What Mimi Sheraton's Family Ate

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdqA4uhEUeMmlsYJrCUn5Llnz3oAwJSxLKvInECnpocFNi0xplsK7fZfe-UD2yLs5fcnHlFr-m1Vb2iZRecg9mUicVcH9eszep3rLV_A8pZetYh0hLGRxdIU7VVvy4dYyIcnIeOr54WCB/s1600/sheraton.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566517436628289746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggdqA4uhEUeMmlsYJrCUn5Llnz3oAwJSxLKvInECnpocFNi0xplsK7fZfe-UD2yLs5fcnHlFr-m1Vb2iZRecg9mUicVcH9eszep3rLV_A8pZetYh0hLGRxdIU7VVvy4dYyIcnIeOr54WCB/s400/sheraton.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" /></a>Mimi Sheraton grew up in a family that mixed traditional Jewish food with all kinds of American food. Her mother Mrs. Solomon made hot cereal on cold mornings, her own version of chopped liver, hamburger patties with egg and onion in the meat, tomato and herring sandwiches, stuffed chicken neck, sweet-sour salads, and shrimp salad. She made boiled potatoes, challah French toast, Hamantashen, and also Seafood Newburg. Her grandmother was a remarkably skilled baker, but most of her recipes were in her hands and head, and were never recorded.<br /><br />Mimi Sheraton's brief reminiscences -- like her description of the progression of foods her mother gave her when she was sick in bed -- are very enjoyable, though the recipes are the main content of this book.<br /><br />My own mother made many of the same dishes -- both the ones from the Jewish tradition and the ones from the American tradition. Like Mrs. Solomon, she even had envelopes full of dog-eared, food-splattered recipes that she wrote down from friends' phone instructions, newspaper and magazine clippings of recipes, and only one cook book. Despite having similar food up-bringings, though, Mimi Sheraton became a highly respected food writer and <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> restaurant reviewer. And I didn't.<br /><br />I'm glad I found a nice used copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">From My Mother's Kitchen</span> and added it to my collection. I hope I get around to trying some of the recipes, which reflect a type of home cooking that's often neglected in the spotlights of TV food and celebrity cooking that dominate newer cookbooks.<br /><br />One more thing: Sheraton generally seems to keep her age a deep dark secret. But she gave it away: she was nine years old when she fell in love with Clark Gable in the movie "It happened one night." The movie appeared in 1934. So now I know.

What Mimi Sheraton's Family Ate

Mimi Sheraton grew up in a family that mixed traditional Jewish food with all kinds of American food. Her mother Mrs. Solomon made hot cerea...

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A Never-Ending Domestic Drama

From four stories by Jhumpa Lahiri's collection <span style="font-style: italic;">Unaccustomed Earth</span>, four Indian mothers express themselves by serving Indian food:<br /><blockquote>"... I would find [my mother] in the kitchen, rolling out dough for luchis, which she normally made only on Sundays for my father and me." ("Hell-Heaven," p. 63)<br /><br />"The dining table had been set since the afternoon. This was my mother's way when she gave parties, though she had never prepared such an elaborate meal in the middle of the week. An hour before you were expected, she turned on the oven. She had heated up a panful of oil and begun to fry thick slices of eggplant to serve with the dal...." ("Once in a Lifetime," p. 231)<br /><br />"A single place had been set for me ... with translucent luchis piled on a plate, and several smaller bowls containing dal and vegetables arrayed in a semicircle..... I was no longer accustomed to Indian food." ("Year's End," p. 259)<br /><br />"When Akash [age 3] was younger she had followed her mother's advice to get him used to the taste of Indian food and made the effort to poach chicken and vegetables with cinnamon and cardamom and clove. Now he ate from boxes." ("Unaccustomed Earth," p. 23)</blockquote>Lahiri has a talent for describing the domestic scenes in Indian immigrant homes in American college towns. In almost every story well-educated and well-paid doctorate-holding fathers, whose careers were established in approximately the 1960s, live with their arranged wives and one or two quickly assimilating children. The children resist their parents' ways, though they rarely make a self-destructive choice. Their pizzas and donuts illustrate their feelings about their silently and servilely cooking mothers who are rarely fulfilled by life in American suburbs. In most of the stories, we learn about both the adolescence and the adult lives of these children, especially about their relationships with lovers -- mainly not Indians. Frequently we learn a bit about their own children, often born when they are far older than their mothers were.<br /><br />Every story varies a little from the others (and one has a seriously different plot), but when I finished this book and compared it to my memories of the author's other books, I feel as if I was stuck in a repeating trap something like the day that would never end in the movie <span style="font-style: italic;">Groundhog Day</span>. Each iteration just a little different, but somehow the whole never quite changes. Lahiri is a talented writer and I hope she finds a way to use her talent for something new next time.

A Never-Ending Domestic Drama

From four stories by Jhumpa Lahiri's collection Unaccustomed Earth , four Indian mothers express themselves by serving Indian food: ...

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Doris Lessing: Mara and Dann

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPenFNTfO1IEQuZfkp14qUEkENur9tcCDAU4SYv_k-oCrV1kXXJ7Q86rEgvNXUExH6yIDYP8MKksSprFh0rLqK85wAVrhiyLpr9h3eZDPlDVLaeHQJeUwsNiQ8_QOD4gc2k22MrKlJY8f4/s1600/lessing.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565191066571160642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPenFNTfO1IEQuZfkp14qUEkENur9tcCDAU4SYv_k-oCrV1kXXJ7Q86rEgvNXUExH6yIDYP8MKksSprFh0rLqK85wAVrhiyLpr9h3eZDPlDVLaeHQJeUwsNiQ8_QOD4gc2k22MrKlJY8f4/s320/lessing.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 228px; height: 320px;" /></a><style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">In Mara’s world, nourishment consists of yellow roots, white tasteless lumps, and dry leaves without specific names; sour milk or milk directly from a large beast, flour bought from a trader and mixed with muddy water and cooked on a hot rock. She occasionally stays with people with somewhat better food. Her first taste of meat is a raw frog that emerges from mud after a rare rainstorm. Mara eventually learns to eat slabs of muscle meat cooked on a fire. But few things have a precise name.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mara owns a water can and some clothing that never wear out because the materials came from an earlier more sophisticated civilization. All her possessions fit in a sack that she carries as she treks through a dying landscape where rain has ceased to fall.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Dann, Mara’s brother, travels with her most of the way through the book-long journey. He carries a knife and an axe, metal tools that no one seems able to make any more, and defends them against other desperate wanderers. From time to time they are taken into slavery, where at least they receive real meals. Eventually they reach a land where people have copied guns from ancient examples. War and famine follow them everywhere.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Everything about their journey is vivid, but tedious. Doris Lessing is such a wonderful story-teller that I’ve been working through difficult books like this forever, it seems. She must tell you everything about a woman and all her challenges, and you must listen.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thinking back, I considered how Doris Lessing provided a foundation for feminists of the seventies. Her early works from the fifties and sixties explored the experience of woman in a groundbreaking way. Her characters (almost exclusively women) had lived through World War II in colonial Africa; early marriage as unequals to their often intellectually inferior husbands; desperate desire for education and challenging jobs when none was available, and second-class status in left-wing politics. They had undergone psychoanalysis at the hands of well-meaning and likable other women but it hadn’t made them what they wanted to be. But slowly Doris Lessing’s women emerged into something that I think she wanted them to be. And feminists loved it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The multi-volume personal history of the fictional character Martha Quest went through all this, and came out in a new world that hadn’t happened yet (though I think it’s now technically in the past). <i style="">The Four-Gated City</i>, with Martha Quest as a much older woman, was set in a future of Doris Lessing’s devising. The details of that future allowed Lessing to explore aspects of life that weren’t possible in the real world that she had been describing with painful accuracy before.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doris Lessing continued to create new environments and check out how women would handle them. She wasn’t writing science fiction, just doing thought experiments, is what I would say. Some worked better than others. Virtually all Lessing’s created futures are extremely unpleasant. I haven’t read everything she’s written but I’ve read a lot. War, famine, bad faith in political systems, degeneration of family and civil society, and other extremes all beset her societies -- normal demands of life don't set sufficient extremes. When she removes civilization and its protections, women characters like Mara have to deal with men who are stronger than they are, as well as with the danger of pregnancy from any encounter, willing or not.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="">Mara and Dann</i>, published in 1999 extends these thought experiments. Mara is the center. She’s born into an aristocratic family somewhere in Africa just as long years of drought destroy any possibility of their continuing to live. Food and water have disappeared as rivers and waterways have dried up, trees died, and animals starved. As a child of seven, Mara must start fending for herself and caring for her younger brother. Both are scarred by their experiences with hostile strangers, then raised by a woman whose dedication to them is somewhat mysterious.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As late adolescents, they begin a long journey north in search of a place where there is comfort, security, food and water. The drought, famine, wars between diverse races and peoples, and the disastrously hostile human and natural environment challenge Mara in ways that Doris Lessing’s characters from the 1950s could never be challenged.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For one thing, she is intellectually deprived, as well as starving and nearly dying of thirst. She has no words for cattle and goats (all are called milk beasts) or crocodiles (called water dragons), no ability to count much above her fingers and toes, no words for human sex organs or sex acts, no identification for plants in her landscape, only guesses about what might poison her, no words for the past or its technologies. She gets occasional glimpses of the civilizations that existed 10 or 15,000 years earlier and clearly produced advanced devices, weapons, transportation, and arts. That would have been us.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mara and Dann finally reach a farmstead where a settled life seems possible – but like many of Lessing’s tales, this one ends with ambiguity.</p>

Doris Lessing: Mara and Dann

In Mara’s world, nourishment consists of yellow roots, white tasteless lumps, and dry leaves without specific names; sour milk or milk ...

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What the Ancient Romans Ate

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0226290328/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link"><img alt="A Taste of Ancient Rome" border="0" height="300" id="prodImage" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Z9ZF5PRTL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><br />I read Giacosa's <span style="font-style: italic;">A Taste of Ancient Rome</span> quite a few years ago, and recently found a really nice used copy of the hardback edition. So I just reread it. I was amazed that I remembered it so well, but it's totally absorbing.<br /><br />The author's main message is that most days most Romans ate very very simple food. The banquets with vast numbers of dishes and the over-the-top recipes for flamingo tongues, camel toes, and little song birds were in some cases exaggerated, in others reflective only of very ostentatious events put on by show-offs. Of course I remember the dormice roasted on a stone and coated in poppy seeds and honey: the Romans loved dormice and they fattened them for the table in funny little jars. Of course I remember some of the satiric scenes from literature where the cook would say he forgot to gut a whole roast pig -- and then he'd slit it open to show all kinds of sausages. I have kept these images in mind ever since I first read the book.<br /><br />Plain wheat, spelt, or barley porridge with vegetables; many egg dishes; flavoring with garum, a fermented fish sauce; ordinary cured olives; and mainly vegetarian foods seem to have been the real Roman diet. They drank water or wine (often spiced in a wide variety of ways). They viewed milk to be the drink for children and people who lived in the country. And quite a few Romans wrote about food, giving this author plenty of material, not just the recipes from the famous Apicius.

What the Ancient Romans Ate

I read Giacosa's A Taste of Ancient Rome quite a few years ago, and recently found a really nice used copy of the hardback edition. So ...

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"The Food Snob's Dictionary"

I recently read all the definitions in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge</span> by David Kamp and Marion Rosenfeld.<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0767926919/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link"><img alt="The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge" border="0" height="300" id="prodImage" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gxamY4XdL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg" width="300" /></a><br /><br />This is a fun read. The authors list food snob topics from <span style="font-weight: bold;">Acme Bread Company</span> to <span style="font-weight: bold;">Zingerman's</span>. The overall attitude of the book is by necessity snarky and superior, but I found it bearable since I share a lot of their dismissive analysis of food snob concerns.<br /><br />I particularly liked the little supplementary lists. For example, "Faux Food Snobbery: Six Foods that Non-Snobs Mistakenly Believe are Snobworthy (and That Snobs Can't Be Bothered With)" -- truffle oil, Earl Grey tea, broccolini, kiwi fruit, Chilean sea bass, and Bell peppers in colors like orange and purple. Or the list of appropriate ways to refer to "Esteemed Food Personages in Conversation with Other Food Snobs," which includes "Bud" for Calvin Trillin and "Simca" for Simone Beck. Or the list of films that "All Food Snobs Must Profess to Have Seen" -- including two of my favorites, <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Tampopo</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Babette's Feast</span>. Actually, I did see most of these, though I doubt if I fit their definition as a food snob.<br /><br />I was going to cite my favorite definition, but I can't decide which one it is. I'll just mention the entry for the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Super-Rica Taqueria in Santa Barbara</span>, which is renowned because Julia Child used to eat there. The authors write: "Though the torn-canvas roof and lines out the door suggest an enervating exercise in underwhelming reverse chic, the tacos -- made with thick, homemade corn tortillas... -- are actually good." They don't even mention that these tacos are made by an elderly woman while you wait (and the line behind you waits). Or that there are other taquerias in Santa Barbara where the lines are shorter. I was last there in 2003, maybe it's different now.

"The Food Snob's Dictionary"

I recently read all the definitions in The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge by David Kamp and Ma...

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What we ate this weekend

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifVA7LvborPua4fLM8a6eoU3jfg540UJKi492EtVjXtU9NIlpB8v-LrdQ3KUYSS77xQxAc6CeYWgEl_3sVFO-k3JeDxiBK8d4gk9Q8r-TXgcNWmMF0sk9VNTculk5gieNIGCiAD-xJv7ca/s1600/boeuf.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560376777680965842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifVA7LvborPua4fLM8a6eoU3jfg540UJKi492EtVjXtU9NIlpB8v-LrdQ3KUYSS77xQxAc6CeYWgEl_3sVFO-k3JeDxiBK8d4gk9Q8r-TXgcNWmMF0sk9VNTculk5gieNIGCiAD-xJv7ca/s400/boeuf.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" /></a>Carol made a stunningly gorgeous boeuf en croute for dinner on Friday night; a mushroom sauce and another sauce were also on the menu. She also made a delicious soup, an inventive kale salad, and a nutmeg-flavored cake. A splendid meal! She's simultaneously creative and patient: a winning combination. I don't have anywhere near the patience needed for such things.

What we ate this weekend

Carol made a stunningly gorgeous boeuf en croute for dinner on Friday night; a mushroom sauce and another sauce were also on the menu. She a...

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The wide, wide world

In the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> today: an article about a Brazilian town where eating a particular species of ant is a tradition: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/world/americas/05ants.html?_r=1">Pesticides Threaten Ant-Eating Tradition in Brazil</a>. I appreciated the tone of the article, which describes the ant-hunting methods of the people in the town without prejudice against their choice of food. They enjoy the flavor. That's it. Although I have no particular wish to taste this, I am very interested in how varied human nutrition can be.<br /><br />I've read other books and articles about foodways that challenge my comfort levels. One is:<br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sharks-Fin-Sichuan-Pepper-Sweet-Sour/dp/0393332888/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294236260&sr=8-3"><img alt="Product Details" border="0" class="" height="160" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LXM0f6B9L._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA160_.jpg" width="160" /><br />Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China.</a> The author, Fuchsia Dunlop, describes her process of learning to cook and eat a number of foods that are unusual in her native England and elsewhere in European food traditions, but completely common and appreciated in China. The reader gets a positive picture of how another culture might differ in a basic way about food.<br /><br />I've also read a book about Australian natives' annual feast on the Bogong moth. These moths were gathered during their migration. Moth hungers roasted the moths individually on a hot stone; "their peanut-sized abdomens are full of protein, with an oily texture and a taste not unlike roast chestnuts." As many as 500 people from different tribes would gather to eat moths during the season when they were available. People from many tribes also socialized, exchanged goods, and arranged marriages. Needless to say, these customs are no longer possible in modern Australia. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Moth Hunters of the Australian Capital Territory</span> by Josephine Flood, 1996)<br /><br />It's a wide, wide, world.<br /><br />UPDATE: For a much more amusing version of weird things people eat, see <a href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2011/01/the_five_worst_canned_foods_yo.php#more">this</a>.

The wide, wide world

In the New York Times today: an article about a Brazilian town where eating a particular species of ant is a tradition: Pesticides Threaten...

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