What did Magellan and his sailors eat?

<br /><div class="MsoNormal">"Real bread" was the first food that the 18 survivors of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world ate upon returning home. Their fleet's one remaining ship had finally landed at the mouth of the Gualquivir in Spain. For three years, they had been at sea, having left the Guadalquivir with five ships and 265 men. After spending months out of sight of land, taking sides in a failed mutiny, witnessing the death of their leader Magellan and many other comrades, and exploring new territories in South America and the Pacific, their privations were over and they kissed the earth as they landed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">"For years they had not fingered the soft, aromatic crumb; for years they had not known the flavours of the wine, the meat and the fruit of their homeland," wrote Stefan Zweig at the end of his account of Magellan's voyage. Zweig's<i> Magellan</i> is an imaginative and dramatically written account of this, the first voyage around the world. He published it in 1938, but like many of his works, it's been reissued recently.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Zweig depicted Magellan as a taciturn hero, who acted boldly but never without forethought, except perhaps in the instance of the one fatal mistake that led to his death. Zweig was as admiring of and interested in Magellan's long and careful preparation for the voyage into the unknown as he is in the voyage itself.  He detailed first the patient preparation of food, ships, and supplies, then the alternation of plenty and famine as the five, then four, eventually only one ship, the Victoria, (shown below in an image from Wikimedia, from a 1590 map) circled the globe.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s1600/magellanship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s320/magellanship.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Just decades after Columbus's discovery, when ocean voyages were extremely long, basic ship's provisions mainly consisted of biscuit (a long-lasting hard bread that was the mainstay of all ocean trips until modern times). Magellan's ships also carried beans, lentils, oil, salt pork, cheese, dried fish, and other staples. A few cows would provide milk for the start of the voyage; along with a few pigs, there could be fresh meat -- though not for long.  In both the text and in an appendix, Zweig lists the amounts and the cost of all these provisions, illustrating Magellan's careful record-keeping and planning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Wine was to be served with two meals a day during the voyage: Magellan laid in hundreds of casks and bottles. Obviously he also provided what he hoped would be adequate supplies of drinking water -- though the ships' reservoirs often became foul and the water after long days at sea became nearly undrinkable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Magellan wanted his men to eat well. To the staple supplies he added intriguing extras: sugar, vinegar, garlic, onions, raisins, figs, almonds, honey, currants, capers, salt, rice, mustard, quince paste, and flour. What were the cooks' recipes to be made from these tasty additions to ordinary ships' provisions? I'm sure no one made any record of such a thing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Preparing to sail around the world -- which had never been done before -- Magellan knew that his would be the longest voyage ever planned. He expected few opportunities for re-supplying his five ships. In fact, he believed the strait between the Atlantic and the Pacific to be far closer to the equator than the Strait of Magellan, which he discovered. And he found the Pacific Ocean to be much vaster than expected as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Consequently, the enormous food supplies were inadequate. As the five ships finished the voyage down the coast of South America, a mutiny and the desertion of one of the ships helped to deplete the supplies. Magellan's underlings, when they traitorously took over one of the ships, opened the stores to the crew to buy their loyalty. By that time, perhaps the most luxurious foods like figs, raisins, currants, and almonds had already been used up -- rations had already been cut significantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After coming through the newly discovered strait, the remaining ships had an agonizingly long reach across the Pacific. The crews experienced first hunger, then scurvy and other forms of malnutrition, and finally (in many cases) death by starvation. The biscuit, unpalatable when fresh, crumbled and turned to dust; however, it was the only nutrition available. The sailors eked it out with sawdust and with the meat of the ship's rats, which became a delicacy. They soaked, boiled, and ate some of the rigging as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In contrast, when the starving remnant reached the Philippines, the welcoming king of Cebu Island offered them feasts of sweet tropical fruit and other delicacies. Bananas, palm wine, coconuts, exotic vegetables, and roasted fish with fresh ginger --good food and fresh water brought them back to life. As they visited various islands, including the Spice Islands that had always been their goal, they learned to enjoy these treats. Though Magellan was already dead, they claimed the islands for the king of Spain as they had meant to do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While making their way back to Europe, the voyagers suffered again. By this time, 1520, the route from the Spice Islands through the Indian Ocean and around Africa was well known. Politics, however, made the excruciatingly long trip from the Spice Islands back to Spain even more frustratingly hunger-ridden than the Pacific crossing. Magellan, a Portuguese by origin, had been rejected by his own king, and thus was sailing for Spain. All the ports were Portuguese, and his ships and men were labeled pirates in Portuguese territory -- a price was on every head.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus, the survivors had to hurry across the seas without going into port except once, on a ruse. By the time the last 18 sailors once more tasted the bread and wine of their homeland, they had been starving for months since their days of feasting. Moreover, they were starving within a ship loaded with exotic and unimaginably valuable spices that could do no more for their hunger than the ocean did for their thirst, according to Zweig's narrative.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Obviously, most of <i>Magellan</i> is about non-food issues -- though the motive Zweig cited on the very first page, and which persisted throughout the voyage, was to create a proprietary Spanish trade route to the Spice Islands to obtain rare spices for European use. I've concentrated on the issues of eating and starving that were the undercurrent throughout.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><h2>Afterthoughts</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjutWRh77fPu72rsXUhqeJdEnvyvfTdaiQV9ylUJ-8loxgzVosZTrOZyXLLQO7kVWvkhXSUv8QhXJtxnRuZM4ODU4m5CdnIMoFlEEXHQ7NW6JZyFGw8lqSpK3YodAIDCpsNXH_RGTSXTtI/s1600/cormorants9946.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjutWRh77fPu72rsXUhqeJdEnvyvfTdaiQV9ylUJ-8loxgzVosZTrOZyXLLQO7kVWvkhXSUv8QhXJtxnRuZM4ODU4m5CdnIMoFlEEXHQ7NW6JZyFGw8lqSpK3YodAIDCpsNXH_RGTSXTtI/s320/cormorants9946.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm writing beside a very calm Pacific Ocean beach, thinking of the naked terror that other parts of these waters must have delivered to Magellan and his crew. Cormorants roost in the trees and tiny sailboats dash around the harbor. So different!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Two very interesting things in <i>Magellan</i> that are not related to food are:</div><div class="MsoListBullet"></div><ul><li>Magellan had a Philippino slave who traveled with the ships and was intended to be an interpreter. When the ship landed in his land of origin, he thus became the very first man ever to circle the globe. (He also was caught up in the nasty aftermath of Magellan's death at the hands of a rival to the Philippine king who welcomed the voyagers, and thus remained in his own country when the ships left.)<br /> </li><li>Upon their first stop at a port on the African coast, when they were almost back to Spain, the surviving sailors discovered the paradox that their carefully maintained ship logs recorded the day of the week as Wednesday, but the local date was Thursday. Being the first men to make a full trip around the world, they discovered that you need an international dateline (to explain it with an anachronism). Zweig says this was incredible to the people of that era: "as exciting to the humanists of the sixteenth century as has been the theory of relativity to those of our own generation."</li></ul><br /><div class="MsoNormal">I enjoyed Zweig's book and its rather retro style of writing historic narrative. My only reservation is that he sometimes overuses Homeric similes.</div>

What did Magellan and his sailors eat?

"Real bread" was the first food that the 18 survivors of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world ate upon returning home. The...

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Apricots

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7302862314/" title="sbmarket9928 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="sbmarket9928" height="375" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7078/7302862314_15ef817402.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />Perfect ripe apricots are splendid, like these beauties that I photographed on the deck of our apartment here in Santa Barbara. The flavor is unimaginably wonderful. I don't see them often -- not even every year, as they don't travel well.<br /><br />I think this year's apricot crop is exceptional even for California -- they've been available at an incredible price each time I have gone to the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market. We have been eating them every day since our arrival -- we hadn't been here more than a few hours before our first visit to the Sunday market in Goleta. Yesterday I went to the very large downtown Santa Barbara market (more photos <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7302862314/in/set-72157629879984912/">here</a>).<br /><br />I have only a few memories of apricots. As a child, I loved dried apricots and even canned apricots, but I do not think I ever saw fresh ones until we lived in California during graduate school. And of course I realized that the taste of a ripe apricot like the ones we have been enjoying is just not the same as any other taste.<br /><br />Sometimes Michigan trees produce a small apricot crops, and sometimes there are baskets of apricots from California in specialty markets at home in Ann Arbor. Several years ago when they were in season, I found a great <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2008/08/crisp-crumble-cobbler.html">apricot cobbler recipe</a>, which I remember making for Evelyn and Tom just after Miriam was born -- her birthday was last week, so obviously they were in season when I was there to see my first grandchild.<br /><br />Once during our first time in California I made an apricot tart -- I must have used a Julia Child recipe, as I didn't have very many cookbooks then. The old oven in our Berkeley apartment was very dirty. Black flakes fell on the apricots before the tart was finished baking, but I removed them and we enjoyed eating it. The next day, I cleaned the oven with oven cleaner -- it took hours. Evelyn was born the day after that. Some people told me that the impulse to clean was a sign that I was ready to give birth. I think I cleaned the oven just because of black carbon flakes on my beautiful apricot tart.<br /><br />Update: Elaine remembers -- <span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><i>My California apricot remembrance: When Dan was a baby we carefully followed Dr Spock's recommendations and peeled grapes for him and otherwise watched what he ate. When he was less than a year old, he was crawling around in our back yard, found a lovely ripe apricot that had fallen from our tree, and ate most of it before I noticed. No ill effects! This convinced me that I didn't have to monitor his food so carefully. You are right that fresh California apricots are wonderful.</i></span>

Apricots

Perfect ripe apricots are splendid, like these beauties that I photographed on the deck of our apartment here in Santa Barbara. The flavor i...

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Group Barbecue

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Rcg5XTItfxczRxjdni3kzr0KBvjGeOqUWwkvXy0PzOaLsWuGj-5qG7zL0lhJC7G_-61_xV8P_yRhFtCYP8FOqtTEL1B1UEt7KGd9d7wdhARRHxbLlmejFFR7olVe858jaGWurYGdYEcX/s1600/kitp-picnic+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Rcg5XTItfxczRxjdni3kzr0KBvjGeOqUWwkvXy0PzOaLsWuGj-5qG7zL0lhJC7G_-61_xV8P_yRhFtCYP8FOqtTEL1B1UEt7KGd9d7wdhARRHxbLlmejFFR7olVe858jaGWurYGdYEcX/s320/kitp-picnic+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXClGJ_RGD0OHFAYCtX92J-jP-Gkt4hl5yCiMHqN0Um9YVsFXXdDbYeBQx-i2KdAROr-nGeT-q2-XChIOp0DtY9-XQL3NRgTBX3X5H5_Cn4bfVILeQ7RRMKqPwcvkwG6w9r4fMkf8tBaj/s1600/kitp-picnic+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpXClGJ_RGD0OHFAYCtX92J-jP-Gkt4hl5yCiMHqN0Um9YVsFXXdDbYeBQx-i2KdAROr-nGeT-q2-XChIOp0DtY9-XQL3NRgTBX3X5H5_Cn4bfVILeQ7RRMKqPwcvkwG6w9r4fMkf8tBaj/s320/kitp-picnic+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Grilled vegetables -- especially corn and asparagus -- are really a treat. Our hosts (well, ok, their graduate students who served as chefs) slathered olive oil on everything they put on the grill, which made it all crisp and perfectly blackened.<br /><br />The California sun shone on us, and after dinner, many of the guests played soccer on the large lawn that belongs to UCSB faculty housing, where the picnic took place.

Group Barbecue

Grilled vegetables -- especially corn and asparagus -- are really a treat. Our hosts (well, ok, their graduate students who served as chefs)...

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You know you are in California

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7237105398/" title="california9750 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="california9750" height="500" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7219/7237105398_bbcb06912e.jpg" width="375" /></a><br /><br /><ul><li>You know you are in California when you are smiling at your burrito out in the sunshine.</li><li>You know you are in California when a farmer at the farmers' market explains that he sells three types of artichokes, and another farmer has two kinds of avocados, some ripe, some hard. And a third farmer says that last year's tomato plants still have some tomatoes on them. </li><li>You know you are in California when girls wear short shorts with Uggs. It's hardly worth mentioning the sight of surf boards, but they're here too.</li><li>You know you are in California when you see flights of pelicans, sea fog, lagoons, tidal sloughs, and rolling waves.</li><li>You know you are in California when you smell the eucalyptus trees.</li></ul>

You know you are in California

You know you are in California when you are smiling at your burrito out in the sunshine. You know you are in California when a farmer at the...

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"One Man Band" Diner

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7224594862/" title="utah9706 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="utah9706" height="500" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7086/7224594862_ecb2d262a5.jpg" width="394" /></a><br /><br /> The "One Man Band" diner in the very strange town of Nephi, Utah, is a fun place to eat. The menu has a long list of instructions, beginning with the directive that you should decide exactly what each person at the table wants to eat, and then phone in your order on the red telephone beside the table (where the juke box should be, I guess). The kitchen is open to the dining room where tables are formica-topped and benches are naugahide. We watched the kitchen staff assemble the meals:<br /><br />  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7224595118/" title="utah9708 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="utah9708" height="375" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7071/7224595118_0a912c34a4.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br /> I loved the eggs, hash browns, toast, and melted cheese I ordered -- breakfast for dinner!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7224595338/" title="utah9714 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="utah9714" height="375" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8011/7224595338_0c82e8f267.jpg" width="500"></a><br /> After we ate, we took a ride (yes, even though we drove for 8 hours today) up a mountain into the Uinta National Forest. It's amazing how Utah scenery is spectacular even when it's in an obscure place off the beaten track (like this isn't Zion, Arches, Capitol Reefs,<br />Brice Canyon, etc).<br /><br />  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7224595520/" title="utah9724 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="utah9724" height="375" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7224595520_6bf3f88801.jpg" width="500" /></a>

"One Man Band" Diner

 The "One Man Band" diner in the very strange town of Nephi, Utah, is a fun place to eat. The menu has a long list of instructions...

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Dinner in Cheyenne

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7219156982/" title="wyoming9699 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="wyoming9699" height="500" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7074/7219156982_8961102740.jpg" width="375" /></a>'<br /><br />The Albany Bar in Cheyenne has been in business since 1942, and the building is at least half a century older than the business. I think the menu may have been updated -- though not too much. I had trout with a baked potato (the trout isn't local) and Len had a steak sandwich (maybe the cow was local). The interior of the Albany is full of old-style wooden booths and fixtures from the past -- the exterior has the typical extra-tall front pediment of a 19th century frontier building. It's across the street from the old Union Pacific Railroad Station, now a museum, and not far from the Capitol building.<br /><br />For dessert, I had lemon cheesecake, which I would call New York style. I wonder what they would have served in the 1880s when the railroad station was new. Above our table was a photograph of the construction of the station with the workers standing on the partially built walls. Cheyenne history photos were on all the restaurant walls.<br /><br />  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12003515@N05/7219157438/" title="wyoming9688 by mesander2000, on Flickr"><img alt="wyoming9688" height="375" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5333/7219157438_e887703f86.jpg" width="500" /></a><br /><br />The Albany atmosphere contrasted with that of the very up-to-date brewpub in Des Moines where we ate dinner last night, though the menus had quite a bit of overlap, such as several Mexican-style offerings and of course hamburgers of various types (more trendy at the brewpub, naturally).

Dinner in Cheyenne

' The Albany Bar in Cheyenne has been in business since 1942, and the building is at least half a century older than the business. I thi...

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"Tomatoland"

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTca-Wl2KIQRc5TBAnGrReoUR9RuRU_8nDG9umIyXBO2lOS4gPrwv2VAcrnrD5ETi1YtVYBgyikwK-NBbfATJGeV0weaKQTSfN6veumzrOth9J_Sq7UsfC4l6mdNqxPGI4q-A6YCoCBP9/s1600/tomatoland.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyTca-Wl2KIQRc5TBAnGrReoUR9RuRU_8nDG9umIyXBO2lOS4gPrwv2VAcrnrD5ETi1YtVYBgyikwK-NBbfATJGeV0weaKQTSfN6veumzrOth9J_Sq7UsfC4l6mdNqxPGI4q-A6YCoCBP9/s1600/tomatoland.jpeg" /></a><i>Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit</i> by Barry Estabrook is a very focused book. Too focused. The tomatoland he describes is in Imolakee, Florida, and almost nowhere else. The most startling fact of the book is that Florida isn't really a very good place to grow tomatoes. The soil is sandy and poor in nutrients for the crop, and there are too many insects. As a result, the big growers who have considerable political clout have received exceptions from many regulations of the use of dangerous and disgusting chemicals on their tomatoes -- bad for consumers, much worse for field workers.<br /><br />The humanitarian issues of Estabrook's tomatoland include underpaying workers, cheating them of wages, exploiting their ignorance and frequent status as illegal aliens, ensuring that they are poorly housed and fed, carelessly exposing them to hazards like pesticides, and at worst, brutally enslaving them. He clearly explains that this is real and total slavery with only a slim chance of escape. He describes several lawsuits and campaigns for fairer treatment of workers, and profiles various victims and advocates. He's especially detailed about the well-known campaign to increase the pay of tomato pickers, and corporate resistance (from businesses like Trader Joe's, which I think by now has conceded) even to a token increment of a penny per pound of tomatoes.<br /><br />The culinary issues are predictable: why don't tomatoes have any taste? Estabrook describes the indifference of the major growers to whether their tomatoes do in fact taste like tomatoes. He acknowledges that no mass-market, high-quantity agriculture could produce garden-ripe, fresh-picked taste -- but goes to some length to clarify that the extremes of tasteless tomatoes could be addressed, and how a few experimental labs are working on tomato taste and on preserving and incorporating genes from wild plants that grow in South America. The large-scale growers, however, just don't care. Yes, organic farmers have some success, as do farmers in other places, but the demand for a cheap product overwhelms them.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>True, most tomatoes consumed in America are grown in Florida (the book is rich with statistics), and tomato-growing is an area of many important issues, humanitarian, political, nutritional, and culinary. However, I was disappointed by the lack of contrasting stories about organic farmers, farmers with alternate methods, or about farms in Canada, Mexico, or other states -- that is, the producers of the tomatoes that I actually eat when fresh local tomatoes aren't in season. He describes only one or two farms that serve a small part of the population of New York City, and a brief description of an organic farmer in Florida.<br /><br />In sum, the material in this book is important, but I wanted a broader look at the tomato.

"Tomatoland"

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook is a very focused book. Too focused. The...

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