Today has been a different kind of day. I turn 27 today, and have spent most of the day in silence, speaking only to request that my husband get me some cough syrup before he went to work and to tell the people on the phone that no, this is not the center for early childhood education, or the council for basic education (neither of which appears to actually exist according to the internet). But the good part of silence, particularly on birthdays, is that we have the opportunity - in between marathon viewings of Scrubs DVDs - to reflect on the years behind us. In my case, most of that reflection centered around the dish I served last night at my birthday dinner.
Last year, when we resided in MS, John and I would occasionally go to a restaurant near us called Amerigo. Most of the time, we would sit in the bar, because we firmly believe that a lot of what makes eating out great (interaction, relaxed pace, good service) often happens in the best way at the bar. During the week, the bartender, whose name I never learned, would remember us, what we did for a living, and usually, what kind of wine I wanted (Simi Sauvignon Blanc, almost always). She would talk happily with us until another customer or just our need to be still took her away. She had a gift for reading customers.
Once, we went on a Saturday night. Our bartender wasn't there, and most of the clientele was a mix of older men, and the over-tanned, over-blond, over-botoxed women who were their hangers on. We were decidedly out of place, and we never returned on a weekend, for during the week, the place was like a sanctuary.
Our dish was the Fettucine Imperial: alfredo sauce with ham, roasted chicken, and sliced mushrooms over pasta (we always substituted the whole wheat penne). We would get the dish, and split it, eat from the same plate, dip our bread in the sauce, and drink wine, right at the bar, inches apart, more comfortable and more intimate that we could have been at a table.
I started to crave this pasta about two weeks ago, and decided I would have it be my birthday meal. So, last night, we added another element to this food memory: that of 8 friends, gathered around a table, wine flowing, conversation moving easily between those that have known us for a while and those who were just getting to know us. The very light in the apartment seemed to change, as this dish, that had been a symbol of private comfort and intimacy, became a little more public. It's meaning changed, and as wonderful a memory as it was before, the nuance added by the dinner party is a lasting gift because it is now spread among friends.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
On Onions and Poetry
The Traveling Onion
Naomi Shihab Nye
“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship - why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
Naomi Shihab Nye
“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship - why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
On Picky Eaters
(I got all caught up politicking, and forgot about blogging. Combine that with being unable to sign in to blogger on Firefox - a problem I just spent a half hour fixing - and my little blog suffered).
In my very first food post on this blog, I bring up that I wasn't always an adventurous eater. I have a thing with textures and smells, and that has proven difficult to get over (for other insight into my relative pickiness, see my thoughts on eggs). Tiny pieces of crunchy onions, for example, regardless of what they're an ingredient in, at the least make me gag, and will definitely ruin my appetite. There's something about the crunch, lasting bite after bite, getting pressed into the grooves of your molars, sending the sound taking advantage of the acoustics of your soft palate, reverberating down the back of your throat and in your ears. I can't take it. I like my onions coarsely chopped, well cooked, or both.
For years, I refused to cook with onions, or to allow my husband to. But slowly, I came to realize that I enjoy the flavor of an onion, and that with adequate precautions, I can cook with them. How did I get there? Well, first by allowing big (probably unsightly huge) pieces of cooked onion in my food, where at least I could pick them out. Then, by learning to appreciate chopped raw onion as a condiment on top of the lentils and beans that were grad school staples. Now, I regularly cook with onions, but I still find that crunch, in just the right spot, can send me running to the bathroom for relief (usually to brush my teeth to stop the crunch, but I have been known to barf on occasion when this happens).
Turns out, I'm not alone. There's a syndrome, or dysfunction if you will, in which the brain has difficulty processing sensory information. So, something soft will feel rough, etc.... Now, certainly, I do not have such a thing, but judging by this comment thread on one of my favorite sites, Jezebel, there are plenty of us for whom the textures of foods can be a problem.
Of course, there are other kinds of picky. There's "I won't eat that no matter what even though I've never tried it", which is the worst kind of picky; there's "This doesn't meet whatever ethical/moral standards I hold myself too," which is a very common and understandable kind of picky ('sup Kosher and Halal folks). There's also snobby picky, and totally arbitrary picky (example: I have a friend who would not eat cold cheese. Hot cheese - totally fine. Cold cheese, no dice. This same friend would also drink Muscle Milk in banana flavor, so we thought there was no hope for him. Fortunately he married another friend, who is the opposite of picky - we lovingly call her a goat - and has actually eaten cheesecake, in which there is, you guessed it, cold cheese).
Interestingly enough, there is also Presidential pickiness. I'll excerpt the paragraph in question:
Obama carefully conserved his energy. He was not a man of appetites, like Bill Clinton, who would grab whatever goodie passed by on the tray. Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys. Frustrated by reporters fishing for trivial "gaffes," Obama did not like coming back to the plane to talk to the press. As he trudged back from time to time to deal with the reporters' incessant questions, he looked like a suburban dad, slump-shouldered after a long day at the office, taking out the trash.
The article contrasts President-Elect Obama with his wife, saying:
Michelle Obama is not ascetic like her husband. She has long been familiar with Chicago's chicest clothing stores, and she'll "eat a cheeseburger in a heartbeat," said Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker, her close friend from Chicago (Rucker-Whitaker's husband, Eric, is a friend of Obama's from Harvard days and often plays basketball with him). Michelle's favorite drink, said Rucker-Whitaker, is champagne.
Our interest in food as a culture has probably never been quite so strong, with the exception of right after WWII, when technologies left over from the war helped agriculture boom and brought more food to us more quickly. Everyone and her mama has a food blog, and everyone has an opinion. We're also spending a lot of time discussing the eating habits of those in power (anyone remember the Obama arugula thing?). In a way, there's never been a better time to talk about this stuff, and what it signifies to us when someone in power (or someone at all) is picky: in a bad economy, what sends a better signal, someone who can abstain, and be measured, or someone who stops in for a burger whenever they've got the craving? I'm not positing either as a moral failing or moral success - I know I sure as hell lean more toward the burger side of that equation. But food signifies a lot to us, and the way we consume it can speak of responsibility or of decadence.
On that note, I think being too picky can be just as decadent as overconsumption. It is an enormous privilege to be able to choose from the bounty that we do as Americans what we will and won't eat. The day could be coming when farmlands, oceans, and water supplies are too strained to allow us to do so anymore. The day could also be coming when beans and rice are back on the menu daily, even now that grad school is a thing of the past.
PS - Thanks to a kitty paw, this almost didn't get posted. No treats for Seamus tonight.
In my very first food post on this blog, I bring up that I wasn't always an adventurous eater. I have a thing with textures and smells, and that has proven difficult to get over (for other insight into my relative pickiness, see my thoughts on eggs). Tiny pieces of crunchy onions, for example, regardless of what they're an ingredient in, at the least make me gag, and will definitely ruin my appetite. There's something about the crunch, lasting bite after bite, getting pressed into the grooves of your molars, sending the sound taking advantage of the acoustics of your soft palate, reverberating down the back of your throat and in your ears. I can't take it. I like my onions coarsely chopped, well cooked, or both.
For years, I refused to cook with onions, or to allow my husband to. But slowly, I came to realize that I enjoy the flavor of an onion, and that with adequate precautions, I can cook with them. How did I get there? Well, first by allowing big (probably unsightly huge) pieces of cooked onion in my food, where at least I could pick them out. Then, by learning to appreciate chopped raw onion as a condiment on top of the lentils and beans that were grad school staples. Now, I regularly cook with onions, but I still find that crunch, in just the right spot, can send me running to the bathroom for relief (usually to brush my teeth to stop the crunch, but I have been known to barf on occasion when this happens).
Turns out, I'm not alone. There's a syndrome, or dysfunction if you will, in which the brain has difficulty processing sensory information. So, something soft will feel rough, etc.... Now, certainly, I do not have such a thing, but judging by this comment thread on one of my favorite sites, Jezebel, there are plenty of us for whom the textures of foods can be a problem.
Of course, there are other kinds of picky. There's "I won't eat that no matter what even though I've never tried it", which is the worst kind of picky; there's "This doesn't meet whatever ethical/moral standards I hold myself too," which is a very common and understandable kind of picky ('sup Kosher and Halal folks). There's also snobby picky, and totally arbitrary picky (example: I have a friend who would not eat cold cheese. Hot cheese - totally fine. Cold cheese, no dice. This same friend would also drink Muscle Milk in banana flavor, so we thought there was no hope for him. Fortunately he married another friend, who is the opposite of picky - we lovingly call her a goat - and has actually eaten cheesecake, in which there is, you guessed it, cold cheese).
Interestingly enough, there is also Presidential pickiness. I'll excerpt the paragraph in question:
Obama carefully conserved his energy. He was not a man of appetites, like Bill Clinton, who would grab whatever goodie passed by on the tray. Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys. Frustrated by reporters fishing for trivial "gaffes," Obama did not like coming back to the plane to talk to the press. As he trudged back from time to time to deal with the reporters' incessant questions, he looked like a suburban dad, slump-shouldered after a long day at the office, taking out the trash.
The article contrasts President-Elect Obama with his wife, saying:
Michelle Obama is not ascetic like her husband. She has long been familiar with Chicago's chicest clothing stores, and she'll "eat a cheeseburger in a heartbeat," said Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker, her close friend from Chicago (Rucker-Whitaker's husband, Eric, is a friend of Obama's from Harvard days and often plays basketball with him). Michelle's favorite drink, said Rucker-Whitaker, is champagne.
Our interest in food as a culture has probably never been quite so strong, with the exception of right after WWII, when technologies left over from the war helped agriculture boom and brought more food to us more quickly. Everyone and her mama has a food blog, and everyone has an opinion. We're also spending a lot of time discussing the eating habits of those in power (anyone remember the Obama arugula thing?). In a way, there's never been a better time to talk about this stuff, and what it signifies to us when someone in power (or someone at all) is picky: in a bad economy, what sends a better signal, someone who can abstain, and be measured, or someone who stops in for a burger whenever they've got the craving? I'm not positing either as a moral failing or moral success - I know I sure as hell lean more toward the burger side of that equation. But food signifies a lot to us, and the way we consume it can speak of responsibility or of decadence.
On that note, I think being too picky can be just as decadent as overconsumption. It is an enormous privilege to be able to choose from the bounty that we do as Americans what we will and won't eat. The day could be coming when farmlands, oceans, and water supplies are too strained to allow us to do so anymore. The day could also be coming when beans and rice are back on the menu daily, even now that grad school is a thing of the past.
PS - Thanks to a kitty paw, this almost didn't get posted. No treats for Seamus tonight.
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