In My Kitchen, November 2020.

What's new and nifty in my November Kitchen?

A large selection of German Lebkuchen: this is one of the many selections in
a gift box from Evelyn. A favorite:  “Dominoes” which have three layers, gingerbread, 
almond paste, and jelly, and are covered with chocolate. (Irresistible!)

A new butter and cheese dish with a slot for the knife.

Also new: tongs to replace a broken pair: useful & boring.
We also bought some new spatulas -- also boring but useful.

Round proofing basket for Len’s bread making.

Cooking

During the month of November, as we've done for months during out long dark lockdown, we ate almost every meal at our own table, just the two of us, having cooked the food for ourselves. As the pandemic statistics rose to new heights, we even stopped going into the one or two little markets where we felt safe for a while. All our groceries came from deliveries or curb-side pickup.

We tried various combinations of new flavors.

We made frittata with Asian flavors, and finished the top with the 
kitchen torch rather than under the broiler.

The frittata had eggs (of course) and broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and
Asian condiments; garnished with cilantro, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce.

Wild-caught gulf shrimp with fresh vegetables.

We constantly make new kinds of pancakes from sourdough discard.
Here: pancakes with raisins and dried apricots with a side of fried apple slices.

Kitchen Essentials

Essential kitchen item: Vlasic dill relish!
Tuna salad without it is impossible.

.

Essential to have on hand: wine. The beverage for Elizabeth's
weekly blogger get-together.

Thanksgiving

Some good things we ate: mushroom gravy, pumpkin with garlic and cilantro, and a chicken with dressing made from wild rice, white rice, cranberries, and green onions. Then on Saturday night, we had a great gift: leftover duck and sides reserved for us from the Thanksgiving dinner of some relatives who quarantined for 2 weeks to be able to get together with each other.

  

Carving the chicken on Facetime, as we shared our
Thanksgiving dinner with Evelyn and her family.

Down the street, Kathy’s Bear also enjoyed 
a turkey dinner.

Baking

For Thanksgiving, Len baked apple bread (shown) and rye-raisin bread.
We ate some and gave some to several friends.

Strangest Food Read of November

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata has some of the weirdest and most disturbing food scenes that I've ever read. I liked her first book, Convenience Store Woman (blogged here), but this new one was really horrifying! Both books are about characters that reject Japanese society in eccentric ways, but I think Murata has gone off some kind of deep end now!

This concludes my kitchen roundup for the busy, though isolated, month of November. I’m sharing with a number of bloggers at the event “In My Kitchen” sponsored by Sherry’s Pickings.

Blog post and photos © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

"Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson, published August, 2020.

Voters in the 2016 election seemed to vote against their interests. "They were willing to lose health insurance now, risk White House instability and government shutdowns, external threats from faraway lands, in order to preserve what their actions say they value most— the benefits they had grown accustomed to as members of the historically ruling caste in America."  (p. 324). 

The role of caste in driving American behavior is the central idea of Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste. She shows that the American relationship of White and Black people, from the start when African slaves were first introduced, produced and maintained a caste system like that of India. The possession of higher-caste status by all White people meant everything to the less educated, less successful, and less wealthy Whites whose superiority was based only on the caste system itself, and on nothing inherent in themselves. 

Painstakingly, Isabel Wilkerson details the formation of the American caste system, and delineates why it's a much more powerful way to look at our society than using the concept of racism. She illustrates the "pillars" of the caste system, including that it's supported by religious beliefs, it's enforced through anti-intermarriage laws and customs, that one's caste is strongly inherited and inescapable, that it's enforced by terror and cruelty as well as psychological means, and that being a member of the upper caste confers automatic superiority. She provides vivid examples from her own experiences and those of others to show the cruelty and inhumanity of the system and the stress it creates in the members of the lower caste, that is, in Black people.

Hitler modeled his anti-Jewish laws on the laws and customs of the American caste system, Wilkerson points out. Parallels between the persecution of Jews by the Nazi authorities in the 1930s and the persecution of Black lower-caste Americans are painful to read. Wilkerson writes: "Hitler especially marveled at the American 'knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death.'" (p. 81). 

Actually, everything in this book is painful to read and I had to force myself to get through it. Admittedly, I wasn't able to finish reading her equally painful earlier book, The Warmth of Other Suns, published 2010, which documented the American caste system in another way. I'm not going to try to summarize the many other interesting topics in Caste, which the author used to make her persuasive argument in favor of this viewpoint. If you think what I've said is weak, you should read the book before you try to refute the point on the basis of what I've said. My summary is very incomplete.

Caste is a very powerful book, and the conclusions about our society highlight a wide variety of American's behavior. The election of 2020 was no different than the election of 2016 when it comes to White voters, about which Wilkerson wrote:

"Why, some people on the left kept asking, why, oh, why, were these people voting against their own interests? The questioners on the left were unseeing and yet so certain. What they had not considered was that the people voting this way were, in fact, voting their interests. Maintaining the caste system as it had always been was in their interest. And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air, and even die to protect their long-term interest in the hierarchy as they had known it." (p. 327).

Just remember this:

"Through no fault of any individual born to it, a caste system centers the dominant caste as the sun around which all other castes revolve and defines it as the default-setting standard of normalcy, of intellect, of beauty, against which all others are measured, ranked in descending order by their physiological proximity to the dominant caste." (p. 268). 

Critics were enthusiastic about this book:

• In the New York Times, reviewer Dwight Garner called Caste "an extraordinary document, one that strikes me as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far." 
• In the Washington Post, Kenneth W. Mack, a historian and a professor of law at Harvard, says Caste is "a powerful, illuminating and heartfelt account of how hierarchy reproduces itself, as well as a call to action for the difficult work of undoing it." 
• On the NPR website, reviewer Hope Wabuke referred to Caste: "a masterwork of writing — a profound achievement of scholarship and research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral storytelling and cogent analysis." 

Each reviewer that I read cited different details in describing the book, which reflects Wilkerson's wide-ranging collection of fascinating history and examples. Reading the reviews after I wrote my own impressions made me feel that my enthusiasm was shared by many more expert readers than myself. I do recommend it!

Review © 2020 mae sander.

Jaume Plensa Sculpture

 “Behind the Walls” by Jaume Plensa.

"Behind the Walls" is the title of a newly-installed outdoor sculpture by Jaume Plensa at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The work, which is a gift to the museum, is made of polyester resin and marble dust, and most recently stood in Rockefeller Center in New York.

Spanish artist Jaume Plensa's work "argues for art's capacity to produce powerfully a sense of public place and expression," according to museum director Christina Olsen (The University Record, November 16, 2020, p. 1). In my opinion, part of its power comes from its really impressive size: it stands 25 feet tall. I looked at it from nearby and from a distance, and it seems to me that it is perfectly proportioned for the space in a corner of the modern wing of the museum. I have seen a work by this sculptor before, in Chicago in 2017: the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park.

Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004. The black granite pool between two glass brick towers is 232 feet long, 48 feet wide, and 1/8 inch deep, and is open for people to walk through.

About Crown Fountain in Chicago:

"The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out." (source)

Blog post and original photos © 2017, 2020, mae sander.

The Politics of the Potato

“What if the healthiest and most beneficial foods were also the tastiest? This is exactly what advocates of the potato claimed in the eighteenth century. Just as the framers of the new discipline of political economy believed that, ultimately, there was no conflict between allowing individuals to conduct their own economic affairs and the well-being of the larger economic whole, so potato-promoters maintained that the potatoes required to build a strong and prosperous state were the very thing that poor people would themselves choose to eat. All that was needed was an educational campaign and an increase in availability.” (Feeding the People, p. 80)

The potato in the late 18th century was viewed as a saving food that would nourish poor people who couldn't afford the cost of wheat bread. When Ireland adopted the potato and consequently experienced a population explosion, there was rejoicing at this effect. But then came the potato blight, the resulting famine, and the view that potato consumption was a disaster. Eventually, the perceived value of the potato went up again. In any case, the potato was highly politicized throughout its history in Europe.

In the early days after the discovery of the potato in the New World, potatoes were sort of a stealth vegetable in Europe. While many earlier historians reported that the potato was virtually unused there before the end of the 18th century, and that in fact people refused to eat it in many places, author Rebecca Earle, in a new book called Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato, finds new information in sources such as town and church records, cookbooks, and tax rolls, rather than in standard historic writings.

Potatoes were cultivated long before receiving official recognition. They were peasant food, grown in household gardens in a number of parts of Europe from the early introduction of New World foodstuffs. Personal gardens were an important source of nutrition for peasants and lower class workers because they weren't taxed or tithed. The frequently stated claim that potatoes were only accepted as food long after other New World foods like chocolate doesn't hold up to Earle's scrutiny. I particularly liked her contradiction of the often-repeated belief that because potatoes appear similar to deformed human body parts, people in the 16th through 18th centuries thought they would cause leprosy. This is fanciful! Only one source, a speculative one at that, cites any evidence for this claim, and it doesn't seem to have any actual base in historic reality.

Potato cultivation, in short, started much earlier than previous writers believed. For example:

“Like title disputes and herbals, printed and manuscript cookery books indicate that new-world roots were being cultivated on a small scale for domestic use in parts of Germany, England and elsewhere. As one 1651 cookbook from the Saxon city of Braunschweig noted, ‘earth-artichokes or roots … have become so common that practically every farmer grows them in his garden.' By the early eighteenth century, German cookery books often distinguished explicitly between different new-world tubers, and made clear that in some regions the ordinary potato was ‘quite common.’ As the century progressed, potato recipes could be found in ever-more published and manuscript recipe collections from many different parts of Europe.” (p. 36)

“Even in areas where potato cultivation began later, in the eighteenth century, villagers and peasants were often the first to raise the crop. This was for instance the case in Galicia, in southern Poland, where potatoes were grown in peasant gardens before they were introduced into the kitchens of landed estates.” (p. 44)

Illustration of an Itinerant Potato Seller,
18th century England, p. 39

Theories about potato consumption appeared quite a bit after the actual consumption of this vegetable. Some writers predicted that potatoes would not only provide good nutrition, but also inspire happiness in those who ate them. Happiness turns out to have been a very important topic in 18th century political thought. How can the population be made happier and more productive? Or to be more exact, how can peasants' happiness be manipulated to make the populace more productive for the benefit of the rulers? “Potatoes, happiness and the business of statecraft were bound together in the language of political economy.” (p. 103)

Earle cites numerous famous writers who proposed that eating potatoes would vastly improve the condition of the poor, and thus make them better -- and happier -- citizens or subjects. For example:

“Count Rumford reminded readers that since schemes to encourage potato consumption aimed ultimately to improve the well-being of the working poor, they were by definition of interest to ‘enlightened statesmen.’” (p. 73)

“William Buchan, the Scottish physician and advocate of potato gardens, encapsulated the happy situation resulting from greater potato consumption: ‘men would multiply, and poverty, unless among the profligate, be unknown.’” (p. 81)

Count Rumford (1753-1814), among his many accomplishments, was an advocate of soup kitchens to feed the poor, and he invented several variants of a now-famous recipe for nourishing soup. Variations of this soup were served to needy people, with flavors designed to please the different ethnic groups in Italy, Spain, and England. 

As with earlier eras, Earle's discussion of the 19th and 20th centuries details many facts about the uses of the potato and attitudes towards its production and consumption. Throughout the book, the topics of potato cultivation and culinary uses illustrate how food played a central role in politics, political theory, and political discussions. Very interesting! In the past, I have read a number of books on the history of the potato, most notably that by Redcliffe Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, and The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman. It’s impressive how different Earle’s approach to this food history is from the others. All in all,  Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato is a great book, well worth reading. It even includes recipes!

Review © 2020 mae sander.

Dinner for Two (Plus Four on Facetime)

Chicken, rice stuffing, cranberry sauce, mushroom gravy,
pumpkin with garlic and cilantro.

Update: our Facetime dinner from the other end.

Cooking!

 

Table for two.

Mushroom gravy simmering.

Cranberry-orange sauce.
(There is also cranberry chutney!)

Chicken stuffed with white & wild rice,
ready to roast in the oven.

All photos © 2020 mae sander.

Thanksgiving Preparations

Early this morning, Len started making apple bread for Thanksgiving Dinner.
We plan to eat some for dinner, and give some to friends. Earlier this week, he made rye-raisin bread for friends.

The loaves are now rising, and will be baked later this morning.

A turkey would be too large: we will be roasting this chicken, 
which is currently dry-brining in the refrigerator.

Stock for gravy is simmering: using up the meat trimmings
and vegetable trimmings is one of our annual Thanksgiving chores.

Despite being alone, we are preparing a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and as I often have done, I'm writing blog posts about our cooking progress. We miss all the usual people with whom we normally cook and share our Thanksgiving dinner, but we will meet with them later on e-chats. We've sent and received Thanksgiving greetings with a few friends all around the country.

Our usual co-cooks are busy in their own kitchens, making food for just their own families. Evelyn has already made candied pecans, making them on the stovetop rather than in the oven as we usually do. Elaine writes that she's saving candied pecans for another day: "We'll just have cranberry bread and apple pie and cranberry chutney (already made) as sweets. I'm stuffing a chicken and mashing sweet potatoes (omitting the cilantro, which we like OK but not enough to have a whole bunch minus a bit rot in the refrigerator."

Also, a friend wrote me this interesting note: "We had a dinner with just two for our first Thanksgiving in 1961. Back then I was able to find a five pound turkey! I made a chestnut stuffing using chestnuts in the shell. That was a lot of work. I soon learned to buy dry chestnuts without the shells. Today I will use a turkey breast as there is no such thing as a small turkey."

Blog post and photos © 2020 mae sander.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Kathy's Bear, cooking for the holiday.

Thanksgiving in my neighborhood.

Hunger In America

Food Gatherers, Ann Arbor, Michigan: a food bank that serves many charitable organizations.
I took these photos a few years ago when I toured the Food Gatherers facility.

Thinking of Thanksgiving this week, I have written several posts about the celebrations that we have enjoyed over the years, and on the foods and traditions of this American holiday. I'm thankful that my family, friends, and I have been privileged to enjoy many of these traditions over the years. 

Now I would like to turn my thoughts to the many people who are suffering more this year than ever because they do not have sufficient resources to obtain adequate foods, for every day or for the holiday. Hunger is worse than ever in our community, as in our country as a whole, and in the entire world.

From the newsletter of Food Gatherers, our
local food bank (source)

What can I do? What can we do? My choice has been donating to Food Gatherers, the local food bank in Ann Arbor. Like most similar organizations nationwide, Food Gatherers has experienced a great increase in need this year. The associated food pantries that distribute food from Food Gatherers to needy people have been extremely stressed. Pantries that served 100 families a month before the pandemic now serve 100 families per week. 

The food distribution organizations working with Food Gatherers have increased support for vulnerable families and individuals who are unable to pick up food at distribution centers. They have also been increasing help provided at the distribution centers where people can pick up food boxes.  

Food Gatherers obtains food from a number of sources, including donations of surplus food, donations via food drives, purchases of food from various sources, and food obtained from Feeding America, which is an organization that supplies food to food pantries nationwide. Feeding America is the parent organization of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries nationwide. To learn about how Feeding America collects and distributes food throughout these organizations, see: "How Do Food Banks Work?"

Feeding America has recognized the accomplishments of Food Gatherers: "For the second year in a row, Food Gatherers has been inducted into the Feeding America Advocacy Hall of Fame. To be included, food banks must complete a year-long challenge that includes educating community members and policymakers about the realities of food insecurity."

From the website of Feeding America (link), I would like to quote the following summary of the dire situation of hungry children, working-age Americans, elderly people, and households in both urban and rural areas. They write: 

Millions of children and families living in America face hunger and food insecurity every day.

• Due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 50 million people may experience food insecurity in 2020, including a potential 17 million children.
• According to the USDA's latest Household Food Insecurity in the United States report, more than 35 million people in the United States struggled with hunger in 2019. 
• In 2018, 14.3 million American households were food insecure with limited or uncertain access to enough food.
• Households with children are more likely to experience food insecurity. Before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 10 million children live in food-insecure households.
• Every community in the country is home to families who struggle with food insecurity including rural and suburban communities.
• Many households that experience food insecurity do not qualify for federal nutrition programs and need to rely on their local food banks and other hunger relief organizations for support.

I try to be conscious of the needs of others, and I have been donating money to Food Gatherers throughout the terrible emergency that's gripped our country this year. When I think about Thanksgiving, I think of my own life but also others' lives. I feel grateful to these organizations for helping those who need help. I encourage generosity from anyone who is able to be generous.

Note about a program to alleviate hunger: In thinking about the problems of hunger in America, I have been trying to follow a government program that was invented last spring to address the food insecurity caused by the pandemic. This program, unfortunately, has been kept fairly secret from the public and from relevant watchdogs. It was supposed to collect farm surpluses, such as food that would have been sold to restaurants, and to employ private corporations (rather than the existing food bank network or the USDA) to assemble and distribute food boxes to needy people. Many problems with suspicious or corrupt dealings have been documented with these private corporations, which were often cronies of the administration. For a recent report on this issue see "Trump officials gave a finance firm $16.3 million to supply food boxes to the poor. House Democrats are raising questions about how those funds were handled."

UPDATE: Also see this summary about the increase in hunger in America at the Guardian today.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander, quotes and images as credited. 

Thanksgiving Music

"Over the River to Grandma's House on Thanksgiving Day" by Grandma Moses, the American primitive painter. Date: 1943 (source)

Is there any such thing as Thanksgiving music? As far as I can tell, there is exactly one song that is authentic for this holiday. There are many manufactured kids' songs for nursery schools. There are songs of thanksgiving or being thankful, some of them religious and some very sentimental or even corny. However, they are not specific to the holiday -- people have thankful prayers and thoughts on all days.

Here are all the lyrics to the one and only song. If you went to any school in America, at least if you were there at the time I was a kid, then you can sing it:

“Over the River and Through the Woods”
by Lydia Maria Child, 1844

Over the river and through the woods,
To grandmother's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow-oh!

Over the river and through the woods,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.

Over the river and through the woods,
To have a first-rate play;
Oh, hear the bells ring, "Ting-a-ling-ling!"
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day!

Over the river and through the woods,
Trot fast, my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river and through the woods,
And straight through the barnyard gate.
We seem to go extremely slow
It is so hard to wait!

Over the river and through the woods,
Now Grandmother's cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

Another Grandma Moses Thanksgiving. (Source)

With all the music about other holidays, and all the time since 1844, I can't believe there's only one bona-fide Thanksgiving song. I can't even find a legitimate song about a turkey dinner. Evidently Irving Berlin wrote a song called "Plenty to be Thankful For" but I think it never took off; it came from the same movie as White Christmas, but I guess it didn't have the same appeal. And yes, I know about Adam Sandler -- doesn't count.

In place of a Thanksgiving Turkey song, here's one about mashed potatoes! Best I can do.

I hope someone will correct me, and show me that more Thanksgiving music does exist. 

UPDATE: My sister added one more song, also written in 1844:

Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander, images as credited.

Beaujolais Nouveau for Thanksgiving?

An ad for this year's Beaujolais Nouveau.
The Wine Spectator offers a review of this year's wine. 

What are you planning to drink with your Thanksgiving dinner in this unusual and very restricted year? When the fad for Beaujolais Nouveau was a big deal a number of years ago, we used to have it with our turkey every year. The producers in France release the first bottling of the new Beaujolais vintage on the third Thursday in November: coincidentally just in time for Thanksgiving. In the past, you had to reserve your wine, as only a few bottles arrived by air freight in the US quickly, and the rest came on a ship quite slowly. The familiar French announcement was "Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!"

Sadly, the 2020 celebrations of the new wine in the Beaujolais region were cancelled due to the pandemic, and there are worries about how it will be shipped and sold. The harvest is good, but the distribution is precarious! 

Image from a EuroNews video about the 2020 Beaujolais Nouveau,
which was released November 19, 2020. (source)

Advertising campaigns in the 1990s vastly increased the demand for this young wine, and the vineyards and wine-shippers of Beaujolais began to bottle much more of new wine. They revised the arrangements to get it to market, so they could ship it before the release date, which is less fun, and the price crept up, so in recent years we have chosen other wines for Thanksgiving. Also this year, increased tariffs on French wine have made a formerly inexpensive treat into a higher-priced choice, and the pandemic, as I mentioned, is interfering with distribution. Some producers aren't even sending any to the US.  

I'm sure we will have some wine with whatever we eat on Thursday! Maybe even Beaujolais Nouveau 2020 (though I haven't yet located any available locally). I'm sharing my Thanksgiving beverage thoughts with other bloggers who get together at the Altered Book Lover blog.

Harvesting the grapes, 2020. It was a very abundant and promising harvest.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander, images as credited.

Vintage Ads for Thanksgiving Foods

In 2017, I posted a collection of vintage ads for Thanksgiving foods, illustrating how people cooked the traditional dinner in the past and sometimes still do. I've edited the captions and added one or two images for this re-post. You may find the ads nostalgic -- or may find them amusing. Or you may find this post a depressing reminder of what we can't have this year because of the pandemic. I hope you will enjoy whatever feast you can organize this year!

My mother did make pumpkin pie with canned pumpkin and Pet milk. She also made
a stellar apple pie, which my sister still makes when we are able to get together!

McCormick has been packaging and advertising spices since 1889.
Our family dinners long ago used most of these spices. Also now!
Most of us really don't much like pumpkin pie these days.

From 1902: another brand of seasoning. I found many ads for Thanksgiving
menu items on the web and in my old magazines. Most of the ads (except
this very old one) make me think of the Thanksgiving dinners of the
past and how our tastes have changed without giving up the classics.

In 1941, the Wine Board was promoting wine
for Thanksgiving dinner!

This ad from 1924 illustrates how long American cooks have been making sweet
potato casserole topped with marshmallows. (Actually it started quite a bit earlier!)
My aunts used to make this for Thanksgiving, but we've moved on to a more
savory sweet potato recipe with garlic, cilantro, and no added sugar.

Another random ad from the internet.

Ocean Spray canned cranberry sauce is an old-time
classic. Some time ago, I started making several cranberry
recipes from scratch instead of just slicing it up.

This ad could appear right now and no one would think anything of it.
Margaret Rudkin (1897–1967), who is quoted in the ad, was the founder of Pepperidge Farm.
She's a fascinating figure: see "The Remarkable Life of Margaret Rudkin."

From our local food corporation, Chelsea Milling Company, comes the
corn muffin mix used in the Thanksgiving favorite corn casserole.
Jiffy Mixes aren't advertised much, so I didn't actually find an ad for this.
However the recipe re-appears every year: see "Easiest-Ever Corn Casserole."

Aparna makes Jiffy mix corn pudding, 2013.

This ad really looks unappetizing -- and pathetic. Not so vintage, either.
I feel sorry for anyone who eats like this! We always make our own gravy.

I don't remember this classic green bean casserole as a family tradition,
but it sure does get a lot of attention in food histories and recipe collections.
Campbell's introduced it in 1955. It seems to have swept the Nation.

Whatever.

This ad really makes me sad, reminding me of how normal smoking once was.
My father smoked Camels for most of his life: until it was too late.

This post is by mae sander for mae food dot blogspot dot com, originally published November, 2017.