Carrot Top

Why do I think we invented the "Cocktail Party"? Did we?

I haven't the slightest clue, Daniel. But do let us know what you find out, with all details included.

Of course there is also the "cuisine" of the restaurant (at differing levels of "haute" or not) and the "cuisine" of the home. Two different things, as in other cultures. Our food, or cuisine, is also affected by regulatory agencies that may or may not have a stronger hand in terms of control than in other places, but I would suspect the hand is stronger. This is both limiting and helpful in various ways. On the limiting side, it affects what ingredients are available in a general widespread sense, which affects what restaurants or the home cook can obtain and serve (and often, due to heavy rules, keeps a foot set down on new restaurants that would open due to the high cost of meeting regulations) and also what streetfoods might be available (usually only an issue in cities, but I daresay many a roadside BBQ has not been opened due to the high level of health code requirements and the cost of meeting them, making operations prohibitively expensive as opposed to profits expected). On the helpful side, we are known as being one of the most sanitation-minded people on the planet when it comes to food, and that translates into a more easy assurance that one will not become ill from the food they eat, perhaps more than in some other places. (The oft-quoted phrase heard from traveller's lips worldwide: "Why did you go to McDonald's?!", and the answer given. . ."It was clean.") Not to say that I don't see lots of grimy-enough places around here.

I love the Food Museum site - it always has something fun going on! And the plate project sounds absolutely fascinating, Rebecca. If the name of the exhibit happens to come along, please do post it for us. . .what one might wish to put on a plate and eat might be astonishing. It is wonderful that your particular friend chose to make and eat love. Good thoughts, as always, Karen

Inspired by M.F.K. Fisher's "An Alphabet for Gourmets", I thought it might be fun to have our own banquet of words and food, from letter to letter, all along the alphabet. We'll start with "A" rather than challenging the Way of Things, today, and each day to follow will bring along the next letter (just sing "The Alphabet Song" to yourself if you get worried about what letter comes next - I always do though am beginning to consider the melody a bit dreary). Naturally we are setting a banquet of food. And the things that go along with it. Interestingly enough, in taking a quick look at M.F.K. Fisher's book, some of the chapter titles start with an idea rather than a food itself - Bachelors; Cautious; Gluttony; Happy; Kosher; Monastic; Romantic. . .and the storyline then follows through with the foods that connect with these ideas. The choices are endless. Pick something posted already that piques your interest. Or choose something of your own. Tell recipes, thoughts, uses. Argue the merits of one thing or another, if you'd like. ................................................................... I'll start, with Anchovy Anchovies are ugly little things when they are in the can. They are fearsome, dank, salty. The saying "Eating an anchovy is like eating an eyebrow" is quite apt. I understand that fresh anchovies are a different thing altogether, and have always wanted to try one. Haven't done it yet, though. There are several recipes I adore anchovies (salted, canned) in, and nothing else will do as replacement. A dish of vermicelli tossed with a quick sauce of olive oil (no I can not use the abbreviation for olive oil, it sounds like a pompous train coming puffing self-importantly through the station), loads of garlic, hot red peppers, fresh plum tomatoes and a large handful of chopped parsley. It's actually my favorite pasta recipe. I love anchovies on pizza, too, but nobody else (usually) that I am around agrees with this, so that is a longed-for, once-in-a-while thing. Pissaladiere. The very word seems to enclose anchovies within it. Anchovy Paste. Makes me think of Britian. Old Britian. The little cans are charming. I hope they never disappear, with the cute little keys attached to laboriously peel back the lid in a tight curl. The world will have lost something meaningful in an odd way, if so.

I'd like to add this painting to the thread. Nothing startling in terms of what it is as a painting, but for one thing that struck me as slightly odd. Painted by the American James Peale in the 1820's, it prominently features a "balsam apple". Which, if you google it, you find listed as being called balsam pear or bitter melon. The timing on the painting is interesting, for even now bitter melon is not well known in the US. Nor is balsam apple, really. (From this site.) What's more interesting is that the wild varieties that are pictured as thriving here look like this not like this. So. . .was he painting a bitter melon? Or a balsam apple? Are they the same thing? And where on earth did he obtain (whatever it is that it really is) in 1820 in the US? Not modern art, but yet slightly conceptual and mildly shocking.

That part in Mexico has always made me feel edgy, too, Ingrid. It will be interesting to re-read it and try to find the reason. Agreed, too, with the "enough, already" feeling. I didn't feel this way in the past but do, now. What's worse is that the Chexmix was this sort of new and healthy kind, with bits of dried apples and walnuts and cinnamon in it. Literally, I dumped half the bag on my head. I had to take a shower. (Sing along now - "I'm gonna wash that Chexmix right out of my hair. . .") And to add insult to injury, I never buy Chexmix. I just picked up this bag because it was on the shelf in front of me while I was trying to find "stocking stuffers" for Christmas. My daughter did not want it. (Smart girl ) So I decided to eat it because I hate to throw food away. Pah. Pouring Chexmix over my head has actually been my downfall in life. ........................................... I'm not sure about the popularized notion of "acting as we want to feel", or at least, I can't agree with it in a simple form. In some ways this ties into what Maggie noted about MFK and her writings which are so apparently autobiographic. MFK drew a world (with food - "The Art of Eating") that held a certain sort of promise. As a skilled storyteller, she held many in her grip with her own peculiar variety of intangible belief system. The stories held this within them, it was offered to us. And then we do find (in the additional knowledge of her "real life") that the world she drew ("acting as we want to feel" might be what she did, in her own way, in drawing those stories) was not real. "Acting as we want to feel" can be deceptive. Unless it thoroughly works, and brings actual measurable results in reality, in one's life both public and private. Or so I think. But what do I know. I am one who pours Chexmix in her hair.

Follow-up to last post: I walked away from the computer, thinking about MFK and food and all of it. Got a book and went to the kitchen and chose something (ah! very mindfully I thought about what I would choose!) then walked to the couch and picked up a book to read for a moment. A quilt lay half on the floor where my son left it this morning (which of course I say I will wait for him to pick up and then rarely do, picking up after him rather unthinkingly sometime during the day) and I went to throw it over myself on the couch. As I did so, I was surprised, attacked by the food I had chosen to eat. For it was an open package and I poured it right over my head. Divine awakening? Something of the sort. My food of choice? Here's the real kicker. And I swear to you I chose this food without focusing on its name. . . . . . . . Chexmix.

What's scary to me is how very much we all do define ourselves by what we eat. Or is it the other way around - that what we eat defines us. In so many ways. In too many ways. And I'm not just talking about "in a cultural sense" which is important, but moreso in an inner sense of who we really feel like we are, inside. Not "who we are", note, but "who we feel like we are". I'm not sure that parts of that last paragraph are applicable to the males of our species. Might be, might not. We still do move from certain role to certain role as we move through our lives. We are daughter, of some variety, with some sort of story to know of how that is "supposed to be" in terms of how we are. What we eat often reflects that. Then we are wife, or close equivalent in many relationships whether there is ring and papers involved or not. We enter the family of the man we've chosen to love (and to follow, in many cases, still, regardless of our apparent freedoms of choice). The family we enter has their own ways of food and eating, and our husband has expectations. We enter another phase of shifting sands, which can be either a gift or a burden. It usually is one or the other - it usually is *not* just a nothing, a blank. And we shift inside, by what we choose to cook and eat, altering "who we feel like we are". This particular thing can be, and is, often altered by the ways life moves around us. Death of a husband leaves a wife who has cooked for him looking around with nobody to cook for (that she wants to, for this part of her has died too) or simply not even interested in eating anything. Divorce can leave the ways of eating and cooking and "who one thinks one is" adrift, as can living in a marriage that is full of things marriages should not be full of. It comes out in the food. One does not generally like to serve a delicate and loving banquet when the air of ugliness wafts silently at the edges of the windows. And one does not think of eating in such a way either, for themselves. Being a mother and caring for one's children brings another new phase into being. Particularly when they are young, if the choice has been made to be around them rather than to go out of the home to work, one is again plunged into the shift of "who one thinks one is". Now, we are not sex kittens in most eyes. We are mothers. And in addition to the physical shift involved in growing and bearing a child, with the neccesary extra weight that occurs for healthy babies, the day changes its pace and shape. You can not tell a baby or a child to "just wait a minute, I want to do my nails" or, when a sudden ear-splitting shriek rises from the other room as you have your hands delicately playing with filo and butter, say to yourself, "Ah. They'll be okay. I'll just finish making this, the right way, first." Or maybe you can, but if so one must be rewarded the More Than Nerves Of Steel Award. The foods in the house change, often. The things that Kids Like to Eat creep in, and often these foods are not the best things for mothers to eat, if they want to remain healthy. It frightens me how what we eat can define us, or how it can alter "who we think we are". For if it has the power to shift who we think we are it has the power to alter who we are. A subtle, often friendly assault which we invite, and then conspire with. If it's true, my meanderings above, then it's important to think about what we eat. And to make it match as close as possible "who we think we are" and even beyond that "who we want to be". For if we don't, who will?

Isn't that the name of the new Jeffrey Chodorow restaurant? ← But wait a minute. Isn't there already an "Artful Thighs" restaurant in Santa Monica? (Just kidding)

Chexmix works, doesn't it. "Chexmix the Goat. Now starring with Jerry Lewis! See goat and man as they fall over themselves and everyone else! A slapstick comedy for the entire family."

I found myself cranky today again at my favorite "food writer". Yet another word besides Chexbres. In "Catherine's Lonesome Cooks". It was several sentences, actually. Uh. . .right. I think they must have made men differently then, if so. And. . . "artful thighs" ? WTF?! ( ) ( ) P.S. Will undoubtedly be back tomorrow with my cheerleading pom-poms at the ready, though.

Chexbres has always held a peculiar fascination for me that resembles nothing so much as a child with a wonderful scab on their knee to poke at wide-eyed and involved with a total and rapt interest all the day long. Chexbres Chexbres Chexbres. You WILL hear that name, Rachel. (Certainly MFK made sure we heard it enough. ) ...................................... Here is the rest of what happens with Sabri's "cake": (Sabri is speaking. . .) I took "fine vermicelli" to mean the very thinnest sort possible. That way it does become more easily meldable. A dessert that resembles those we know here made with shredded filo dough (if we are so lucky as to know them ). A cake to dive into. Served with hot mint tea (though likely Sabri served it with unsweetened strong hot black tea), the makings of an afternoon of langour. ...................................... Do you remember reading "Fifty Million Snails", Rachel? Have you ever snail-hunted? (Snails, not snipes. ) I did it once, one year, a long time ago. A real thing, a good and interesting thing to do.

There's a recipe in one of Arthur Schwartz' books that has both rice *and* potatoes in it. Wonder if that would be enough carbs for him. (Armenian Meatball Soup, and it's very good, too! )

Yes, she chose it as nickname for him. *If* I remember right, it is because of some time they spent together at that place in Switzerland. Love makes one both blind *and* deaf, perhaps? Absolutely it is pronounced softer than it "looks", written. But I don't care. It still is a lump in the center of her style of writing. The best spin I could put on it would be that she meant the name to strike one, lumpily, indigestibly, as literary device. As the story of how the real Chexbres in the end must have felt like to her. Not digestible. Painful. But that spin is probably just utter nonsense in the end run. She probably loved the name. ............................ Yes, do! find the quote that brought that to your attention, Kougin Aman. That would be interesting to see.

Except for that g*dawful name "Chexbres". Which is like a lump of unsoaked salt cod shoved down one's throat every time it appears.

Strangely enough, I am beginning to feel like a cheerleader for the first time in my life. *Must* run out for some pom-poms later today.

"Woe to the cook whose sauce has no sting." (Chaucer) (Seems right to me. )

And I like the jazz analogy because through that form we are free and even encouraged to do "riffs", intensely full of personal style. I also like the jazz analogy because there is (or was, initially) a sense of rebelliousness. Things don't have to be done the way they always have been done. Tradition can be thrown high in the air and tossed around to make different shapes.

Could be we're like China. Simply not discovered till some years later.

One interesting facet of "fast food" or convenience food, which the US might arguably be said to lead the way in, to our collective (?) detriment, is that it freed a huge female population from the daily assigned chores that had taken them hours a day for centuries, in their roles as homemakers. That means a lot, to a lot of people. It means that they can do things besides be in the home, cooking. It means that they can become professional at any other thing they may want to consider, thereby finding ways that their souls can soar. It means that single mothers can work outside the home and put a hot meal on the table (oh no, not gourmet, but edible and perhaps even good) for their children when they get home, quickly. The very fact that fast food or convenience foods exist allows many women to consider the idea of cooking as a pleasure, not something they *have to do* three times a day seven days a week. Naturally I am not speaking of the wealthy here, but of the working class or poor. It means that more women can love cooking as an expression of themselves, as an enjoyable task. In one sense fast food may be a collective detriment. It sure ain't "gourmet". But to tell the women of any country that have the opportunity to utilize fast food *or* convenience foods *when they please* that these foods are detrimental to their lives, that really it is so much better to cook slow food, for that "tastes better". . . to my mind, that is a disservice. The "taste" of a thing is not only on the tongue. It is also in the heart and mind and histories.

And *now*! For the second time in History, I've found the word (challenged by Pontormo in the food word game) warners! In "In Sinistra Parte, Johannes Baptista", we are educated: Chomp chomp.

Earlier today I read 'I Arise Resigned'. I felt I knew Sabri when I read that, years ago. I had to make that "cake". And so I did, just exactly from his directions. All this was pre-professional cooking years. It was an adventure. And it was very good. Then after a discussion about why this cake is eaten. . .the "reason" for it. . . I can see those hands. I know Sabri, whether he is real or not.

Yes, the cadence, the depth, the solidity, the *storytelling*!, the ability to thoroughly enchant and to romance, and now, this time around, I am finding humor - which did not strike me as much in past readings. One thing that was interesting to note from her biography was that becoming a "foodwriter" was not her initial intention. She wanted to write of all things, of life, of stories. But jobs were offered to her writing about food (for she was a woman of a time and place where this tack was an easier one). And so the works began, for the paycheck and for a situated place offered in the world of writing. A very lucky happenstance for those who like to read and think of the ways food might go beyond the plate and the palate.

KR (happily falling under the table)