Food city area: Food in Literature

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Sunday Brunch

Sunday Brunch

Sunday Brunch at Gabi's Yesterday my book group met to have brunch and discuss the book Memoir of the Sunday Brunch by Julia Pandl. T...

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09.13

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvl2y7GGltxXE7ugX01enqVeQsZEwBZoCWyA9gubNVXRSYSLfpQhyff8L8lV7DYqDoIbSAaV3nl4w382H8GlsK1fFd6lVNXDKeVdZ7L9Gf81AHRFWJ3t8tg8j-qfcrlEfgg3Lg9MNfQDYk/s1600/chang-rae-lee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvl2y7GGltxXE7ugX01enqVeQsZEwBZoCWyA9gubNVXRSYSLfpQhyff8L8lV7DYqDoIbSAaV3nl4w382H8GlsK1fFd6lVNXDKeVdZ7L9Gf81AHRFWJ3t8tg8j-qfcrlEfgg3Lg9MNfQDYk/s1600/chang-rae-lee.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>The <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/books/review/on-such-a-full-sea-by-chang-rae-lee.html?_r=0">review on January 2</a> described Chang-Rae Lee's novel <i>On Such a Full Sea</i> as "a wonderful addition not only to Chang-rae Lee’s body of work but to the ranks of 'serious' writers venturing into the realm of dystopian fantasy." The reviewer compared it favorably to similar novels by Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Cormac McCarthy, and Anthony Burgess. I decided to read it.<br /><br /><i>On Such a Full Sea</i> was a terrible disappointment overall. The author's choice of showing a distopian future by describing a naive member of society making a road trip isn't very original as far as I'm concerned. The traveler's  discovery of a series of enclaves with varying types of people and levels of control by government is predictable. Her encounter with rapacious or pathological expressions of human nature didn't rise above the ordinary. Pointed parallels to the tendencies or dangers of our own society in fact become tedious and a bit hackneyed. I just don't agree with any of the favorable reviews I read.<br /><br />The naive traveler, a very young woman named Fan, comes from B-Mor, once the city of Baltimore, and she travels west into "The Smokes." The one unusual feature of the novel is the narration by a collective voice representing the people of B-Mor: people who came from "New China" in the nearly-forgotten past and displaced the original inhabitants. The voice relates what "we," the people of B-Mor at some unspecified future time, know about Fan and her journey, and above all how "we" don't know what her motives were or why she made each decision to move on.<br /><br />The people of B-Mor in this distopian era make a collective living by producing industrial and very hygienic food -- specifically fish raised in tanks and hydroponic, very uniform vegetables -- for more elite towns, where the people are very rich. In B-Mor people like Fan worked very hard and had little imagination or richness to their lives; they appreciated having a schedule: "it helps one to sleep more soundly, to work steadily through one's shift, maybe even to digest the hearty meals, and finally to enjoy all the free time." (p. 2; Kindle location 76)<br /><br />In fact each part of the region that hasn't been totally ruined makes a living from some collective occupation serving the rich, while out in "The Smokes" poverty and living by hook or crook prevades. Ok, sounds like <i>Hunger Games,</i> but the NYT reviewer didn't stoop to that comparison.<br /><br />Traveling in search of her disappeared boyfriend Reg, Fan discovers new sorts of people as she grows hungrier and hungrier -- she's pregnant and struggling to hide her condition from each group of people or family that take her in, mostly for terrible motives. The author does a good job using food to distinguish the old inhabitants from the "New China" interlopers, Fan's people. Food enables the author to let the reader know what he thinks of various people: vegetarians who are also murderers, poor people living on the edge, rich people obsessed with cuisine. But it's a bit predictable.<br /><br />In B-Mor the "New China" people are fond of their native food; a funeral feast illustrates this. "Homemade delicacies" included "Shanxi-style smoked pork belly, stuff you hardly ever see these days. The fatty peppery scent of the dish was absolutely transporting ... but ... it was a cloud you kept wishing would blow away, so you could taste only woe." (p. 28; Kindle location 419)<br /><br />As the collective "we" describes their view of Fan, sometimes the reader learns more about them; for example as they hear stories about old times "Auntie Virginia poured cups of iced tea to go with the boiled peanuts she'd bring out in a white plastic bowl." (p. 68; Kindle location 927)<br /><br />During Fan's final adventure, in the poorer places people eat almost exclusively from canned goods and long-lasting food pouches, which are usable as barter as well as edible. Fan often observes them eating right out of the can or pouch. An evening meal in one household in the Smokes "meant sometimes frying up eggs, or game if someone shot or trapped any, but mostly it was heating stuff right in the cans... everyone would share what they had, a potluck of diced carrots and mackerel and kidney beans, and if someone was feeling extra-generous maybe a tin of beef chili or chicken stew." (p. 86; Kindle location 1151)<br /><br />In contrast, in one of the elite compounds, she's taken to a kind of rogue fair where people dare to eat street food. It's daring to eat this rather than the very pure and artificially grown food like that raised in B-Mor: "you could get Belgian street frites, or a Hiroshima-style <i>okonomiyaki</i>, or a gravy-sopped plate of chicken and dumplings. They went to Vik's favorite, the Chinese-Korean tent, where he ordered them bowls of chive <i>jajang</i> noodles and a small platter of braised sea cucumber, which Fan could not stop eating." (p. 271; Kindle location 3517)<br /><br />Fan's final stopping place, in the high-status compound, introduces her to one of the wealthiest families of the tale, where the head of the house believes that "Eating was obviously elementary, it was what people did most of their day, literally taking in the world." He was fascinated by food preparation, and tried to involve all his children in it "from the selection of the ingredients at the village market to the chopping and measuring and cooking (the babies given a strong whiff of everything from ginger slices to cinnamon sticks, after which they'd sometimes cry), the idea being a holistic appreciation through mindful exertions that would result in the best chance for well-being." (p. 343; Kindle location 4436)<br /><br />Obviously, this noble view of food suggests that the character is out of touch with the lower classes. He too ends up not so nice, but I'll refrain from spoiling the ending. No one is nice in this distopia!

"On Such a Full Sea"

The New York Times review on January 2 described Chang-Rae Lee's novel On Such a Full Sea as "a wonderful addition not only to C...

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05.56

The Garden of Beasts

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh25jTmbRH86Rb0Y9fWQJFAA4_OzeIoQVFn1_TBDMtBAZT5WAODUrpLK2ffzDwe-0dJ51u93s2M5Cs3Pusx8lrOkktDeuRPSQr10onFcUpW6d8TbzP20vrIxs6MDHtZvhmlu1N33N_6ryZA/s1600/bookclub+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh25jTmbRH86Rb0Y9fWQJFAA4_OzeIoQVFn1_TBDMtBAZT5WAODUrpLK2ffzDwe-0dJ51u93s2M5Cs3Pusx8lrOkktDeuRPSQr10onFcUpW6d8TbzP20vrIxs6MDHtZvhmlu1N33N_6ryZA/s400/bookclub+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elaine's Table: Stollen, Lebkuchen, German Cheese, etc.</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC9zOo3CaKt-37oBupdm-TXjfRaOM7HPGM69LxNe0Un9aXDykuNekXHnFtf4j66Y-vN7LSaK6DJNZIroji82CvL6-Ef6sqb4kvhpyTr2e1WcmMloNKnpt4eD4ecvwjY2hG85PBp_ZDryKW/s1600/bookclub+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC9zOo3CaKt-37oBupdm-TXjfRaOM7HPGM69LxNe0Un9aXDykuNekXHnFtf4j66Y-vN7LSaK6DJNZIroji82CvL6-Ef6sqb4kvhpyTr2e1WcmMloNKnpt4eD4ecvwjY2hG85PBp_ZDryKW/s400/bookclub+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Center: Kichel, a very light traditional Jewish cookie</td></tr></tbody></table>Last night my book club discussed <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Beasts-terror-Hitlers-Berlin-ebook/dp/B004HFRJM6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386350934&sr=8-1&keywords=Erik+Larson" style="color: #996633;">In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span class="med reg" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">by Erik Larson </span>, a story of 1933-1934 Berlin and the rise of Hitler and the early impact on Berlin and its inhabitants. Therefore our hostess, my friend Elaine, served a combination of German and Jewish foods, as shown above. As usual, we had a very free-ranging discussion about the book and ideas that came up in connection with the book, such as the role of Churchill in recognizing the reality of Hitler's rise, and the conditions in America at the time. Below are some of the themes that we discussed and things I've thought about the book.<br /><br />William E. Dodd, America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany is the center of <i>In the Garden of Beasts</i>, along with his family. The book also describes in some detail the antics of his daughter who inappropriately was having affairs with both Nazis and with a Soviet agent. Larson's choice of Dodd as a focus allows Larson to describe early Nazi success from the point of view of a historic individual who didn't know how things would turn out. Dodd's and his daughter's central roles make the book read like a novel, though it's completely based on historical research.<br /><br />Before Roosevelt appointed him as ambassador, Dodd was a professor at the University of Chicago, trying to finish his life's work: a book on the Old South. He wasn't political and he wasn't connected to the elite circles of high-society, wealthy, ivy-league, anti-semitic white men who ran the State Department. His conflicts and problems with them and with his similarly-connected subordinates in Berlin are one of the interesting topics of the book. Particularly, as he had no fortune, he was determined to live and entertain on his salary -- in total contrast to the usual ambassador types.<br /><br />As a more open-minded and academic thinker than the standard State Department officials, one area of conflict was Dodd's clear-headed ability to see just what the Nazis were up to: how they were enforcing their wish that ordinary Germans to go along with their program. At one point, for example, we get sudden insight into how far things have gone: Dodd sees a swastika embossed on a cough drop that one of the Nazi contacts offers him. I had a lot of sympathy for Dodd as he found it harder and harder to exert normal diplomatic relations with Hitler's officials, whose actions were increasingly heinous. Dodd began to refuse to attend Nazi rallies and other events that were so hysterical in the way they worked up crowd mentality and attacked Jews -- leading to more criticism and back-biting in Washington.<br /><div><br /></div>After finishing Larson's book, I started rereading a novel about wartime Berlin that book club read last summer: <i>City of Women</i> by David Gillham.  The two books, set at different times in Nazi history, seem to work together in my mind to give a picture of how the Germans were corrupted and bullied into compliance with Nazi thought. The impoverishment of the ordinary Germans, who were on very tight rations and found almost nothing in the shops, and the outright denial of food to the hidden Jews in Gillham's book provides a food theme, or rather a starvation theme.<br /><br />Both Berlin books are painful to read -- Larson says (in the afterword and in some interviews we discussed last night) that he found the research for the book terribly depressing and horrifying. Larson's earlier book was <i>Devil in the White City</i> about the Chicago World's Fair, a previous book club selection <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2009/07/devil-in-white-city.html">which I wrote about here.</a> Although in it Larson describes the horrible actions of a serial killer who was preying on women who came to the fair, Larson said he didn't find that anywhere near as difficult as learning about Hitler, for whom he developed an overwhelming hatred. I also found the World's Fair a much lighter topic than Hitler and prefer the earlier book.

The Garden of Beasts

Elaine's Table: Stollen, Lebkuchen, German Cheese, etc. Center: Kichel, a very light traditional Jewish cookie Last night my book club d...

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10.11

Northwood by Sarah Josepha Hale

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSybQeMUDu6BhdJj77ltK90kyigEuosAu2dFvuvLKamd7LlbTe-UUFbUJK9O7rcFpFJCsoFV3FAlaijQ7xl7ObE3GXkehZvZbfq8OXGMqe8eoTaT4kkihvmYTMIFh_dqDzuTGeMWcEnvRl/s1600/Northwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSybQeMUDu6BhdJj77ltK90kyigEuosAu2dFvuvLKamd7LlbTe-UUFbUJK9O7rcFpFJCsoFV3FAlaijQ7xl7ObE3GXkehZvZbfq8OXGMqe8eoTaT4kkihvmYTMIFh_dqDzuTGeMWcEnvRl/s400/Northwood.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Northwood</i>, Title Page, Second Edition (Wiki Media)</td></tr></tbody></table>In the novel <i>Northwood</i> by Sarah Josepha Hale, published in 1827, I was amazed to find a description of Thanksgiving dinner that is so close to what we have today. The major difference is the variety of meat dishes beyond just the turkey. Hale is famous for her advocacy of making Thanksgiving a national holiday. Her later non-fiction writings included lots of advice for how the holiday should be celebrated: in other words, we owe her!<br /><br />But here are her original words:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“But now to my dinner … A long table, formed by placing two of the ordinary size together, was set forth in the parlor, which being the best room, and ornamented with the best furniture, was seldom used, except on important occasions. The finishing of the parlor was in a much better manner than that of any other apartment in the house; the wood work was painted cream color, and the plaster walls ornamented with paper hangings of gay tints and curious devices. …<br /> <o:p> </o:p>“The furniture of the parlor consisted of a mahogany sideboard and table, a dozen handsome rush-bottomed chairs, a large mirror, the gilt frame covered with green gauze to prevent injury from dust and flies, and on the floor was a substantial, home manufactured carpet, woven in a curious manner and blended with all the colors of the rainbow …<br /><o:p> </o:p>“The table, covered with a damask cloth, vieing in whiteness, and nearly equalling in texture, the finest imported, though spun, woven and bleached by Mrs. Romelee’s own hand, was now intended for the whole household, every child having a seat on this occasion, and the more the better, it being considered an honor for a man to sit down to his Thanksgiving supper surrounded by a large family. The provision is always sufficient for a multitude, every farmer in the country being, at this season of the year, plentifully supplied, and every one proud of displaying his abundance and prosperity.<br /><o:p> </o:p>“The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station, sending forth the rich odour of its savoury stuffing, and finely covered with the frost of the basting. At the foot of the board a surloin of beef, flanked on either side by a leg of pork and joint of mutton, seemed placed as a bastion to defend innumerable bowls of gravy and plates of vegetables disposed in that quarter. A goose and pair of ducklings occupied side stations on the table, the middle being graced, as it always is on such occasions by that rich burgomaster of the provisions, called a chicken pie. This pie, which is wholly formed of the choicest parts of fowls, enriched and seasoned with a profusion of butter and pepper, and covered with an excellent puff paste, is, like the celebrated pumpkin pie, an indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving; the size of the pie usually denoting the gratitude of the party who prepares the feast. … Plates of pickles, preserves, and butter, and all the necessaries for increasing the seasoning of the viands to the demand of each palate, filled the interstices on the table, leaving hardly sufficient room for the plates of the company, a wine glass and two tumblers for each, with a slice of wheat bread lying on one of the inverted tumblers. A side table was literally loaded with the preparations for the second course, placed there to obviate the necessity of leaving the apartment during the repast. Mr. Romelee keeping no domestic, the family were to wait on themselves, or on each other. There was a huge plumb pudding, custards, and pies of every name and description ever known in Yankee land; yet the pumpkin pie occupied the most distinguished niche. There were also several kinds of rich cake, and a variety of sweet meats and fruits. On the sideboard was ranged a goodly number of decanters and bottles; the former filled with currant wine and the latter with excellent cider and ginger beer, a beverage Mrs. Romelee prided herself on preparing in perfection. There were no foreign wines or ardent spirits, Squire Romelee being a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">consistent</i> moralist.” -- Google Book Edition p. 114-117</span></blockquote>                   <br /><br />

Northwood by Sarah Josepha Hale

Northwood , Title Page, Second Edition (Wiki Media) In the novel Northwood by Sarah Josepha Hale, published in 1827, I was amazed to find a...

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06.17

"Yes, Chef"

In his memoir <i>Yes, Chef</i>,  the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson shows  himself to be a man who loves food and who is dedicated to several ideals of ethnic awareness and racial equality. Though I knew that Samuelsson was a native of Ethiopia, adopted as a small child and raised in Sweden, author of a book of pan-African recipes, and later an immigrant and naturalized citizen of the US, I wasn’t expecting the high quality of writing and high level of global consciousness that I found in the book. <br /><br />Always loving food and cooking, Samuelsson credits his Swedish grandmother Mormor with introducing him to food: <br /><blockquote>“At <i>Mormor’s</i>, the smell of food was omnipresent: The yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread or the tang of drying rose hips  hit you as soon as you walked in. Something was always going on in her kitchen, and usually several things at once. My grandmother would start chopping vegetables for dinner while sterilizing jars for canning, while stirring a pot of chicken stock or grinding pork for a month’s worth of sausages. If I had to try to pinpoint my earliest food memory it would not be a single taste, but a smell – my grandmother’s house.” (kindle location 268) </blockquote>“Every country has a cuisine,” Samuelsson says (kindle location 3317). He shares his fascination and respect for the deep flavors of Swedish food. He describes vividly his voyages long and short in search of unusual spices and cooking techniques in Europe, Asia, Africa, and among immigrant communities in New York.  From a stage on a cruise ship to Southeast Asia to walks through New York and spending all his meagre earnings on meals at respected restaurants, he searched for good tastes. <br /><br />His discovery of obscure flavors like the spice mix <i>berbere</i> native to his Amharic village in Ethiopia comes alive, while he also painfully explains the harsh poverty in which his natal family subsists. His efforts to be generous and helpful to his family (whom he found when he was over 30, after long efforts) depict his struggle to treat them with respect for their culture, while trying to give his much younger half-sisters a better chance through education. His emotional life is complex and maybe he’s not always perfect in his relationships with others, but I think he describes it in a way that makes one understand him.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE6NPXeFV6WJLs9ZmbWuYSr9HOJyW-UWgFysQeUsZXtdBfoS8QE5cxpKuMVpazAszkJCjH3-zS9AWkvnyCsFZsWR7c2h8n4RznQG_fid-dbCSYkItTLsHJNpEgbX5NzeGMhucoBXobpWK/s1600/redrooster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmE6NPXeFV6WJLs9ZmbWuYSr9HOJyW-UWgFysQeUsZXtdBfoS8QE5cxpKuMVpazAszkJCjH3-zS9AWkvnyCsFZsWR7c2h8n4RznQG_fid-dbCSYkItTLsHJNpEgbX5NzeGMhucoBXobpWK/s1600/redrooster.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Website of Samuelsson's restaurant Red Rooster.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Samuelsson began his education in a Swedish culinary school, but quickly sought apprenticeships in three-star establishments in Switzerland and Austria. The toughness of life in such kitchens is characterized by the automatic response of a subordinate when given an order: "Yes, Chef!" The apprenticeship of a chef in a modern kitchen is a frequent subject for chef memoirs; this one seems to me very vivid but less sensationalistic than some of the others.<br /><br />Samuelsson was always conscious of his racial difference, not least because a worker in those kitchens is often referred to as a “negre” – not a nice word. He’s especially clear about racism in high-end American restaurants and how it affected him during his development as a chef, beginning just above apprentice level and quickly progressing to be a head chef, a partner in a high-profile venture that failed, and finally as the chef chosen to cook the Obama's first White House state dinner and eventually as owner of a successful Harlem restaurant The Red Rooster.<br /><br />

"Yes, Chef"

In his memoir Yes, Chef , the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson shows himself to be a man who loves food and who is dedicated to several id...

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07.54

Mo Yan: The Garlic Ballads

<div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioxj8aEToanNXXu-zJNpjUvdqWJb4gmvTnluzQUbS2pMVKxnfD4MKaisnPEEh8k13SyDnXJmyi7fb_61BQEpYVghZ4-NV98hN4oY30Yj7aAvJfwhkFa64J-GNMWC1K94xvlpxZOdWIDrmS/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-10-31+at+2.17.42+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioxj8aEToanNXXu-zJNpjUvdqWJb4gmvTnluzQUbS2pMVKxnfD4MKaisnPEEh8k13SyDnXJmyi7fb_61BQEpYVghZ4-NV98hN4oY30Yj7aAvJfwhkFa64J-GNMWC1K94xvlpxZOdWIDrmS/s320/Screen+shot+2012-10-31+at+2.17.42+PM.png" width="224" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">     <br /><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t understand China, but I decided to read <i>The Garlic Ballads</i> by this year’s Nobelist in Literature, Mo Yan. I don’t understand the book any more than anything else about China. I can follow the narrative, which is not in chronological order, but still not too complicated -- I just find the culture to be a challenge.<br /><br />At the beginning of each chapter of <i>The Garlic Ballads</i>, we hear a few lines about garlic and politics, sung by a blind street singer named Zhang Kou. At the beginning:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>“Pray listen, my fellow villagers, to Zhang Kou’s tale of the mortal world and Paradise!</i> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i></i><i>The nation’s founder, Emperor Liu of the Great Han,</i> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i></i><i>Comanded citizens of our country to plant garlic for tribute…”</i> (p. 1)</blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal">Who is Emperor Liu? I don’t know. Why garlic? We’ll find out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After a few lines of ballad starting each chapter, the author slowly introduces a number of characters: dirt farmers in the village, the poor and mistreated of China. They have planted garlic for the 1987 harvest because it was selling for a lot of money – and because the planners told them to. They are very poor. They complain all the time because of rapidly rising prices of the things they need, such as pork and fertilizer for their garlic fields. The peasant women even have to stand in line at the birthing center. They constantly have to bribe the officials, who live much better than they do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When it’s time to sell the garlic, the market collapses and the farmers are left worse off than ever. Communist ideals of earlier days have been betrayed as this new free enterprise enables whole new abusive situations under the onus of bureaucracy. I think that this life doesn’t make sense to the characters, and that’s a reason why it doesn’t make sense to me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The first chapter tells of the arrest of one of these farmers, Gao Yang, who seems to have no idea what crime he was being accused of. Soon we meet another character named Gao Ma, who is also accused of a crime – starting a riot at the local city hall. A third arrestee, who appears somewhat later, is a woman of the village with a complicated relationship to the others. The chapters bob and weave back and forth between the horrible conditions in their jail cells, the filth, the lice, the smells, the abusive fellow prisoners. We follow the prisoners’ memories of their lives, from the time their fellow elementary school students mistreated them, through the recent garlic debacle, and up to the time of their arrest.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Garlic is everywhere. Green shoots in the fields. Piled in the farmers’ carts pulled by cow or donkey. In everything the farmers eat. Overflowing the warehouses. Confiscated in shakedowns by petty officials. Rotting in the street. An ingredient in many very unappetizing meals. Garlic everywhere! The crop should have sold for lots of money. As the blind poet said<i>,<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: 3.0pt;"><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>“Sing of the brilliant Party Central Committee… Elders and brothers, get rich on garlic, remake yourselves!” </i>(p. 205)</blockquote></div><div class="MsoNormal">Food is one of the principal elements in the characters’ lives. Most of the time they eat coarse flatbread “hard and resistant as a frozen rag.” In jail, one prisoner receives a bowl of noodle soup to make others jealous, so they will abuse him – their normal ration is “one steamed bun and a ladleful of soup.” (p. 87) The best meal in book is for a prisoner on death row -- a last dinner of fatty pork, potatoes, wafer cakes fried on a griddle and stuffed with green onions, and bean paste. (p. 247) Prison buns are made from stale mildewed flour with a few vegetables – and garlic, “raw, cold garlic,” “cold garlic broth” (pp. 79, 123)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sometimes I felt as if I was reading an even grimmer version of the “laughter through tears” style of Yiddish writers like Sholem Aleichem, whose characters endured similar mistreatment -- though not really as degrading. Reviewers have compared Mo Yan to Dickens, to Faulkner, or to South American Magical Realists. Hmmm.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Comedy or tragedy? There’s a comic scene when Gao Ma attempts to take a bride whose family had promised her elsewhere. But her tragic suicide is in no way amusing. The failure to sell garlic involves some comic scenes. But as the discouraged farmers, who had waited in a line of “farmers, trucks, oxcarts, horsecarts, tractors, bicycles, even motorbikes” (p. 130), dragged their garlic back home, one dies a tragic death when struck by a drunken official driving an unlicensed car. The riot in government offices is somewhat comic. I guess.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jail time is too humiliating to be funny, as are lives of mistreatment in memories; one charater says “dogs are better off than we are. People feed them when they’re hungry, and as a last resort, they can survive on human waste.” (p. 124) Finally, one accused prisoner stands up to the judges at his trial, and a seemingly true voice of a noble soldier pleads for a better society. <br /><br /></div>The epigraph to the entire novel is attibuted to Joseph Stalin, “Novelists are so concerned with ‘man’s fate’ that they tend to lose sight of their own fate. Therein lies their tragedy.” I say attributed, since the only google hits for the quote are in articles about <i>The Garlic Ballads</i>, not about Stalin. I don’t understand this book.</div>

Mo Yan: The Garlic Ballads

I don’t understand China, but I decided to read The Garlic Ballads by this year’s Nobelist in Literature, Mo Yan. I don’t understand t...

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11.25

Food in Poetry

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWO6fYaKDZC2bJYipLi1R05lrxPWtfBYTSeqNs01pOEzFozpw_fW7uSGuXohyphenhyphenf3KsisgEBK_feAUYvSC8aYsb7m5_J4B1Ocsl-g9RO-xRbwIKyl_5anzffjWu1ak71m-CLh5dJAZNCJe3M/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-09-05+at+4.29.39+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWO6fYaKDZC2bJYipLi1R05lrxPWtfBYTSeqNs01pOEzFozpw_fW7uSGuXohyphenhyphenf3KsisgEBK_feAUYvSC8aYsb7m5_J4B1Ocsl-g9RO-xRbwIKyl_5anzffjWu1ak71m-CLh5dJAZNCJe3M/s320/Screen+shot+2012-09-05+at+4.29.39+PM.png" width="213" /></a></div>I often write about food in novels or other books I have read. I have just found a Poetry Magazine <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/browse/#subject=30">collection of poems that feature food</a>. Other than the famous one about plums by William Carlos Williams ("This is just to say"), or the Ogden Nash short poems published in the book depicted at right like the one about the parsnip, I couldn't easily think of any food poems. I'm not that much of a poetry reader, as it  happens; however, several of these poems appealed to me.<br /><br />Being a fan of Gertrude Stein, I enjoyed the poem titled "Christian Bérard." I already know quite a bit about what Gertrude Stein liked to eat, because of the <i>Alice B. Toklas Cookbook</i>. Here are the first lines of the poem:<br /><br /><h3>Christian Bérard</h3><br />BY GERTRUDE STEIN<br /><br />Eating is her subject.<br />While eating is her subject.<br />Where eating is her subject.<br />Withdraw whether it is eating which is her subject. Literally while she ate eating is her subject. Afterwards too and in between. This is an introduction to what she ate.<br />She ate a pigeon and a soufflé.<br />That was on one day.<br />She ate a thin ham and its sauce.<br />That was on another day.<br />She ate desserts.<br />That had been on one day.<br />She had fish grouse and little cakes that was before that day.<br />She had breaded veal and grapes that was on that day.<br />After that she ate every day.<br />Very little but very good.<br />She ate very well that day.<br />What is the difference between steaming and roasting, she ate it cold because of Saturday.<br />Remembering potatoes because of preparation for part of the day.<br />There is a difference in preparation of cray-fish which makes a change in their fish for instance.<br />What was it besides bread.<br />Why is eating her subject.        There are reasons why eating is her subject.<br />...<br /><br /><b>Two other poems that I liked</b> are by poets I was previously unfamiliar with: Paul Blackburn and Victor Hernandez Cruz. And there are so many more!<br /><br />The beginnings of these poems:<br /><h3>The Café Filtre</h3><br />BY PAUL BLACKBURN<br /><br />Slowly and with persistence<br />he eats away at the big steak,<br />gobbles up the asparagus, its<br />butter & salt &  root taste,<br />drinks at a glass of red wine, and carefully<br />taking his time, mops up<br />the gravy with bread—<br />The top of the café filtre is<br />copper, passively shines back, & between<br />mouthfuls of steak, sips of wine,<br />he remembers<br />at intervals to<br />with the flat of his hand<br />the top removed,<br />bang<br />at the apparatus,<br />create the suction that<br />the water will<br />fall through<br />more quickly<br />Across the tiles of the floor, the<br />cat comes to the table  :  again.<br />“I’ve already given you one piece of steak,<br />what do you want from me now? Love?”<br />...<br /><br /><h3>Red Beans</h3><br />BY VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ<br /><br />Next  to white rice<br />it looks like coral<br />sitting next to snow<br /><br />Hills of starch<br />border<br />The burnt sienna<br />of irony<br /><br />Azusenas being chased by<br />the terra cotta feathers<br />of a rooster<br />...

Food in Poetry

I often write about food in novels or other books I have read. I have just found a Poetry Magazine collection of poems that feature food . ...

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13.48

What did Shakespeare eat?

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEish8tQAhMQCUMI1ZMJ0oCNhGxtJblJNiUfqR2UFT8Lj0O2GtpUZcUQIF7f9hthibQDoJf8EP9Ozs15ZHQfkKlmtsWNdAjLpJczWX03gXg9lM1X_akqNbZ2GV7VHqdIQf9V_jH7x_38iBA7/s1600/shakespeare-cookbook1085.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEish8tQAhMQCUMI1ZMJ0oCNhGxtJblJNiUfqR2UFT8Lj0O2GtpUZcUQIF7f9hthibQDoJf8EP9Ozs15ZHQfkKlmtsWNdAjLpJczWX03gXg9lM1X_akqNbZ2GV7VHqdIQf9V_jH7x_38iBA7/s320/shakespeare-cookbook1085.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><br /><br />What did Shakespeare eat?<br /><br />Definitive answers here: <i>The Shakespeare Cookbook</i> by Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby, published by the British Museum Press this year. Andrew Dalby is a culinary historian, so this is a work of scholarship, using contemporary cookbooks and dietary advice books that were in print during Shakespeare's lifetime. I had no idea how many such works existed!<br /><br />Another surprise: many recipes are simple and close to modern cooking. For example, chicken fricassee described on page 54 is almost exactly the way I sometimes use up leftover chicken, though the modern version often includes pimentos (a variety of capsicum peppers, which Dalby says hadn't reached England from the New World yet) and the Shakespeare-era version uses the spice mace, which isn't on my spice shelf.<br /><br />A variety of pies of all sizes combine meat, fruit, suet, and spice into a preparation that predates our mince pies. The small ones are called "chewets" and contain saffron and ground ginger along with cooked meat. If I could find suet, I would be interested to try pies or chewets, as I have always liked that funny packaged mincemeat that is featured at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I would like to meet its ancestor. (If I could find a swan, there's another recipe in the book I might try too.)<br /><br />Similarly there are recipes for a sort of meatball including meat-egg-dried fruit and flavored with mace. Large ones were called Farts, small ones were called Fysts. I definitely plan to try these, as the modernized recipe doesn't require suet at all. And the name is so amusing! Dalby doesn't offer any word history on this. Although there are many references on the Web to the original recipe, a quick look didn't offer me any insight into why this word meant little meatballs in Elizabethan times.<br /><br />The explanation of what the word "cake" meant to Shakespeare is very interesting. "A cake, to Shakespeare, was a concept that overlapped with the modern English cake but didn't coincide with it." (page 70)<br /><br />So, the authors point out, cakes could sweet or savory in the famous line<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?" </blockquote>The word cake could refer to a loaf cake, a tea-cake, or a waffle. It could mean a biscuit. (I think this is the British biscuit, which in America we call a cookie -- the problem of terminology didn't stop in Shakespeare's time.) The book's cake recipe is for Barm Brak, made from white-bread dough, sugar, lard, eggs, raisins, and sweet spices.<br /><br />Every section of the book has a discussion of a food reference in a particular Shakespeare play, with elaborations from the literature of Shakespeare's contemporaries as well as contemporary food sources. Almost every page includes an illustration, also contemporary to Shakespeare. And every section offers a wide range of interesting references and information, as well as at least one recipe quoted directly from the sources and then a modernized version. A fantastic book, for which I'm grateful to my friend Sheila!

What did Shakespeare eat?

What did Shakespeare eat? Definitive answers here: The Shakespeare Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby, published by the British Mus...

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08.35

The Night Circus

Hot cocoa, spiced cider, popcorn with caramel, chocolate mice with licorice tails, pastry dipped in cinnamon-sugar... these are the tastes and smells of the magic Circus in Erin Morgenstern's delightful novel <i>The Night Circus</i>. The author seems to have intuited and absorbed the conclusions also being studied by the emerging science of neurogastronomy, that is, the exploration of a kind of synesthesia between taste and smell. The novel presents profound reactions and memories based on these senses.*<br /><br />Several of the recurring events and experiences in <i>The Night Circus</i> are intensified by aromas and flavors.  Food is vividly described (as well as interactions between the eccentric host and guests) at exotic Midnight Dinners held by one of the founders of the circus.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"Dish after dish is brought to the table, some easily identifiable as quail  or rabbit or lamb, served on banana leaves or baked in apples or garnished  with brandy-soaked cherries. Other courses are more enigmatic, concealed in  sweet sauces or spiced soups, unidentifiable meats hidden in pastries and  glazes.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"Should a diner inquire as to the nature of a particular dish, question the  origin of a bite or a seasoning, a flavor she cannot put her finger on (for even  those with the most refined of palates can never identify each and every  flavor), she will not be met with a satisfying answer. ...</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"The desserts are always astonishing. Confections deliriously executed in  chocolate and butterscotch, berries bursting with creams and liqueurs. Cakes  layered to impossible heights, pastries lighter than air. Figs that drip with  honey, sugar blown into curls and flowers." (p. 70-71) </span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">And </span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"Dessert consists mainly of a gargantuan tiered cake shaped to resemble  circus tents and frosted in stripes, the filling within a bright shock of  raspberry cream. There are also miniature chocolate leopards, and  strawberries coated in looping patterns of dark and white chocolates."  (p. 301-302)</span></blockquote> <span style="background-color: white;">In the circus itself, caramel and smoke smells and unimaginably delicious food and beverages like the cider and cocoa trigger both real and magical responses. The intensity of the story, which is multi-layered and sensual in many other ways, is constantly amplified by descriptions of both identifiable and mysterious aromas.<br /><br />The power of aromas is especially captured in one particular scene in the novel. Little bottles and jars in one of the many magic circus tents hold aromas that trigger the memory of stories for Widget, one of the keepers of the circus tale. When a character opens it, one bottle behaves like this: </span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"A small wisp of smoke escapes, but other than that it is empty. As he peers  inside he smells the smoke of a roaring fire, and a hint of snow and roasting  chestnuts, Curious, he inhales deeply. There is the aroma of mulled wine and  sugared candy, peppermint and pipe smoke. The crisp pine scent of a fir tree.  The wax of dripping candles. He can almost feel the snow, the excitement,  and the anticipation, the sugary taste of a striped candy. It is dizzying and  wonderful and disturbing. After a few moments, he replaces the lid and puts  the jar carefully back on the table." (p. 314)</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">This character, Bailey, who is being brought into the circus to make it last forever, experiences Widget's little bottles, especially one that preserves the memory of an oak tree on his family farm:</span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"He pulls out the minuscule stopper, relieved that it remains attached to the  bottle with a curl of wire.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"The sensation inside is so familiar, so comforting and recognizable and real  that Bailey can feel the roughness of the bark, the smell of the acorns, even  the chattering of the squirrels."(p. 359)</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">The book has a wealth of other magical aspects, relating to the two central characters Celia (who wears a deeply personal perfume!) and Marco. Celia's father Prospero, one of the magicians who sets the events going, is especially fascinated by Shakespeare, and he would have liked to name her Miranda, but she answered only to Celia, perhaps because he had nothing like the control of Shakespeare's Prospero over his little island realm.<br /><br />Secrets and stories -- like the ones Widget collects -- are an intimate part of magic. One of Widget's stories is often mentioned by the magical circus people -- it's the tale told of a wizard who revealed his secrets and was imprisoned in a tree by one of the enchantments he himself disclosed. Like the Shakespeare theme, it's totally absorbing, but I'll limit myself to what I've said about aromas and tastes, rather than trying to review the book as a whole.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibI4W8u3Wb2-Gil0pDxLKoPlKBzUuZ0FTYmkQ65SHHNWw6qHAsy7QV6l4bEE6A8WiVV7Xd108uy59yUWQpFVcv-N1Qfb3XDJE3WCXv5uGHcV-5bFVej4mfBcMw8dkfdDM52Bv3jOETVfls/s1600/nightcircus.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibI4W8u3Wb2-Gil0pDxLKoPlKBzUuZ0FTYmkQ65SHHNWw6qHAsy7QV6l4bEE6A8WiVV7Xd108uy59yUWQpFVcv-N1Qfb3XDJE3WCXv5uGHcV-5bFVej4mfBcMw8dkfdDM52Bv3jOETVfls/s320/nightcircus.jpeg" width="207" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">*The science of taste and smell as I refer to it, is described in the book  <i>Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why it Matters</i> by Gordon M. Shepherd, and other sources. Shepherd provides strong arguments against the old belief that the human brain is deficient in processing aromas and flavors, and he describes in detail how the brain creates flavor-smell images. It's not necessary to be scientific to read The Night Circus, but the connection is fascinating. The author does credit a perfumery called <a href="http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/welcome.html">Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab</a>, though not that I noticed any scientific writing!</span></span>

The Night Circus

Hot cocoa, spiced cider, popcorn with caramel, chocolate mice with licorice tails, pastry dipped in cinnamon-sugar... these are the tastes a...

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14.06

Henry James Refinement

I have been reading two complementary books:<br /><i><br /></i><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The Ambassadors </i>by Henry James </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1pYzjeXj1OZzLxWLzIrGv84BFNuEhmRZvpIex_NcrYonlvVRxDcha101k3UTA5lOKig4z2eiajaBM9w7k-6Wf5IEYHqIILu4nHUx-as4DwTrOFzHRd6GsEFuUtIWl493oY9WTkShXFgtX/s1600/ambassadors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1pYzjeXj1OZzLxWLzIrGv84BFNuEhmRZvpIex_NcrYonlvVRxDcha101k3UTA5lOKig4z2eiajaBM9w7k-6Wf5IEYHqIILu4nHUx-as4DwTrOFzHRd6GsEFuUtIWl493oY9WTkShXFgtX/s320/ambassadors.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Foreign Bodies</i> by Cynthia Ozick </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgMt5vw681ITsjxkD-SAcf3eW7YqpKd00S_g-Y4RUA9rOuOJJkf5MdU6_xAZTnXW2mpiwbWqiuVOBhTPEop8Cn5RWquZ1Ykr1OqPSVmAGeqKgfHCymFvnP7EZhkd8sBZWLyw96zxNfdkw/s1600/Foreign-Bodies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgMt5vw681ITsjxkD-SAcf3eW7YqpKd00S_g-Y4RUA9rOuOJJkf5MdU6_xAZTnXW2mpiwbWqiuVOBhTPEop8Cn5RWquZ1Ykr1OqPSVmAGeqKgfHCymFvnP7EZhkd8sBZWLyw96zxNfdkw/s320/Foreign-Bodies.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br />I'm kind of a fan of Ozick, and when I learned that this recent work of hers was in some way based on <i>The Ambassadors,</i> I decided to read both. Indeed, thematically they have much in common, and there's a lot I could say about them, but for the moment, I'm just going to talk about the way that the two authors use food in their narratives. I think it helps to pinpoint why I like Ozick but I'm infuriated by James. <br /><br />Unsympathetic, self-absorbed, idly rich, status-conscious, easily impressed (by European pretensions), egocentric characters abound in <i>The Ambassadors. </i>I'm really not sure if James saw them that way, or if he just admired people who were <span style="background-color: white;">self-absorbed, idly rich, egocentric, and gullible about European pretensions. I'm sure he didn't view them as shallow, but that's how they seem to me when all is said and done. Mostly James's characters talk and talk and talk, though occasionally they go out into the countryside or stop for a meal, continuing to be self-absorbed etc. all the time.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br />At one meal, a character named Madame de Vionnet -- whose own background is unclear, but who is married into a vaguely identified titled family -- sits opposite Strether, the novel's central character (who is the most extremely self-absorbed, idle, status-conscious, and easily impressed of them all). She looks at him "over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-colored Chablis."</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;"><br />A few paragraphs later we hear </span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;">"If all the accidents were to fight on her side ... he could only give himself up. This was what he had done in privately deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular runaway properly ends? The smash was their walk, their dejeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it -- to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own." (Kindle location 4188, Cambridge Edition)</span></blockquote><span style="background-color: white;">As the novel winds up, Strether goes to see a young man named Chad, another self-absorbed and easily manipulated character. Upon entering Chad's rooms, he finds a table where Chad has recently eaten. It contained </span><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"a supper of light cold clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether's approach in what might have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his life!..." (Kindle location 8061)</blockquote>The last sections of <i>The Ambassadors</i> consist of Strether's endless final interactions with various women who have influence over either Chad or Strether himself. At a critical one, Strether meets with Maria Gostrey, a character who seems to provide him with some sort of link to reality (perhaps):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this that he met her question.... She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him ... " <span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">(Kindle location 8258)</span></blockquote>This little detail leads up to a critical interchange between them, where he tells her he will leave her instead of making a commitment to her that she had been angling for.<br /><br />Excuse me if these quotes seem long-winded. Henry James IS long-winded. As I see it, highly refined bits of food sustain the characters in long bouts of navel-gazing and constantly worrying about commitment that in fact are sort of maddening. Strether is 55 years old, for crying out loud!<br /><br />The level of detail that's allusive but very unspecific is characteristic of the novel as a whole. It's why I can't believe I ever read anything by Henry James.<br /><br /><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b><u>AND IN CONTRAST... </u></b></span><br />Cynthia Ozick's characters are more human and sympathetic than those of James (not one of whom I like at all!) The thematic similarity of the novels is not in my view based on a similarity of characters' temperament or personality or values, but on the way that one character becomes an "ambassador" between others. In a way, Ozick's commentary makes James's exploration of the topic of ambassadorship have a wider meaning, borrowing the most interesting of his ideas.<br /><br />Ozick does not go for the extreme subtlety that James gives this thought -- especially as he makes all the events and conversations take place in Paris, and never directly describes or quotes the woman behind all the machinations. Her depiction of all the characters (the sender of "messages," the "ambassador," and the recipients of the "messages") in my opinion gives her book more depth, but I'm sure lots of critics and James-lovers would disagree.<br /><br />Food also isn't seen the same etherial way. It's pretty down-to-earth. One big reason is that many of the characters in Ozick's novel live in middle class America or in not-even-genteel poverty as exiles or displaced persons in Europe. (The events take place in 1952: one character is literally a D.P. whose former life and family were destroyed by time in concentration camps.) So right at the beginning, when the central character, Bea Nightingale, searches Paris for her renegade nephew, she finds a cafe with "odors of eggs and coffee all around." (p. 6)<br /><br />Many more flashback memories occur in Ozick's novel than in James's. This is another way I think the novel is more rooted in real life, not just some sort of rich person's imaginary world.<br /><br />Bea remembers a wedding of her best friend where she had been with her future (now ex) husband:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"They were standing side by side near an ice sculpture -- twin mermaids embracing -- at the base of which lay wide oval platters of sliced melon, layer upon layer of pink, orange, green, studded with swollen strawberries still attached to their leafy stems. The strawberries resembled surgically removed organs freshly lifted from the gash in an anaesthetized belly." (p. 27)</blockquote>Maybe Ozick's characters are portrayed as a bit vulgar, in contrast to the excessively refined James characters. But she knows what they are. She doesn't admire them for everything, though she communicates a level of sympathy that I as a reader can share.<br /><br />Ozick says the young man who is to be "rescued" by the ambassador from home is "a luftmentch" which she defines as "an inconsequential person, an impracticality made of air." (p. 96) This would be a good epithet for the young man in the James book, too -- in fact for several of them.

Henry James Refinement

I have been reading two complementary books: The Ambassadors by Henry James Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick I'm kind of a fan of Ozic...

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15.05

The Witch of Endor Ate Here

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7382896594/" title="ojai0038 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="ojai0038" height="375" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5331/7382896594_f3860492be.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />I've heard that the Witch of Endor has moved to Ojai, California, and lives or at least hangs out in an antique shop there. Or so says Michael Scott the author of <i>The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. </i>Earlier today, we were in Ojai for lunch in the sun at a nice little Mexican restaurant. We had standard, tasty Cal-Mex food starting with the usual chips and salsa, and continuing with platters of tamales and pupusas with a side of beans and rice. Nothing out of the ordinary, but we enjoyed ourselves.<br /><br />We also walked down Main Street near Libby Park, location of the witch's shop. We poked around in the shopping arcades across the street, looked in some galleries, and a went to a large bookstore, but didn't see any witches. However, I suspect that a modern witch would rather eat Mexican food than hummus, olives, eggplant salad, and pita, which is what she'd get nowadays in a sunny outdoor restaurant in Endor in the Jezreel Valley where she came from. In Biblical days she might have had bread, dates, and some kind of soft white cheese, I guess. I don't know what Biblical witches ate.<br /><br />We didn't hear about Sott's witch until we got home, anyway, or we would have checked a few more antique shops. We found out that Evelyn and Tom were watching us on "Find my friends." When they saw that we were in Ojai they were quite surprised as they weren't sure whether Scott had invented Ojai itself, as well as the witch's antique shop.

The Witch of Endor Ate Here

I've heard that the Witch of Endor has moved to Ojai, California, and lives or at least hangs out in an antique shop there. Or so says M...

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17.41

Food can be funny

<p class="MsoNormal">Anything – even hunger -- can be funny in Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s sprawling satire of early Soviet times, <i>The Little Golden Calf</i>. Bumbling bureaucrats, resource shortages, redistribution of possessions, and redefined relationships on all levels provided the two writers ample opportunities for broad humor. The novel is episodic: more or less centered around an informal group of con men and opportunistic thieves who take to the road in a car called the Antelope-Gnu. Published in 1936, and now somewhat culturally a bit alien, the novel is still full of really funny scenes.</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">Some chapters in <i>The Little Golden Calf</i> consist of sketches involving other people besides the road trippers -- people who are about to come in contact with the main group. One such diversion is titled “Vasisualy Lokhankin and His Role in the Russian Revolution” (<i>The Little Golden Calf</i>, transl. Fisher, p. 170 -177) It begins: “At exactly four-forty in the afternoon, Vasisualy Lokhankin went on a hunger strike.” </p>  <p class="MsoNormal">Vasisualy’s cause was simple: his wife Varvara had just told him she was leaving him with her lover, Pitburdukov. He says she can’t: “One person can’t leave another person if the other person loves her.” Varvara’s response: “She can too.” He vowed not to eat until she comes back, not “for a whole day. A week. A year. … I’ll lie here just like this, in my suspenders, until I die.”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">She began to walk away: “I’m leaving. Farewell, Vaisisualy I’m leaving your booklet of bread vouchers on the table.” Now things are clearer even to a 21<sup>st</sup> century American: food was rationed, but he was going on a hunger strike. As she walked toward the door, he ripped up the booklet and shouted “Save me!” She began to take him seriously: “Don’t you dare keep on this hunger strike! … This is stupid Vaisisualy. This is rebellious individualism.”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">He replied, “You don’t fully comprehend the meaning of individualism, or of the intelligentsia in general.”  In response, she took off her hat “and quickly made an open-faced sandwich with eggplant caviar, muttering ‘crazed animal,’ ‘tyrant,’ and ‘private property owner’ all the while.”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">She demanded that he eat the sandwich. He refused. “Taking advantage of the hunger-striker’s momentarily open mouth, Varvara deftly shoved the open-faced sandwich into the aperture between his little pharaonic beard and trim Moscow-style mustache.” He spits it out. “Eat, you good-for-nothing!... You intellectual!”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">Wait a minute, 21<sup>st</sup> century reader. How did such political jargon get into a quarrel between a couple as they are splitting up? What’s really behind this? Lokhankin’s next gesture, while brushing the crumbs out of his beard, was to lie back down on the couch: “He really did not want to part with his wife. As well as a multitude of shortcomings, Varvara had two key advantages: a large white bosom and a job. Vasisualy himself had never worked anywhere. Work would have kept him from thinking about the significance of the Russian intelligentsia, a social group of which he considered himself a member. Thus Lohankin’s extensive ponderings all came back to the same pleasant and deeply personal theme: ‘Vasisualy Lokhankin and his significance,’ ‘Lokhankin and the tragedy of Russian liberalism,’ ‘Lokhankin and his role in the Russian Revolution.’”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">Later that evening, Varvara’s lover Ptiburdukov arrived, determined to convince her to leave despite the hunger strike. She explained: “There he is! Just lying there! Animal! Vile private property owner! The thing is that this feudal landlord, this serf-owner, has gone on a hunger strike because I want to leave him.” She tried and again failed to force the now-stale eggplant-caviar sandwich on him: “Eat, you vile man. Eat, you serf-owner.”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">The next morning, he said: “There, now the sharp pains in the stomach have started. … And then there’ll be scurvy caused by malnutrition, with loss of hair and teeth.” Wait a minute, modern reader! We are picking up a reference to the real results of real starvation; such starvation had been widespread during the growing pains of the Soviet system a few years before this publication.</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">Ptiburdukov’s brother, a doctor, was called in for a visit. His recommendation: “the patient didn’t need to adhere to any particular diet. He could eat everything. Soup, for example, or meatballs, or compote. He could also have bread, vegetables, and fruits. Fish was also a possibility. He could smoke, within reason, of course. He wouldn’t recommend that the patient start drinking, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to introduce a shot of good port into his system... the doctor didn’t really understand the Lokhankins’ spiritual drama. Puffing up importantly and treading heavily in his boots, he left, declaring in parting that the patient was also not prohibited from bathing in the ocean or riding a bicycle.”</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">How do we read this? Surely we are being told that the doctor is not only not understanding the family drama, but also not understanding what foods would be available even if the “patient” were not on a hunger strike.</p>  <p class="MsoNormal">As time passed, the hunger strike continued. Varvara continued to stay in the apartment with her husband instead of running away. But one night she awakened from a bad dream about the doctor and discovered Vasisualy “standing in front of the open cupboard of the buffet, his back to the bed, chomping loudly. … Having ravaged an entire jar of preserves, he carefully took the lid off the pot, plunged his fingers into the cold borscht, and extracted a piece of meat from it. Even if Varvara had caught her husband at this game during the happiest days of their marriage, Vasisualy would’ve had a bad time of it. Now, however, his fate was sealed.” </p>  <p class="MsoNormal">She left him for good. “Lokhankin suffered openly and majestically. He luxuriated in his woe… His great sorrow gave him the chance to devote even more thought to the significance of the Russian intelligentsia, as well as to the tragedy of Russian liberalism.” </p><p class="MsoNormal">I read <i>The Little Golden Calf</i> as a part of my project on the city of Odessa for <a href="http://hero-or-antihero.blogspot.com/">my other blog</a>. Ilf and Petrov were both natives of Odessa, also the location of the apartment where Vasisualy and Varvara lived. <a href="http://hero-or-antihero.blogspot.com/search/label/Odessa">My posts about Odessa are here.</a></p>

Food can be funny

Anything – even hunger -- can be funny in Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s sprawling satire of early Soviet times, The Little Golden Cal...

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11.57

Bread

I just read <i>Bread: A Global History</i> by William Rubel and "Barms and Leavens -- Medieval to Modern," an article about bakers' yeast, brewers' yeast, and sourdough starters, by Laura Mason, in the collection titled <i>Over a Red-Hot Stove: Essays in Early Cooking Technology</i> edited by Ivan Day. Here's a photo of these two books sandwiching a few other books about bread:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiswF-kW960n2REWxJ6xyiy0MRxvqZtJuYzhpQ6m1qD-tbkVpf-ikEjp3FaC4CzgZneoiyd_e1mky2l9dGkSs_8SlB6vtH6177qte49xBAn3Oq5B6Pr-4m3HDyjFs8JhGheXzzIGgsf5C12/s1600/bread8824.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiswF-kW960n2REWxJ6xyiy0MRxvqZtJuYzhpQ6m1qD-tbkVpf-ikEjp3FaC4CzgZneoiyd_e1mky2l9dGkSs_8SlB6vtH6177qte49xBAn3Oq5B6Pr-4m3HDyjFs8JhGheXzzIGgsf5C12/s320/bread8824.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />Rubel's first chapter presents the prehistoric origins of bread. He writes: "Long before the Neolithic Revolution, when the hunters and gatherers in the Fertile Crescent made the cultural shift to farming and raising large animals..., the peoples in the region were harvesting and eating grains from vast fields of wild barley and wheat." He sets the earliest date for some type of bread-making in this region at 22,500 years ago, explaining that both wheat and barley, when winnowed, ground, and perhaps roughly sifted, could be used for a dough that would form "an aerated crumb, not a dense mass of starch." Archaeology identifies grindstones and traces of hearth fires that confirm this early bread-making. One major theme of his work is that early examples of bread were not necessarily primitive or crude: early people had and used tools and ingenuity to make bread that was tasty by modern standards, and moreover, was often visually creative in its decorative uses.<br /><br />Both Rubel and Mason explore at length the chemistry of bread-making. Mason's concentration is on the historic use of various substances to raise dough, mainly in England, and on the flavors and varieties of bread that resulted from the choices of housewives, noble kitchens, or professional bakers. The early bakers depended on either yeast -- which came from brewing beer or ale -- or on sourdough starter -- which resulted from exposing dough to ambient yeasts and bacteria. Both types of leavening resulted in a variety of flavors; only in the last 200 years or so has yeast exclusively intended for baking bread been prepared, preserved, and sold. Chemical baking powder is very recent, and is barely mentioned in either source.<br /><br />Rubel discusses the same choices in a number of historical and modern contexts, exploring not only the taste and chemistry, but also the social and cultural associations of various types of bread. He makes a case that the past 40 years or so have been a time of very rapid change in bread consumption and in worldwide changes in taste in bread, and especially in the globalization of some types of bread with the possible decline of some local products.<br /><br />Some tastes come and go, for example in some eras bread made from yeast has been highly prized, while in other eras, including the present, a higher value has been placed on sourdough. Also, some bakers cultivate practices that make sourdough bread more sour or less sour -- the famous Poilane bread (described in one of my books depicted) is much less sour than the well-known San Francisco sourdough breads. Mason interestingly pointed out that sourdough, relying more on bacteria, facilitates baking with non-wheat flour such as rye, while yeast creates less of a rise in rye or other grains.<br /><br />My previous favorite bread history was H.E.Jacob's <i>Six Thousand Years of Bread</i>. The two more recent works are much more scientific, and more based in analytic archaeology than in Jacob's more mystical views of bread, though his descriptions are very fascinating. All these books have a large and interesting amount of information and historic detail -- the subject seems almost inexhaustible.<br /><br /><br />

Bread

I just read Bread: A Global History by William Rubel and "Barms and Leavens -- Medieval to Modern," an article about bakers' ...

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10.23

The Belly of Paris

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV6LsBrOlXM3obgfGz_AVvR8dupqXdOmHo4A8sGFBESgdbw4yeMSXpCotPldwFmrZdGmbtBcMatg1m7gMQ-uOeykQ_tGAB3RNyWRQSCoFA5qXuiO8yTAr9wSTRi1Hj-V_eqD98TcXwhRH/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-16+at+4.51.19+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIV6LsBrOlXM3obgfGz_AVvR8dupqXdOmHo4A8sGFBESgdbw4yeMSXpCotPldwFmrZdGmbtBcMatg1m7gMQ-uOeykQ_tGAB3RNyWRQSCoFA5qXuiO8yTAr9wSTRi1Hj-V_eqD98TcXwhRH/s320/Screen+shot+2011-12-16+at+4.51.19+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />I just read Zola's <i>The Belly of Paris</i> in a new translation by Mark Kurlansky. It's the topic for the next meeting of the culinary history book club I belong to.<br /><br />What a masterpiece! The perceived conflict between thin people (who crave social justice) and fat people (mainly the small shopkeepers of the area) is presented vividly. The descriptions of the sights and smells of the market combine perfectly with the pettiness of the characters and their escalating quarrels. The market itself is the central image, along with the streets all around. The map above (<a href="http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/lib/public/full_screen.html?http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/paris/G5834-P3F7-1890z-P6/">from here</a>) shows all the little streets that he mentions.

The Belly of Paris

I just read Zola's The Belly of Paris in a new translation by Mark Kurlansky. It's the topic for the next meeting of the culinary h...

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06.03

Food is not Magical

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYxARWJNCQ9hsU3W7Ct_vb3J8T0h8r5-53Jd1n_sjORRp9_TsD1rIPWtkyy8GEufmRopxLoYnP9NqsSn1_e9YmB3nWGM0heDC389SVob7U0JYNtWKm8c5YiJcjD9GXcstbvh78IslB04gk/s1600/1Q84.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684171977738601618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYxARWJNCQ9hsU3W7Ct_vb3J8T0h8r5-53Jd1n_sjORRp9_TsD1rIPWtkyy8GEufmRopxLoYnP9NqsSn1_e9YmB3nWGM0heDC389SVob7U0JYNtWKm8c5YiJcjD9GXcstbvh78IslB04gk/s400/1Q84.jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 300px;" /></a>Haruki Murakami's new book <i>1Q84</i> conforms to his normal genre: magical realism. It's also very long: 925 pages, described as a doorstop in one review. In an earlier version of our real world, a book this huge would have been completely impractical as airplane reading -- but I bought the Kindle version. In fact, I couldn't finish it in a 13 hour flight from Japan, but now I have finished. <div><br /></div><div><i>1Q84</i> is enjoyable, but I think it could really have been shorter. Before I left for Japan, I reread Murakami's much earlier novel, <i>A Wild Sheep Chase,</i> as preparation. I think I like it better, though it's less suspenseful. The magic in it is more spontaneous, the sense of unreality develops more effectively and maybe more naturally if that makes sense.<div><br /></div><div>One thing I've noticed: magical realism has to be anchored in some sort of realistic world, and in Murakami, one area that stays real is food. While sampling or observing the many and remarkable types of restaurant food in Tokyo last week (Japanese-French banquet food, authentic sushi and other fish, tempura, noodles, rice bowls, kaiseki lunch, Edo hotpot, Wagyu beef, street vendors' offerings, small cakes and pastries in tea shops, and more) I wondered what Japanese people cook and eat at home. Murakami's descriptions of food are probably a reliable indication, even in the midst of the unreality of the plots of these novels.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's a sample of how Tengo, one of the two main characters, makes a meal for himself, after having shopped for the ingredients. He opens a beer, preps some "leathery edamame pods," and puts them on to boil. Then he daydreams about Aomame, the other main character, whom the magical side of things has destined as his own.</div><div><blockquote>"Tengo chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsley, too, he chopped up finely. He peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp out in neat rows, like troops in formation.  When the edamame were finished boiling, he drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and dribbled some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped ginger over a low flame." (p. 255)</blockquote></div><div>It's almost like a recipe. As the ginger is cooking, he continues to think about Aomame whom, at this point, he hasn't seen in 20 years, since they were both 10 years old.</div><div><blockquote>"He put the sliced celery and mushrooms into the frying pan. Turning the gas flame up to high and lightly jogging the pan, he carefully stirred the contants with a bamboo spatula, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper. ...."</blockquote></div><div>The cooking and daydreaming continue. "When the stir-fried shrimp and vegetables were ready, Tengo transferred the food from the frying pan to a large platter along with the edamame. He took a fresh beer from the refrigerator, sat at the kitchen table, and, still lost in thought, proceeded to eat the steaming food." After eating half, he puts the rest away in the refrigerator. </div><div><br /></div><div>In contrast, in an earlier scene, Aomame was served an elegant meal prepared by a professional chef at the home of a rich woman: "boiled white asparagus, salade Nicoise, a crabmeat omelet, and rolls and butter" -- showing, I guess, the evident value of French food to the Japanese that I also observed. (p. 233) In her own home cooking, she prefers fruits and vegetables, as she's a fitness instructor with highly-developed standards for her own health and healthy eating.</div><div><br /></div><div>Other characters mention eating packaged food, ready-to-microwave dishes, or packaged puddings, while Tengo cooks other elaborate dinners for himself as well as for a guest. He makes rice in a rice-cooker to go with sun-dried mackerel, tofu, daikon radish, pickled turnip slices, and pickled plums. Sometimes the foods mentioned are even less recognizable to the non-Japanese reader.</div><div><blockquote>"Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think -- about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions."</blockquote></div><div>In an inn where he stays, Tengo is served the same breakfast every day "dried horse mackerel and fried eggs, a quartered tomato, seasoned dried seaweed, miso soup with shijimi clams, and rice." </div><div><br /></div><div>During the course of the story, Tengo checks what is the number-one best selling book. It was a diet book entitled <i>Eat as Much as You want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight</i>. Tengo thinks: "What a great title. The whole book could be blank inside and it would still sell."</div><div><br /></div><div>My suspicion has been that the Japanese choice of home-cooked foods differs substantially from the American diet, and these various scenes from the real side of magical realism seem to support that thought. I think Tengo was made special by the fact that he is a man who lives alone but cooks elaborately, but that his choice of food was suggested to be roughly normal. In any case, the level of realistic detail about food is an interesting inclusion among the magical events of <i>1Q84.</i></div></div>

Food is not Magical

Haruki Murakami's new book 1Q84 conforms to his normal genre: magical realism. It's also very long: 925 pages, described as a doors...

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08.09

" My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner"

<span style="font-style:italic;">My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir</span> by Meir Shalev is a delicious depiction of Moshav Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. A moshav is a type of collective farm that's far less communal than a kibbutz. The early Israeli pioneers who preferred to live in separate homes for individual families frequently chose life on a moshav instead of the demanding shared kibbutz life. Nahalal was one of the first, perhaps the very first, moshav, founded by Russian Jews in the 1920s. In the course of his memoir, Shalev depicts life on the moshav throughout its history, and even provides background about the Russian villages where the founders came from.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrs5YbnCqC-4BTQza82vGc-DWPlwvy12hPfYlVBy_9XHcQ8vzyHp16no5wWBWxPR2D4adi52nOburV9XfgXNyu6wzwQEyQYUPKyQybsUU6DErog8oKL_sKqEc4O1aPiqVJ1Vy5AWUYjC6x/s1600/cemetery.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677271699658076754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrs5YbnCqC-4BTQza82vGc-DWPlwvy12hPfYlVBy_9XHcQ8vzyHp16no5wWBWxPR2D4adi52nOburV9XfgXNyu6wzwQEyQYUPKyQybsUU6DErog8oKL_sKqEc4O1aPiqVJ1Vy5AWUYjC6x/s400/cemetery.jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a>I especially enjoyed Shalev's memoir because I've visited the Moshav and met some of the present-day inhabitants. I was even given a tour of the cemetery where his parents are buried: a location that figures in several scenes in his memoir. At right is a photo that I took  on that visit.<br /><br />For our visit, we drove on the most recently built tollway from our temporary apartment in Rehovot up to Nahalal. In contrast, Shalev's earliest childhood trips to Nahalal in the 1950s were via the milk tanker that delivered milk from the moshav's cows to the dairy in Jerusalem. Though his grandparents were founders of the moshav, his mother had moved to Jerusalem where his father was a teacher and a poet, so the milk-truck driver would take him back to visit his grandmother and other relatives. Later, he traveled by train, a long and complicated route. His descriptions of train travel are vivid and amusing, right down to the sandwiches with tomato but with the salt packed separately so that the tomatoes wouldn't get mushy and to the last few miles when he and his mother and sisters would travel by horse-drawn cart.<br /><br />Here's my favorite passage about a story his grandfather told about life before going to Israel:<div></div><blockquote><div>"In the shop that his family had 'back there' in Makarov, in Ukraine, 'we sold products for the body, products for the soul, and products for between the two.' When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained. 'Products for the body were axes and hoes and boots for the Ukrainian farmers. Products for the soul were tallises, tefillin, and prayer books for the Jews.'</div><div><br /></div><div>"Then he fell silent and stared at me in order to get me to ask what the products in betwen the two were.</div><div><br /></div><div>'"Grandpa,' I said, 'and what were the products in between the two?'</div><div>"In between the two," he chuckled, 'is <i>selyodka,</i> herring. It's for both the body and the soul.'"</div></blockquote>

" My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner"

My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir by Meir Shalev is a delicious depiction of Moshav Nahalal in the Je...

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18.04

Dumas Celebrates Pork Month

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ifSVA0OZQacEAFTPYm6b8otHxWQHulg8P6-jiDOogdb3IyUmknm55ZjSKb_kGSebdgWyofW5034LXqZrpPfc-3cX7h_eJjBVPq1288EiZ2tvIWIzPFFDFd-uv-mbA_AKUvBW3Prmf6q9/s1600/dumas.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667648316664973778" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ifSVA0OZQacEAFTPYm6b8otHxWQHulg8P6-jiDOogdb3IyUmknm55ZjSKb_kGSebdgWyofW5034LXqZrpPfc-3cX7h_eJjBVPq1288EiZ2tvIWIzPFFDFd-uv-mbA_AKUvBW3Prmf6q9/s320/dumas.jpeg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 128px; height: 209px;" /></a>Alexandre Dumas is best known for the <i>Three Musketeers</i> (at least 29 different film versions listed on IMDB, as one measure of its popularity) and <i>The Count of Monte Cristo </i>(at least 18 versions) but he also wrote a gigantic work called the "Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine." I just bought the little tiny abridged version, recently republished. It's not exactly a cookbook but he does give recipes, so in honor of Louise's Cookbook Game at <a href="http://monthsofediblecelebrations.blogspot.com/">Months of Edible Celebrations,</a> I'm going to share a recipe in honor of Pork Month. That's what we do in this game: we pick a current MONTH, like Apple Month or in this case Pork Month, which is celebrated in October, and we find a recipe in a cookbook we like.<div><br /></div><div>The recipe in the tiny version of the "Grand Dictionnaire" which is titled <span style="font-style:italic;">From Absinthe to Zest: An Alphabet for Food Lovers</span>, doesn't just have any old entry for pork: it has "Young Wild Boar," which in French is "marcassin." The recipe is for "Quarter of wild boar with cherry sauce." You would surely want to make it, if you happened to have a "fresh tender quarter of a young wild boar." Dumas suggests that you start by dealing with the bone -- his description is detailed, on how to do this so that the bone protrudes properly from the meat. Then you put the meat in a litre of marinade, and let it macerate for two or three days, you cook it and baste it, drain it and "mask it with a thick layer of breadcrumbs (from black bread) which have been dried, pounded, sieved, mixed with a little sugar and cinnamon, and then dampened with some good red wine, but only enough to make them stick together." There are a few more instructions on cooking it, and finally putting "a paper frill around the protruding bone."<br /><br />The Cherry Sauce for the meat is made separately, from dried, unpitted cherries, softened in water and then pounded in a mortar.  Additional ingredients include red wine, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and lemon zest, all thickened with starch. <br /><br />Sounds delicious, doesn't it?<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>

Dumas Celebrates Pork Month

Alexandre Dumas is best known for the Three Musketeers (at least 29 different film versions listed on IMDB, as one measure of its popularit...

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21.06

"Pomegranate Soup" by Marsha Mehran

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA24QQeKUuwnuZzyOyb4a6lBhQvkRvHyPo0Uz29SSsKFOHJRq59sAn3MvwW1viabJJrW1ul4f7bFeZnkeB0jlAQR1JYRj3WlEPANwairtZVPkKw7wVls6Km7YrdGKXVkTnGOoUjkoO7vy9/s1600/pomegranate-soup.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5666405951642517170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA24QQeKUuwnuZzyOyb4a6lBhQvkRvHyPo0Uz29SSsKFOHJRq59sAn3MvwW1viabJJrW1ul4f7bFeZnkeB0jlAQR1JYRj3WlEPANwairtZVPkKw7wVls6Km7YrdGKXVkTnGOoUjkoO7vy9/s400/pomegranate-soup.jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 400px;" /></a>I just read the novel <i>Pomegranate Soup</i> by Marsha Mehran. The book features descriptions of food and cooking, including one Persian recipe in each chapter. However, these descriptions are really the only feature of the novel that I find truly strong and enjoyable. The recipes for chicken with walnuts and pomegranates; various soups, yogurt drinks, and deep-fried pastries sound wonderful. <div><br /></div><div>The premise of <i>Pomegranate Soup</i> is like a well-known recipe. Take an insular village somewhere in northern Europe (here, Ireland). Invent some quirky inhabitants (quite a few here). Bring in an immigrant or two to found a restaurant or cafe (here, three sisters from Iran and an elderly Italian widow who had already been the outsider in a village for 40 years or more). Introduce the villagers to exotic cooking. They like it (a bit too fast here). Create some jealousy, greed, adolescent pranks, rivalry, and love interest (maybe a little contrived). Yup, yup, yup, a kind of a melodrama.</div><div><br /></div><div>The portrayal of the sisters and how they fled the revolution in Iran is interesting and plausible. The portrayal of the Irish villagers and the Italian widow is pretty plausible too, at least at first. The events of the story start out not too bad. But as things progress, the story goes out of control -- spoiler coming. </div><div><br /></div><div>The ending, where all the evildoers and mischief makers see the light, repent, and swear to be good, doesn't do much for me at all. Also, throughout the book the descriptions are often a bit over-written, sometimes with rather odd word choices that overreach to try to make it more vivid. In sum, it's a rather weak novel with really good food writing.</div>

"Pomegranate Soup" by Marsha Mehran

I just read the novel Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran. The book features descriptions of food and cooking, including one Persian recipe i...

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12.46

"Cookbooks as Literature"

I just read a really good article about cookbook authors: "<a href="http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/soul-food-cookbooks-as-literature">Soul Food: Cookbooks As Literature</a>" by Maria Bustillos. Included for a detailed review: Alexandre Dumas for his <span style="font-style:italic;">Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine</span>, Elizabeth David; Irma S. Rombauer, the original author of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Joy of Cooking; </span>and Black Panther activist Bobby Seale for <i>Barbeque'N with Bobby. </i> She mentions others as she describes these favorites. She also singles out a few cookbook authors who provide a less interesting and appealing persona, notably Martha Stewart. Bustillos selects apt quotations and recipes to illustrate her descriptions of these authors, which makes this a very readable and enjoyable piece of writing.<br /><br />In summing up her ideas on cookboos as literature, Bustillos writes: "Dumas, and Elizabeth David and Julia Child, Marcel Boulestin and Alice B. Toklas and Bobby Seale and so many others, have the eating of soup figured out and a good deal besides; as literary artists and beyond this, as artists of savoir faire, of life itself. Given that one must eat, how then to do it? Historians and philosophers as well as poets tend to come up short where advice on questions urgent and as homely as these is required."

"Cookbooks as Literature"

I just read a really good article about cookbook authors: " Soul Food: Cookbooks As Literature " by Maria Bustillos. Included for ...

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11.00

Good Eats

Last night my book club met at my house to discuss <span style="font-style:italic;">Just Kids</span> by Patti Smith. We found the book very appealing and fascinating, and discussed it non-stop, except for eating the refreshments that I made. One funny memory that she relates in her memoir was of meeting Allen Ginsberg. He appeared just as she realized that she didn't have enough money for her sandwich at the automat -- he bought her the sandwich and a cup of coffee and sat down with her. After a while he asked "Wait, are you a girl?" She's a girl. <div><br /></div><div>"I thought you were a pretty boy," he explained. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Do I have to pay you for the sandwich?" she asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No, my mistake."<br /><div><br /></div><div>However, food wasn't really a theme of the book. Much of the time in her early life as a New York art scene wannabe, Patti Smith didn't have much to eat. She does often mention eating at the automat -- things like mac and cheese, or a sandwich on a poppy-seed roll. Not much inspiration for refreshments.  </div><div><br /></div><div>Smith mentions that when she and her lover Robert Mapplethorpe had a bit of money they would buy a bag of Mallomars. I decided that would be my one literary menu choice. When I went to the market, though, I found out that Mallomars are seasonal! The chocolate is too melty in summer. So I bought Canadian Whippets, which are similar. </div><div><br /></div><div>In order to make this a scholarly post, I read the Wikipedia entry on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate-coated_marshmallow_treats">Chocolate-coated marshmallow treats</a>. And learned more than any sane person should know about Mallomars, Whippets, and similar confections from Israel, Denmark, England, and even the Phillipines as well as other places. Turns out Mallomars are really a New York thing: 70% are sold there. If you want to know more, you can read the article and the many places that it diligently links to.</div><div><br />A couple of people suggested that the might like recipes for the non-themed but seasonal food I made for the meeting. First, the healthy parts:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6145693126/" title="eats7685 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="eats7685" height="479" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6066/6145693126_a7cf02ccd1_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />Not-quite caprese salad. Do you get tired of the classic combo: fresh mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, and vinaigrette? I've had it quite often this tomato season. I love it, but wanted some variety for my tomatoes, so I used a goat-cheese log and chopped dill and parsley, and a few black olives too.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6145141965/" title="eats7687 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="eats7687" height="480" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6163/6145141965_d474705f29_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />Carrot salad, but not cloyingly sweet, rather savory. It's similar to a Moroccan-Jewish (and also Israeli) recipe. Simple: grated carrots and vinaigrette made from oil, lemon juice, rice vinegar, cumin, Spanish smoked paprika, ground coriander, a crushed garlic clove, and a parsley garnish. Around half a teaspoon of each ground spice for around 1/2 cup oil and around 1/4 cup combined lemon juice and vinegar.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6145142143/" title="eats7688 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="eats7688" height="480" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6063/6145142143_48d1c35604_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />Again I made peach-plum cake from the Polish cookbook. For the recipe see <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2011/06/picnic-game-from-louise.html">this post from last June</a>. Nearby you can see a watermelon and pineapple fruit bowl and the Whippets.</div><div><br /></div><div>And one more picture of current cooking ...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/6145142383/" title="eats7691 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="eats7691" height="479" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6073/6145142383_0822e7dbf1_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /></div><div>Tonight: steak on the grill with great grill marks. Thanks, Lenny.</div></div>

Good Eats

Last night my book club met at my house to discuss Just Kids by Patti Smith. We found the book very appealing and fascinating, and discusse...

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16.54

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"Pomegranate Soup" by Marsha Mehran

"Cookbooks as Literature"

Good Eats

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