Carrot Top

Heh. You just made me realize that (though I am not someone that is a restaurant hound searching for somewhere to eat by reviewer direction) the restaurant review in our local paper might actually be the most entertaining writing going on in the entire paper. Where that leaves the state of the newspaper, the state of my intellect in general, and the state of our geographic region in some ways is uh . . . dubious, at best. I love that line. As you can see from my post above. The motto for people who act this way is "Better safe than sorry". Life is a scary business. Why risk losing maybe twenty dollars and an hour on an unknown meal in some unknown place? Terrible, terrible. It's nice to think one knows what one is talking about, based on what some other people say. "I'm okay, you're okay, we're all okay." (Insert pleased smile here). The argument that one might lose a larger sum and more time when dining at a more expensive place is one made, too. My theory has always been "if you can't afford to screw up, don't do it." Food is a living thing, chefs and people who work at restaurants are living things, and even the best-reviewed restaurant might not give one the buzz one was promised. ............................................... But anyway. Let me go read the restaurant review (for some place I have no real intention of visiting based upon it) and throw away the rest of the paper.

Flat Earth Crisps is actually sort of a scary name.

Her success as an author is shown by the fact that you so easily and affectionately call her "Peg", Anna. It's fascinating how a (good) book can be different things to different people, far beyond what was probably ever intended when it was written. I'm happy to have this copy here. It has a peculiar pull upon me. I think you'll enjoy reading it again too, if you do get a copy. This book does have a personality. "Secret" is a great word, isn't it, Max. Secret agents, secret gardens, secret ingredients. Curiosity can not help but rise about something when "secret" is invoked. I remember that book and wonder why it might not make it onto the list of "books that age gracefully" if it would not. Lots of good stuff in it. Maybe it was timing, a bit too early in some ways or a bit slightly at the end of a certain edge in others? And that has to do more with when it was published more than content? Or would it be something else more intangible? I'm not sure. Now I might have to buy it to find out.

Gochisousama deshita, Hiroyuki.

I finally got Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook Book”. It was a very difficult thing to do for me. My feelings were very mixed. My finger went to hit the button to order it on Amazon so many times, then retreated. There was heavy trepidation in my mind and heart about this book. Regardless of the fact that I can and do and will stand up for the use of convenience foods for people that use them consistently and do realize that times exist when even people who would not "normally" use them, do use them in daily cooking. It seems, intellectually, that there should be no shame about anyone cooking this way if they need to, or want to. For not every meal in life is set at a table where fine, pure, luxurious, artisinal, or even “home-cooked” is possible, just as every dress worn is not a Donna Karan nor is every car driven a custom Ferrari. The "I Hate to Cook Book" sat on my mother's bookshelf when I was a child. I have a first edition here, from 1960. Same dust cover. I remember it well. It sat there, and I looked at it, on that same bookshelf for years. I hated that book. I hated the "I Hate to Cook Book". It sat in between several books on art and lots of books on feminism. Lots of books on feminism. The other books were Agatha Christie paperbacks and Nero Wolfe paperbacks. I liked the mysteries. I loved the books on art that had lots of paintings shown stuck in between the thin rice paper sheets bound inside those tall precious books. The books on feminism did not register. I could have cared less about them, they seemed to just be rhetoric which a child does not care much for. But the "I Hate to Cook Book" was a real thing sitting there in its periwinkle blue cover. It was the only cookbook my mother owned, and I do not know where she got it. I know she did not use it, for it never left the shelf. I know that it did, however, have a message that struck me directly in the heart each time I gazed upon it, and I did not like that message. The message was "I hate to cook, Karen. I want to do other things besides make you a meal.” That message made me very unhappy in imagining it, when I did, as a child. For she did hate to cook, my mother. And that seemed so very wrong. That message made me very unhappy in imagining it, when I did, as a child. Now that I am much older I can understand my mother's feelings. And I can certainly understand the social movement that was behind the writing of the book. If one is tied to being one thing, to standing in the shoes of only one role, that can be awfully, terribly, limiting. And not only emotionally but financially, intellectually and many other ways. It's been forty-seven years since Peg Bracken wrote this book. It is a very humorous book. Peg Bracken herself seems like the sort of person that anyone would want for a good friend . . . easy-going, funny, encouraging. And yet I look at the recipes, now, and still, I cringe. There is a sameness to them that lives in things boxed and canned and packaged, a taste that is curiously and solely of the industrialized world. I'm not crazy about that, at all. But then I remember why the book was written. It was written for a taste of freedom. It was written for expansion from rigidly defined roles that were actually painful for many people. But I still don't want to cook anything from it. And I wonder where that leaves me, or if there is an answer to it all. Is the book useful? Yes. Is it good? In ways. But it still doesn't taste just right. I wonder if I dare to use a recipe from it. That, would be very interesting somehow. While I cook, the book will be in my mind as it was back in 1963, on the second shelf up from the floor in the tall white-painted bookshelf, its pretty periwinkle blue cover peering out encouragingly, while I sat there cross-legged on the floor, staring back at it with resentment and a bit of fear for what it seemed to mean to me, what it meant in my life as the child of my own particular mother and of the particular times that spawned the book.

From "As You Like It" Know what I mean, jellybean?

And really. It just came to me. With my "screen name" being what it is I never should have allowed a bunny in the house in the first place.

We live in Blacksburg, Virginia which is where Virginia Tech is. So our bunny-beating taken pales in comparison to other sorts of natural or unnatural scenarios which occurred here last week which still linger in ways to affect all of us (and all of those who watched from other places). I still think our bunny experience was a silly (and I say that in a tone of slight self-disgust) suburban scenario. In general, people think of meat as coming from plastic packages. Therefore all animals become cute extensions of ourselves rather than fodder for survival as in a serious agricultual environment. And that is where problems can occur. Yes, I sensed it. And I tried to pretend it away. Obviously there are animals who make excellent pets, we always have some of them in our home. But then there are animals who will not, no matter how one tries to enforce "petdom" upon them. From Bunny's eyes, I am quite sure that he might have felt as if some aliens bred him into captivity then took him into a strange difficult place to live. A boy's room, which regardless of the toys, the towers made of cardboard boxes, the lovely bed which could be jumped onto and peed on, the cords which could be gnawed to try to do in his captors (me, obviously, as I remember that electric shock ) yet which did not have grass and trees and brambles and bugs and the sounds of birds, the smell of the earth . . . which did not allow any way to really really jump and run and hop in answer to any of the things heard or smelled or sensed. In other words, from Bunny's eyes, I am sure he might have felt we were out to give him a life that was not his in any real way that would feel right and good to him. From the natural world's eyes, this Bunny was bred to be part of a food chain. The confusion started with this Bunny when we tried to make out that he was not, that he could become what we wanted him to be for our own particular purpose. Ah. The purpose? Merely to love him? And naturally, to have him behave as if he loved us back, even if he was finally only merely pretending to for the food. From my eyes, I felt wrong about this bunny in the first place and really should have listened to that feeling no matter how much I was encouraged to ignore it, both by my son who wanted a bunny and by the pet store people who obviously will sell whatever they can encourage the average sucker to buy. Perhap Drew wanted a bunny based on the ideas of soft cuddly bunnies that we read of in stories, that we see on cartoons (even though some of those are not cuddly but they are *full* of amusing human characteristics ) who then got a bunny of a sort who was basically just a Food Model Bunny who regardless of ongoing help and assistance and training could stretch himself no further to become a different sort of Model Bunny. Limited by . . . I don't know. Genetics? It always sounds intelligent to use that word even when most of us really don't have a clue as to what we are talking about when we pull it out of the Word Hat. And once again, the mistakes I always make do not come from saying "no" too often. They come from saying "yes" at various times from wanting to be "nice". Sickening, really, that this should be so. So, one more experience to chalk up to being too nice. And for a while I'm going to repeat to myself over and over, "Yes, Bunny *did* turn out to be a Food Bunny. That's what he was. Tigers do not change their stripes." And I'll be watching out for Food Bunnys who try to pass themselves off as not being what they are. Because if you don't eat them, they might end up eating you. Just a natural thing.

Nope. The vet is unsure whether Bunny will make it through surgery, so we will see. Here . . . if there is good news and it all works out great, I promise to post and tell you how it did. If it does not all work out great, I won't post about it. ............................................. Regardless, it was good to hear all the thoughts on this subject, as it has developed. Thank you all for that.

Yes, the sense of foreboding is unfortunate here with this situation. I'm sad to have posted things that cause that, but also feel that since this is a real situation where something that is being bred to be eaten has been sold as something that can be petted and not eaten, and there seem to be some huge problems, I don't want anyone else to have to be in this situation because they *didn't know* there was a difference in these breeds either. I just talked to the specialist vet and he said that this breed of bunny, based on what they are bred to be and what they are naturally, can be "intractible" as pets. Yes, I told the vet I was upset with the pet store people and he said that they were "just high school kids who don't really know enough". Right. I didn't know enough either, but they are in a position where they are advising people. Yikes. Maybe. I feel rather as if I am living "The Omen" right now.

Double post.

More on pets and on eating pets: Bunny has continued to have difficulties learning how to be a house bunny, though I have tried to do everything the sites and books advise. He is not a happy house bunny. And in his unhappiness, he continues to inflict damage on the house and therefore on the family, in ways, as my time continues to be spent scrubbing up messes and washing things which the smell will never really probably come out of. I can not, really can not, see keeping an animal confined to a cage for twenty-four hours a day, but every time he comes out the difficulties start over again. Last night we tried to put a bunny leash on him to take him for a walk to keep him busy and hopefully make him happy. He did not like the bunny leash and scraped his way up me, scratching me all over then he did a daredevil jump off my back to the floor. Then he started limping. In order to catch him we had to first remove all the furniture from my son's room as he would skitter from under one thing to under another. I then carried the four foot by three foot cage into his room so that we could try to tempt him into it. We needed to do this in a quick manner of some sort, for it was apparent with his wild jump that he had broken his paw and needed to get to the vet which closed in half an hour. We made it somehow, getting to the vet just as they were closing. Bunny stayed there overnight and this morning he has been diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder which will require fixing. There is only one "exotic animal" vet and he will be in the office in several hours to give full advice. How does this have anything to do with food? Because when I talked to the "regular" vet who called me this morning, she told me that this bunny we have here in the house is not a bunny who should be a pet. This bunny is a bunny that has been bred for food. It is a food bunny. Yet it is being sold in petstores as a pet bunny. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Can a tiger change his stripes? I am a great animal-lover. . . take in strays etc., always have. Yet this is a distinct thing from being an animal-lover. They are selling food animals as pets. How can we have the gall to expect an animal which is not bred to be a thing to be a thing? How, really, can we have the stupidity to think we can somehow "train" a natural, normal, healthy, part-of-the-foodchain animal to be something that it is not? Yet there they are, in each and every petstore. With no warnings given. The vet likened it to trying to bring a Rottweiler into the house to be friends with a new baby. Not natural. There are animals that we eat, and then there are animals that we have as pets. Obviously we can not expect any pet-store to offer good advice on this, and as far as bunnies go, I do not think these facts are generally known, such as one might know about a Rottweiler. Even the book I bought my son to read (ah, yes, it was reccomended by the pet store. Sigh) did not say anything about the difference between "food breeds" and "pet breeds". Oooh. I am steaming. I am angry and very sad, too, that both Bunny and us, are in this contorted situation, and wonder if there is a good fix. Moral: Be sure that your intended pets are definitely intended as pets by breeding and nature, not food by breeding and nature. Double-check, again, even if you think you know by "general knowledge".

Well, during the era in which "Little House on the Prairie" was set (the late 19th century), a large proportion of the US population lived--and worked hard--on farms. And my understanding is that breakfast was indeed a heavy-duty thing for lots of rural folk back then--that is, if they had the wherewithal to afford that kind and amount of food. ← I think that the "steak and egg" breakfast morphed into the "bacon or sausage and egg" breakfast that is quite common today, and not all that very different in terms of caloric content of type of food. Two or three eggs, three to six ounces of some sort of meat, two portions of some sort of bread-stuff with butter and preserves or jelly, a serving of fruit juice and a cup or two of coffee or tea with milk is what a modern-day common American idea consists of. Not that everyone has the time for this before going to work, but this seems to be an ideal that many strive towards as being part of the "good life". ................................................ In the rural past where this breakfast existed (as you say, if there was the wherewithal to afford it) though, it was not generally eaten immediately upon rising. Before eating, there would be the chores to do at daybreak. An hour or two or maybe three of checking fences, feeding and watering livestock, and assuring that the garden was still there and that it would and could be eaten sometime rather than maybe having to eat the aggrevating marauding bunnies that ate it. So in this way, breakfast itself was a different animal, not something eaten "before" the day started but rather into a day well started with physical labor, which would demand that sort of food and induce a good hunger. Well you know. Wielding a blow-dryer and getting these clothes on can be very hard work in the morning. Especially these high-heeled shoes. An egg per shoe might be needed to revive me, to prepare me for the day. A strip of bacon for each eye mascara'd. Buttered jellied biscuits will serve to make up for all that fussing with my hair. And without coffee, of course, I could not even see to do any of this. Ah. Justification can be fun. (Ha, ha! helenjp and I were going on about farmwork at almost the exact same time! The spirit of dank hay and cow patties must be in the air. )

I'll go back and read it, Janet. Thanks. Yes, that was the age of well-practiced manners wielded with sword's edge and a wink, wasn't it. Not the manifesto style of insistence that often can be a hint of shrill layered onto hard rhetoric with a club hidden behind one's back should there be disagreement.

One of the biggest breakfast taboos I know of is the common exhortation that "You *must* have breakfast! It is a healthy start to the day! Your system will not do well without it!". Sort of a backwards taboo in that it is not telling one to avoid anything but rather insisting that the thing itself must not be avoided. A insistent common folk prescription, perhaps one might call it. Yet I've heard from more than one gastroenterologist that some people can not and should not eat breakfast. Their systems just simply do not like to wake up and take in food for at least several hours. And that indeed, people with systems like this will do poorly if they *are* made to eat breakfast, either by parents or by the fact that everywhere it seems everyone is insisting upon it. The only thing I like for breakfast is coffee. Nothing is taboo at my table at breakfast. I'll roast a goat for you if you want. But I will have coffee and no more, thank you. Really. I insist.

There are actually healthful chakras, rituals, and foods that are advised in adurvedic medicine among other ancient advisements for breaking the fast in the morning as well as for other times of the day in order to be more healthfully aligned both physically and mentally to the rhythms of the sun and moon and earth cycles. Speaking of IHOP, surprisingly they serve none of these foods. How could that be? Boorish of them, I say.

I loved this post. Much here worthy of thought, Janet. Deep thought. Obviously some tests need be done. They must have erased the coffee part to avoid current coffee-drinkers worries. I think there are some texts of the manifesto sort here and there in the Cambridge World History of Food. I'll take a look sometime soon.

Or, if I were trying to sound "nice" I might say that what we eat and when we eat it are traditions that create our sense of community. I rarely try to sound nice, though.

I would guess that the concept of which foods belong at what particular meals springs originally from native availability of foods shaped to physical desire (as in, if you work outside on a farm doing hard labor you are likely to be more hungry at certain hours than other people who might rise in the morning to go tend flocks or do food gathering) (obviously I am speaking of "olden times" for the most part here ). . . then simply, tradition. What our forebears eat, we eat, to some extent. Even though we need not, really, today. It's part of what makes us "us" and them "them", whomever we may be and they may be. And it makes the world a interesting place. People like to know what they are "supposed to do" and when they are supposed to do it, and people like to gawk at people who do otherwise. And gosh that does make it more fun to break the rules, too. There is a wonderful essay that touches indirectly upon this question by MFK Fisher. From "How to Cook a Wolf", it is titled "How to Be Sage Without Hemlock". Slightly different, as the question is of meal balance, but thoughts she espouses are useful in thinking of both questions. Why do we eat the same things we always have at breakfast? Because "that is the way it has always been". ..................................... (Edited for spelling because "each" is not "ech".)

Oh well. I was close. I will continue to tell myself that you must have Libra Moon or something. Or that my wrong guess is due to calendric adjustments not being made correctly over the years by astronomers and calendrists. That's always a good one. Nice looking curry. I'm always changing menus last-minute too, for the kids. Easier to do in today's world than in past history when one worked with what one had and what one had was limited. Thank goodness for grocery stores and the ability to be flexible! (Though admittedly it does sometimes make me cranky to have to change my planned dinner. It feels personal, as if the kids want to purposely drive me crazy. But of course they do not - it just human nature. )

I love the food photos and seeing the things you and your family eat but just as much (okay, I admit, maybe even *more* ) I have very much enjoyed seeing how your kitchen and storage space is set up. You are very organized! Wonderful! I try to be, then things escape and wander here and there and then I try again. It's sort of like a life-long project that is strangely close to my heart. Hiroyuki, your children are charming. And from these photos of your pantry and the photo of you, I am even more sure of a guess I made some time ago from your posts that you are a Libra (born between September 23 and October 23). It will surprise me if this is not true. I am reading a book on Ryokan at the moment. Gorgeous photos. I have a friend who is interested in the trend we have here in the US for "pre-fab" (pre-fabricated elements made in factories then assembled on-site rather than built from ground up on-site) housing but who would like to add some of the warmer, more elegant elements that exist in traditional Japanese architectural design to the coldness that seems a part of many of the prefab home designs here. Seeing how your kitchen and pantry work has been very helpful in my imaginings of this part of the idea . . . but I wonder if the concept/designs that work so beautifully well for the Japanese in living/cooking spaces that make one feel able to take a breath of fresh air from the spare control of it all would work here. Americans tend to sprawl. Stuff, lots of stuff. Good thoughts to all of you!

Except for the changes that can occur due to health or age, that is. Health of course, can be worked on to improve, but age is natural (strangely enough ) and it does affect the palate from childhood to old age, in many if not most people.

I've always enjoyed your posts, Hiroyuki, so am glad to see you blogging, though it *is* a truly awesome task to undertake, in my opinion. Deep appreciation to you. Your writings have touched upon some of the traditions that exist in your culture as a part of food and dining, and I really do love to hear about those. I actually thought you were raised from youth bi-lingual, your English is so very good! Perhaps within the blogging our good-energy thoughts of your wife will be sent, and will be received. Thanks!

I wondered the same thing, whether the piece had to be set as formal "manifesto" solely addressing food or whether it could be part of a larger piece addressing broader parts with food included as part of the idea expressed of how one should live, as perceived by the author(s). Several other thoughts came to mind, too. One, of how the vocation of preparing food has a different history in terms of class or formalism than something like the vocation of architecture, which has been considered a "profession" for much longer than food preparation has, which has been more in the class of "trade" which would lead perhaps to less of a collection of formalized writings on it by well-educated practionioners, which would lead to less of a cogent collection of writings that would be separately considered as theses or "manifestos" maybe. Michael Pollan came to mind, too. And this morning, as I smelled the aroma of this brew that is ubiquitous in homes, coffeeshops, offices and wherever one goes anywhere today, I remembered some writings on coffee (around the time of its first popularlity and the growing of the coffeehouse as places to discuss culture and politics in Europe when was it, 17 or 1800's? Don't ask me, I can not ever remember these things exactly that's what books are there for, to look it up and then sound intellegent and it is too early for that, but I do know it happened ) and how coffee was an evil influence on All. I hope this makes sense. Must go have more coffee, for I just heard the toaster pop and instead went and opened the microwave to supposedly take my toast out and of course it wasn't there. Till later, and I do hope that nothing I wrote here ends up with those frightening little pink double lines under it, Karen

Giving the diner exactly what they request if at all possible is what is done in private clubs and some very high-end restaurants. So maybe tolerance depends on cash flow. (Duh. Hadn't had my coffee yet when posting that. Almost forgot that joke about the short man who became so much more attractive when he stood upon his over-stuffed wallet. )