Bi-Weekly topic for February 1, 2004
Not For Vegetarians...
By Feathers of Hope (Pica)
This entry is part of the Ecotone Wiki's joint post on Food and Place
Travelling back to Spain in early December made me realize just how much pork the Spanish eat. Even things that are ostensibly "vegetables"--peas, artichoke hearts, green beans--have bits of ham in them. Not chicken, or beef, but ham. Ham legs, cured in the Spanish manner (jamón serrano), hang in every bar, along with various cured sausages, ready for cutting into tapas or sandwiches or for omelettes or for the peas and artichokes.
There's nothing about Spanish geography that makes the pig a more likely farm animal than, say, a goat, which is certainly eaten in other Mediterranean countries. But there's plenty in Spanish history that has given pork such a prominent place in the cuisine. For one thing, it was outlawed for about six centuries under Moorish occupation. The forbidden food took on the aura of a battle standard.
Food is never just food, is it? The prominence of pork in Spain recalls an earlier, darker time, following the explusion of Jews and Muslims in the fifteenth century, when it was a test. Are you really one of us? Or does your refusal to eat this forbidden meat reveal you as a convert in name only? The Inquisition lurks around the tables in taverns, watching, watching.
Posted by Pica at January 31, 2004 09:07 PM
Comments
Well I seem to remember that it was only in 1992 that the legislation for it to be ilegal to be Jewish in Spain was finally abolished! But ham-in-everything may well continue! It's obviously loaded with significance.
Posted by: Coup de Vent at February 2, 2004 12:03 AM
Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/01/31/not_for_vegetari.html
The Trail: Angels, Demons and the Cafe Beuf
By Fragments from Floyd
Did you ever get sick of the sound of your own voice? Blahblahblahblah Fragments blahblahblah Tsuga... So, I'm gonna let our son, Nathan, tell you a tale that involves Food and Place, the February 01 topic at Ecotone.
As we join the story, Nate is several weeks south of Bar Harbour, making southern progress in his Quixotic Qwest to find America on the back roads between Maine and Goose Creek. He has picked up the Appalachian Trail (at my insistence) through the NY-NJ portion, to keep him away from the congestion. But of course, he has to jerk us around just a little (us, being the parental "units"). So. Here is a segment snatched from his (unpublished) book that I thought of when the topic turned to Food and Place. Hope you enjoy.
At one point, butt considerably frozen, I crossed a road with signs for a payphone nearby, and used the phone to courtesy-call the Units, who hadn’t heard from me in three or four days. Dad picked up and we said our hellos, and then I realized how busy the road must’ve sounded over the phone. I had to yell when eighteen wheelers splash-roared by.
“Been a change of plans, Dad.” I paused to let a pair of muffler-impaired low-riders drag by. “I met this guy, Marty, who knows the streets of New York like the back of his hand, and he told me about a route I could take through the city that was relatively safe, so I got off the trail a couple of days ago. I guess I’m officially in the Bronx now, but it’s hard to tell. It’s not really that busy anymore…”
“Mmmm,” came in from my receiver.
“I’m fine, Dad. And I think this is basically even legal. I mean, there’ve been a couple of signs that said ‘no pedestrians,’ but I’ve seen a coupla others out here, too, and cops have just flown right by us. We’re small potatoes, Dad. Don’t worry. They don’t have time to mess with somebody just for walking on a busy road in NYC…”
“Not happy.” I heard him say, and then repeat, and then repeat. I knew I’d better give up the gig before he really started worrying.
“Just kidding, Pop. I’m thirty miles from New Jersey. Still on the trail. Everything’s wondaful. Jus’ wan’ to say hi.”
After getting called, rightfully, a jerk, and laughing at my good friend and father, I told him I’d call again in a few days and hung up the phone. I was still freezing, especially after not walking for a few minutes, but now I barreled on with a smile. Dads are good for some things.
That night I made it to the shelter to find an old section-hiker already there who introduced himself as “Pops.” Pops quickly addressed what was on both of our minds. “You ready to freeze your ass off tonight?” Pops had yet to officially surrender to the moisture. He had been conquered but he continued to fight.
Pops had been in his sleeping bag since five o clock, stuffed inside it with some of his wet and clammy gear. He was trying to dry his clothes out with his own body heat so that by morning they would be fine again for the trail. I admired his bravery. He was already shaking and it was hardly even twilight.
My own clothes I hung up in the shelter. Some were dripping and all were in some way trading moisture with the wet night air. With our hanging clothes and gear combined, our shelter soon looked like a slummy yardsale aftermath. We used every hook possible and when there weren’t any we invented some.
Out of everything in my possession, my one remaining dry article was my ugliest pair of algodon underwear. Finding them gave me hope, and they suddenly served as the symbol for my will to fight and live. That lone pair of dry, atrocious boxers was to me like the olive branch carried back by Noah’s post-flood Dove. Inspired by the boxers and Pops’ perseverance I, although conquered, would also continue to struggle on. I repacked these boxers in a ziploc bag, sucked out the air and zipped it tight. I rolled the bag, rubber-banded the bag, placed the bag in another bag, repeated the process, and then put this plastic-and-algodon trophy into my final grocery bag and tied it off in double knots.
Hope! I had hope: Whatever happened throughout the night, however frozen my butt actually became, I would put on dry underwear at sunrise. If I ever awoke, I knew I would surely awake in a dry-girthed sort of paradise.
In the meantime Pops and I both cooked long noodley meals over small stoves, debating even over how much water to add. The more heated water, the more free warmth to drink in with the noodles. But, alas, the more we drank the more often we’d have to creep out of whatever paltry warmth we’d mustered, only to brave the elements in returning some of ours to the soil.
“I don’t know about you but I’m peeing right off the deck,” Pops said.
“I’m tempted to just stay in my bag,” I admitted. “Can you imagine how nice that first warm minute would be?” We laughed – the kind of laughing where our bodies automatically did the shaking and all we had to do was add voice to our breath. We laughed at how absurdly reduced to the elements we’d become, and this when it really, comparatively speaking, was not that unspeakably cold!
“If it just wasn’t so dagblamed wet!” Pops shiverlaughed, shaking. We both agreed that snow would’ve been much better than this relentless rain. Snow could perch rather politely on your shoulder and you’d never even notice it was there. Snow could convince you that it wasn’t really made from water at all. The same amount of rain would hit your shoulder like a cold raw egg and then rip through your clothes in a baneful search for your underwear. It would find its way to soak you, freeze you, kill you if it could.
Night had come in and we hoped for snow. We braced for the long haul. I boiled a pot of water and poured it back into my Nalgene, wrapped it in a shirt and huddled around it in my thin little bivy, sometimes putting it down with my frozen feet for a while. Sometimes we tried to talk ourselves and each other into distraction. Other times one of us would say goodnight and plunge in, hoping that we were fully ready for sleep and the morning would come quickly. In the morning, once we could get moving again, we’d be fine.
Never much beyond the lip of sleep, a crashing down the trail startled us from our own chattering little worlds. Flashlights flung out across wet trees along the ridge.
“Who in the hell could that be?” said Pops in disbelief. “What time is it, anyway?”
I looked at my watch. “Eight thirty.” Pops let out a cross between a whimper and a moan. “I’ve been in this shelter since noon today. Been in my sleeping bag since five…” He mumbled off. “…damn thought it was at least one o clock.” We whistled to the oncoming hikers to let them know they’d found the place. They whooped back. One was singing.
“Sweet mother of Mary,” Pops quietly growled.
Rich and Ed unpacked their things and the four of us got acquainted. They were middle-aged boy-scout troop leaders who went to the same church in a nearby town. They hadn’t expected to find anybody else in the shelter on a night like this.
“Too early in the year for thru-hikers to be this far north” Rich said, “and nobody in their right minds would come out in weather like this just for the weekend.”
“Hmm.” Pops said.
Rich and Ed laughed. Rich, by far the larger of the two, was quickly becoming the spokesman. “Well, we’re boy-scout leaders. We enjoy this sort of thing.”
Never in a million years. Never in a million years would I have guessed what happened next.
Ed lugged a ten-pound propane grill from his pack and began to set up its stand in the midst of a light drizzle.
“Itellya, Ed, I am starving.” Rich looked at the two of us. “What about you boys? Up for a coupla ribeyes?”
Trail Magic: trayl-ma-jik. n. A common term used by hikers of the Appalachian Trail to signify a moment of sheer, overwhelming fortune at the time of greatest need.
Shoot now and ask questions later. Real, plump, juicy man-sized fresh-grilled ribeye steaks. Sautéed mushrooms and onions. Mountains of scalloped potatoes in a homemade cheesy white sauce. Suddenly, somehow, two wet bedraggled rats, one minute shivering alone in the wilderness and trying against all odds to sleep their way into oblivion, are the next minute served steaming ribeye steaks on paper plates by singing strangers under light of a lantern in a New Jersey wood. “You’re good men,” Pops said with his mouth full. “Yep. Good. You’re good, good, good men. Wow. You’re—you believe this?” Pops looked up at me and laughed with his mouth full, and laughed and laughed and laughed.
While we all ate, Rich and Ed explained that they’d been planning on coming out with two more campers. The two in their troop who had earned the most patches were going to get to come on this trip as a reward. Then, at the last minute, neither of the boys wanted to go. “They don’t make scouts like they used to,” Rich said. “Tell’em they’ll be hiking six miles in the dark, cold, and rain and they all of a sudden get a chip on their shoulder.” He speared a potato sliver from his plate and held it up like a trophy. “More for us, right? You eat all you want, boys. We don’t want to carry this out in the morning.”
So now, along with my algodon underwear, I had secure and warm in my belly one and a half ribeye steaks, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and various hills of scalloped potatoes in a delectable cheesy white sauce and pepper. Hope.
Regardless, Pops and I still “froze our asses off.” The scout leaders pulled on their long underwear tops and bottoms; good thick dry socks; warm hats; and climbed into their nice thick cozy warm dry delicious sleeping bags while Pops and I curled in or little wet balls and looked on. Pops had on long underwear but it was wet, a thirty-degree sleeping bag but it wasn’t enough. The temperature was down in the thirties now, and I couldn’t convince Pops to take the clammy things out of his bag. The thought of putting on frosty-wet clothes in the morning was enough to keep him with them all night.
Moron that I was, I had already mailed home all of my winter clothes. By then my long underwear, my hat, my wool sweater and my gloves were all snuggled, soft, quiet, and dry in a box in Virginia. Every article of clothing I now had – other than my algodon underwear – was wet. My fleece liner was small, damp, and thin. Even cooking another water bottle was not enough to put any life back into my deadnumbed frozen feet. I reminded myself that my shaking was a good sign – it meant that I was still in only the early stages of hypothermia. I drifted off.
I have never – never in my life – heard anything like the snoring that came from our old friend Rich. And may I never again. Ed snored too, but I have several times heard something like the snoring that came from Ed. Ed’s snoring was just irritating. Rich’s snoring was something paramount. Something that everyone should experience once.
Pops and I, both too cold to sleep, experienced that foghorn wail for seven good hours with seldom a break. Comrades are made quickly in the trenches, and Pops and I were fast becoming friends that needed little speech between us. We pounded the walls, coughed, shouted, laughed hysterically, nudged, poked, kicked and cursed our way through the snoring of the evening. I know it is not his fault. I know that sleep apnea is a horrible condition that cannot easily be helped and should not cast unfavorable light on the snorer. But, still, even with the steaks in our bellies and the knowledge that he was a friend, if we had not kept our sense of humor that night we may very well have killed our good pal Rich.
Pops got up while the sky was still dark gray. He looked and sounded out of sorts. “I’m hiking to the closest road and then hitching a ride to my car. I’ve had enough of this.” He rolled up his ground pad and strapped it sloppily to his pack. He didn’t even bother to put his trash-bag raincover over his pack. “Good luck to ya. See you around.” He looked up at the spattering trees, cursed, and made his way down to the trial.
I listened to him crash away and then tended to myself. I wasn’t looking too good either. Everything about me—my mood, my body, my thoughts, my breathing—was a clammy and deadbody blue. My shaking didn’t seem like such a good sign anymore. I needed heat. I grabbed for my waterbottle and found it in a thin pool around my head. I remembered, now, that I had left it open and Rich had bumped it over. My bivy was waterproof, thank goodness, so I wasn’t any wetter for the wear. But now I’d have to go out to the creek.
I crawled out of the sack and into the drizzle in nothing but my boots and clammy underwear. “God,” I thought, half a prayer and half an expletive. It was the first time I really started fearing for myself. I was shaking so violently that I could only see around me in flashes, like looking at an amateur collection of flip-book pictures.
By the time I had cooked a hot water bottle the boy scouts were up and rummaging around. “Well. You’re up bright and early.” Rich said.
“Yeah.” I was wrapped around the bottle in the tightest ball I could make. “Pops got the jump on me. He left fifteen twenty minutes ago.”
“Too bad,” Ed spoke up. “He’ll miss breakfast.”
Hot damn skippy. Breakfast was more steak and potatoes. The three of us ate our fill and there was still more left over for the boys to take home. If it weren’t for the heat I got from those two meals – the carbos and energy churning in my gut – I don’t know how I would’ve made it through the night. I thanked them, and ate, and thanked them, and thanked them. I extended—and still extend—Pops’s eloquent speech: Rich and Ed, wherever you are, “you’re good men. You’re good, good men.”
Posted by fred1st at 04:57 AM | Comments (5)Comments
Wonderful: absolutely wonderful. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. (Not to imply that anyone's 'nuts,' of course...) ;-)
Wow - another fine writer in the family! I've read a lot of accounts of hiking (have edited a slew of outdoor books) but through-hiking the AT never seemed any realer than this.
I do believe Nate has inherited your muse, old buddy.
that was a great story, told well. I was shivering and grateful for the meal. Good stuff. Good writing. Delicious warmth.
You and Nate have very similar "voices", Fred. Fabulous piece!
A taste of summer
By Hoarded Ordinaries
The following is my contribution to the Ecotone topic, Food and Place.
On Friday I made a pot of spinach-lentil soup. Its easy, one of the first recipes I ever attempted. Just bring some green lentils to a boil then leave them to simmer while you prepare the other ingredients: chopped onions sauted with garlic in olive oil, diced potatoes with spinach, coriander, and lemon juice. Being lazy, I use frozen spinach, which I leave to thaw in a red bowl on the counter until the lentils are soft. The trick to making spinach-lentil soup is to take your time: not only do the lentils need to simmer, but the potatoes need to reach just the right mushy, stewed-with-flavor consistency. Its easy, but it cant be rushed.
The Arabic name for this soup is Addas bi hamoud: sour lentil soup, or lentils with lemon. Im not Middle Eastern, but I went to college in Toledo, Ohio, a town with a large Lebanese and Arabic population. On campus, we ate gyros at the Med Room, where they simmered a savory hunk of ground lamb all day and served it on soft grilled pita bread. Down the street from our dorm, a tiny restaurant whose name Ive forgotten served the best chicken schawarma in town: when I first became a vegetarian, my friend Kristi and I agreed that Schawarma is a Vegetable, as are gyros. While living in the dorms, I stocked my refrigerator with store-bought tubs of baba ghanouj and tabouli; after I married, Chris and I would make regular pilgrimages to the Tiger Bakery, where you could buy still-warm loaves of pita bread and honey-soaked semolina cakes from soft-spoken men who quietly displayed their Koran-recitation trophies.
It was only natural, then, that when I saw a Middle Eastern cookbook on the remainders table at Thackerays, the independent bookstore about a mile from campus, Id snatch it up even if I my dorm room didnt have a kitchen. Our trips to Thackerays were themselves legendary. "Promise that you won't let me buy anything," I'd whisper to Kristi as we walked down tree-lined suburban streets to the local strip-mall; she'd promise, and so would I, but we never remained true to our word. Inevitably there would be some favorite forgotten book on the remainders table, or an interesting new-found friend. I bought my first copy of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek on Thackeray's remainder table, an old paperback edition that now is literally falling to pieces. And equally tattered is my copy of Virginia T. Habeeb's Pita the Great, a cookbook I've kept all these years because of one oft-enjoyed recipe.
You see, I've not made most of the recipes in this book, just one over and over again. When I first bought the book, I didn't bake my own pita bread or make my own hummus bi tahini for lack of a kitchen. Now that I have a kitchen, I have too other responsibilities: it's easier and faster to buy pita and hummus at the store. And although the recipes for Wholemeal Honey Pita, Hummus Guacamole, and Marinated Artichokes with Peppers sound easy enough and make my mouth water just to read them, I am at last a creature of habit, no longer as ready as I was in college to try something new. Then I had leisure but no kitchen; now, I have a kitchen but am hurried and harried by time.
On Friday when I made this latest batch of spinach-lentil soup, I didn't need to open the cookbook: the relevant page fell out, spattered with the remnants of past encounters. I chop onions and potatoes much more quickly these days, so I sat poring over recipes, distractedly munching raw potato slices, while the lentils simmered. Here on the same page as this lentil soup recipe is a menu for a "Picnic Pita Party," an assortment that has beckoned over the years with its image of summer splendor, consumed in leisure:
Spinach and Lentil Soup with Wholemeal Sesame Pitas
Grilled Kefta Kebabas in Sesame Pitas
Spicy Bulgur Salad
Feta Cheese and Cucumber Salad
Glazed Pita Puffs
Hearty Burgundy
Lots of Hot Coffee
Years ago I read this menu and dreamed of summers to come when I'd whip together these recipes, grab a book and a friend and head for a grassy, sun-drenched field. I've never made spicy bulgur salad, I no longer eat the lamb that goes in kefta, and I don't like coffee. But the litany of this meal tempts me still with the allure of far-off, sunny places. Maybe it's Toledo, maybe it's Lebanon, or maybe it's just a dream, this sun-drenched field I imagine. But there I know that it's always summer, there's always time, and the taste of lemon on the tongue is tart and begging to be savored.
Posted by lorianne at February 1, 2004 07:25 AM
Comments
I have to try this lentil soup, Lorianne! It sounds just wonderful. Very nice piece, too. I love the tone, reflective and passionate.
Posted by: trish at February 1, 2004 10:08 AMLorianne: you're so funny. I have more cookbooks than I care to list from which I've tried one, or two, recipes. Two or three cookbooks from which I've cooked extensively (Joy of Cooking, mostly during vacations from college, and Madhur Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, which I think doesn't exist as such in an American edition and for which a scale, rather than a cup measure, is the essential tool; this cookbook invariably takes me to Paris everytime I open it because it's where I learned to cook Indian food).
There's something so appealing about a new (or second-hand: new to us) cookbook. Glimpses of culinary possibility. Maybe this is why people subscribe to cooking magazines: you don't feel so guilty if you only try one or two of the recipes!
Posted by: Pica at February 1, 2004 10:40 AMI really enjoyed reading this and felt re-engaged with exploring the cookery books on the shelves at home. Will definitely try the soup. Good wintry one. I love Eastern European and North African foods any do understand breads so well. Didn't Beth come back with a carload of bread from Montreal a while ago? Can't find the post...
Posted by: Coup de Vent at February 1, 2004 11:43 AMGood to hear I'm not the only one who likes to READ cookbooks as much as COOK with them. There's something magical about just paging through a cookbook & imagining the tastes, smells, and textures.
I actually don't like cooking magazines: the bright, glossy pictures ruin it for me. The food in cooking magazines looks too perfect to my eye. I prefer the evocative quality of words alone, or perhaps some simple line drawings and/or art to illustrate the "mood" of each dish (like the illustrations in the various Moosewood cookbooks).
Posted by: Lorianne at February 2, 2004 06:18 AM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040304061630/http://www.schaub.com/lori/blog/archives/000069.html
Food and Place
By London and the North
The Ecotone wiki is today writing about Food and Place. Join in if you feel like writing something. It stimulates the appetite though.
When I emigrated to Yorkshire six years ago, after a million years in London, one of the first things I noticed was the change in cuisine. We tried to adapt and experiment - some of which paid off and some of which did not.
In London, we ate a lot of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot food. The Erenler Ockabasi on Green Lanes was our favourite and we had many quiet and noisy meals there. One the corner of the street where we lived in Stamford Hill/South Tottenham was a Carribean takeaway. I've eaten a lot of Jamaican food in London over the years - home cook and takeaway. The fact is you can know where you are and probably who you are by what and where you eat in London. Eating patterns are geographical and cultural co-ordinates.
I watched the demise of local Jewish bakeries over the years so that the streets became a map known only to me and other north London Jews of where this one and that one had been. Biting into a piece of cheesecake would be like making a mark upon the landscape of what was and what is. Cheesecake can always be uniquley identified with its maker - some of whom are no more. Are you still alive and well Mr Rogg? Thank you for all the cheesecake, fishballs and delicious New Green (pickles) over the years.
Up here, we made brave attempts at Fish and Chips. Nearly gagged on the lard. Call me a snob I don't give a shit. It was awful. Tongue stuck to roof of mouth. Saw a mega articulated truck delivering it once to the rated (!) Bizzy Lizzy in Skipton. Horrible sight. What are people doing consuming that stuff? Eventually we discovered that you could get Fish and Chips fried in sunflower oil in Ilkley but by then I think this particular local delicacy had lost its appeal.
But Yorkshire definitely has its culinary delights. Mumtaz is perhaps top of the list of fabulous eateries. It's a large, and I mean successfully expanding, Kashmiri restaurant in Bradford. The food there is too wonderful - fresh, authentic, very tasty. All sections of the community eat there. It's in the heart of Bradford so you sit and enjoy a meal and watch on occasion Pakistani youth being harassed by police out the window. Hmm. Oh I think I need another visit soon. Often to be coupled with a movie at Pictureville. Great combo.
We are mapped eating wise up here too. North of Skipton is The Angel at Hetton - white table cloths and expensive wines - something Paris and I like to do for a special occasion. The early bird menu is very good value and a delish treat in all courses. West of Skipton is the Tempest Arms - an old pub with a good menu of fresh foods. A nice relaxed evening. There's the Cavendish Pavillion at Bolton Abbey where we had breakfast this morning. The dog got a sausage. As she does.
There are lots of other places we have discovered over the years now up and down the dales, in uptown Ilkley and downtown Keighley. So we are doing fine. And of course, I have my days in London too so I participate in the bigger culture of city eating out and takeaways - stocking up on missed homefoods at mealtimes.
The other thing that has happened since relocating further north is that we eat much more at home. Paris is a great and happy cook. She also encourages rituals of meals at the table. Breakfast, for example and evening meals. It's to be recommended and makes home feel much more homely.
Posted by Coup de Vent at 04:21 PM | Comments (4)
Comments
When I was last in Edinburgh--summer of 2000--we were introduced to the concept (if not the actual) fried Mars bar from the chippie. You may be interested to know that what passes for a fish and chip shop here in Davis, California, now serves deep fried Snickers (Marathon) bars.
I didn't know anyone ever did fish and chips in lard... ick.
Posted by Pica at February 2, 2004 02:09 AMOne thing that really surprised me about Great Britain as I travelled through it, after hearing all the horror stories about how bad the cooking is, was the number of really great supermarkets and grocery stores. After Sweden and Norway, where we very often had to make do with the single, shriveled tomato or undersized carrot left on the shelves, Britain's supermarkets were a cornucopia of foods from around the world, especially India. It was sheer joy to pick out a Patel's jar of curry paste, go back to our campsite, and mix it with lentils and rice for dinner. In our six months bicycling around, Birtain had the best and greatest variety of food.
Posted by butuki at February 2, 2004 04:27 PMYes Britain's supermarkets are good and getting better with increased supplies of eco-sensitive foods and other goods. But I am reminded by your story of my aunt who, age 65, came over from East Berlin for the first time (1978), way before the wall came down, and stood in a London supermarket and just cried with shock and anger at the contrast in the range and quality of goods. Having said that, there were many good things about the DDR which are now lost.
Posted by Coup de Vent at February 2, 2004 05:09 PMThe DDR. All my life, until the Wall came down, East Germany was this place that movies had told me could only ever be painted in black and white. I had never understood the sadness on my grandfather's face whenever we walked along the border. Until 1995 when my wife and I were invited to a wedding on the north coast. It was like entering a dream... I just couldn't believe there was sunlight there and colors>! It was so beautiful!
I had a long conversation with the old man who ran the pension we were staying at. He told me of life in East Germany and what he both missed and was glad had been repaced. One thing he really missed... he said it again and again... people around him were nicer before the wall came down. He found the world views and assumptions of West Germans to be very harsh and far too removed from human interaction.
Talking to him and walking around those unspoiled rural lanes brought me almost into the memories my mother told me of from her childhood. And my view of what East German was changed forever.
Posted by butuki at February 3, 2004 02:38 AMSource: http://web.archive.org/web/20040412170103/http://www.airenet.co.uk/alife/2004_02.html
Food and Place
By Switched At BirthFirst of all, thanks to Fred First, I learned about Acme Labelmaker, a nifty, fun service. Thanks to them, I can play with making banners to occasionally brighten up a post.
Next, a brief explanation about Ecotone. What on earth is it? Simply put, Ecotone is a collaboration of writers whose blogs are primarily about "place." I am a newcomer, not one of the creative folks who thought this up, and so, in their own words,
An ecotone is a term from the field of ecology. It is a place where landscapes meet -- like field with forest, or grassland with desert. The ecotone is an area of increased richness and diversity where the two communities commingle. Here too are creatures unique to the ecotone... the so-called 'edge effect'. Here in our online version of an ecotone, we hope to create an edge effect, bringing distinct and different places and communities together to enrich our world.
Ecotone's biweekly topics explore a variety of subjects. Some recent ones included Trees and Place, Islands and Place, Coffee Shops as Place, Protecting Place and Mythic Place. Some intriguing topics upcoming include Time and Place, Imaginary Places and Secret Places. Click here to check it out for yourself.
Here's my shot at the current topic.
"Deceptively simple." I think I finally know what that phrase means. Writing about Food and Place should be a piece of cake for me. I write about food all the time over at Mary Beth's Kitchen.
But as I focused on the minute details of food and place in my own life experiences, the more global my thoughts became, wondering how fellow bloggers in China, Australia, Virginia, Boston, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Canada, Wales, Iraq and elsewhere nourish and nurture their physical bodies and spiritual selves, and under what conditions.
The foods we eat depend in large measure upon our geography, culture, philosophy or religion, and economic circumstance. Do we have the freedom to choose what we eat each day or is our menu controlled by others? The locus of our emotional state determines "where we're at." To a depressed person, even the most exquisite meal tastes brown, dusty, and hard to swallow, while one basking in emotional sunshine may savor an apple and a hunk of cheese with fullfilled delight.
To a practicing alcoholic, the beer, cigarette and chocolate chip cookie meal may be a daily reality.
To an ill person in the hospital, the blue liquid nutrient delivered through a feeding tube may keep them alive and hydrated with daily requirements for survival, but it can hardly be called food. Or to someone chronically ill with nausea and pain, food may feel like an enemy.
There can be joy and spritual insight through fasting, when the withholding of food is our own choice.
This morning, I will be at the communion table, partaking of the body and the blood, a bizarre transmogrification, but one in which I participate, hoping that one day something will click and my faith will no longer be elusive. I always take away something of value, a feeling of positive mysticism, feeling that I have indeed been spiritually fed. And yet, walking away, my mouth still damp with wine, a voice in one ear whispers "Believe," while one in the other breathes, "Look before you leap."
09:51 AM in Mary Beth's Kitchen, Spiritual Journey | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040812222556/longleaf.typepad.com/switched_at_birth/2004/02/index.html
Food and Place - #4
By Brain Crayons
Today's post will be my first (and maybe last?) contribution to the Ecotone topic of Food and Place. My blog is not usually "place" themed, and my understanding is that the ecotone spot is really a gathering place for those blogs that are primarily about "place". I don't fall under that category, but I do have a story I could share about Food and Place.
We lived up north. Actually, in Ohio, which to me is very north these days. We were surrounded by maples and wooded areas, and seasons that included harsh winters and brief summers. While young and on summer break, we would sometimes venture down to this other place, called Texas. Our maternal grandparents lived there, and we would head that way for a visit.
I truly can't remember the first time I visited the restaurant known as Jacala's. One thing I do remember is that Jacala's has always meant three things for me ... (1) San Antonio, Texas (2) Family, and (3) Excellent Mexican food. Before there even was a me, my extended family would meet at this neighborhood Mexican restaurant. Birthday? Christening? Graduation? Engagement? Any of these, and other family occasions, would find us all huddled together at Jacala's. We were likely to run into Willie Nelson, or John Wayne, or a host of other known faces there. Many of our photos were taken in this place, and in fact, the ONLY photo in existence with all my siblings and both parents was taken in this restaurant.
My maternal grandparents moved from Czechoslovakia to San Antonio, Texas, by way of the Statue of Liberty. My grandfather was originally a cabinet maker. He went on to live a new life in this place of San Antonio, Texas. He was maybe the purest man I've ever known.
Anyway, when we would make our pilgrimmages from up north down to the dusty warm land of Texas, we would anxiously wait for that first glimpse of Jacala's. It was better than home away from home. There was more family within those walls than maybe ever within our home. At Jacala's, we smiled and visited. We took pictures and dined on salsa and chips. We partook of an excellent menu of enchiladas, spanish rice, frijoles, tostados, guacamole, tacos, and the Jacala family secret -- puffy tacos! Only in San Antonio, Texas, and only in Jacala's can you get a puffy taco that will make your mouth water in your dreams. Whether the seasoned beef or the micro-shredded lettuce and just-barely-melted cheese, a puffy taco will never leave your memory. Yes, the food was beyond compare.
Not once (not even once) in the 15 years or so of migrating from wherever we happened to be in that year to our annual or semi-annual visit to San Antonio, Texas, did we miss a visit to Jacala's. In fact, there were times when we might have only been in town long enough to catch a meal with family. Flying from California to New York? How 'bout stopping over long enough to meet me at Jacala's for lunch? Driving from Florida to Washington? Surely you have time to stop at Jacala's and have dinner?
As our lives were woven and we spread to all corners of the country, the only true constant was that our "meeting place" always remained Jacala's in San Antonio. Births, deaths, marriage, divorces, and everthing in-between has seen the mariachi sound of the patio lights of Jacala's.
I didn't know (back in 1958) that I would eventually make my home in San Antonio, Texas. Or that I would raise my own children there. But it gives me a lasting peace that the one true constant in our ever-moving world is a place just right around the corner. Jacala's still stands, and I'm still ordering my favorite --- the #4, Con Queso, that is. That's the enchilada plate with a puffy taco and a chile con queso on the side. It comes with rice and beans, and a plentiful supply of salsa and chips.
Mostly, it comes with history, and family. San Antonio, Texas is where both my grandchildren have been born, and where my maternal grandparents died. I was married here. Both my sons were born here. Our history circles around this gathering place. Even though our family, and the extended reaches of it, are spread all over the nation, we've always had Jacala's to come home to. At Jacala's, family is seated at the table, within your reach. I love this place.
Posted by: ntexas99 on Feb 01, 04 | 11:57 pm
[0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks COMMENTSThe #4 sounds great. How wonderful Jacala's is still in business.
Even though you don't write *primarily* about place, I hope you'll join Ecotone regularly. The wiki is trying to get people to think about place and encourage them to write about it -- not be an exclusive club! Everyone's welcome.
Posted by: Pica on Feb 02, 04 | 2:03 am
Amen to Pica's comments: you don't have to be primarily "place-centered" (place obsessed?) to participate in Ecotone. If nothing else, it's just kind of fun to brainstorm on the biweekly topics (like taking a non-graded creative writing class with exercises).
Where in Ohio did you live? I was born & raised in Columbus, then went to school in Toledo. Ohio, of course, is a great place to be FROM.
Posted by: Lorianne on Feb 02, 04 | 5:42 pm
Don't be shy! It's un-Texan -- and picking up a shared topic and blogging on it is great fun. You make me think I'll be visiting the wrong end of the state when I go to Houston next month.
Posted by: P. on Feb 04, 04 | 3:26 am
I can't wait to visit SA sometime. I've worked on 2 different books where I've had to find photos of the city, and I'm in love with the Riverwalk just based on the pictures.
Jacala's sounds heavenly. It's great to hear about places like that, that have been around for years. I've never heard of a puffy taco! I need one!!
Thanks for sharing your memories of a special place.
Posted by: laurie on Feb 04, 04 | 4:47 pm
Thank you to everyone for the welcome, and for the generous comments. I'll be keeping my eye on the ecotone site. I love seeing the stories there!
Posted by: ntexas99 on Feb 08, 04 | 4:22 am
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20051122142622/http://www.braincrayons.com/comments.php?id=35_0_1_0_C
Food Capitals Of The World
By Feathers of Hope (Numenius)]
A note for the Ecotone Wiki's entries on Food and Place.
I think it's a peculiarly American thing to name many a town and burgh the world capital of something or other. Not surprisingly a large fraction of these are food-related. Evidently Sacramento, not far from here, is the almond capital of the world. (Perhaps this makes Governor Arnold the Almond King?) Chico, a little farther to the north, isn't daunted by this proclamation and also claims this title.
Perhaps most famous in California is Gilroy, south of the Bay Area, which is the garlic capital of the world, and nearby is Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world. A few miles to the south is Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the world. Throw in a bit of Santa Cruz county wine, and you have the makings of a good meal there.
As in the case of the almonds, sometimes there are several claimants to a title. Three towns in the Southern U.S. -- Belzoni, Mississippi, Savannah, Tennessee, and Des Allemands, Louisiana -- call themselves the catfish capital of the world.
Many of the capitals have food festivals associated with them. Gilroy has a garlic festival the last weekend in July that draws well over 100,000 people. Garlic fiends that we are, this sounds a good bit more appetizing than the annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival held over Labor Day weekend in Morgan City, Louisiana.
Posted by Numenius at February 1, 2004 11:15 PM
Comments
Yes it's quite bizarre especially when it extends beyond food - barbed wire capital, hubcap city??? Thanks for the thoughts and links.
Posted by: Coup de Vent at February 2, 2004 12:07 AMBe happy that you live in California; things are even weirder in my home state of Ohio. Marion, Ohio is the popcorn capital of the world, and nearby Waldo, Ohio is the birthplace of the bologna sandwich.
Posted by: Lorianne at February 2, 2004 01:44 AMUtah's pride is being the state with the highest Jell-o and ice cream consumption per capita in the nation.
Posted by: Stephen at February 3, 2004 02:31 PMActually, RIPON, CA is the Almond Capitol of the World.
Posted by: Amy at September 20, 2004 10:55 PM
Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/02/01/food_capitals_of.html
Burger/Joint
By P.
I'm an eater -- a gourmand, I guess you'd say. It's a consuming passion and my greatest, and no doubt most deadly, sin. I find I love the act of eating and the comfortable feeling of having eaten well, and while fine suppers in romantic circumstances are all very well, I can't separate them as memories from disturbing dinners in atrocious surroundings. Can I choose between artistically dripped sauces in Washington and appalling fried calamari in New Jersey? Between my disappointing first bowl of grits in a southern Denny's and homemade sausage in a Catskills country firehouse? How can I forget Mr Burger And Chinese Too? I'm afraid that to me, eating is too much fun; seldom does a unique meal, by itself, leave a good story to tell. So this is a story about place more than food -- or rather, about a non-place, full of non-food and a sort of non-community.
It was late last summer, in the hottest part of mid-August, when I try not to travel and end up driving anyway. We had fought our way over the Blue Ridge in a blinding thunderstorm on I-77, in a white-knuckled stream of traffic dotted with tankers and plagued with aggressive SUV drivers, all of us afraid to slow down too much lest we be hit from behind by that large shadow half-visible in the mirror. Even the back seat, normally an inexhaustible fountain of demands and comments, had fallen silent.
Then, out of the weather and into the foothills of the Virginia mountains, we found ourselves in a miles-long backup of cars at the inadequate junction of I-77 and I-81, at the beginning of that remarkable stretch of I-81 where you're going both north and south, if the signs are to be believed.
From the back seat comes the announcement: "I have to go to the bathroom!"
Myself, I'd rather be dodging tankers in the rain.
Tensely, we waited out the traffic jam, all the while eyeing roadside bushes and wishing we were in Pennsylvania, where they don't clear the right-of-way as thoroughly. Hopefully, we swung southwest at last on the northbound highway -- but it wasn't until we turned north again that we found a place to stop.
The scene struck me as we came up to it. Under a silver sky, there was a narrow valley with a highway bridge across it and a mighty river of traffic instead of water slashing between the hills. Looking impossibly long, a tanker truck caught the light as it crossed the bridge. All around, trees lined the horizon, dark in the shadowless light.
To the right, a cluster of low buildings you might find anywhere in the U.S. -- but teeming, as an oasis on the edge of a great desert might be (Last Burger For A Thousand Miles! Tank Up and, well, you know). A meaningless place in itself, but full of importance.
Maybe it was relief. We found it, of course, at McDonald's, that essential adjunct to American motor travel. But in the crowded men's room, it was plain everyone felt the same sense of release from strain. In accents of the deep South, the mountains and the Midwest, the men were gossipping about weather and distance and challenges overcome. It was the last place I would have looked for it, but everyone seemed happy.
Not everyone, actually. Facing the dining room's main door were seven huge people, jammed into the narrow metal and fiberglass slots provided as seating in fast-food places. Stone-faced, they eyed the scene like squat statues meant to ward off intruders (Abandon All Appetite, Ye Who Enter Here), or else to accept small sacrifices from grudging strangers. I could relate to their expressions a bit: I know from undignified experience that fat is surprisingly squishy, but they could not have been comfortable, racked in like that. I tried, and failed, to imagine what they were driving. I would not have looked forward to that, either. I hoped they did not have to go far.
Opposite them, beside the door, a man with a white beard watched out the window. Unlike the rest of us, he had a couple of bags with him, and a moment's speculation led my daughter and me to deduce, and find, the bus station across the oil-spotted parking lot. A spectacularly tall family walked by, in colorful college T-shirts that defied guessing, for the schools named had nothing to do, geographically, with our route and weren't even famous for basketball. Everywhere at this way station in the middle of nowhere, there were prosperous families and hardscrabble truckers, midwesterners and tidewater-dwellers, chattering and hurrying.
I assume we ate something. Knowing my daughter's tastes, it was doubtless chicken nuggets, requested, nibbled and left unfinished on her part -- for she is not an eater and we encourage her. I would have had a salad, though I dislike the bland greens you get in such places. But it was OK. We needed sustenance and rest as well as relief. It was good not to be moving for a few minutes, even if we were far from home and among strangers. I remember we celebrated by buying a dessert.
Could an isolated caravanserai in the Sahara be much different, or more welcome?
Source: http://my.core.com/~pzicari/text/FoodTravel.html
Hill Food
By Older and Growing
This one's for the bi-weekly Ecotone topic, which is currently on Food and Place:
I’m probably missing out on something, but I’ve never been one to see food as an art-form. Although sharing a meal together can be a happy social event, an excuse, should we need one, to spend time with friends, I can never regard the food itself as much more than fuel for the body. That may be why food adds to the pleasure of camping and climbing trips. I’m not bothered by the simple nature of the diet or the basic preparation facilities; quite the reverse – I delight in the simplicity of nutritious, satisfying meals prepared over a single-burner backpacking stove. The whole outdoors experience becomes perfectly integrated- existence focused on the essentials of shelter, food, and appreciation of the immediate environment; all else fades into a distant irrelevance.
Life in the outdoors is full of ritual. Small tents have to be kept tidy otherwise anarchy reigns and tempers fray as every other minute is spent in searching for something; like as not something found and put down only a minute ago. “A place for everything, and everything in its place” may sound a touch Draconian, but it works and avoids wasted time and false accusations against one’s tent-mate. So, morning starts with the washing ritual, followed by the first-coffee-of-the-day ritual (standing in a quiet campsite whilst most are still asleep, cradling a steaming hot cup in chilly hands, gazing at the hills and guessing what the weather has in store), then the breakfast ritual, then the sort-out-the-food-for-the-day ritual and finally the rucksack packing ritual. Hill food has to be easy to carry, easy to eat, high calorie-to-weight ratio and ideally based on complex carbohydrates. And last thing before leaving, down a pint of water – it’s easier to carry inside your stomach than on your back.
Knowing that it’s physiologically good to stop for an intake of fluid and calories is a great excuse for stopping to satisfy more than the physical needs of the body (yes, those as well…). Having to take off rucksack and delve inside to retrieve water bottle or thermos flask and cereal bar (granola bar in the US??) encourages you to site for a while and rest, turning away from the steep slope immediately ahead, to take in the expanding view unfolding below. This is another of the rituals of hillwalking; you soon develop an eye for a good stopping place - a flat-topped rock to sit on, maybe a large boulder to provide shelter from the wind and a backrest, and an unimpeded view into the valleys below.
These views tend to stick in the mind; having a snack-stop gives time to take in detail that otherwise would be passed over – the moving pattern of light and shade on a far hillside as the wind blows clouds across the sun; a squall blowing a wave of ripples across a lake tucked into the corrie far below; grasses near at hand bend and wave – always the wind making it’s presence felt. Or the eye follows possible scrambling or climbing routes up a rock face away across the slope, picking out the lines of weakness and mentally joining them in a continuous way to the summit. Weight is the enemy of fast, comfortable movement, so wherever possible, everything carried on the hill serves more than one purpose. So even food might be said to be dual purpose – it feeds the body and it encourages me to stop and feed the soul at the same time.
Although on day walks summits are often reached around lunch-time, they are rarely places to stop and relax and eat. More usually they are windswept, shrouded in mist, and accompanied by horizontal rain that drives its way into every crevice no matter where you look for shelter. So summits are somewhere to pause briefly, check the map (yes, you know where you are but it’s surprisingly easy to take a wrong path – every way is down), and move on. Lunch is had at whatever spot looks most inviting at any time after 11:30 – or indeed at any and all times. Where and when to eat depends far more on the environment than it does on the clock.
The main meal at the end of the day is one of the best times when camping. A time of purposeful yet restful activity, crouched over a stove, with luck in the golden light of the setting sun – yes, it does occasionally happen that way, more often than you might believe, and when it does the effect is quite magical. Sitting perched on a folding three-legged stool, plate in lap, watching the last rays of the setting sun setting the peaks and clouds ablaze whilst dusk has already arrived down in the valley, shoulders hunched against the evening chill, savouring the inner warmth from piping-hot supper and enjoying simply being there too much to retreat from the cold into the tent.
Even on rainy days, mealtimes are still a pleasure. Provided the wind direction is as predicted when the tent was pitched, I can sit in the porch, sheltered by a pegged-out door flap, watching grey clouds and lashing rain whilst the stove hisses gently just outside the doorway, then retreat into warmth and comfort when the meal is ready. Mealtimes when camping take on a significance that far outweighs the simplicity of their menus.
Oh, you want to know what we actually eat? Okay here goes…
Breakfast is of cereals, long-life milk, a banana, maybe some bread and margarine.
Snacks during the day: three cereal (aka granola/muesli) bars (no chocolate – too sticky!).
Lunch: on-the-spot sandwiches of crackers and cream cheese from a tube (quick and easy, and no waste if there’s no time to have lunch), followed by a slab of fruit cake or sticky ginger cake and an apple
Dinner: Something rice or pasta based, like long-life tortellini with a tomato and basil sauce.
And as much coffee as I get time to brew.
// posted by andy @ 2:44 PM permalink
Comments
Isn't it magical how a smashed peanut butter & jelly sandwich tastes like gourmet food if you eat it on the top of a mountain, the sun drying the pack-sweat from your back? Perhaps the most important ingredient in "trail mix" is the trail itself.
I have a feeling that jelly in US-speak must be something different to jelly in UK-speak...
But I DO know what you mean Lorianne
"Perhaps the most important ingredient in "trail mix" is the trail itself." Lorianne, you are RIGHT about that - well said.
Hill food gives you the excuse to enjoy the hill. I like that.
Source: http://olderandgrowing.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_olderandgrowing_archive.html#107581946095033641
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
By Cassandra Pages
FOOD AND PLACE: Ecotone Topic for February 2
Since I read the name of the current topic, the memory of one meal has kept pushing itself forward, like a special dish insistently proffered by a Middle Eastern hostess. I don’t know why. There have been many more spectacular or romantic places, and many meals in which I can remember virtually every bite, every taste. Of this one, I cannot even remember what we ate. But it has insisted that I tell about it, so I will try.
My parents and my husband and I decided, one early summer day, to drive up, away from the lake, into the wild state land ten miles or so to the east. Let’s take a picnic, I said, so my mother and I packed sandwiches and something to drink, and we piled into the car. When we crossed from the regular class C roads onto state land, none of us could remember the way, so we crisscrossed on roads that all looked the same through the deep woods, looking for familiar landmarks. Our destination was a pond, invisible from the road but marked by a small place where the underbrush had been cleared beneath large evergreens, known mostly to people like me who had worked for the state environmental or forestry departments. I hadn’t been there for some years. We stumbled onto a riding encampment where a group was beginning an overnight trail ride; we found the old fossil pit full of shattered shale, and stopped so that my husband, who had grown up in granite-boned New England, could find some fossil shells of his own. Eventually we found the right combination of turns and dips and culverts, and came to the clearing. We parked, and walked in through the woods to the dam at the end of the pond, where we spread ourselves out on the grass, unwrapped the food, and ate.
It was a beautiful day in late June, and the sun had been shining on our grassy couch long enough to send up the fragrance of hayscented fern and Indian paintbrush. The “pond” such as it was, is a remnant, slowly filling in. The dam at this end, built in the thirties by the CCC, probably, was small, only twenty-five or thirty feet long: a grassy knoll with a small stream spilling out on the other side. There were lots of dead trees in the center of the water, and thicker brush beyond, and every time I had visited I’d seen ducks, and often an osprey or blue heron, whose nest you could see in a tall dead tree. Of the four of us, I was the only one who had explored the real secret of this place: from the far side of the dam, an unmarked trail led to a path where a person in hip-waders could enter the water, dark with tannic acid, and carefully wade toward the middle, where, beyond the brush and dead trees, a large, ancient, quaking bog opened like a magical field. The sphagnum moss was thick and easily supported the weight of adults. Tall pitcher plants stood in lethal readiness; cranberries and bog rosemary grew lushly underfoot, and the air buzzed with the sound of thousands of insects. From the dam, all these wonders were invisible; in fact few people knew about the bog’s existence. The only clue close by was a patch of sundews who raised their sticky green flower-pads to the light near the stream behind us.
We ate our sandwiches in silence, watching the life of the pond – the big bullfrog tadpoles and green salamanders that lazily moved on the bottom, the water-striders delicately navigating the surface, the tentative nose of a turtle, the flash and cry of a kingfisher - and then each of us turned to the grass around us and began eating the tiny wild strawberries that we could smell in the sunlight. We ate in circles around ourselves until our fingers were pink with strawberry juice, and then lay back, content. “Food always tastes better outdoors,” my father remarked, and he told a story about a simple meal he remembered when he was a young soldier somewhere in Europe during World War II, hungry and not knowing if the sun would come up another day.
Why do I remember this? Because it was unusual for the four of us to be there together? Because it had always been a mysterious and special place for me? Or perhaps it was simply the condensation of that moment: the sun, the strawberries, the people I love best, all safe and happy, while beyond us, out of sight, continued a prehistoric drama of eaters and eaten, of plants and animals switching roles, of specialized species locked in a dance of survival.
Nothing else happened; I checked to see if the sundews were still there, and we walked out through the woods.
7:51 PM
Source: http://cassandrapages.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cassandrapages_archive.html#107585586352790964
Food is at the essence of place
By First-n-Main
Food is at the essence of place, at least for me. And not just any food but bread. I think about a favorite bakery in North Beach, San Francisco or the Cuban bakery in Miami that sells the most wonderful guava pastries. But it goes much deeper than that. The one memory I carry from my childhood in the Philippines (we moved away when I was three) is of waking up in the darkness and smelling the fresh bread baking down the street. I'm not a good enough writer to describe the aroma or the sense of warmth one can get from it, though I can almost smell it now as I sit here. Today, whenever I pass a bakery in the morning, I'm sometimes overcome with a sense of longing for a place that I never really knew.
Tiffin in Madurai
By under the fire star
This is my contribution to the Ecotone group blogging topic, Food and Place. (It's a great topic -- why not go there and add a contribution of your own?)
I was in college. I had come to Madurai, in the heart of Tamil Nadu, during a summer vacation. I was studying Tamil privately for two months. I didn’t have much money, so I stayed in a very cheap hotel near the Meenakshi temple, called Alankar Lodge. You could open your door and shout down the hall for one of the thambis (‘little brothers’) – small boys whom the hotel employed - and they would run out to the street and bring back coffee or Fanta or biscuits for you. Several other American students were also staying there, along with Indian travellers.
Everything that I saw or tasted or heard or smelled was absolutely new to me. I was excited, frightened, enchanted. Some days I couldn’t eat at all, I was so full of all these feelings. But I did discover a little hole-in-the-wall nearby. A blackboard was propped outside the door, with the day’s offerings chalked in Tamil. Just inside the door a man stood behind a small counter with a compartmented cash box, which he would padlock at the end of the day. There were a few dinky tables. There was a door leading to a tiny kitchen, from which emerged conversation and clattering. The walls were grimy with smoke; or perhaps it was just grime. A man with a big belly, wearing a dhoti tucked up to knee level, would saunter around to ask what you wanted. In a very short time he would bang down a metal plate with your food on it; and afterwards, a smaller plate with a paper chit, with the amount due written by hand.
At that time, my favourite food was upma, probably because I wasn't yet able to eat spicy food. It is a bland concoction, like cream of wheat with some onions and green chillies added. I would order upma and coffee, served very sweet, milky and strong, in a little steel tumbler which was set in a smaller steel cup. The coffee was made frothy by pouring it from one container to another, with as much air in between as possible. I liked to eat my upma with butter melting into it. The butter arrived in a dollop on a square of banana leaf. It was white butter, un-dyed, unsalted, and usually slightly rancid. It had to be ordered separately.
So I came to this place for the first time, after reading on the chalkboard outside that upma was being served. I sat down, and the man with the big belly came over to me, and I summoned up my Tamil and said, “Please give me upma with vennir” -- upma with butter. That man looked at me expressionlessly, and then said, “Vennai butter, vennir hot water.” My face turned much redder than it does these days, and I said, “Yes, please give me butter.” He went off to tell the story in the kitchen, and I ate my buttered upma and drank my coffee.
It was delicious upma, and one of the best language lessons I ever had. I’ll never forget the difference between vennir and vennai, or his deadpan expression and croaking voice; and I smile whenever I look at upma.
A Lack Thereof
By Laughing~Knees
Debris on a sidewalk in Soest, Germany, 1988
This is the sixteenth installment of the ongoing Ecotone essay series. This week’s topic is Food and Place. Please stop by and read the other essays or feel free to contribute your own words.
In this fast-tracked modern world, where the goods that hold up our daily lives magically appear, cut up, cleaned, wrapped, and ready to eat, more and more it seems as if we’ve lost touch with how and where it all comes from. Even when we do head out into the “wild” to harvest some measure of communion with our green past, we carry all the implements with us, like an astronaut walking on the moon. Throw away the backpack, the quick-drying clothing, the stove and pot, and most importantly, that nylon ditty bag of sustainables, and we’re lost. Most so-called “outdoorsmen” today, if suddenly left to fend for themselves far from the road and the aid of transportation, would quickly find themselves starving to death, even if an abundance of food presents itself an arm’s breadth away. Just watch a “Survivor” episode; those people know nothing about actually surviving.
In the late summer of 2001, upset and disoriented from an argument, I set off one weekend for the back country mountains north of Nikko, a national park area 2 hours north of Tokyo, without properly checking my packing list. All I could think of was that I needed to get away from people and from my home. I hoisted my pack and set off to the train station, intent upon images of forest trails and windy ridges.
Things went badly from the start. I had forgotten the map for the area and so missed the campsite that would have set me right at the trail head for the following morning. Instead I had to pitch my tent in an auto camping area, a few kilometers from the trail. It was hot and muggy and all night I lay swatting mosquitoes while drunk campers nearby reveled until the coming of dawn. I got perhaps three hours of sleep, and when morning broke, my muscles and head felt as heavy as the wet mist that sat upon the tent.
I packed quickly and headed off toward the trail, leaving early so that I might avoid the crowds of hikers. The approach to the trailhead zig-zagged along a river valley, with no signs posted, and only by querying a few farmers tending their sweet potato patches did I manage to make it to the trailhead. By that time the sun had already climbed quite high and the Japanese summer heat had begun to melt away the mist. There were no other hikers, which, because I was glad to be alone, I didn’t take note of.
The trail led into an overgrown wood with downed trees across the path and thick, almost impenetrable bamboo thicket lining the inclines on either side. Much of the walk involved scrambling through branches and stepping around crumbling ledges. Luckily a few faded wooden signs pointed to the one name of the mountain I was trying to reach and I followed them on faith.
The trail grew steeper and entered a dry ravine riverbed, old painted trail markers polka dotting the boulders and outcroppings. Walking here meant digging my boot toes into gravel and pedaling through loose scree, pumping heart and breath in an effort to stay afloat on a steep slope.
Huge, fat, wingless grasshoppers began to appear all around in the gravel and dry grass. All of them moving in the same direction, adjacent to my own movement. They were so heavy they could barely hop, but even when I approached they seemed not to notice my presence. When I reached a small ridge, I sat on a stump, eating a rice ball and watching the mass movement of the swarm, like a flowing green carpet displacing the stillness of the terrain.
I reached the summit at about noon. The peak overlooked a tarn with lead blue water across the surface of which dragged shadows of the storm clouds, mounting behind the peak opposite. Thunder rumbled from the distance. I stopped to evaluate the trail and saw that I needed to traverse a treacherous slope of loose rocks and slippery mud.
That’s when my hypoglycemia, a diabetic reaction to insulin, too little food, and high energy exertion, hit. I absently reached into my pack’s top pocket for the chocolate bar I always kept there for just such occasions. My fingers fumbled around and found… nothing. I threw the pack down and rummaged more carefully throughout the pack, hoping that I had misplaced the bar somewhere in the main compartment. Nothing. I paused, looking into the pack, then pulled out the ditty bag of food I had brought. That would do, I thought. I’ll just eat the lunch I had brought. When I opened the bag though, only a package of freeze dried rice, another package of freeze-dried spinach, a packet of soup, and a tea bag fell out. Panicking, I emptied the contents of the pack onto the trail and sifted through everything I had. Nothing.
The hypoglycemic reaction was beginning to make me dizzy and my vision blurred. I forced myself to sit still and think. Carefully I placed everything back into the pack, leaving the ditty bag of food out. I sized up the incoming storm cloud and figured I had just enough time to get my stove going and cook all the food I had left. I found a sheltered space beside a huge boulder, set up my stove, and placed a pot of water on top to boil. I waited.
I observed the landscape around me. With my vision blurring and hands beginning to shake and an uncontrollable sweat slowly drenching my clothes, the mountains seemed surreal. I hugged my knees as a frigid wind blasted the shelter and howled among the treetops back behind the trail. I pulled on my insulated jacket and watched the water in the pot, counting the tiny bubbles forming on the bottom. Steam curled off the edge of the pot and was whipped away by the wind.
During those fatal moments, when I thought I might die, all I could think of was how soft the clouds looked and how I missed my wife, with whom I had argued. The mountains seemed cold and pitiless and my stomach had no belief in the bounty of nature. Everything felt like bones around me.
I was breathing fast when the water started to boil. I emptied the open packages into the pot, not caring what mixed with what, and whispered a litany to myself, of the dream of an explosion of flavors in my mouth. Of warmth streaming down my veins. Of a pact with the world in which my body must sacrifice its independence to house the freewheeling flight of my soul. Food is life, and life is food. There is no such thing as life without the death that food requires.
I could barely hold the bowl as I spooned through it, my hands were shaking so badly. I ate so fast my lips and tongue were scalded. Lights swirled in my eyes and I was shivering from the cold sweat. I used the remaining hot water to make a cup of tea and while it steeped I finished the rice soup. The soup poured into my recesses and glowed like a firefly, reaching into niches of sustenance that only the heat could revive. Gradually the shaking died away and I squatted beside the pot, breathing slowly, in and out. Breathing slowly, slowly. When I switched off the stove the stillness clapped shut around me, with only the wind speaking.
That was perhaps the best meal I ever ate, not because I had abandoned preferences and simply enjoyed the taste of rice and spinach and egg and salt, but because that meal was stripped of distractions. The cold wind, my beating heart, and the flow of calories and nutrients made up the entire moment.
It began to rain.
I put away the tools and scraps and cinched up my pack. I stood up on steady legs. I picked my way across the slippery slope and reached the ridge on the opposite side of the dale. From there it was just a matter of crunching down the steep trail towards the road below, just discernible. And a step ahead of my next meal.
Posted by butuki at 03:59 PM in Nature and Place | Permalink | Comments (6) (0)What a story. So many things for me to take away.
Posted by Beth W. at February 6, 2004 08:28 AMLove love love these last two images! Gorgeous!
Posted by Pamela at February 6, 2004 08:34 AMWhat a riveting story, and so beautifully described. I’ve been thinking about food a lot this week, as I’ve been eating so poorly and getting angry at myself for how I’m eating. This story has filled me with such an appreciation for the basics, for the experience of simply eating, of simply being alive. Maybe that experience is always available to us. Thank you — this story has special meaning for me.
Posted by Anita at February 6, 2004 11:12 AMWhat a wonderful narrative! Thank you.
Posted by dale at February 6, 2004 05:26 PMYou’ve given me a vivid picture of what food really is; I won’t forget this reminder of why we should pay attention. And besides the food part - what a story about those times when our anger and distress cause us to just “take off” in an unplanned way. I could connect with this very well, butuki.
Posted by beth at February 7, 2004 12:55 AMOh my G-d! I wish you many packs with insistent chocolate bars and glycemically sustaining products! I also wish you more of the focus you found to get yourself through. My partner, Paris, is diabetic and we can easily forget to carry the necessary back up stuff. Food and place? A good one….
Posted by Coup de Vent at February 12, 2004 11:22 PM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040215002641/http://www.butuki.com/archives/2004_02.html#000135
Ethiopia: Nightmare in Kitfo house
By unganisha.org
It’s my last evening, and I am in one of Bahir Dar’s less illustrious bars.
You knew that when the table looked like it had been hacked into shape with a panga [machete], and rusted milk powder tins substituted for ashtrays.
The ashtray on my table has a couple of yellowed molars among the cinders.
Healthy blokes these – not a cavity in them, they didn’t fall off because of bad dental hygiene.
The bar is packed with wildly cheering Ethiopian drunks, crowded around the solitary television set.
It’s the world athletics championship highlights – some women’s long distance race, and the Ethiopian runner is laying the Kenyan runner to waste.
I am tempted to cheer the Kenyan, but the dental artifacts in the tin-can point to dire consequences if I do that.
That’s when Ato Yigzaw struts in.
Middle-aged, graying, dressed in one of those suits with Olympic-size padded shoulders, the likes of which have not been seen since the days when mullet hairstyles and communists ruled the planet.
He requests to sit at my table, the only one with free space.
His shifty-eyed stooges pull the chair out for him.
The Ethiopian runner finally wins – the whole bar goes up in one giant scream, and it’s not even a Live telecast.
The old geezer, Yigzaw now turns his attention to me –
Was I a tourist? How did I like the country? Where had I been? How were my folks at home? Hope mommy was fine? And so on.
I give him the works.
That’s the beauty of Ethiopia – tell any poor innocent Ethiopian about how beautiful their country is, and cite a few important dates in Ethiopian history (Emperor Menelik defeating the invading Italians in 1898 is a universal favorite) – and soon, they are ready to fork over their life savings, and ply you with food and drinks. Despite my protests, the lackeys are sent off to get a few more rounds of beer.
I get to know a bit more about Ato Yigzaw – he is the regional distributor for the popular Bedele “monkey” beer. “I would like to invite you for dinner…” he tells me “…special Ethiopian dinner”
Ethiopian cuisine is probably the spiciest in Africa.
Folks here, have the ability to chew vast quantities of raw chilies without batting an eyelid – enough to put any south Indian to shame.
My favorite dish was undoubtedly Key Wott – a kind of lamb stew served in dynamite-hot berbera sauce. The stew is eaten along with traditional staple injera: A flat bread, similar to a giant pancake or a Dosa – but with a texture that lies somewhere between wet parchment and Styrofoam.
The meat stew is served on top of the centrally placed injera – and everyone eats out of the same plate.
Soon, I am bundled into Mr.Yigzaw’s shiny Toyota pickup – the sidekicks are ordered to ride in the back.
Where are we going?
“Kitfo house!!”
Kitfo house is a smashed up apartment block – the ground floor of which, serves as some kind of home-brewed gym – where people work out on wooden benches using bar-bells made out of rusted truck rims.
The restaurant is upstairs, in a dimly lit room with the lingering smell of coffee, spices and death. A scruffy man in an apron greets us, bowing low, the broom in his hand sweeping the floor -- he is the cook.
Classy place though – instead of the usual wall hangings, they have veritable Turner prize nominees -- fresh carcasses strung up on the walls.
Ato Yigzaw scratches, sniffs and prods before selecting the winning corpse – a particularly rotund looking bovine, which seems to be attracting the envy of all the flies playing prom on it.
The meat is taken away to the kitchen for preparation.
What are we eating? I ask.
“Kitfo!” – and it sounds like a delicacy.
Or so, I thought.
The meat soon comes back in a bowl, accompanied by rolls of injera.
Its minced beef, all right – but raw, as in bloody raw, not even heated to the slight– all of it topped with dollops of rancid homemade butter.
And everyone is waiting for the esteemed foreign guest to take the first bite.
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, eating uncooked flesh isn’t my favorite pastime -- but there’s no way out.
To make matters worse, I am under a paranoid delusion that if I say no, these eager and anxious Ethiopians will beat me like a sick dog. I don’t normally get such delusions, but it can only be blamed on the rank arack-like spirit served at Kitfo house. Especially worrying is the cook -- wearing his blood splattered apron, with the smooth handled cleaver tucked casually in his waistband. He catches my stare, and sends me a flinty grin – a gaping mouthful of blackened stumps and tiny bits of golden metal.
So I swallow the meat, great gobfulls of it – e-coli, salmonella, anthrax, ringworm and meat. It tastes hideous. The whole cocktail is repeatedly washed down with mind-numbing doses of stiff spirit. Ato Yigzaw and co. are almost rendered tearful by my enthusiasm.
The rest of the evening disappears in a blur of shrill laughter and ribald jokes – none of which I recall very clearly. But we hatched a diabolical scheme to take over Africa’s beer market. Our flagship product was going to be Bedele “monkey” beer – smuggled all over the continent in cattle trucks and sold at rock-bottom prices. That evening, even Heineken and Budweiser were brought to their knees in the face of Bedele 's continental assault.
So ended my chance to become Africa’s liquor baron.
And I haven’t contracted any meat-borne diseases (yet).
Source: http://www.unganisha.org/home/logs/perma/20031107/
home cooking
By alembic
This post is my response to ecotone's (February 1, 2004) biweekly topic: Food and Place:
[Edited -- with addition of a second part]
I.
I live in gastronomic paradise. Here in Northern California, in a temperate climate that fuses the best of your dreams of Mediterranean living sans the dust and clutter of history whatever yen your taste buds decide to bring on can be satisfied almost instantly. Indian, Chinese, Thai, Russian, Moroccan, Italian, French, Mexican you can eat your way through the fare of countries and even continents in the short space of a day without so much as a tinge of worry about the usual afflictions that plague travelers who partake of the local bounty in some exotic location.
Imagine then, one of my compatriots, a local from Marin, on his or her first sojourn in India or Morocco, or Russia, or even Italy, settling in for a meal he or she expects to evoke a sense of the familiar of home through the taste buds. Imagine his or her surprise when that pasta pomodoro in a trattoria tastes nothing like it does at Luigis or da Carlo or whatever ersatz Italian eatery she or he has been frequenting for years in the bucolic splendor of Marin.
Our sojourner finds him or herself in an odd stew of homesickness hankering for the familiar taste of the flavors of a dish first cooked up by an immigrant hankering for the familiar tastes of home, a place where our sojourner is now trying to evoke the familiar taste of home in a dish cooked up and the spiral of desire continues on its convoluted trajectory.
II.
It was June and the fact that the days were getting longer was old hat by now. The novelty of seeing deer graze on the hill crisscrossed with paved streets has worn off my guests. There was also much less oohing and ahing at the grocery store where the price of a pound of potato or of a loaf of bread could send my guests, former residents of Eastern Europe, into an animated symposium about war (the second world war), famine, five-year plans, communism, capitalism ... and the shape of my curves.
Still, I lugged bagful of groceries home everyday, cooking up meals in a relentless succession. A thoughtful hostess, my guests complimented me constantly -- though, in retrospect, I realize that I kept producing dish upon dish and urging them to share the bounty of this land because it was much easier than to share my feelings with them.
Some nights we barbecued salmon, others just vegetables. On the night this picture was taken, we barbecued everything: salmon, peppers, zucchinis, eggplants, corn, and the wild Alaska salmon. There was a big bowl of Greek salad too, to go with it all, along with Campari and plenty of wine, some of which we bought only days before as we toured a couple of wineries in Napa and Sonoma.
For weeks that early summer of 2002, I was entertaining my mother and Anna, the woman who had been my nanny and later my friend over the years of my childhood in which I went from an awareness of toys to a preoccupation with boys....
The wine, the only genuine local flavor in this evenings small feast, loosened our tongues, and we spoke, albeit haltingly, in a number of languages, some of which had gotten away from us (like my Hungarian, for example) and some of which we couldnt quite grasp or hold on to long enough to be fluent in (like my mothers English, or Annas mixture of Swedish and English). We babbled on, steering clear of any mention of our amazement that we should all be here, so far from where we had started more than 30 years ago -- or of any talk about a future reunion....
Posted by maria at February 15, 2004 12:06 PM
Comments
Yes. And then returns home and now feels that the local Italian food is not actualy Italian but Marinitalian. And goes out to buy a cookbook.
Posted by: Coup de Vent on February 15, 2004 02:01 PMWell, I never expect restaurants here to serve authentic ethnic food. Everything's Americanized (i.e. toned down) to not shock people's sensibilities.
Posted by: sya on February 16, 2004 04:57 AM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040516024840/http://www.ashladle.org/archives/000295.html
FAIRWATER LIONS' CLUB VALENTINE BRUNCH
By The Middlewesterner
The Fairwater Lions Club Valentine Brunch is one of the rituals of this little community. Some years ago, after we'd attended the brunch (as we did again this morning), I made a journal entry about the experience. What I wrote then could pass almost word for word for our experience today:
We went to the Lions' Club Valentine's brunch, Mary and I did, and Mary's mother. We thought we were being so wise trying to get in just as the doors opened at 10:30 a.m. And we were only a few minutes later than that. Well, there were already forty or fifty cars parked around the Civic Center, a mob of people already eating, another mob in line to be served. We entered through the backdoor as required, into the back room of the lower level. If you didn't have your ticket yet, you could buy one here - "at the door" was a dollar more than "in advance." In one corner, a woman was slicing desserts to serve them. In another, drinks were being prepared behind a make-shift bar: Bloody Mary's seemed the order of the day. A sign on the wall: "Old Tables - Residents May Borrow." Twenty people, or twenty-five, were seated at the tables there in the backroom, cupping their drinks and talking and cupping their drinks, waiting for the line to shrink. The murmur of talk rose and fell, rose and fell. We got into the line right away.
Oh it was an Iowa picnic! Pea salad and macaroni salads and potato salad and apple salad and marshmallow salad. Scalloped potatoes - "Sir, would you care for some scalloped potatoes," says the owner of the lumber yard. Pancakes and french toast. Vegetables. Fried chicken, sausages, slices of ham. Orange juice and milk and coffee. Our plates full, we passed over the dessert table for the moment.
We found a place at a table. Tables set together ran the length of the room; lines of them parallel to each other, one and then another. And more. Chairs tightly spaced: "Elbow room! cried Daniel Boone." None of the tables was entirely full; and, in the great eternal cosmic dance of things, as people were done being served, carrying their heavy plates with two hands, other people were finished, leaving their table, making space for the new arrivals. The murmur of talk in the room rose and fell, rose and fell. Pass the syrup, please. Do you want some dessert? Which of the Stellmachers is that? Isn't this an interesting apple salad - carameled apple salad, sweet and nutty.
As if we might still be hungry, as if we needed them, we got desserts. I offer Mary a taste: "The sour cream frosting really makes that," she says of the rich chocolate bar.
Then we gather up our own trays and plates and silverware, in the great eternal cosmic dance, and leave them in their proper places. Like an Iowa picnic, you must clear up after yourself, leave the park in the same condition you found it. We are out the door, then, into the sunshine. We will not have to eat again for a very long time.
Source: http://middlewesterner.blogspot.com/2004_02_15_middlewesterner_archive.html
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