Tag Archives: hoopla digital

Digital Delivery Delicacies: Food-A Cultural Culinary History, Online Courses from Universal Class, and more!

15 Jun

If you have been wanting to expand your culinary knowledge and skills, but don’t have time to attend a class in person then checkout these great online lectures and courses available from home for Hoboken Library Card holders.

Food: A Cultural Culinary History and The Everyday Gourmet

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For Hoboken Library and other BCCLS Library Patrons interested in learning about the history of food check out episodes of Food: A Cultural Culinary History, part of The Great Courses lecture series available from Hoopla.  Although best watched in order since each of the 36 lecture builds on one another, they are filmed as 30 minute segments by topics on specific regions/eras so if you are just interested in specific food cultures/time periods you can skip around.  The lecture starts at the Stone Age and then moves through different times in history including Ancient Egypt, Elizabethan England, Edo Era Japan and ending with a look into what the future of food might be.  I found the lectures very interesting in the way they looked at not only food trends, but the way history impacted the food we eat and the way food in turn influenced history.  You can pick up some great tidbits for cocktail party chatter.  The course is taught by Dr. Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in California, where he teaches food history.  The series is also available on DVD from BCCLS libraries and you can check out several of Albala’s books in print on a variety of food history topics.

Hoopla has other lectures from The Great Courses series including several Everyday Gourmet courses on topics such as Rediscovering the Lost Art of Cooking, Essential Secrets of Spices in Cooking, and Baking Pastries and Desserts.  I have checked out the first of the Baking Pastries and Dessert lectures and plan to watch more in the future.  It has some useful tips for beginners like how to ensure all the ingredients are mixed.

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Hoopla also features a variety of cookbooks and ebooks on food history.  I enjoyed reading The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin by Michael Krondl.  My parent’s house was behind Dunkin’ Donuts so the delicious smell of fresh made donuts makes me think of home; it was fun to learn about their history and other notable moments in donut history.  Also featured are a baker’s dozen of donut recipes including ones from around the world such as Venetian Carnival Fritters and Oliebollen Dutch Donuts.  My husband was inspired to make the Nutella filled Bombolonis-Yum!  Remember BCCLS patrons have 20 checkouts for Hoopla per month of books, movies, music and more!

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Get Cooking and Baking with Universal Class
For those looking for a more interactive learning experience check out some of the cooking classes available to Hoboken Patrons from Universal Class including online courses on:

If you don’t have a Hoboken Library Resident Card to access Universal Class from home, you can access the courses from within the library on the library’s computers or from your wi-fi enabled laptop.  The courses each feature an instructor who you can email about assignments with.  The courses are self-paced and you have a six month period to complete them.  This is a great way to expand your repertoire and learn some new skills.  I love baking cakes and cookies, but have always found pies intimidating so I’m hoping to take the pie baking course and be able to have homemade rather than store-bought pumpkin and apple pies for Thanksgiving.  Courses are available 24/7 so they are perfect for a busy working mom like me since I can work on them after my little guy goes to bed.  Besides the classes that will appeal to beginning cooks there are also ones on a variety of other topics such as Excel, Grammar, and Resume Writing.  The courses are easy to navigate.

And if you are looking for an in person class for foodies we have that too; on Monday June 13 back by popular demand I will be co-teaching a class on ice cream making using a machine as wells as an easy recipe using just plastic bags, ice, salt and a few simple ingredients.  This is a fun class for adults, older kids, and teens!

-Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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Moon Madness: Radiance, A Trip to the Moon, and Moonday

16 Mar

The moon has been a source of wonder, myth, and mystery since the first human looked up at the night sky.  Few of us actually get to walk on its surface, although perhaps with the promise of space tourism that may soon change.  Until that day we have these fantasy works that allow our imaginations to take flight.

Catherynne M. Valente’s Radiance

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To me this was the best book of 2015.  Inspired by the silent film, A Trip to the Moon, Radiance takes place in alternate reality where Edison’s hoarding of copyrights means that talkie films never caught on, but space travel is commonplace.  People now live on the moon and other planets whose native species while being named after creatures on earth are decidedly alien.  Valente’s clever creative descriptions of this alien menagerie was only one of the many features which charmed me.  This quirky book is told through a variety of found materials including transcripts, gossip columns, and more.  This adds enjoyment to the audiobook version (available from Hoopla) as actor Heath Miller brings to life the characters. All together the found materials forms the mysterious story of deceased filmmaker Severin Unck whose life is slowly revealed.  Her documentaries were a reaction against her father’s over the top fantastical works and Valente notes that her own filmmaker father helped to motivate her writing of the novel.  Retro futurism has never been so delightful or thoughtful.  Read it in print from the Hoboken Library or as an eBook from eBCCLS!

A Trip to the Moon

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Georges Méliès’s  A Trip to the Moon was inspired by the novels of Jules Verne and other science fiction novels from that time period.  It uses the effects and the aesthetics derived from the Féerie theatrical productions which were popular in France in the 1800’s; ironically the beginning of film saw the decline of its popularity.  Despite the fact that the film was created in 1902, it has kept its charm and due to the recent fad for retrofuturism it seems oddly modern with its depiction of astronomers who use a cannon to launch their rocket to the moon.  Beside Valente’s novel, it has been the inspiration for one of my favorite music videos, Smashing Pumpkin’s “Tonight, Tonight.”  There is a colorized version of  A Trip to the Moon.  Although currently films can be colorized via computer, at that time each print of films had to be individually hand colored.  The coloring leads another level of whimsy and visual interest to the film.  Valente discussed the job in her novel; I would definitely recommend watching the film while reading Radiance.  You can borrow the DVD, Méliès le Cinémagicien from BCCLS which includes a documentary about Méliès as well as several of his films.

Adam Rex’s Moonday

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If your children, like my three year old son, are fascinated by the moon, then you should check out Adam Rex’s Moonday, where the moon takes up residency in a family’s backyard.  Although at first it seems exciting to be able to literally reach out and touch the moon, it soon has some odd consequences including the town’s people’s lack of sleep and a tide that begins to fill up the yard.  Rex’s realistic illustrations bring this surreal concept to life.  You may remember Rex from previous blog posts as the illustrator of my son’s favorite picture book series centered on Chu, the panda bear with the mighty sneeze, written by Neil Gaiman.  Moonday is available from Hoboken Public Library and you can borrow a picture book on video adaptation from Hoopla.

-Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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