Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day 2009 in a Mexican restaurant in San Diego.
We were surprised to find an Irish celebration in front of a Mexican mural!

The traditional American celebrations of St.Patrick's Day involve parades and big parties at bars with green beer. This year, the coronavirus has cancelled most of that. I don't normally go to bars anyway, but I love Ireland, where I've visited several times. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day in my own way, I decided to re-publish a blog post about Ireland that I wrote in 2011.

At the Giants Causeway, March 2011. This mysterious rock formation was made by the
giant Finn McCool of Ireland. (Or if you prefer, by volcanic activity)

Where Do Irish Fairies Live? 

Originally posted on my travel blog in March, 2011

The landscape in Ireland is full of ancient stones. Old towers and seaside fortifications from the Middle Ages. Early Christian churches, holy wells, and abbeys with a few standing arches from once-secluded cloisters. Stone walls from all eras dividing the land into sheep pens. Ruined castles from many different centuries. The giant Finn McCool's causeway. And neolithic tombs, forts, and other constructions.

My perspective in seeing all these bare stones on my three trips to Ireland has always been historical: I try to learn about the eras when many races and tribes came to Ireland and built new lives and new stone structures. I envisioned how these peoples cut down the ancient forests and turned them into bogs and stony fields. I read about centuries of fighting, famine, colonization, and other events affected the landscape.

But how did the Irish farmers two centuries ago view all this evidence showing centuries of human occupation? They had little historic information, and less understanding of how ancient the neolithic tombs and forts were created. The mysteries of their surroundings created a sense of enchantment. Irish folk tales invented Finn McCool to create the giant's causeway, and imagined races of fairies, wee people, leprechauns (who are originally shoe makers), banshees, and many others to populate these very scary ruins. In their stories, doors would open amidst the stones, old tombs would light up and songs would sound into nighttime darkness, and the old castles would come to life with ethereal people who couldn't be seen in daylight.


Neolithic stones, photo from our 2005 trip.

In reading William Butler Yeats's Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, I'm getting a much more vivid picture of how the fairies live. In one story, a man named Lusmore was walking slowly home one night, when "he came to the old moat of Knockgrafton, which stood on the right-hand side of his road." A moat is a neolithic tomb, such as I saw on my trip.

"Tired and weary was he, and noways comfortable in his own mind at thinking how much farther he had to travel, and that he should be walking all the night; so he sat down under the moat to rest himself, ... Presently there rose a wild strain of unearthly melody upon the ear of little Lusmore; he listened, and he thought that he had never heard such ravishing music before. It was like the sound of many voices, each mingling and blending with the other so strangely that they seemed to be one, though all singing different strains, and the words of the song were these--

"Da Luan, Da Mort, Da Luan, Da Mort, Da Luan, Da Mort;

"when there would be a moment's pause, and then the round of melody went on again. ... The fairies within Knockgrafton, for the song was a fairy melody ... " -- The Legend of Knockgrafton

Another neolithic tomb in The Burren, from our 2005 trip


Poulnabroe, a well-preserved neolithic portal tomb







One more portal tomb, north of Sligo, 2011
Castles such as the ones we saw were also homes for fairies; from the tale of a young man:

"An old ruined castle, about a quarter of a mile from his cabin, was said to be the abode of the 'wee folk.' Every Halloween were the ancient windows lighted up, and passers-by saw little figures flitting to and fro inside the building, while they heard the music of pipes and flutes. It was well known that fairy revels took place; but nobody had the courage to intrude on them." -- Jamie Freel and the Young Lady

If fairies or pookas come here now, they disturb the residents of the just-visible adjacent housing development!

Bread: Traditional food in time of hunger

Across the country this weekend grocery stores and big-box stores are running out of vegetables, frozen foods, pasta, canned goods, and bread as well as a number of other products. While this may not reflect real shortages, it definitely reflects people’s increasing fears of the growing pandemic, and fear that going into stores will soon risk unnecessary exposure to those already infected with the virus.

Bread has been regarded as a fundamental food during much of European and American history. Although the current Western diet no longer gives this central role to bread, it remains important and well-loved. Baking bread is a comforting activity during times like these, and it’s reassuring to have a good supply of flour and yeast or starter that can be used to continue baking.

Len baked a very dark rye bread this weekend.  

Checking that the bread is done.

The bread came out a beautiful color and texture. It was great with butter,
along with eggs and vegetables.

In keeping with the mood around here, I decided to read this book: The History of Bread by Bernard Dupaigne, translated from French (published 1999). The early history is fairly condensed, covering topics like the development of cultivation of wheat and other grain, the relationship of beer and bread in ancient Egypt, and the importance of  “bread and circuses” in ancient Rome. The author briefly touches on the spread of wheat cultivation, the invention of various types of mills and ovens, and the symbolic significance of bread in early civilizations, mainly around the Mediterranean. The real heart of the book is the description of the role of bread in French history. 

As I read, I was thinking about how important bread has been -- often the source of most of the nutrition of societies that preceded ours, and also the importance of plentiful bread as a symbol of security and social stability. Though the book does talk about civil unrest of various kinds in France when bread became scarce or expensive, it's mostly about happier topics like different flavors and shapes and ritual uses of bread. I have read other books about famine and about people's desperation when wheat flour was scarce and they resorted to nearly inedible materials to make their loaves.

Dupaigne ends with a brief description of breads around the world, and then a few recipes. The main attraction of this book is its fabulous illustrations. The pages are beautifully designed and laid out to combine text and images. It's not a particularly complete or profound history of bread, but the pictures make up for the lack of depth.

Illustration of a medieval bread oven.

A typical page of the book, with picture of an
ancient kneading trough in use.

We are trying to stay isolated as the number of cases of virus in Michigan is growing rapidly.
However we felt safe taking a walk by the river. A large number of other people had the same idea,
but it was not difficult to stay at least 6 feet from them.

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

Sister Fidelma Eats Breakfast and Solves a Mystery

"Fidelma mentally shut her ears to the scratchy voice of the woman, and ate mechanically of the cereal and fruit placed before her." (Peter Tremayne, Absolution By Murder: A Sister Fidelma Mystery, p. 173)

Cereal and fruit for breakfast? You mean cornflakes with a banana? Oh, wait, Sister Fidelma lived in the Dark Ages: the year 664 to be exact. No cornflakes. No bananas.

Absolution by Murder (published 1995) is the first book in a long series. In it, Sister Fidelma is attending a very complicated meeting between the Saxon Christians and the Irish Christians. The church authorities and members of the nobility are discussing several passionate issues, such as how to set the date of Easter and whether members of religious orders should be allowed to marry.

A combination of political ambitions and religious fanaticism drives the very numerous principal characters -- in fact, the first 50 pages is entirely dedicated to description of what seem to be dozens of these people. Finally, we get to the point: several murders punctuate the proceedings. Sister Fidelma from Ireland, who is qualified as an expert on legal matters, and a similarly trained male representative of the English factions are assigned to find the culprit, and at last there's a plot.

Alas, several very long discussions of church matters derail the action that one expects when reading a mystery novel, even a historical one. I also found too much reliance on the way all the characters spoke different languages, so had a variety of translation issues which for me slowed down the action, though I'm sure it was very historically accurate. Although the author uses a stylized and rather affected way of writing dialog, it didn't really convince me the way that some historical novels do. Maybe it owed a bit to Sir Walter Scott, famous inventor of a fake-archaic Medieval language irreverently called tushery.

The level of detail about these historically researched disputes is excruciating, so one would hope there would at least be some nice cultural and social history to make it a little more entertaining. As always, I look for food details, and I was pretty disappointed in them, as well as in the other cultural stuff. Cereal and fruit indeed! Couldn't the author at least have called it porridge?

A few other food quotes make me think the author just wasn't that interested in culinary history. There just isn't any effort to portray the food in a vivid or distinctive way. Here are a few quotes that show the author's lack of effort at detail, except for the use of an ancient word, paximatium:

"... thirty of the brethren laboured over steaming cooking pots to supply the wants of the great abbey and its guests." (p. 182). 

"The kitchens... were still full of strong odours, with the inevitable reek of stale boiled cabbage and herbs dominating." (p. 221).

"She had merely eaten some fruit and a piece of paximatium, the heavy bread, and then gone immediately to her cubiculum to rest for a while." (p. 155).  

"Jugs of cool milk, jars of honey and paximatium, the twice-baked bread, were being distributed to each table." (p. 209).

Unfortunately the author wasn't that into social history either. I felt there was a lack of effort to place the characters' attitudes and speech in their historic time, such as a character saying "Let us say Deusdedit had a heart attack" instead of reflecting whatever medical analysis they would have made. Or several times, characters handle books as if they were the same then as now, which they weren't: "Seaxwulf slammed the book shut." (p. 181 and p. 194)

The relationships of the characters made me think of a twentieth century feminist awakening novel, or even about another book I've been reading,  Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (published 2020). Although we are told that women in Ireland in this era were given exceptionally many privileges and extraordinary access to education, the way the character is portrayed still seems to me a bit too modern-feminist in tone. For example, right at the beginning of the book, Sister Fidelma encounters a brutish Saxon:

"The warrior, Wulfric, had moved so that his mount was close to the young religieuse. He leant forward in his saddle towards her. Her nose wrinkled as she smelt his foul breath and saw his blackened teeth grinning at her. He was clearly impressed that, young as she was, and woman that she was, she did not seem afraid of him or of his companions." (pp. 5-6). 

I'll just add a couple of other quotations with a contrasting quote from Recollections of My Nonexistence.

"The man was handing the key to Eadulf when he suddenly glanced at Fidelma. He grinned lewdly and said something which his companion found amusing." (Absolution by Murder, p. 102). 

"Fidelma found it an irritating mannerism of all Saxons that if a man were present he always took precedence over a woman." (Absolution by Murder, p. 137).

"You could be harmed a little— by insults and threats that reminded you you were not safe and free and endowed with certain inalienable rights— or more by a rape, or more by a rape-kidnapping-torture-imprisonment-mutilation, more yet by murder, and the possibility of death always hung over the other aggressions. You could be erased a little so that there was less of you, less confidence, less freedom, or your rights could be eroded, your body invaded so that it was less and less yours, you could be rubbed out altogether, and none of those possibilities seemed particularly remote. All the worst things that happened to other women because they were women could happen to you because you were a woman." (Recollections of My Nonexistence, p. 57). 

On the amazon.com page for Absolution by Murder we learn: "Peter Tremayne is the pseudonym for Peter Berresford Ellis, a well-respected authority on the ancient Celts. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, The Celtic Dawn: A History of Pan Celticism, and The Druids." So one assumes that the endless descriptions of the political scene and the religious disputes are perfectly accurate. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the author just doesn't care about the other details, including some very modern-sounding discussion of a same-sex attraction where one of the characters uses the word "homosexual," which might be an anachronism, whatever language they were supposed to be speaking. Maybe someone will show me that I'm wrong.

I'm grateful to Claudia, who blogs at https://honeyfromrock.blogspot.com/ for reviewing another book in the Sister Fidelma series and thus introducing me to Sister Fidelma. This review is entirely my own, © 2020 by mae sander for my blog, maefood dot blogspot dot com. If you read this at another site, it's been pirated.

Traditional Food that Keeps Well: Butter and Cheese

Having a reliable supply of food on hand has become a necessity for large numbers of people throughout the world in the past week or so. My recent discussion of preparations for the rapidly growing outbreak of coronavirus received comments from people on several continents who were also starting to feel the necessity to stock up on food and other necessities. Before I continue with some thoughts on good food to have on hand, here are some photos I took at my local Whole Foods store this morning. Yes, the fear of being quarantined or isolated has really affected people!

Frozen pizza: gone.

Canned tomato products: almost gone.
According to the butcher, meat supplies are running out.

I saw many people with huge quantities of groceries, such as this scene in the checkout line.

Just like everyone else, I've been thinking about what foods have a long shelf life. My mind has turned to cheese.

From my refrigerator: cheddar, parmesan, and swiss.

These cheeses have a shelf-life of 3 to 6 months before you unwrap them, and last pretty long when opened. Despite the extreme fears of some people, I’m convinced that we won’t be without electricity during even the worst possible outbreak of disease, so cheese seems to me a very good choice to have on hand. I’ve read a lot of discussions of what to buy and keep — I don’t think most of the discussions mention cheese and butter, though jam and peanut butter often make the list.

With bread or crackers, cheese makes an instant meal. It also adds important flavor and nutrition to dishes from a wide variety of cuisines. For example, in the book Taco USA, Gustavo Arellano mentions many many types of tacos and other Mexican-style foods that use jack cheese, cotijo cheese, or the Tex-Mex queso. So besides a few extra packages of cheese for your fridge, think about adding a package of tortillas to the supplies in your freezer and some jars of salsa for your pantry!

Cheese has a wonderful long history, too. Preservation of milk by making it into cheese or butter has been around for thousands of years. Before refrigeration, cellars and natural caves provided cool storage for food and wine, including these processed dairy products. Discussions of processed foods often ignore the long traditions that enabled early agricultural societies to eat better throughout the seasons. Milk spoils fast and shelf-stable milk has been developed only in the last century or so, as a result of industrial food-processing techniques. On the other hand, cheese and butter are very good, traditionally processed, long-lasting foods to have on hand for whatever we are facing.

 A prehistoric woman holding a butter churn on her head.
Chacolithic era from the sanctuary of Gilat in the Negev in Israel.
Dated 5500 to 6500 years ago. (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, my photo.)

As my trip to Whole Foods impressed on me, there's suddenly been considerable acceleration of the urgency of the now-global pandemic. As more and more new cases were reported, including here in Michigan, the two of us became convinced that we should stay home rather than take a planned trip to visit family. Concerts, meetings, and lectures that we planned to attend have been cancelled or probably will be cancelled. All classes and seminars at the University of Michigan have been cancelled, along with those of many other institutions in the country.

On every level -- family, city, state, country, and the whole world -- we're facing a challenge that never happened before.

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

Hoarding in advance of the coming plague

Source: CDC website.

According to this map from the CDC, updated today, March 10, the state where I live, Michigan, has not reported any cases of the corona virus that is threatening the world. [Update March 11: Michigan has now identified two cases of corona virus.]

Nevertheless, warnings bombard us. Perhaps as in New Rochelle, NY this afternoon, Michigan residents may be told to stay indoors to protect themselves as well as to reduce the speed of transmission of the disease. Perhaps we'll be too sick to go out and all the delivery services will cease to function. Perhaps our imaginations will run away and our fears will become even more overblown.

Unfortunately, advice-giving pundits have no real scenario for the situation that is most likely. Instead of trying to figure out something relevant, they are reproducing advice for preparation for storms, wars, unanticipated power shut-downs, and a variety of doomsday possibilities. An example is USA Today, which began with some semi-sensible advice, and continued by telling you to have a "Disaster Kit" with drinking water, flashlights, a hand-crank radio, matches, blankets, and so on. They discussed possibilities up to and including the need for fleeing to somewhere else. Even though they said these preparations were for other emergencies, they were clearly trying to create, not alleviate, the panic! (Link)

Fortunately, there's always someone who has a less gloomy view. I received the following from a friend in England who said the origin was in Bangalore --

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to the recent virus threat and have therefore raised their threat level from “miffed” to “peeved”. Soon, though, the level may be raised yet again to “irritated” or even “a bit cross”. They have not been “a bit cross” since the Blitz in 1940 when supplies of tea nearly ran out. The virus has been re-categorized from “tiresome” to a “damned nuisance”. The last time the British issued a “damned nuisance” warning level was in 1588 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

Back to the gloomy present in the United States. Large numbers of people are stocking up their homes with medications, hand sanitizers, contagion-stopping gauze masks, toilet paper, and other seemingly relevant things. This behavior is occurring worldwide: almost every news source notes that in Australia, actual violence has occurred between women in supermarkets competing to buy depleted supplies of toilet paper, and has discussed the response of various governments wanting to ensure that hospitals will have surgical masks and that panic-driven shoppers don't buy all the pasta. The state of New York has put convicts to work in prison factories to make hand sanitizer for the government. A variety of rumors even discuss making your own hand sanitizer, though vodka isn't evidently the way to go: it's not high enough in alcohol.

People are also stockpiling food and other things:

"... the prospect of extended confinement at home has sent people scrambling for other items. Oat milk has become a hot commodity due to its longer shelf life than dairy-based products, suvivalist gear popularized on the National Geographic show 'Doomsday Preppers' is in demand and Hostess Brands Inc. reports sales of their famously indestructible snack, the Twinkie, are soaring." (Bloomsberg News, March 10, 2020)

The Bloomsberg News article title is: "Why Rational People Are Panic Buying as Coronavirus Spreads," but I can't really see any rational explanations for much of the behavior that's documented here. In fact, the article is mostly a discussion of the desperation most people feel to be in control of their circumstances:

"Psychologists view control as a fundamental human need. With a disease that’s highly infectious and can turn deadly, this epidemic violates a sense of control in fundamental ways. Unless policy makers can find a way to restore that feeling, the cycle of panic buying, hoarding and scarcity only stands to escalate."

Stacks of toilet paper for sale at Costco last week.

Some people make themselves feel more in control by buying things they will probably never use. Some people are simply taking advantage and buying up things they can resell on e-bay or amazon and make unconscionable profits. Some of course are trying to be rational -- toilet paper may be more rational since you won't have to throw it out in 6 months. Presumably, you'll keep using it as long as you live, and anyway, you really don't want to be without it in case of whatever part of the projected apocalypse you are worried about.I understand how hard it is to resist panic.

I'm completely convinced that the electricity and water supplies will not be interrupted by an outbreak of coronavirus, but I see that one might need to stay indoors, and that market access might become difficult. Personally, I have laid in a higher-than-usual supply of a few shelf-stable foods and frozen foods, such as boxed soup, crackers, canned tuna, and cookies.

And of course I bought toilet paper when I went to Costco. In fact, there were mountains of toilet paper available there but they told me that they had been out for 4 days last week, and that a truckload had just arrived the day I happened to shop there. Don't panic!

My father told us a story that I'm thinking about now. During World War I, he was a young child. His native village in what's now the country of Belarus was in the path of the German army that was about to invade Russia. The people of the village knew it was going to be a difficult winter (I think it was in 1914 or 1915). Food supplies were always scarce as the winter went on in these very primitive villages. His mother, he told us, wanted to be prepared for the coming troubles, so she filled up part of their house with potatoes and built a wall to hide them. This seems to have kept them from starvation. Eventually, they were evacuated to some type of refugee camp to be out of the battleground. That's all I know. Things could be worse. Actually, things did get much worse: the Nazi armies arrived in 1941, and 1942 all the Jews remaining in the village were slaughtered. Fortunately, by that time my father had been in the US for many years, though his relatives weren't all survivors.

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

"The Man in the Red Coat"

The Man in the Red Coat
(published November, 2019)

Julian Barnes's recent book The Man in the Red Coat is very puzzling. When I bought it, I thought it was a historical novel. As I began reading I quickly found that it's nothing like that, but I have finished reading the book, and I still don't know what, exactly, it is. Social history? Intellectual history? Personality sketches of a bunch of people who lived in France and England at the end of the 19th century? A bunch of muddled thoughts of a wonderful present-day writer, free associating while looking at very old photos and portraits by famous artists of that day? An attempt to write a biography of Dr. Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918) -- but one that was derailed by too much focus on a whole lot of other people? A successful biography that I just didn't appreciate? Something else that I didn't appreciate? And I wish I had been a more successful reader, as I've liked many of Barnes's other books.

The Man in the Red Coat presents many details about the life of Dr. Pozzi,  who was a famous gynecologist and made the profession much more effective and respectable, as well as being a member of high society in France. Barnes includes details about Pozzi's accomplishments innovating new surgical procedures and new anti-infection techniques, as well as his leadership in the practice of medicine in France and worldwide. As an administrator, for example, his taste in art was reflected when he commissioned art works for the hospital where he worked, such as “Health Restored to the Sick” -- a very large mural (4.4 by 2.75 meters) by Georges Clairin.

Dr. Pozzi was well-connected among the intellectual classes, the artists and stage performers, the aristocrats, and the bourgeois high society of Paris in his day. Consequently much (in fact, too much) of the narrative is occupied with the lives of a number of people who were in some way associated with Dr. Pozzi, some close, some not-so-close. We especially learn a lot about the famous people such as Oscar Wild, John Singer Sargent, Marcel Proust, and Sarah Bernhardt (whose face appeared in Clairin's allegorical mural). I'll spare you a list of the dozens of people who were less-well-known who get a lot of space in the book. Barnes manages to provide a huge amount of detail about Pozzi, his wife and children, and all his many friends, his colleagues, his acquaintances, and of the acquaintances of all of these people.

Dr. Pozzi at Home by John Singer Sargent (1881)

As you can tell, I am a frustrated reader. All these free ranging sketches of numerous people and their relationships to each other as well as to Pozzi simply didn't seem coherent to me. I couldn't follow the choice of all these riffs on portraits by artists of the time, such as the one that gives the book its title.

Occasionally Barnes does offer a hint about what he was doing:

"I was drawn to Dr. Pozzi by the Sargent portrait, became curious about his life and work, wrote this book, and still find the picture a true and dashing likeness." Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat, Kindle Locations 2644-2645).

Throughout the book, Barnes comes back to his interpretation of this portrait, and to the interpretation of many other portraits by Sargent and others, as well as speculation and history of the lives -- especially the sex lives -- of the subjects.

Finally "Things We Cannot Know" is the title of a long section towards the end of the book, where Barnes summarizes all the half-known biographical details and intriguing hints he found in researching the doctor's life and the lives -- especially the sex lives --  of his friends and acquaintances. And he ends this long passage: "All these matters could, of course, be solved in a novel." (Kindle Locations 3188 and 3257).

The book is full of small photographs of all the famous people of the era, as well as of their portraits by famous painters. At times I felt as if this collection of photos and portraits was a driving force in Barnes's choice of subject matter. He explains these photos:

"If, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, you bought a chocolate bar from the grocers Félix Potin, there was an outside chance that you might find in it a small photograph of Dr. Pozzi, the size and shape of a cigarette card. Between 1898 and 1922 Félix Potin produced three series of Célébrités Contemporaines— with around five hundred in each batch— and also sold albums into which you could stick your cards. Pozzi featured in the second series, and was available in two different poses. I have both cards on my desk. Full-bearded and wavy-haired, with a marked widow’s peak, he wears a dark jacket: in one, arms folded, he gazes off to our right; in the other, he stares straight back at us. Both poses exude dynamism and self-confidence; 'Pozzi, Médecin' each of them proclaims." (Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat, Kindle Locations 1184-1189). 

Wait! They are just like the Famous Witch and Wizard cards included in each purchase of chocolate frogs -- the cards that Harry Potter learns about on his first trip on the Hogwarts Express! Never mind. This insight is of no more use to me than any other.

To you, my readers, I apologize for writing such a confused review, but it's all mine and copyright © 2020 by me, mae sander, for maefood dot blog spot dot com, and if you are finding it elsewhere, it's a pirate version!

Very early spring in the Arb

Plants are pushing up through the ice on the little brook that runs through the
University of Michigan Arboretum.

Copyright © 2020 mae sander

This would be a sign of spring....

...if only it were locally grown. But it traveled from California to Trader Joe’s.

More Signs of Spring in My Neighborhood

The Beginning of Spring

As we walked by the river on Wednesday, we heard the throaty trills of male red winged blackbirds, just returned from somewhere further south where they spent the winter. We also heard the click-click of the females answering them. Several males perched in the trees near the water, which is now mainly free of the ice that was there on our last walk.

Did these birds just arrive from Florida? Mexico? Costa Rica? Perhaps the one in the photo has migrated to and from Michigan for years. According to the Cornell Laboratory:

"The oldest recorded Red-winged Blackbird was 15 years, 9 months old. It was banded in New Jersey in 1967, and found alive, but injured in Michigan in 1983. It was able to be released after recovering from its injuries."

Bluebirds and robins do not migrate from our area, even though their presence is often mentioned as a sign of spring, but this first sighting of the beautiful redwings really does signal the changing season. I hope it lasts!

Blog post by mae sander. Copyright © 2020. 

"The Curious Cook"

Harold McGee's book The Curious Cook was published in 1992. That didn't stop me from learning all kinds of interesting new things when I read it this week.

As in his earlier book, On Food and Cooking, McGee's main interest is the science of cooking. He looks at currently interesting issues like salmonella in eggs or how to keep lettuce leaves or guacamole from turning brown. He also explores older questions such as whether searing meat really keeps in "the juices" or whether ice cubes freeze faster if you start with boiling water instead of tap water.

The Curious Cook also has an interesting focus on unusual histories such as the history of persimmons or jerusalem artichokes. He offers summaries of earlier food science such as the work of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814), and on the history of food words such as the word mayonnaise.

Let me start by telling you a few things I learned from McGee about mayonnaise.

I am a lover of mayonnaise; these are the two I have on hand.

• Purists insist that mayonnaise must be made from egg yolks, olive oil, and a hint of lemon juice or vinegar. McGee points out that the definition of this sauce was once much broader, including some very surprising ingredients, like mashed potato.
• Mayonnaise was first mentioned in print near the beginning of the 19th century. An important early discussion of mayonnaise appeared in the work of the famous chef Antoine Carême (1784-1833). 
• By the end of the 19th century, says McGee, mayonnaise was a very popular condiment in both Europe and America: an example of American use is Waldorf Salad, first offered in around 1895.
• The chemistry of mayonnaise involves emulsifying oil and egg yolk. McGee did extensive research on how this process works, including exploring the limits of how much oil can be emulsified into a small amount of egg yolk. Techniques for salmonella-safe mayo using cooked egg are also provided in his hands-on report. As he does with many topics, he challenges conventional cooking wisdom and long-standing myths.
• Where did the word mayonnaise originate? McGee cites a wide variety of theories. Some people, says McGee, think that it's named after the battle of Mahon, which the French won in 1756. Others believe that this is unlikely because the word wasn't used for around 50 years after the battle, and because the city of Mahon isn't known for its gastronomic successes. Another French word could be the root: moyeu, egg yolk; but that word obsolete by the 19th century. 
• "The true root word according to Carême, is manier: to work to manipulate," because of the process of working the liquids together. And "The most recent educated guess ... derives mayonnaise from the old verb mailler, meaning to beat, crush, or grind." (p. 130) 
• Modern bottled mayonnaise dates to near the beginning of the 20th century. This started when growing interest in photography caused a surplus of egg yolks -- albumen from large quantities of egg whites was essential in the booming photographic industry. To cope with the surplus, it was discovered that frozen egg yolks kept very well. Then it was discovered that the frozen yolks were a fine ingredient in long-lasting mayonnaise. Throughout the 20th century mayo became more and more widely used in American cuisine.

I pursued the topic of mayo history, and discovered that in 2013, the popular American brand Hellman's Mayonnaise celebrated 100 years of production. In honor of that anniversary, many writers discussed the same history that McGee had covered 20 years earlier, as well as topics like why some people love mayo and some hate it; why some think its blasphemy to use it on corned beef; or why others find it totally improper to put mayo on a BLT. Here are a few links to the articles I found useful: "On the Etymology of the Word Mayonnaise" from Bon Appétit, "A Brief History of Mayonnaise" from Slate, and a history of the word mayonnaise from the blog Word Histories.

You might be a curious cook yourself, so I'll tell you what McGee said about searing meat, freezing ice cubes, and keeping green stuff from turning brown. If you want to read about his very careful experiments and discoveries on these subjects, you need to get a copy of the book for yourself! His conclusions:

"Searing meat does not seal in juices. Nor does searing reduce the loss of juices. The juiciness of meat is determined by the doneness to which the meat is cooked: the rarer the juicier." (p. 21)

"Hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold water. In my freezer, ice-cube trays filled with hot or cold water take about the same time to freeze." (p. 190)

"Blemished lettuce leaves darken more rapidly in a salad than leaves with intact surfaces.  ... As long as your knife is sharp, it doesn't matter whether you cut or tear the leaves ... Both vinegar and oil harm the appearance of lettuce, but oil acts more rapidly. ... Leaving the avocado pit in the bowl will keep green only the guacamole in direct contact with it." (p. 72) 

You may think you know how a lot of things work in the kitchen, but McGee doesn't let myths, traditional authorities, or old-wives' tales get in the way of his experiments. While TV food science programs and many others have redone some of the tests, especially about searing steaks to "keep the juices in," his ideas are still intriguing and many are not well-known. He may have made a few mistakes (especially about the physics of heat, according to my husband, a physicist), but his results are mostly still very useful.

The copy of The Curious Cook that I read came from the library -- I think I once owned a copy but I don't think I have it any more, and I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to reading such an interesting book!

This Wordy Wednesday blog post copyright © 2020 mae sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com.

Venice is Sinking. Poor Inspector Brunetti!

"The faint odour of cloves greeted him when he got home, luring him into the kitchen to see what Paola was up to. Spezzatino di manzo with exotic spices, it seemed, and if he knew anything about vegetables, Cavolini di bruxelles alla besciamella." (Donna Leon, The Temptation of Forgiveness).

Before I say any more about Donna Leon's 2018 detective novel, The Temptation of Forgiveness, I'll mention that she does describe a couple of typical Venetian meals cooked by the wife of Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police force. Spezzatino di manzo is Venetian beef stew, and Cavolini di bruxelles alla besciamella is Brussels sprouts in cream sauce. As always, Brunetti's devoted wife Paola is a wonderful cook, as in this quote from quite a bit later: "Paola restored harmony, or rather, her fresh chestnut and hazelnut cake restored harmony." Although the food descriptions in this book aren't really as detailed or tempting as in some of the earlier books, they aren't bad either!

Brunetti is a severely, maybe overly, honest and idealistic policeman, who loves his family and is immensely sympathetic to the innocent victims of crime and of mismanagement in government and in the police force, issues that constantly interfere with his professional life.

Disillusionment is Commissario Brunetti's main feeling throughout this book. Maybe you would be disillusioned too if your son and daughter had been adolescent high schoolers since 1992, but that's how life happens when you are the hero of a 29 book series of detective novels. Readers of detective fiction get used to such things: remember Hercule Poirot in the Agatha Christie series retired before World War I but kept detecting until the 1960s.

To illustrate one of the actual sources of his discomfort, here is the description of Brunetti's boss:

"Most of Vice-Questore Patta’s behaviour was predictable for a man who had progressed through government bureaucracy. He seemed busier than he was; he never missed the opportunity to claim for himself any praise given to the organization for which he worked; he had a black belt in shifting blame or responsibility for failure to shoulders other than his own." (The Temptation of Forgiveness, Commissario Brunetti Book 27, p. 4). 

Brunetti's Venice is a city in deep trouble. He misses the little shops where he once bought food, toys, household necessities, and whatever is needed for daily life. They all seem to have been replaced with tourist venues selling cheap masks and souvenirs made in China, not in small workshops as in earlier times. Old buildings that had once been ordinary people's homes had been "transformed into bijoux bed and breakfasts." The mayor and city officials were indifferent to the residents, interested only in their own ability to make money and "keep the cruise ships coming at whatever cost to the citizens."

As one character in the book puts it: "Olive oil that costs fifteen Euros a half litre? Seven-hundred-Euro boots? A coffee that costs twice what most bars charge?... And as far as the other places go, what Venetian wants a glass elephant or a plastic mask?" As he walks around the city, Brunetti notices "many empty places where formerly had stood fruit and vegetable stalls; half the fishmongers were gone."

Another time: "When was it, Brunetti wondered, that kiosks had ceased to sell primarily newspapers and magazines, and now sold compact discs, trinkets, key chains, and T-shirts? And when had the men inside ceased to be Italian?"

In the news right now, in March of 2020. I have been reading about the situation in Venice, including these problems and more. Last fall, Venice had floods, and now the coronavirus is threatening all of northern Italy. The carnival was called off, and the tourists that local Venetians both despise and depend on have disappeared, threatening the city's prosperity.

A current article titled "‘It’s the last nail in the coffin’: Venice empties as coronavirus spreads" makes the problems all too clear:

"The Venetian tourism industry is still reeling after severe flooding in November left much of the city under water; now it has a very different kind of crisis to face. More than 800 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in Italy, and 29 people have died. 

“'We were waiting for the carnival to get the economy going again after the acqua alta, but now we have a new problem,' said Sabrina, a worker at fashion store Sartoria dei Dogi. 

"The floods reduced turnover in Venice by 40% in the final quarter of last year, according to local government figures, and estimates suggest the virus will cause a downturn of 30-40% in this quarter. 

"More than 40% of hotel bookings have been cancelled, according to the Venetian Hoteliers Association."

What's the bright side?  One Venetian quoted in the article put it this way: “Of course it’s terrible that livelihoods are being affected, but now people can breathe.” This is the feeling that you get from reading about Brunetti's feelings about the hollowed-out city that no longer seems alive for residents, only for tourists. He can't breathe!

Oh, yes -- there's a mystery in this book, and Brunetti eventually gets to the bottom of it. But unlike in most of the other books in the series, the plot seems less important than Brunetti's dissatisfaction with the terrible ways that his city has changed.

Donna Leon's production of novels in the Brunetti series has been consistent -- around one a year -- and always pretty good, in my opinion. Also a cookbook of the foods he ate (blogged here: Commissario Brunetti Eats Lunch). The Brunetti series has already covered the Venice floods in the book Aqua Alta (book 5 in the Brunetti series, originally published 1996). I suspect she might do a coronavirus in Venice book at some time in the future, but of course none of knows how that's going to turn out, we can only fear it.

I'm not sure why I missed The Temptation of Forgiveness, number 27 in the series, when it came out a couple of years ago, but I"m glad I finally read it. I did read number 28, and maybe I'll read the next one soon.

Donna Leon's next book, Trace Elements,
will be released on March 3, 2020.
It's number 29 in the Brunetti series.

Page numbers are missing from most of my quotations here because the Kindle edition has messed them up, and after page 32, they all say page 33. Sorry, I don't know how to fix that.

This review copyright © 2020 by mae sander for maefood dot blog spot dot com.

If you read this at another site, it's been pirated.

So Long, Joe

Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe died Friday at his home in Pasadena, California, which was also the location of his first Trader Joe's store. According to the Washington Post -- "The man who founded Trader Joe’s has died, and people are mourning the cultural icon" --

"Coulombe sold Trader Joe’s to German grocery retailer Aldi Nord in 1979. He retired from the company nine years later. 

"Part of Coulombe’s strategy was producing a store brand of as many products as he could, cutting the cost of production and delivering those savings to customers. 

"He would also stop selling an item if it wasn’t in season or easily available, meaning the store’s stock was always changing."

Trader Joe's didn't open in Ann Arbor until around a decade ago. However, I had already shopped at TJ's in California, and I've been shopping at the Ann Arbor one ever since. It helps that the store is only around half a mile from my house. I could easily walk there but I couldn't walk back because of all the items I impulse buy whenever I'm there.

It's true that they keep changing their product mix, and there are definitely some things I miss from the past such as puffed wheat cereal (which Quaker doesn't make any more either) or Red Boat Vietnamese Fish Sauce. Besides prepared products, I like quite a few of their fresh produce options, such as cleaned and trimmed leeks, a variety of small tasty tomatoes, various colored peppers, and several types of clementines.

Here are just a few of the photos that I've posted on this blog in the past 10 years or so:

Nice seafood! I also like the frozen fish at TJ's.

These Bistro Biscuits (very much like Lotus/Delta cookies) were good, but in Trader Joe's usual fashion, they disappeared from the shelves.

Trader Joe's sign in 2010.

All above photos are mine, © 2010-2020 mae sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com

Rest In Peace, Joe

Joe Coulombe in 1985 (AP photo from msn news)

Zora Neale Hurston

During the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was one of the outstanding authors -- now remembered for several of her novels. She also wrote many stories, which were published in obscure and hard-to-locate little magazines and newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s. Some determined editors have recently collected a number of these stories in this book: Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick.
Published January, 2020.

I found much to like in these stories of ordinary people in Harlem and in Neale's native state, Florida.  Quite a few of her characters began life in the rural south, but left to settle in the big city. The stories usually highlight some particular characteristic of one or two characters, often portraying the tensions within couples. I enjoyed Neale's sense of irony where characters would get even with one another, or would make some mistake in a relationship.

Of course I watched for especially interesting descriptions of what these characters cooked and ate. Here are some quotes:

"Missie May fanned around in the kitchen. A fresh red and white checked cloth on the table. Big pitcher of buttermilk beaded with pale drops of butter from the churn. Hot fried mullet, crackling bread, ham hock atop a mound of string beans and new potatoes, and perched on the window-sill a pone of spicy potato pudding." Zora Neale Hurston, "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, Kindle Locations 3133-3135).

"On Saturday he went to Orlando to make his market. It had been a long time since he had done that. Meat and lard, meal and flour, soap and starch. Cans of corn and tomatoes. All the staples. He fooled around town for awhile and bought bananas and apples. Way after while he went around to the candy store." ("The Gilded Six-Bits," Kindle Locations 3281-3283).  

"Stella was a gracious hostess, and while her husband proudly showed the envious 'Blue-front' around, put supper on the table, and invited him to stay. She had veal-cutlet and fried sweet potato, tea and hot biscuit." ("The Conversion of Sam," Kindle Locations 960-962). 

"Jim was fat, black, and indolent; and his eating house reflected the character of its owner. In his fly-specked shop-window were displayed fish, pigs’ feet and ears, and chitterlings that one more than half suspected had had the same attention." ("The Conversion of Sam" Kindle Locations 770-772).  

The stories are revealing about life in another time and place that sometimes seems quite close to the present, sometimes very long ago. Especially interesting are the stories "set in urban environments that reflect the tumult of the Great Migration. More than two million African Americans left the largely rural South between 1910 and 1940 for the industrialized cities of the North." (Introduction by Genevieve West, Kindle Locations 139-140).

Because many of these were Hurston's very early efforts in writing fiction, I would say that the quality of the stories is a little uneven. Her transcription of the dialect or accents of the characters is sometimes challenging to read.  Overall, it's worth reading this new collection along with the introductory material by several modern scholars.

This review is written for maefood dot blogspot dot com, © 2020 mae sander.