Carrot Top

I found another Oldenburg - in Minneapolis: Skyline with Spoon ................................................ For some reason, I keep remembering a giant teacup somewhere. But of course that might just be from a Disney movie.

The city I live in has decided to implement a program of public art. Public art has a way of curiously and starkly giving representation of the place it lives in. The choice made by our city's leaders of what to spend some fairly good amount of money on - this choice that it has made to represent the city - is a series (some twenty of them, I believe - to be added on one by one as time goes by) of six foot tall plastic turkeys. Shiny plastic turkeys to keep them nice. Hokie Bird turkeys. The Hokie Bird is unlike any turkey I've ever seen in reality or in pictures. It is bald and fat, particularly in the tummy area. The tummy area is shown well, as the bird stands on its hind two feet, with its wings clasped in a grandfatherly way around the front of the distended tummy. (Pot belly, really.) Its chest is rather shallow though large and naked, and the visage of the turkey does not do much in terms of reassuring one that any intelligence at all resides there. These turkeys are to be all the same in shape and shininess - yet naturally as they are Art, they will be decorated (painted) differently so that everyone can admire the creativity that our city has to display as its public statement. The first one was installed last week in front of the Town Hall on Main Street, close to the street so that nobody driving through would possibly be able to miss this wonder of artsiness, this ode to our culture. It is painted as if it were tie-dyed or alternately graffiti'd, in bright conflicting colors. I would say "You really must see it!" but really, rather feel that instead, you probably should not if you value anything of beauty or indeed, have any aesthetic sense of things at all. If you were a stranger driving through our town, without any knowledge that this turkey was not meant to be eaten but rather was a symbol of some really big boys playing ball, you definitely would think we grew turkeys here - that we wanted you to admire, buy and eat our turkeys. And soon our town will be filled with a flock of lots of these birds. As for me, suddenly the idea of a nice roast turkey dinner has gone the way that the idea of wearing disposable paper dresses went in the late 1960's. Forgotten, and good riddance. .................................................................. Does the place you live have any food sculptures or any public art that represents food? If so, what is it?

But aside from that great food that only Mayhaw Man has the right to name, there are some others. Classics - that have stood the test of time. Olive oil. Anything in the allium family. Rice. Beans and Legumes. Bread. Green herbs and spring lettuces. Asparagus! Bananas, the entire spectrum from sweet to starchy. Potatoes. Cherries, apples, plums. Litchees would be worth their weight in gold. Tea, coffee (Starbucks is planning already for the day to occur). Beer, Wine and Spirits. Even the most vile-tasting sorts. Shrimp? Maybe. Chicken, too. And any pork at all.

Begins with an O.

Fascinating. And the book you link to seems to be yet another one I've got to get. The only food connection in anything I've read so far with these specific words (wabi, sabi, shibui) seems to be the aesthetic of the tea ceremony. Yet not so much the tea ceremony itself but one step removed. . .the aesthetic of it. The culture is so deeply rich in ritual - and the language does not seem to easily float between things such as design and food; or popular culture and food - as English does. That would seem to infer that there is a firmer sense of permanence in how one "thinks" about food - in Japanese. Would this lead to less sense of experimentation with the cookery in general? Would it lead to a deeper sense of internal connection with food in some way when thinking in Japanese? I'm beginning to "get" wabi and sabi and even wabi-sabi but shibui still seems to have different meanings and inferences but that might only be the shortness of my mind. Well. Whatever it is, I like it, anyway.

I wonder. . .but no. I'd rather deep-fry a pig's foot (previously braised in some luscious bath of spices and aromatics natch) than a tail.

And once again we return to "Buyer beware." And in this global marketplace the possible machinations seem so dense as to be sometimes insurmountable, as you note. Perhaps "buy local" is the key? Is that the only way to really be assured?

athinaeo's recipe is similar to the one I use, but with the addition of some diced tomatoes, raisins, and pignoli to the recipe. Layer thinly sliced lemons onto the top and drizzle with good olive oil before baking in a temperate oven.

Interesting answers. The first I read of shibui, which generated this question in my mind, was this: "[. . .] the way of shibui, the design principle that urges a gardener to leave two or three bright, fall-colored leaves behind on an otherwise immaculate surface of raked lawn." Images of food that would be plated in this way came to my mind. The tension of imbalance - an liveliness of sorts - that creates a focus of interest that the mere rigid form of perfect balance does not. To extend it into another realm with food, one might think of the unexpected flavor held in a certain ingredient that sparks a dish - something that surprises yet intrigues, removes itself yet blends and supports the whole. In a brief web-search, I found references mostly to design. And was also fascinated by the fact that these words used to be used separately, yet are more often used together now (wabi and sabi). The two meanings of shibui (really there seem to be three?) startled me also. For no good reason except that one of the meanings seems full of a deeper intent than the other two hold that it surprised me. It came to me to wonder, if in Japanese, the words used to specifically describe one thing in one specific vocation were shifted over into use for other vocations. In English, we are very free and easy-going with our words - they wander all over the place and are re-shaped often for different uses. tokyogurumegal notes that shibui is now used to describe a cool person - so maybe this is done in Japanese to some extent. But still, I wonder if the language that is used to describe food and dining is as mutant or as fickle or as flexible as it is in English (particularly American English). It seems that this would have some bearing on how one in a culture "thought" or "felt" about food and the things that surround it.

The same questions were running through my mind last night as my arms struggled to lift some of these things into the pan to brown for arroz con pollo. Yeah, lots of white meat - but who cares? Dinner took longer to make, the portion sizes were too large (so I took out the cleaver and simply made the pieces smaller, but some aesthetic value was disdained in doing so), and there was something just plain spooky about the sizes of these things. Bigger is not always better. But here, they were not on sale Sandy. Three of these half breasts went for close to nine dollars.

Ah! Anne will have to find her own source of strength, then. (I do remember seeing some children's cookbook on Anne Of Green Gables where she seemed to be eating teacakes and such, so I *did* wonder. . . ) Rice does go better with pork than the oats that were running through my mind, indeed. Deep-fried rice bundles with soy-braised pork centers, anyone? Yours in deep-fried bliss, Lo Bak Dou

Your testimony as to the way those animals were treated again raises the question of different operations handling animals in different ways, Toasted. And it would be good to hear more about this if there is more to hear, if there *is* any finally solid reasonably acceptable way of knowing the percentages on how different places do things differently. Aside from the fact that I often give voice to my thoughts in a flippant manner, this is of course nothing to be taken flippantly. My own family owns a chicken farm and a lab that develops antibiotics and other drugs specifically for poultry, so yes, I've been around chickens. Cows. . .I lived for four years in a rural area where raising beef was the source of most of the income of the folk that lived in that area. . .and while yes - I did see some examples of what you described with what might be considered unneccesary roughness to the animals (mostly at the livestock market), most farmers, including the one whose land nestled right up onto mine so that the fields connected, the barns were visible and within hearing range - did not exhibit anything except the fondest sort of care for their livestock. Again, the best thing to do in my mind is to each educate ourselves as much as possible. One of the problems in finding reliable sources of information, of course, is the unreliability of some of the studies undertaken. Unless one knows a subject well enough to really know how to question it correctly, one can end up misinformed by studies. An example of this (again, somewhat in this area of livestock/animal husbandry/ animal rights/what we should eat or not) is something I saw myself several years ago. A questionnaire was sent out to the elementary school children here in the town I live in - a university town, filled to the brim and overflowing with personnages with degrees of all sorts of higher educations. The study asked questions with the intent to define what children thought about "animal rights". It asked questions like: "Is it right to kill a deer for food?" and so on. There were fifty questions of this sort. My son was given the questionnaire to fill out - and naturally I saw it. I asked him how his friends were answering the questions - how they felt about this (as they did discuss this at school). I then asked him how his friends from where we lived before (the rural farming area) would have answered the questions. He sort of hooted with laughter. "They would have answered completely differently, Mom" was his answer to that one. A week or so later, I called the scholars that had administered this test, who all were doing research at the university. Upon asking them if they thought this test showed a good, fair, even sampling of the population's opinion - they said "Yes, of course it does." When asked if they were going to make a note on these results (which were going to be published) that the sampling they took was based upon a population of children who were basically suburban townies from families with college-level education and a certain income level (and that this study did not include the responses of the rural children less than an hour away living in vastly different circumstances) they said "No." There *will* be different "takes" on this question of "should we eat foie gras", for different reasons. Finally, though - I personally can not equate animal husbandry to human slavery. And in my house, truly, it is me who is slave to my cat and to any stray animal who happens to be in my path. And I daren't ever wish that they would go to the grocery store to buy something for me to eat - because really, I do not think they would.

Hmmm. Your list of pertinent questions leave me feeling rather impertinent in having made up my own mind on this question. Although my sense of "eat or be eaten" is unlikely to be changed (as I noted, too many years of living in Brooklyn can make one this way) it still would be good to know some answers to that really good and detailed list you had the b. . b. . brains to post. In the sentence above, you note that your experience is that there is considerable variation in several particulars between operations. I believe you, but would like to hear more if you would wish to jostle your pen into giving us more details upon your specific experiences. (?) Pretty please with sugar on top.

Just a question about Japanese food, language, aesthetics and possibly culture. Are the terms wabi, sabi, and shibui ever used in descriptions of food or dining? If not, are there other terms that might be used intead to give shape to a similar meaning?

Boyfriends? You can apply the same rules to them as to any other vegetable, Ptipois. Just approach them, pick them up and poke them. If they are too heavy to lift, choose instead a spot on them that interests you and give it a few good pinches. You'll find out a lot this way. ..................................................................... But who cares to discuss boyfriends when instead we can discuss books about Farmer's Markets!? Here is my question, directed to Jamie: You've given us a list of questions to ponder as to what the effects of this book might be, and noted that it is an older book just recently re-issued by University of Chicago Press. How did this book initially come to your notice? *Is* it being touted in the media (or do you have an "inside source". . . ) Basically, my question is - where did you find this particular package of eh. . .psalt?

Or it could just be me they didn't like. You're from Manhattan. I was from Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights, to be exact - but what does a cow know?

Ahhh. Now add a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the center of that and you've got heaven. Rather turducken-like, too.

Agreed with you there, Sugarella. There is no more disgusting and difficult fish to clean than skate unless it is octopus - and that might not even be quite as horrid. Neither one will make the list in my opinion! (Though I'll happily eat either if someone else wants to take on all the work! )

Several thoughts about foie gras ran through my mind today. The first is of its history. Where did it come from, and what was the original intent of the people who produced this product? There is proof that the idea of force-feeding geese was known as long ago as Ancient Roman times - and even perhaps earlier. It would seem to me, that then as today - the original intent of the producer was to practice good animal husbandry. It would be interesting to know of how it was "discovered" that a goose's liver was a most exquisite thing to dine upon when enlarged by force-feeding the goose. It would seem to me that as with most things "discovered" in long-ago days that this was not found to be so by lab tests but more likely by some gluttonous goose with a habit of overeating. Gus the Gluttonous Goose. (It has been known to happen.) Farmers then, as today (unless they are a conglomerate) were not generally known to be among the wealthy. Careful husbandry (care - with an overlying hint of thrift attached to it) was the only way they might survive well - if they survived well at all. To the farmer, a goose is a product. Now the moral question must be raised as to whether an animal has the same rights to freedom as any human being, and that is something that each person must answer for themselves. . . but to my mind - well. It used to be that when I thought of chickens my mind raced to The Little Red Hen. How cute! How sweet! A little hen, anthropomorphized into a quite sane and literate teller of How To Best Live Life. I loved chickens. Till I visited my first chicken farm. It was there that I discovered that most chickens did not have the same innate and marvellous intelligence of the hen I loved - and indeed they stunk to high heavens and they tried to bite me. Cows. Yes - there were always the beautiful cows out in the fields, decorating the landscape so nicely. Visit one. It most likely will try to step on you, and will be quite difficult to get six hundred pounds of Daisy off your foot. Lambs are adorable. But ask any farmer how much trouble a young male lamb can cause just because he is himself. My final conclusion came to be that most animals (unless they are wily enough to pretend to want to be happy-go-lucky companions to the wonder that is the human race) are best raised to be eaten. For if they had their chance, I have no doubt at all that they would eat us. But back to the idea of husbandry. The production of foie gras is the practice of good animal husbandry at its highest level. Here is a goose. This goose can provide a roast for dinner OR it can provide foie gras and perhaps later a nice braise. The notion of thrift, careful and thoughtful management of the natural resources that we as human beings consider ourselves to be the stewards of in this world, is drawn well in the example of foie gras production. And thrift, itself, when practiced in this manner, is a classical virtue. It ties together a sense of care for what has been provided for us with a living reality of care shown through husbandry. That foie gras is a luxury item perhaps causes some of the anger that is attached to it. It reeks of conspicuous consumption - there is a taint of lack of care given to the animal - there is a sense of a product being made for the wealthy while putting a poor animal at risk of pain in the process. Yet there is no proof that the animal suffers and indeed there is evidence that these geese enjoy their feedings when properly done as any good working farmer should know how to - and as the production of foie gras is monitored by governmental agencies it probably behooves farmers to know how to do it in the right manner. Foie gras, besides being something delicious to eat (to my mind) finally, exemplifies a virtue, not a sin. So I will thank the goose (in my mind) and be grateful to the farmers of all times past for being able stewards of many good things, and will sit down with grace intended to dine upon it.

Is this what Anne of Green Gables used to eat for breakfast? Lard and porridge, with a side of pig intestines?! Indeed, that will give a child backbone.

Now that's not fair, Mallet - to leave everyone hanging on to the thought of "WHAT KIND of fat?" Today I am thinking of a mid-day snack of olives - stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, varieties of hot and sweet peppers, anchovies, tuna, and artichoke hearts - battered and fried. Maybe throw in a handful or two with centers of Pernod or Cassis syrups. That could be the beverage part of the meal.

Souffled potatoes. With a bit of Reblochon blended with ever-so-tiny bits of black truffle inserted into the center of each intended pouff before the final baptism by fire and oil.

And also I must apologize for this post. I used the word "honestly" twice. And everyone knows that two negatives make a positive. God how I hate it when I discover I've lied without even knowing it. Bad show. Bad bad bad. But I am looking forward to the book arriving for further discussion, or alternately a nice long nap.

Yes, to your last question. But please do not ever associate me with those people you've mentioned in the first sentence - you know, the PLT's. Thank you.

Hmmm. Another version of Swanson's frozen TV dinners?