Bacchus, God of Wine

Dionysus (2nd century CE), Louvre Museum. (Wikipedia)

Dionysus was the Greek god of wine. His Roman alterego was Bacchus. Classical depictions of this god often make him young and very beautiful -- though at times, he appears as a rather degenerate older man. In Greek depictions, he was often shown with his followers: a group of human revelers who often appeared in a celebratory procession. These were called the thiasus or thiasos of Dionysus. Dionysus is also shown with cheetahs or leopards, which pulled his chariot or otherwise accompanied him.

Non-human revelers in Greek or Roman myths and images of Dionysus and Bacchus included dancing girl-nymphs called maenads and male satyrs, which had human heads and bodies with horse-like ears and tails. They were a pretty wild bunch! A Bacchanal is still the name for an orgy-like party.

Also from the Louvre: a Greek vase showing Dionysus and his Thiasos. (525 to 500 BCE, Wikipedia)

Bacchus from The Leadenhall Street Mosaic (British Museum)

Bacchus Fresco from Pompeii (British Museum)

Bacchus in the Renaissance

Caravaggio's Bacchus (1595-1597) from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Renaissance painters also loved to depict this god, just as the ancients did.

Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian (1522-1523). National Gallery, London. (Wikipedia)
This painting depicts the myth of Bacchus and Ariadne as told by the Roman poet Ovid.
It's the only image I have chosen where Bacchus is not holding a wine cup.

Perhaps the fermented beverage that Greek and Roman gods and humans drank didn't taste just like the wine we enjoy these days. In ancient Greece it often had the taste of pine resin, which lined and sealed the terracotta amphoras used for shipping and storing wine. We probably wouldn't actually rate it very high! So although I wouldn't want to drink their wine, I find the ancient Greek and Roman myths about it very appealing and I really like the gods and mythical tales that personify the glory of wine.

I'm sharing these portrayals of Dionysus and Bacchus and their wine cups with Altered Book Lover and the many followers of her blog who share their ideas and images about drinks each Tuesday.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com. Images as credited.

Dreaming of Somewhere

At the gardens of the Smithsonian a few years ago.

Fairfax, Virginia. St. Louis, MO. Lafayette, IN.  I want to see my family. The risks are just too high now. No way to go there.

California Redwoods last September.

California. Always one of my favorite places. Last fall, we took a magnificent guided bird tour including parts of the Bay Area and the Sierras. San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are some of my favorite cities. I would love to go back. But right now, California is tragically troubled by coronavirus, drought, and the worst fires imaginable. Around 100,000 people have fled from their homes. Some are sleeping on the ground in parks. The smoke chokes everyone, in cities, agricultural areas, the redwood forests, and everywhere. Many of the redwoods have even burned, perhaps irreversibly (these ancient giants have survived fires in the past, but they take a long time for their grandeur and beauty to be restored, and there are no guarantees). No way to go there.

The Grand Canyon.

New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Texas. I especially want to go and see the fascinating birdlife there. Not possible!

Hawaiian Rainbow.

Hawaii. First, getting there: many hours on a plane and in airports. Second: quarantine for 2 weeks when you get there. Plus all the other logistical problems No way to go there.

The Eiffel Tower on our most recent visit to Paris.

France. I would like to see my friends in Paris, to visit the Mediterranean coast and the Atlantic coast, and to explore the vineyards and towns in Alsace. And more. But getting to France right now is impossible: Americans are NOT ALLOWED. The virus seemed to be declining, but then returned. Access to parks, restaurants, monuments, museums, and the like is unpredictable. Maybe the beautiful fruit and vegetable markets will close. No way to go there.

The National Geographic Explorer on our cruise in Patagonia.

Iceland. One of my dream tourist places. I was booked on a National Geographic/Lindblad cruise there in June, but it was obviously cancelled. Another place that Americans are currently unwelcome. And the risk of taking even a small ship like Lindblad runs seems outrageously dangerous now. If the coronavirus did break out, you could be confined to a tiny cabin for weeks, as happened to various cruises last spring. No way to go there.

Japan. No way to go there.

I could go on, but that's enough.

Blog post  and photos © 2017-2020 mae sander. All photos by mae sander for maefood dot blog spot dot com.

Bears, Rabbits, ...

Kathy’s Bear, shown here doing his laundry, has lots of companions throughout my neighborhood.

Tallahassee, Florida: The Nickel Boys

Tallahassee, Florida.

When I was in high school, my parents, brother, and sister went to Tallahassee, Florida, for the summer, while I arranged for myself to stay with my aunt and go to a special summer school. My mother brought back with her a set of beautiful watercolors which she did in her kitchen there: she said she loved the high humidity because she liked to wash the colors while the paper was damp, and in Tallahassee summer weather, this worked well. Above is one of these beautiful paintings, which currently hangs in my daughter's house.

The Nickel Boys, winner of the Pulitzer
Prize in Fiction for 2020.

I thought about these idyllic scenes with cows and green grass as I read a novel that takes place in and near Tallahassee: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Although it's a famous prize-winner, I knew little about the book. You probably know more than I did, as it was a best-seller and widely reviewed.

The Nickel Boys shocked me with its power and skill and immediacy. It made me think about the two worlds of Tallahassee: the bucolic farm scenes my mother painted and the cruel and unjust world of the central character, the boy Elwood, a bright and ambitious boy -- but he is destroyed by his society. The date of my family's stay in Florida, and thus the date on this painting, is just at the time when Elwood was a boy, a bit before the main action of the book, which particularly made me connect the book and my mother's paintings.

All the time I was reading it, I was thinking about "Black Lives Matter," which to me calls forth the time in the book when Black Lives didn't matter to anyone but themselves and when systematic racism was the norm, in fact was almost required of whites. And how we need to work on the way the set of injustices is still embedded almost invisibly in our society. Or as it's stated in the novel about the white southerners:

"Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom. Take him away from his family, whip him until all he remembers is the whip, chain him up so all he knows is chains. ... After the Civil War, when a five-dollar fine for a Jim Crow charge— vagrancy, changing employers without permission, 'bumptious contact,' what have you— swept black men and women up into the maw of debt labor, the white sons remembered the family lore." (p. 191). 

The novel invokes the Black experience in Tallahassee, the setting of The Nickel Boys but it could be anywhere in America. I grew up in St.Louis, where it wasn't seriously different. You know that special summer school I went to? I think there was no more than one Black student, if any, in a hand-picked group of several hundred students in several academic areas, representing the entire urban and suburban area. St.Louis remains in the news for instances of injustice and bigotry, but I'm getting off the topic.

The beautiful story of Elwood's childhood optimism emerges as we learn of his school experiences with one good teacher, and as he's encouraged in his hopes by his reading of the speeches and actions of Martin Luther King, particularly by a recording of one of King's speeches. Whitehead makes extremely effective use of quotes from King throughout the book. Clearly the twenty-first-century reader is challenged to question how much progress we've made to date, in achieving the vision of a better society. And the hopes of the boy Elwood are clearly such a futile set of hopes.

Abuses are common in Elwood's life. A rigged system subsidizes white home buyers, not Blacks like Elwood's grandmother. A rigged system sent him to reform school -- the Nickel School -- when he hoped to go to college. At Nickel, Elwood lived a life in torment in a hideous place called the White House. Systematic and legally mandated injustice meant the Black inmates of the reform school mainly had bad oatmeal to eat. School managers sold the more wholesome food meant for the boys, especially that meant for the black boys, to the town diners and drug stores -- Elwood was forced to help deliver this food to the town businesses. The book is full of extremely specific examples, but the reader can never lose sight of what they meant for society 60 years ago, and what they still mean now.

The cruelty of cheating the boy-inmates of the food intended for them becomes critical in the final scenes when state inspectors arrive to see the situation at the school. A show is put on for the inspectors, and the boys know it, though they enjoy the moment. Briefly:

"The three house fathers stood before the serving trays, which that day were filled with the food the students were supposed to get every morning: scrambled eggs, ham, fresh juice, and pears." (p. 176). 

"The other students made so much noise when they saw what the kitchen had cooked up for lunch— hamburgers and mashed potatoes and ice cream that would never see the inside of Fisher’s Drugs— that Blakeley told them to keep it down. 'You want them to think this is some kind of circus we running here?'" (p. 180).  

"Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and the infinite brotherhood of broken boys." (p. 189).

At the end of the book, in some thoughts of a minor character who didn't experience the Tallahassee life, says much about the current way that this history continues to haunt America:

"She had grown up in the same country with the same skin. She lived in New York City in 2014. It was hard to remember sometimes how bad it used to be— bending to a colored fountain when she visited her family in Virginia, the immense exertion white people put into grinding them down— and then it all returned in a rush, set off by tiny things, like standing on a corner trying to hail a cab, a routine humiliation she forgot five minutes later because if she didn’t, she’d go crazy, and set off by the big things, a drive through a blighted neighborhood snuffed out by that same immense exertion, or another boy shot dead by a cop: They treat us like subhumans in our own country. Always have." (p. 206). 

If you read this book, I think you will know what is meant by "Black Lives Matter." I hope so. If you leave a comment here that says "all lives matter" I won't publish it, because either you just don't get it, or you accept the evil of the racism of our society.

Review by mae sander for mae's food blog at maefood dot blog spot dot com. © 2020. 

Eating Canned Tuna

Skipjack, albacore, bigeye, yellowfin, Atlantic bluefin, Pacific bluefin, and southern bluefin tuna are the principal species in the tuna family. They vary widely in size, in scarcity, and in culinary desirability. Bluefin tuna, mainly fished for their use in sushi, are very large, and very expensive -- and also under extreme threat of becoming extinct. Some of the smaller and more common tuna types, such as albacore, though heavily fished, are at much less risk. In general, tuna play a large role in ocean ecosystems. Tuna also play a large role in American nutrition. (source)

Lunch: tuna and white bean salad with local
tomatoes and garden herbs.

Ingredients: red onions soaked in ice water, lemon juice,
a can of tuna, a can of white beans, vinaigrette sauce made
with Edmund Fallot mustard.

In recent months, I've been trying to revisit my choices of foods, and to develop a better sense of responsibility in what we eat. I'm looking at the issues of health and nutrition, of ecology and climate change, and of the welfare of workers in the food industry including faming, fishing, food processing, transportation of food, and many jobs in food stores. It's a big job! Today, I'm thinking about tuna, particularly canned tuna, and I’ve been reading about the history and current state of the tuna industry.

Tuna canning in America began around the turn of the 20th century, and continued to grow for most of the century. Tuna was a staple for Americans from virtually all ethnic groups, with use by a very high percent of households: "For nearly nine decades, Americans ate more and more tuna out of tin cans. For nearly five decades — from about 1950 until 2000 — tuna, almost all of which was canned, was the most popular seafood in the United States." However, between 1990 and 2010, Americans' tuna consumption decreased from 4 pounds per person per year to just 2 pounds. As the industry grew over time, the original numerous small tuna canneries slowly consolidated into just a few, and began to engage in collusion to drive up prices. This year an executive of one company has even been convicted of illegal price fixing. (source, source)

After a decline in the early part of this century, tuna sales seem to be going back up now. Specifically a study from Fortune Business Insights reports: "Consumers are highly dependent on ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat food products due to the convenience of cooking offered by them. The rise in working women population and the less time spent on cooking has led to wide utilization of canned tuna. The millennial population is highly inclined towards such convenience food products as it is easy to prepare, nutritious as well as saves the food preparation time. Many manufacturers are focusing on launch of new products and certifications to provide the consumers with quality products and for serving them better." (source, source)

Despite the legal setbacks to specific producers, overall the market for canned and packaged tuna has been growing for a few years, and the market changes caused by the pandemic have driven up demand for all canned products, tuna included. Collectively, the tuna industry production totals in the tens of billions of dollars per year; though total consumption is still down, the value of tuna purchased is up because of higher prices and higher quality of the product. Here's a graph of recent and projected growth:

As for me: tuna salad is one of the easiest recipes in my repertoire -- a can of tuna with mayo, pickle relish, maybe chopped onion or celery, maybe hard boiled egg. We like it in a cold sandwich, as a classic tuna melt, or just as a salad with other veggies. We also like the Italian-style salad made with white beans and tuna. Another favorite: the French Salade Niçoise -- tuna, tomato, olives, green beans, pommes à l'huile (French potato salad), optional anchovies. A famous American classic, though I don't make it myself, is the tuna hot dish with cream of something soup and noodles. With all the challenges to grocery shopping we're facing these days, these pantry-shelf recipes are surely more valuable than ever. Tuna sandwiches (maybe made directly from a pouch, maybe by adding your own mayo) are still a mainstay of lunches throughout America.

Issues about the rights and wrongs of eating tuna are numerous. Is it safe to eat tuna? Especially, is there a risk of mercury contamination? Is tuna environmentally responsible? In particular, are dolphins being killed by nets that capture the tuna? And are the tuna in oceans throughout the world being irreversibly fished out, leading to many ocean-wide problems? Is the price going up, making it less and less affordable? Finally, are the fishermen on the tuna boats taking terrible risks of infection from coronavirus? Answers to these questions are disputed: the fishing industry trade association denies the warnings from consumer and environmental organizations, while most other organizations suggest caution with regard to mercury in tuna and strongly recommend responsible methods of fishing.

Except for the self-serving National Fisheries Institute positions, most analysts recommend pole-and-line or trolling methods of fishing, which would mean purchasing tuna labeled to have these methods, and recommend albacore or skipjack species of tuna. The extreme vulnerability of the bluefin tuna isn't relevant to the discussion of canned tuna, as these giant fish are used only for sushi (but you might want to think about this if you do eat sushi). The "Eat This Not That" website points out:

"Resources like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Site or Greenpeace's canned tuna report, which ranks 20 well known brands for their sustainability, as well as ethical and fair trade practices, are good places to start making more informed choices with canned fish."

Yes, I’ve been buying recommended ethically fished and handled canned tuna brands, namely Wild Planet and Whole Foods 365 brand, for some time, but I try to revisit these decisions occasionally in case the situation changes.

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

100 Years of Votes for Women

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.  

"Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." 

– U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIX

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Women's Suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, which provided all women citizens with voting rights. A number of individual states had already granted women's voting rights, beginning in Wyoming in 1869: here in Michigan, women had voted since 1918. The campaign for women's rights had been long and active -- as illustrated by the photo above from the Lansing State Journal.

Even after the passage of the 19th amendment, women of color were explicitly denied the vote by a variety of discriminatory means, and the struggle for votes for everyone continues. In the election this November, no citizen of the US can take his or her voting rights for granted: we still must fight to ensure that every citizen can vote and that each person's vote will be counted. However, today, 100 years after the amendment became part of the Constitution, is a good day to look back on the struggles of the past to achieve the victories that made us what we are now. For a detailed history in pictures, see "Suffrage at 100" in today's New York Times. (Note: this article is behind a paywall, but you can see it if you have no NYT cookies in your browser.)

Blog post by mae sander at mae food dot blogspot.com

Wine

“Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1779.

Wine is one of the best pleasures left when you can't go out and have to stay separate from people. Drinking wine in moderation has made a lot of people just a little happier, me included. And wine has been a human pleasure for thousands of years -- the earliest being in China 9000 years ago. Thinking about wine, I decided to find a few images depicting wine in medieval times, beginning with a favorite tapestry showing wine making and wine drinking.

"Les  Vendanges" (the wine harvest) -- 16th Century Belgian Tapestry from the collection of the  Cluny Museum, Paris.

From "Les Vendanges" -- crushing the grapes.

From "Les Vendanges"

One of the Cluny Unicorn Tapestries.

The Cluny Museum of Medieval Art in Paris, owner of "Les Vendanges," is probably my favorite museum in any city in the world. We have visited there on every trip to Paris (except once, when they were closed for remodeling). The Cluny tapestries are the most spectacular part of their collection, the  most famous being the series called "The Lady and the Unicorn."

"Les Vendanges" is a very large weaving almost 5 meters in length and 2.5 meters high. I'm fascinated by the details of winemaking, storage, and wine drinking from the past, illustrated in its imagery. Of course I know that harvested grapes are no longer put in large vats where strong men trample them with bare feet to extract the juice; nevertheless, seeing the details of this method of making wine 500 years ago enriches my experience drinking wine: which I love to do!

Illustration of winemaking from "Tacuinum Sanitatis,"
a medieval work on health based on an Arab medical book.

Wine conservation from The Medieval Cookbook.

October wine harvest, from "Le Grand Calendrier," Troyes, 1541.

"Vendanges au Chateau" from Tournais in Belgium, a tapestry woven in 1520. 

At the moment French winegrowers are having a very rough time, while in our own shops, the French wines that we prefer are becoming hard to find. I read this in the New York Times: "The economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus, combined with the Trump administration’s 25 percent tax on French wines in the trade war dispute with Europe, has collapsed the [French] wine market." So I hope our happy enjoyment of French wine isn't disrupted.

I'm sharing these wine images from 500 years ago with Altered Book Lover and her "T is for Tuesday" blog event, where many other bloggers share images of drinks with one another.

Images of "Les Vendanges" and "Lady and the Unicorn  from Cluny Museum website. Other images from WikiArt. 

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

Today’s Brownies

 

Morning in Our Back Yard

We decided to take a short bike ride before breakfast Friday. The slanting sunlight was shining on the garden fence as we opened the garage to take the bikes out. As we rode around the neighborhood, we could smell breakfast. In one block, we knew someone was frying bacon and eggs. And maybe coffee and toast. In the next block, in contrast to these appealing aromas, we knew there had been a disturbed skunk sometime overnight. The air was cool and pleasant for the entire ride.

Our own breakfast, when we got home, was tomato, cottage cheese, herring, olives, and cucumber on our Mickey and Minnie plates. Kind of an Israeli breakfast.

Meanwhile, in the course of the day on Friday, among all the depressing news:

We'll wait and see. So unexpectedly cheerful! I hope it goes well for the panda and all her keepers.

Blog post by mae sander. © 2020.

Three Girl Detectives

Vintage Nancy Drew

My first detective was —naturally — Nancy Drew.  The everlasting girl sleuth made her first appearance in 1930. Nancy Drew books kept being updated for generation after generation of readers, and eventually for film and TV watchers. At age 10 or 11, on summer days, I could walk to the nearby library, check out my max of three Nancy Drew mysteries (disapproved by the librarians), read them in a day or so, and go back for more.

Over the years, I’ve read lots of  mysteries of various kinds that featured both men and women detectives. Or sleuths, as Carolyn Keene, fictitious author of Nancy Drew would have it. So much has been written about Nancy Drew and her influence that I have nothing to add here, except that I've been thinking about girl detectives because my current reading has featured a couple of 1990s female detectives, Aimee Leduc and Lydia Chin.

The novels I read are the creations of authors Cara Black and S.J. Rozen. Black's Aimee is a private investigator in Paris. Rozan's Lydia investigates in New York, with a focus on Chinatown. Both of these characters are highly intelligent, strong, young, good looking, brave, and resourceful. I have a feeling that their invincible and unflappable personalities are particularly representative of the ideals of the 1990s, though both authors have continued to write many more novels featuring these detectives. Their abilities defy the imagination: they are just too perfect!

Murder in the Marais by
Cara Black (published 1997,
set in 1993.

While I've read several of the Lydia Chin novels in the past, and posted reviews of several of them, Aimee Leduc is new to me: she's a favorite of my friend Mary, who recommended them and loaned them to me. In the first novel of the series, Murder in the Marais, Aimee is depicted as a real superwoman, able to cope with events that would presumably defeat anyone else, and able to cope with the threats that occur in this suspenseful tale.

Aimee uses ingenious and convincing disguises for every occasion. She has a huge wardrobe of remarkable haute couture clothing, as well as special-purpose clothes for slumming and other situations. Mostly these come from thrift shops where she makes incredible finds from famous Paris designers. However, on one occasion she simply stole an entire outfit from a factory. It's ok: she had to get new clothes in order to escape a pursuer.

Aimee's brilliance includes a range of computer skills appropriate for the novel's 1993 setting. Using equipment that's now long obsolete, she can hack into any government or industry computer and find out what she needs to know: often while fighting off bad guys. Her various confrontations with dangerous violent men show her to be intrepid -- including shooting the worst of them off a roof when he was shooting at her with a night-vision weapon.

Witnessing deaths or finding bodies doesn't cause her to lose her calm demeanor. She effortlessly navigates the streets, metro, and sewers of Paris. Above all, Aimee knows where to find the most delicious onion soup, hot apple tart, and good coffee in Paris. What a remarkable woman!

Mandarin Plaid by
S.J. Rozan (1997)

S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin is a Chinese American, a child of immigrants. She lives with her mother -- who would prefer a more submissive and conventional behavior of her daughter. In Mandarin Plaid, the second in the series, Lydia uses her knowledge of Chinese language, immigrants, and diverse customs in her work as a private eye, partnering with a conventional detective named Bill Smith. Like Aimee, Lydia has remarkable computer skills (appropriate for her time). She also has an uncanny ability to judge character and guess people's motives or weaknesses. She's also similarly capable of staying cool while threats and dangers lurk all over New York.

Although Lydia's wardrobe isn't as versatile or stylish as that of Aimee in Paris, she thinks hard about dressing to fit into a variety of low-life bars, trendy restaurants, and other settings where her detective duties take her. She uses Asian martial arts in hand-to-hand fighting with the bad guys -- her gun comes in handy as well. She works out at a dojo to keep in shape mentally and physically:

"Practicing form, repeating the traditional moves in their prescribed combinations, again, again, again, with no involvement with anyone else, nothing but the relentless, exhausting effort to perfect yourself: that helped." (p. 173).

Food, especially the most appealing foods of Chinatown, is often on Lydia's mind. She stops for tea often, and enjoys several specific types. She's also a helpful shopper for her mother: before going out detecting one morning, she has to do some marketing:

"Water spinach, in Chinatown on a bright weekday morning, is not hard to find. Fruit and vegetable sellers weight their sidewalk stands down with shiny oranges and ugly misshapen jackfruit, crowded beside bundles of foot-long beans as thin as a shoelace and surrounded by bunches of deep green leaves, some rounded, some serrated, all glistening with water sprinkled enthusiastically over them by the sharp-eyed merchants and their fresh-off-the-boat assistants." (p. 84).

At an up and coming trendy Chinese restaurant (remember, this is the early 1990s!), she ordered "a platter of sizzling oysters in a garlic and scallion sauce. ... I tasted them. They were wonderful, something bitter in the sauce setting off the richness of the oysters perfectly." For her second course: "a whole perch, steamed and glistening in a ginger-scallion sauce, topped with delicate strands of carrot, red pepper, and bean thread. With it came a platter of watercress sauteed with garlic, and a large covered bowl of fragrant rice." (p. 141-143).

These days, the library isn't a place I'm going (in fact, I don't think it's open, only delivering books for pre-arranged pick-up). Borrowing books from a friend like Mary is exceptional. E-books are my mainstay! But lazy reading about girl sleuths is still a great way to spend a hot summer afternoon.

This review post © 2020 by mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com. 

If you see this at another blog, it's been pirated!

Another Bike Ride

Along the Huron River there’s a bicycle path almost everywhere, in the city and along the country roads. On this ride we went from the Dixboro Dam just east of town along the river nearly into the center of town. All of the rides are beautiful, and we feel lucky that there are so many non-motorized-vehicle paths to choose from. The railroad tracks also parallel the river (as was a common practice in the 19th century when the rail lines were laid out). So there are numerous places where the tracks cross the river, which all seem to be an opportunity for graffiti artists. artists.

Blog post and photos © 2020 mae sander.

 

PIzza on the Weber Grill