Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine Chocolate Memories

Heart-Shaped Chocolate Box, 1950s

Valentine's Day makes me think of a lot of things. Above all: chocolate. When we were kids, my father would buy the family a heart-shaped box of chocolate, or just some chocolate candy in an ordinary box. My memories are not detailed, but I do know that he and my mother particularly liked a local St. Louis candy manufacturer called Mavrakos, whose plant was located not far from where we lived. The company had several stores in St. Louis from early in the twentieth century until 1984, so they definitely existed throughout my childhood. My mother always saved the chocolate boxes, so I also remember loose buttons or rubber-band-bound letters kept in faintly chocolate-scented boxes with the Mavrakos logo.

1961 Mavrakos newspaper ad.

Heavenly Hash from Mavrakos -- a real treat 
we enjoyed from time to time.

A write-up of the Mavrakos candy company's history:  https://losttables.com/mavrakos/mavrakos.htm

More Chocolate

While we were in graduate school, Len and I lived in Berkeley, California, for several years. A favorite chain of chocolate shops at the time was See's Candies (blogged here). I'm sure See's had lots of special chocolate for Valentine's Day, but I mostly remember that I used to stop on ordinary days at the shop on Telegraph Avenue, and buy just a few pieces of chocolate from the candy counter. After California, we moved to Michigan. One local candy company was Sanders' Candy; it went out of business for a while and has now been reborn with different owners. Better than Sanders' Candy, though was Drake's, a diner and candy store next to the University of Michigan campus (blogged here). Opposite the soda fountain and antique wooden booths, Drake's had a whole wall of little cubby holes with various chocolates from which you could choose just what you wanted. And I did.

Today, See's Candies, founded in California, has been making chocolate continuously for over 100 years. They are now a national company. Here in Ann Arbor, we have a See's candy counter in our local Plum Market. Interesting price comparison: a 1 pound box of assorted chocolates at Mavrakos from the ad in 1961 cost between $3.25 and $3.49. The Plum Market website offers a 1 pound box for $36 or a heart-shaped box for $44.99. 

More critically: in 2022, the price of chocolate has gone up 5% to 10% over last year, which is pretty much an average rise in these price-troubled times. Sorry, I can't keep from thinking about the economy. 

I hope that you enjoy a great Valentine's Day with your favorite treat, whatever it may be!

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.

In the Kitchen in January

Political events and unfounded hopes for covid vaccinations have preoccupied my thoughts during January. Because isolation is still necessary, in fact increasingly necessary, we have continued to cook and eat all our meals at home, but without a lot of novelty. New items we have purchased include things like different face masks rather than different kitchen gadgets! The best I can do for "In My Kitchen" is a summary of what we ate during the month.

Len's experiments in baking from The Rye Baker have continued, with lots of delicious rye breads as well as pizza dough and crusty sourdough loaves. As he creates sourdough discard, I try to use it up by making pancakes, both sweet and savory. I've posted plenty of photos of these breads in the past -- here are a few more.

One of Len's great rye breads served with anchovy butter.

Salad and tangerines accompany the bread.

Fresh out of the oven!

  

A loaf made from light rye flour and "first clear"
wheat flour: new ingredients this month.

 

Rye bread, eggplant with stir-fry noodles, and grapes for dessert.

Ottolenghi's many fascinating recipes continue to be a favorite choice for adding new flavors and flavor combinations to our diet.

 

From Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem:
a sheet pan dish: chicken with fennel and tangerines.
The only chicken I cooked in January.

The chicken dish, served with rice. (Recipe here)

From Ottolenghi's Flavor: potatoes and eggs
with gochujang sauce and miso.

Grocery delivery and a few items picked up by a friend continue to be our source of all food. In January, we didn't even order any take-out food -- we ordered from Whole Foods via amazon.com and we cooked it all in the kitchen. Unfortunately, although the Whole Foods ordering continues to be reliable, Amazon has discontinued Prime Pantry, and the products I was buying from that service are now much more expensive on Amazon, if available at all. In the following photo you can see the last Pantry box awaiting recycling. 

Amazon Prime Pantry:
formerly a great way to get many brand-name foods
like V-8 juice and Hellman's mayo.

Soup has been a welcome lunch food as the weather descends into its most wintery period, though luckily, we had a relatively mild December and first half of January, with snow at near-record lows. Soup is about the least photogenic food I know of, so no pics!

A more cheerful subject: Valentine's Day is coming soon! At the end of the month, we added some Valentine placemats and decor to our table. It's nice to see them during the worsening weather as we fret because the Michigan distribution of vaccine is very slow and uncertain.

On the table: placemats that say "I Love You"
and some bright heart-shaped fairy lights.

The Valentine decor with an exceptional meat meal:
mashed potatoes, yogurt sauce, condiments, AND
lamb chops that I had in the freezer before the pandemic began.
(OK, I should have used them sooner, but they were fine.)

Savory pancakes containing corn and onion, with avocado salad.
Valentine decor again.

 

"I love you" placemats once more, with salad, rice, and shrimp.

 

To conclude with a happy thought: one of the flocks of robins that spend the winter in wooded areas
came to our neighborhood last week, and feasted on the berries in a nearby garden.

This blog post © 2021 mae sander, to be shared with “In My Kitchen” hosted by Sherry’s blog.

Valentine Customs Old and New

2015 Candy Hearts from the Atlantic article

Little chalky-tasting Valentine candy hearts have their messages updated every year, I read this week in an article in the Atlantic. I remember candy hearts from elementary school. They never tasted good, but were a permanent part of the class Valentine party. Also, Raggedy Ann had one sewn inside her chest, giving them extra significance.

The centerpiece of the class Valentine party in my schooldays was a decorated Valentine box made of a cardboard hat box (something that doesn't exist any more). The box had a slot cut in the top, and everyone would put in personally addressed Valentines, which were distributed during the party. Besides the chalky hearts we had lots of home-made cookies.

I think classroom celebrations are still pretty much the same now except the kids probably decorate a box from amazon.com -- hat boxes being even more obsolete than the hats that were sold in them. Also, in some parts of the country, sweets aren't allowed at school parties, so I guess they can't have candy hearts or homemade cookies either.

I looked up the history of Valentine customs in England in Ronald Hutton's definitive book Stations of the Sun, A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. The earliest Valentine traditions weren't about human lovers, but about birds, who in Chaucer's time were believed to pick their mates on Valentine's Day. Sweet!

For a long time, people picked someone to be their Valentine, but the choice was made randomly. Beginning in the mid-18th century, children in some parts of England went from house to house asking for treats, much like the Halloween custom.

Morrow, morrow, Valentine,

I'll be yours if you'll be mine,

Please to give me a Valentine.

Rhymes like this became part of the tradition: in the morning, children would say the rhymes and receive presents from their families. In some places in the 19th century, the presents were given by "the Valentine Man" or "Father Valentine" an anonymous figure who left "sweets, fruit, pencils, or a book for each child on a window-sill or inside a hallway." (Hutton, p. 149)

Valentine cards became extremely popular in the early 19th century, with the post offices handling traffic far in excess of every-day demand. Towards the end of the century, "mocking, insulting, or 'indecent' Valentines" became popular, driving the more romantic and pretty cards out of favor. By 1914 the tradition of sending cards almost died out, but was revived in the 1920s with influence from America, and Valentine cards have remained popular in England ever since, according to Hutton.

Oh, and the New York Times, in an article in "The Upshot" says that those chalky hearts are "3,777 percent more likely than normal" to be eaten on Valentine's Day than any other day of the year. Champagne, oysters, strawberries, and many things dipped in chocolate are also consumed in larger-than-usual quantities. Sounds good to me. I hope you enjoy your celebration.

Chinese Valentine's New Year

This Sunday is both Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year. I am beginning to look for a menu that honors both of them.

The traditional Chinese New Year menus are chosen to bring longevity, riches, peace, wisdom and virtue. Some of the most well-known foods:

• Fish -- the Chinese word for fish, yue, means abundance so fish bring good fortune and good health. Whole fish are luckier because cutting them up uses a knife or cleaver, which are unlucky implements. However, fish balls (or meat balls) with ingredients chopped before the holiday arrives are also traditional because of the round shape
  
• Lettuce -- the word "choy" for green vegetables also means good luck, and lettuce is the luckiest. Other greens like Chinese cabbage or broccoli also appear on New Year's menus. No word on the gangster use of "lettuce" to mean money.
• Foods representing "gold" -- foods to make you rich are gold in color (oranges, tangerines, pomelos, gourds) or resemble gold bars, especially dumplings or spring rolls. I find this interesting as in many European traditions, gold foods or even edible gold were popular for the same reason.
  
• Noodles -- are long, for long life. You have to eat them without cutting them, preferably by slurping.

The Chinese New Year holiday is celebrated over several days, and on some of the other days a large number of other foods are eaten for good luck, including a vegetarian meal; luxurious buffets with shell fish, sea weed, sticky-rice balls, and, lotus-root dishes; elaborate hot-pot meals, and many others.

I don't see much overlap with Valentine Day foods, though wearing red and decorations in red brings luck in Chinese tradition and is also the color for kids on Valentine's Day. Chocolate and heart-shaped candies are not particularly associated with Chinese menus, though there are sweets included in many of the feasts for the holiday.

Addendum: the Valentine Day and Chinese New Year timing is indeed unusual. According to the L.A.Times: "This is a rare convergence -- it's only the third time since 1900 -- and it won't happen again until after 2030."