baseball bat to prevent them from gaining free access to the fridge.

The secret?
 
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Restoration Place

​Nobody I've ever known shared my enthusiasm for this treat. Hell, most had never even heard of it.

And, to be honest, I really don't blame those who grew up in an urban environment or downwind from some industrial plant. But we lived in a small college town--and way back when the thought of eating spoonfuls of frozen acid rain didn't seem that bad.

Snow ice cream consists of vanilla extract, sugar, a little milk and a lot of snow all mixed together in a large bowl.

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​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining why I'm so damn twisted.

I can say this without flinching: my dad made the best fried catfish and--especially--the best hush puppies ever.

Every Sunday without fail he'd stand over the stove dredging and splattering. It wasn't always catfish. Sometimes he prepared bluegill or some other panfish--it depended on what we caught that week. But he knew the whys and wherefores of catfish.

Really, I don't know what the secret was, since he never used a recipe. The fish just came out right: heavy and light, crunchy and fluffy, delicate and very, very muddy--every damn time.

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Dave Watson

​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining why I'm so damn warped.

On this day a couple years ago I was with some friends at the Christmas market in Nuremberg.

Actually, me and another guy spent Saturday afternoon in a sports bar watching Bundesliga action with some German who spent several hours recounting the career of goalkeeper Oliver Kahn. We did, however, step outside once or twice for a helping of the region's spicy white sausage.

The city is known for war crimes trials (try asking locals for directions to the sights) and sausage, both in brat form and--at Christmas market stalls--as ground patties. Standing outside with the smell of mulled wine and pork fat all around with the holidays approaching, well, there's no better way to appreciate a greasy meal.

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​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining why I'm so damn warped.

Even in tough economic times, working Americans take fewer vacation days than any other people on earth--although I believe this oft-cited bit of information ignores farmers eking out a living on the Sahara's fringes and those always-on-the-job Somali pirates.

If true--and it must be--this means any sanctioned time off has a defined value. For instance, the December holidays are for gift getting (some would say giving) and Super Bowl Sunday is for Chex Mix with friends. But Thanksgiving is the holiday we reserve for family.

Of course, while I was living in Europe, the whole family gathering thing was a bit too expensive. Instead, expats tend to seek each other out this time of year, linking up for communal dinners at hotels or chain restaurants or any place catering to Americans by putting together a turkey dinner.

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​If Memory Serves chronicles moments from my dining past, perhaps explaining why I'm so damn warped.

It's funny how memories become jumbled sometimes. For several decades now I've remembered sitting in our London flat, pouring clotted cream over McVitie's apple pies.

These were tarts sold in boxes of six at the local grocer's, each about three inches in diameter. Sweet, buttery and rich, they took to cream so very well...and I can find no reference to the company ever having made such an item.

McVitie's made--and continues to make for their new owners, United Biscuit--cookies and snack bars that are popular in England. But a brand called Mr. Kipling produces the type of miniature pie I remember.

Probably find out next that it wasn't clotted cream.

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