Another visit to the Farmers' Market

I'm a very faithful customer of the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market, which meets at different places on different days. The biggest market is on Saturday morning in a commuter parking lot downtown. The Tuesday market is set up on State Street, the main commercial downtown street (just a few blocks from the Saturday market). Other days, the market meets in a shopping-center parking lot in Goleta, in Montecito, in Carpinteria, and in Solvang, all smaller towns in the county. I've been to Goleta and Carpinteria, which don't have as many vendors as the downtown markets.

The organizing body is made up of the farmers and others who sell at these markets, so you see the same faces rotating through all the different markets. The range of produce is amazing, because these growers come from so many different climate zones. Farms within Santa Barbara and quite nearby grow strawberries, avocados, and a few other crops. There are pistachio, walnut, and almond growers inland in locations like Ojai. Dates are brought in from the desert. Olive oil comes from olives growing not far from here. Yesterday I saw the first ripe figs from the Central Valley, which also produces conventional produce like raspberries, broccoli, onions, radishes, leeks, herbs, corn, garlic, tomatoes, and so on. Elsewhere, orchards produce apricots, peaches, plums, and more exotic fruits. Vendors come as far as several hours to these markets each week.

A few photos from yesterday in downtown Santa Barbara:

Henry James Refinement

I have been reading two complementary books:

The Ambassadors by Henry James 

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick 

I'm kind of a fan of Ozick, and when I learned that this recent work of hers was in some way based on The Ambassadors, I decided to read both. Indeed, thematically they have much in common, and there's a lot I could say about them, but for the moment, I'm just going to talk about the way that the two authors use food in their narratives. I think it helps to pinpoint why I like Ozick but I'm infuriated by James.

Unsympathetic, self-absorbed, idly rich, status-conscious, easily impressed (by European pretensions), egocentric characters abound in The Ambassadors. I'm really not sure if James saw them that way, or if he just admired people who were self-absorbed, idly rich, egocentric, and gullible about European pretensions. I'm sure he didn't view them as shallow, but that's how they seem to me when all is said and done. Mostly James's characters talk and talk and talk, though occasionally they go out into the countryside or stop for a meal, continuing to be self-absorbed etc. all the time.

At one meal, a character named Madame de Vionnet -- whose own background is unclear, but who is married into a vaguely identified titled family -- sits opposite Strether, the novel's central character (who is the most extremely self-absorbed, idle, status-conscious, and easily impressed of them all). She looks at him "over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-colored Chablis."

A few paragraphs later we hear 

"If all the accidents were to fight on her side ... he could only give himself up. This was what he had done in privately deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular runaway properly ends? The smash was their walk, their dejeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it -- to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own." (Kindle location 4188, Cambridge Edition)

As the novel winds up, Strether goes to see a young man named Chad, another self-absorbed and easily manipulated character. Upon entering Chad's rooms, he finds a table where Chad has recently eaten. It contained 

"a supper of light cold clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the circle of the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air again for a smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether's approach in what might have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his life!..." (Kindle location 8061)

The last sections of The Ambassadors consist of Strether's endless final interactions with various women who have influence over either Chad or Strether himself. At a critical one, Strether meets with Maria Gostrey, a character who seems to provide him with some sort of link to reality (perhaps):

"He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this that he met her question.... She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him ... "  (Kindle location 8258)

This little detail leads up to a critical interchange between them, where he tells her he will leave her instead of making a commitment to her that she had been angling for.

Excuse me if these quotes seem long-winded. Henry James IS long-winded. As I see it, highly refined bits of food sustain the characters in long bouts of navel-gazing and constantly worrying about commitment that in fact are sort of maddening. Strether is 55 years old, for crying out loud!

The level of detail that's allusive but very unspecific is characteristic of the novel as a whole. It's why I can't believe I ever read anything by Henry James.

AND IN CONTRAST...
Cynthia Ozick's characters are more human and sympathetic than those of James (not one of whom I like at all!) The thematic similarity of the novels is not in my view based on a similarity of characters' temperament or personality or values, but on the way that one character becomes an "ambassador" between others. In a way, Ozick's commentary makes James's exploration of the topic of ambassadorship have a wider meaning, borrowing the most interesting of his ideas.

Ozick does not go for the extreme subtlety that James gives this thought -- especially as he makes all the events and conversations take place in Paris, and never directly describes or quotes the woman behind all the machinations. Her depiction of all the characters (the sender of "messages," the "ambassador," and the recipients of the "messages") in my opinion gives her book more depth, but I'm sure lots of critics and James-lovers would disagree.

Food also isn't seen the same etherial way. It's pretty down-to-earth. One big reason is that many of the characters in Ozick's novel live in middle class America or in not-even-genteel poverty as exiles or displaced persons in Europe. (The events take place in 1952: one character is literally a D.P. whose former life and family were destroyed by time in concentration camps.) So right at the beginning, when the central character, Bea Nightingale, searches Paris for her renegade nephew, she finds a cafe with "odors of eggs and coffee all around." (p. 6)

Many more flashback memories occur in Ozick's novel than in James's. This is another way I think the novel is more rooted in real life, not just some sort of rich person's imaginary world.

Bea remembers a wedding of her best friend where she had been with her future (now ex) husband:

"They were standing side by side near an ice sculpture -- twin mermaids embracing -- at the base of which lay wide oval platters of sliced melon, layer upon layer of pink, orange, green, studded with swollen strawberries still attached to their leafy stems. The strawberries resembled surgically removed organs freshly lifted from the gash in an anaesthetized belly." (p. 27)

Maybe Ozick's characters are portrayed as a bit vulgar, in contrast to the excessively refined James characters. But she knows what they are. She doesn't admire them for everything, though she communicates a level of sympathy that I as a reader can share.

Ozick says the young man who is to be "rescued" by the ambassador from home is "a luftmentch" which she defines as "an inconsequential person, an impracticality made of air." (p. 96) This would be a good epithet for the young man in the James book, too -- in fact for several of them.

Winetasting

It's still early in the growing season for the 2012 vintage, but we saw vines spreading their tendrils and also very green bunches of tiny grapes in the vineyards we visited today. I believe the vines pictured here will produce the grapes for several types of white wine.

 

We returned to the Santa Barbara wine country to try the wines from some new wineries. We wanted to buy a few bottles for the remainder of our stay here. Two wineries that we liked: Firestone and Gainey. The tasting rooms at Gainey are especially picturesque, as they are also the storage rooms for large and small casks of wine and huge shelves of bottles.

 



At the end of the day, just as the sun was dropping behind the cliffs, we spent a moment at Arroyo Burro beach as we often do. It's only a few minutes from our apartment.


 

Artichokes for Louise's Picnic Game

Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations is organizing a big virtual picnic among all her blogger contacts. I'm participating in this picnic; my contribution, representing the letter A, will be steamed artichokes with mayonnaise. While I'm at it, I'll also put in some asparagus, and avocados from the fabulous Santa Barbara Farmers' Market.

Last Saturday I wrote about cooking artichokes -- see this post:

Artichokes

I described how I begin by trimming the sharply-pointed leaves, then I steam the artichokes and cool them off. If you picnic with me, don't forget -- whole steamed fresh artichokes must be eaten with care by scraping the soft part from each leaf with one's teeth. Artichokes are the only food I know of where instructions for eating them are as important as instructions for cooking them! If you are fearful, you can buy jars with just the soft interior leaves, marinated and ready to put in a salad, but it's nowhere near as fun as working with the big, tough thistle just off the stalk:

I just love seeing all the different kinds of artichokes in the market, and I'm equally excited about avocados and asparagus. I also steam the asparagus, and serve it chilled with vinaigrette for a picnic (or fresh from the steamer with butter.) Here's what you can see at the market here:

The avocado vendor:

I guess being away from home, where artichokes and avocados don't grow, makes me appreciate this all the more. I eat ripe avocados with lemon juice and salt, but of course they too can be made fancy or added to salads. And of course there's always guacamole, but it doesn't start with my letter A.

The Witch of Endor Ate Here

I've heard that the Witch of Endor has moved to Ojai, California, and lives or at least hangs out in an antique shop there. Or so says Michael Scott the author of The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Earlier today, we were in Ojai for lunch in the sun at a nice little Mexican restaurant. We had standard, tasty Cal-Mex food starting with the usual chips and salsa, and continuing with platters of tamales and pupusas with a side of beans and rice. Nothing out of the ordinary, but we enjoyed ourselves.

We also walked down Main Street near Libby Park, location of the witch's shop. We poked around in the shopping arcades across the street, looked in some galleries, and a went to a large bookstore, but didn't see any witches. However, I suspect that a modern witch would rather eat Mexican food than hummus, olives, eggplant salad, and pita, which is what she'd get nowadays in a sunny outdoor restaurant in Endor in the Jezreel Valley where she came from. In Biblical days she might have had bread, dates, and some kind of soft white cheese, I guess. I don't know what Biblical witches ate.

We didn't hear about Sott's witch until we got home, anyway, or we would have checked a few more antique shops. We found out that Evelyn and Tom were watching us on "Find my friends." When they saw that we were in Ojai they were quite surprised as they weren't sure whether Scott had invented Ojai itself, as well as the witch's antique shop.

Artichokes

The Santa Barbara Farmers' Market offers a splendid selection of produce, including many vegetables and fruits that simply don't grow back home in Michigan. The artichokes are especially fascinating -- it's really quite a pleasure to choose from several sizes and varieties.

Cooking artichokes isn't all that difficult if you have a steamer, and my small kitchen here fortunately does have one. After trimming the tips of the leaves with a scissors and peeling the stems, I steamed my artichokes until they were quite soft.





Above: trimmed artichokes in the steamer basket. Below: cooked artichokes ready for us to remove one leaf at a time and dip each leaf into mayonnaise or vinaigrette.



The first time I ever tried to eat an artichoke was with my parents and siblings. None of us had ever tasted or seen one. We tried to eat the whole thing, and after chewing away at the fibrous outer leaves for a while, concluded that they weren't much good. I think that happened to lots of midwesterners who had no background in these Mediterranean exotica. What surprises me is that my parents were even willing to try something that unusual. We normally stuck to our old favorite vegetables, many frozen or even from cans.

On my first visit to France, someone gave me a lesson in how to take each leaf from the whole artichoke, dip it in sauce, and scrape the soft part with my teeth until I reached the entirely-edible inner leaves. I've been an artichoke fan ever since. I like the way they make other food taste sweet.

Zen Potluck

 My yoga studio offered a potluck for students and instructors last night. Most of those in attendance were instructors, and most of them didn't bring any potluck contribution. So the meal consisted of kale salad, tofu-cucumber thingies on toothpicks, a small fruit salad, some biscotti, and the beautiful pie above, made by an instructor named Rachel. I brought the fruit salad and biscotti. Everyone seemed quite content with that amount of food. I guess it's very Zen.

What did Magellan and his sailors eat?

"Real bread" was the first food that the 18 survivors of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world ate upon returning home. Their fleet's one remaining ship had finally landed at the mouth of the Gualquivir in Spain. For three years, they had been at sea, having left the Guadalquivir with five ships and 265 men. After spending months out of sight of land, taking sides in a failed mutiny, witnessing the death of their leader Magellan and many other comrades, and exploring new territories in South America and the Pacific, their privations were over and they kissed the earth as they landed.

"For years they had not fingered the soft, aromatic crumb; for years they had not known the flavours of the wine, the meat and the fruit of their homeland," wrote Stefan Zweig at the end of his account of Magellan's voyage. Zweig's Magellan is an imaginative and dramatically written account of this, the first voyage around the world. He published it in 1938, but like many of his works, it's been reissued recently.

Zweig depicted Magellan as a taciturn hero, who acted boldly but never without forethought, except perhaps in the instance of the one fatal mistake that led to his death. Zweig was as admiring of and interested in Magellan's long and careful preparation for the voyage into the unknown as he is in the voyage itself.  He detailed first the patient preparation of food, ships, and supplies, then the alternation of plenty and famine as the five, then four, eventually only one ship, the Victoria, (shown below in an image from Wikimedia, from a 1590 map) circled the globe.

Just decades after Columbus's discovery, when ocean voyages were extremely long, basic ship's provisions mainly consisted of biscuit (a long-lasting hard bread that was the mainstay of all ocean trips until modern times). Magellan's ships also carried beans, lentils, oil, salt pork, cheese, dried fish, and other staples. A few cows would provide milk for the start of the voyage; along with a few pigs, there could be fresh meat -- though not for long.  In both the text and in an appendix, Zweig lists the amounts and the cost of all these provisions, illustrating Magellan's careful record-keeping and planning.

Wine was to be served with two meals a day during the voyage: Magellan laid in hundreds of casks and bottles. Obviously he also provided what he hoped would be adequate supplies of drinking water -- though the ships' reservoirs often became foul and the water after long days at sea became nearly undrinkable.

Magellan wanted his men to eat well. To the staple supplies he added intriguing extras: sugar, vinegar, garlic, onions, raisins, figs, almonds, honey, currants, capers, salt, rice, mustard, quince paste, and flour. What were the cooks' recipes to be made from these tasty additions to ordinary ships' provisions? I'm sure no one made any record of such a thing.

Preparing to sail around the world -- which had never been done before -- Magellan knew that his would be the longest voyage ever planned. He expected few opportunities for re-supplying his five ships. In fact, he believed the strait between the Atlantic and the Pacific to be far closer to the equator than the Strait of Magellan, which he discovered. And he found the Pacific Ocean to be much vaster than expected as well.

Consequently, the enormous food supplies were inadequate. As the five ships finished the voyage down the coast of South America, a mutiny and the desertion of one of the ships helped to deplete the supplies. Magellan's underlings, when they traitorously took over one of the ships, opened the stores to the crew to buy their loyalty. By that time, perhaps the most luxurious foods like figs, raisins, currants, and almonds had already been used up -- rations had already been cut significantly.

After coming through the newly discovered strait, the remaining ships had an agonizingly long reach across the Pacific. The crews experienced first hunger, then scurvy and other forms of malnutrition, and finally (in many cases) death by starvation. The biscuit, unpalatable when fresh, crumbled and turned to dust; however, it was the only nutrition available. The sailors eked it out with sawdust and with the meat of the ship's rats, which became a delicacy. They soaked, boiled, and ate some of the rigging as well.

In contrast, when the starving remnant reached the Philippines, the welcoming king of Cebu Island offered them feasts of sweet tropical fruit and other delicacies. Bananas, palm wine, coconuts, exotic vegetables, and roasted fish with fresh ginger --good food and fresh water brought them back to life. As they visited various islands, including the Spice Islands that had always been their goal, they learned to enjoy these treats. Though Magellan was already dead, they claimed the islands for the king of Spain as they had meant to do.

While making their way back to Europe, the voyagers suffered again. By this time, 1520, the route from the Spice Islands through the Indian Ocean and around Africa was well known. Politics, however, made the excruciatingly long trip from the Spice Islands back to Spain even more frustratingly hunger-ridden than the Pacific crossing. Magellan, a Portuguese by origin, had been rejected by his own king, and thus was sailing for Spain. All the ports were Portuguese, and his ships and men were labeled pirates in Portuguese territory -- a price was on every head.

Thus, the survivors had to hurry across the seas without going into port except once, on a ruse. By the time the last 18 sailors once more tasted the bread and wine of their homeland, they had been starving for months since their days of feasting. Moreover, they were starving within a ship loaded with exotic and unimaginably valuable spices that could do no more for their hunger than the ocean did for their thirst, according to Zweig's narrative.

Obviously, most of Magellan is about non-food issues -- though the motive Zweig cited on the very first page, and which persisted throughout the voyage, was to create a proprietary Spanish trade route to the Spice Islands to obtain rare spices for European use. I've concentrated on the issues of eating and starving that were the undercurrent throughout.

Afterthoughts

I'm writing beside a very calm Pacific Ocean beach, thinking of the naked terror that other parts of these waters must have delivered to Magellan and his crew. Cormorants roost in the trees and tiny sailboats dash around the harbor. So different!

Two very interesting things in Magellan that are not related to food are:

• Magellan had a Philippino slave who traveled with the ships and was intended to be an interpreter. When the ship landed in his land of origin, he thus became the very first man ever to circle the globe. (He also was caught up in the nasty aftermath of Magellan's death at the hands of a rival to the Philippine king who welcomed the voyagers, and thus remained in his own country when the ships left.)
   
• Upon their first stop at a port on the African coast, when they were almost back to Spain, the surviving sailors discovered the paradox that their carefully maintained ship logs recorded the day of the week as Wednesday, but the local date was Thursday. Being the first men to make a full trip around the world, they discovered that you need an international dateline (to explain it with an anachronism). Zweig says this was incredible to the people of that era: "as exciting to the humanists of the sixteenth century as has been the theory of relativity to those of our own generation."

I enjoyed Zweig's book and its rather retro style of writing historic narrative. My only reservation is that he sometimes overuses Homeric similes.

Apricots

Perfect ripe apricots are splendid, like these beauties that I photographed on the deck of our apartment here in Santa Barbara. The flavor is unimaginably wonderful. I don't see them often -- not even every year, as they don't travel well.

I think this year's apricot crop is exceptional even for California -- they've been available at an incredible price each time I have gone to the Santa Barbara Farmers' Market. We have been eating them every day since our arrival -- we hadn't been here more than a few hours before our first visit to the Sunday market in Goleta. Yesterday I went to the very large downtown Santa Barbara market (more photos here).

I have only a few memories of apricots. As a child, I loved dried apricots and even canned apricots, but I do not think I ever saw fresh ones until we lived in California during graduate school. And of course I realized that the taste of a ripe apricot like the ones we have been enjoying is just not the same as any other taste.

Sometimes Michigan trees produce a small apricot crops, and sometimes there are baskets of apricots from California in specialty markets at home in Ann Arbor. Several years ago when they were in season, I found a great apricot cobbler recipe, which I remember making for Evelyn and Tom just after Miriam was born -- her birthday was last week, so obviously they were in season when I was there to see my first grandchild.

Once during our first time in California I made an apricot tart -- I must have used a Julia Child recipe, as I didn't have very many cookbooks then. The old oven in our Berkeley apartment was very dirty. Black flakes fell on the apricots before the tart was finished baking, but I removed them and we enjoyed eating it. The next day, I cleaned the oven with oven cleaner -- it took hours. Evelyn was born the day after that. Some people told me that the impulse to clean was a sign that I was ready to give birth. I think I cleaned the oven just because of black carbon flakes on my beautiful apricot tart.

Update: Elaine remembers -- My California apricot remembrance: When Dan was a baby we carefully followed Dr Spock's recommendations and peeled grapes for him and otherwise watched what he ate. When he was less than a year old, he was crawling around in our back yard, found a lovely ripe apricot that had fallen from our tree, and ate most of it before I noticed. No ill effects! This convinced me that I didn't have to monitor his food so carefully. You are right that fresh California apricots are wonderful.

Group Barbecue

Grilled vegetables -- especially corn and asparagus -- are really a treat. Our hosts (well, ok, their graduate students who served as chefs) slathered olive oil on everything they put on the grill, which made it all crisp and perfectly blackened.

The California sun shone on us, and after dinner, many of the guests played soccer on the large lawn that belongs to UCSB faculty housing, where the picnic took place.

You know you are in California

• You know you are in California when you are smiling at your burrito out in the sunshine.
• You know you are in California when a farmer at the farmers' market explains that he sells three types of artichokes, and another farmer has two kinds of avocados, some ripe, some hard. And a third farmer says that last year's tomato plants still have some tomatoes on them. 
• You know you are in California when girls wear short shorts with Uggs. It's hardly worth mentioning the sight of surf boards, but they're here too.
• You know you are in California when you see flights of pelicans, sea fog, lagoons, tidal sloughs, and rolling waves.
• You know you are in California when you smell the eucalyptus trees.

"One Man Band" Diner

 The "One Man Band" diner in the very strange town of Nephi, Utah, is a fun place to eat. The menu has a long list of instructions, beginning with the directive that you should decide exactly what each person at the table wants to eat, and then phone in your order on the red telephone beside the table (where the juke box should be, I guess). The kitchen is open to the dining room where tables are formica-topped and benches are naugahide. We watched the kitchen staff assemble the meals:

 

 I loved the eggs, hash browns, toast, and melted cheese I ordered -- breakfast for dinner!


 After we ate, we took a ride (yes, even though we drove for 8 hours today) up a mountain into the Uinta National Forest. It's amazing how Utah scenery is spectacular even when it's in an obscure place off the beaten track (like this isn't Zion, Arches, Capitol Reefs,
Brice Canyon, etc).

 

Dinner in Cheyenne

'

The Albany Bar in Cheyenne has been in business since 1942, and the building is at least half a century older than the business. I think the menu may have been updated -- though not too much. I had trout with a baked potato (the trout isn't local) and Len had a steak sandwich (maybe the cow was local). The interior of the Albany is full of old-style wooden booths and fixtures from the past -- the exterior has the typical extra-tall front pediment of a 19th century frontier building. It's across the street from the old Union Pacific Railroad Station, now a museum, and not far from the Capitol building.

For dessert, I had lemon cheesecake, which I would call New York style. I wonder what they would have served in the 1880s when the railroad station was new. Above our table was a photograph of the construction of the station with the workers standing on the partially built walls. Cheyenne history photos were on all the restaurant walls.

 

The Albany atmosphere contrasted with that of the very up-to-date brewpub in Des Moines where we ate dinner last night, though the menus had quite a bit of overlap, such as several Mexican-style offerings and of course hamburgers of various types (more trendy at the brewpub, naturally).

"Tomatoland"

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook is a very focused book. Too focused. The tomatoland he describes is in Imolakee, Florida, and almost nowhere else. The most startling fact of the book is that Florida isn't really a very good place to grow tomatoes. The soil is sandy and poor in nutrients for the crop, and there are too many insects. As a result, the big growers who have considerable political clout have received exceptions from many regulations of the use of dangerous and disgusting chemicals on their tomatoes -- bad for consumers, much worse for field workers.

The humanitarian issues of Estabrook's tomatoland include underpaying workers, cheating them of wages, exploiting their ignorance and frequent status as illegal aliens, ensuring that they are poorly housed and fed, carelessly exposing them to hazards like pesticides, and at worst, brutally enslaving them. He clearly explains that this is real and total slavery with only a slim chance of escape. He describes several lawsuits and campaigns for fairer treatment of workers, and profiles various victims and advocates. He's especially detailed about the well-known campaign to increase the pay of tomato pickers, and corporate resistance (from businesses like Trader Joe's, which I think by now has conceded) even to a token increment of a penny per pound of tomatoes.

The culinary issues are predictable: why don't tomatoes have any taste? Estabrook describes the indifference of the major growers to whether their tomatoes do in fact taste like tomatoes. He acknowledges that no mass-market, high-quantity agriculture could produce garden-ripe, fresh-picked taste -- but goes to some length to clarify that the extremes of tasteless tomatoes could be addressed, and how a few experimental labs are working on tomato taste and on preserving and incorporating genes from wild plants that grow in South America. The large-scale growers, however, just don't care. Yes, organic farmers have some success, as do farmers in other places, but the demand for a cheap product overwhelms them.

True, most tomatoes consumed in America are grown in Florida (the book is rich with statistics), and tomato-growing is an area of many important issues, humanitarian, political, nutritional, and culinary. However, I was disappointed by the lack of contrasting stories about organic farmers, farmers with alternate methods, or about farms in Canada, Mexico, or other states -- that is, the producers of the tomatoes that I actually eat when fresh local tomatoes aren't in season. He describes only one or two farms that serve a small part of the population of New York City, and a brief description of an organic farmer in Florida.

In sum, the material in this book is important, but I wanted a broader look at the tomato.

Mexican Food, American Promoters

As I said in my most recent post, I couldn't resist reading Gustavo Arellano's new book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. It's every bit as good as I expected. I liked the organization by food type. First, Arellano discusses the tamales that were sold by street vendors in many US cities in the 19th century.  Then chili, tacos, enchiladas, burritos, salsa, each becoming well-known, popular, and highly profitable in non-Mexican communities throughout the country. There's also a diversion into the history of a famous tortilla with the face of Jesus on it.

The most salient fact about each popularization, is that Mexican restaurant owners or food vendors or more recently food trucks have developed the foods for American taste, but in every case, it was non-Mexicans who cleaned up by amplifying sales. Taco Bell, the late (unlamented) Chi-Chi's, Chipotle, etc. were all the result of a non-Mexican amplifying what Mexicans had invented. There's really no implication of theft, just that the non-Mexicans seemed to have had the capital and know-how to scale a good idea into a national or regional restaurant chain -- and make a lot of money. Similarly, Arellano describes how most high-profile grocery products like Old El Paso tortillas and salsa, Newman's Own, Pace, Gebhardts, etc. were developed by non-Mexicans, based on the recipes and expertise of Mexican cooks and sauce makers.

Arellano also has a very interesting chapter called "How Did Americans become Experts at Writing Cookbooks on Mexican Food?" I never thought about this either. Non-Mexicans study regional cooking, become well-versed by interviewing Mexican cooks, and they write the books.

The book reminds me of Jennifer 8 Lee's book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, which explores how Chinese food became so popular throughout the USA. Both authors have a fantastic grasp of the way Americans of many ethnicities think and how they form food tastes. Both present the experiences of ethnic food producers and what it means to them, not just to the consumers.

Where do tacos come from?

How many really intriguing reviews does it take to get me to buy a book? I've been reading quite a few reviews of the newly published book Taco USA by Gustavo Arellano. Julia Moskin's review, featured on page one of the online New York Times (shown above), made me do it. From the reviews and amazon's Look Inside the Book feature, I'm convinced that Arellano will enlighten me about many features of American food  history. He emphatically says it's not a book about Mexico, and not a book about fancy "authentic" Mexican restaurants with that weird corn fungus and epazote. I wonder if he'll mention Xochimilco which used to be in downtown Detroit (maybe still is). And I wonder if it served his sort of American Mexican food or something else.

Maybe the first reference I saw to Arellano's book was L.A.'s Idea of Mexican Food vs. What Mexicans Really Eat last March. A Venn diagram from the article appears below -- it's one of a series of Venn diagrams about what various ethnic groups eat and what we think their cuisine is about. It's a fun article, with quite a few other ideas about "real" Mexican food.

See "Gelatina" in the list of things that Mexicans in Mexico eat? It's Jello with fruit in it. Colorful. Who knew?

The next thing I'm probably going to do: open my iPad to the Kindle app and start reading Taco USA. I'll write my own review some time soon.

Mysterious Edible Mona Lisa

Depicted here on the blog The Amateur Gourmet -- but who is she, this mysterious woman made of something edible but unidentified. Is she warm, is she real? Or just a cold and lonely work of salami?

Meat

The New York Times recently ran an online essay contest about the ethics of eating meat. Thousands of entries were reduced to six finalists, published here: Put Your Ethics Where Your Mouth Is. Among them, one point of view favoring ethical meat consumption created a real learning experience for me. The surprising argument in favor of ethical meat-eating is that farming vegetables is impractical without animals. Here is the paragraph, by a former vegetarian, that I find most convincing:

"I became interested in growing vegetables and found myself apprenticing on a farm in Massachusetts. Still a vegetarian, I was surprised to learn that we amended soil fertility by applying bone and blood meal, both slaughterhouse byproducts, and we regularly dipped young transplants in fish emulsion. I realized then what farmers have known forever: the domestication of animals and the cultivation of vegetables go hand in hand. Growing vegetables is an inherently extractive process, removing nutrients from the soil, so a sustainable system requires other inputs to replace them. Every backyard gardener knows that animal manure enriches the soil, so it should come as little surprise that the animal-vegetable connection is so basic that it’s built into the words themselves: the word 'manure' is rooted in the Latin manuopera, meaning manual work. Through my first season on the farm, I gradually came to terms with the idea that using animal byproducts made good sense, especially in contrast to the alternative of synthetic chemical fertilizers."

This author concludes: "There is an ethical option — a responsibility, even — for eating animals that are raised within a sustainable farm system and slaughtered with the compassion necessitated by our relationship."

 Another excellent article among the top six states:

"While most present-day meat production is an ecologically foolish and ethically wrong endeavor, happily this is changing, and there are abundant examples of ecologically beneficial, pasture-based systems. The fact is that most agroecologists agree that animals are integral parts of truly sustainable agricultural systems. They are able to cycle nutrients, aid in land management and convert sun to food in ways that are nearly impossible for us to do without fossil fuel. If 'ethical' is defined as living in the most ecologically benign way, then in fairly specific circumstances, of which each eater must educate himself, eating meat is ethical, in fact NOT eating meat may be arguably unethical."

And I also find this statement of the issue enlightening:

"We need to seek balance in our land and in our kitchens. However, I also ask my vegetarian friends to consider that if they are eating eggs, then someone had to cull the roosters or mature hens, and I hope those animals were not wasted. If they are drinking dairy, someone had to cull the males from the herd, since a world where every animal is maintained would be unsustainable. And if there are no animal inputs on the farms, then that energy has to come from fossil fuels and other nonorganic sources."

I'm familiar with the usual discussions of animal welfare, planetary welfare, and global human welfare. I had often heard these questions, asked by several of the contestants:

• Is it ever ok to slaughter a living being?
• Do cows or pigs or chickens know what's happening to them?
• Is meat eating "natural" for humans?
• Does a vegan diet in humans lead to brain damage or other deficiencies?
• Does the raising of grain-eating animals for some populations cause other humans to starve for lack of the grain that feeds the animals?
• Is large-scale meat agriculture ruining the planet because of rain-forest destruction, methane gas production, toxic runoff, or whatever?
• Is small-scale meat-raising sustainable and would it be less ruinous to the planet?

But I found the common-sense approach of asking about farming vegetables without animals very fascinating.

Barbie's Kitchen

Alice's Barbies turn out to have a kitchen; one of them agreed to show me the refrigerator. I like this better than the earlier Barbie kitchen I posted here.

Passover is Coming Soon

Last night I attended a wonderful baking demonstration by Lori Shepard, chef and owner of a catering company called Simply Scrumptious Catering.

Above, you can see the demo table which had been painstakingly prepared by Lori (left) and Esther, our hostess. Throughout her demo, Lori fielded questions from attendees, who included novice cooks as well as those who were highly experienced. She showed a number of techniques, such as beating the egg mixture for a Mexican flan, folding the dry and then the wet ingredients into beaten egg whites (to prevent them from deflating), tapping a pan of cake batter before baking (to remove oversize air bubbles), and turning a cake upside down with a bottle in the center of a tube pan (to prevent the cake from sinking as it cools). Lori showed us an incredible variety of Passover desserts. Some were conventionally kosher for Passover; others were ultra-kosher, meaning they not only were free of flour, corn products, and leavening, but didn't even contain any matzo products.

Though I do not change dishes or remove any foods from my home or from my diet during Passover, I was fascinated by the demo. Passover, I believe, ties all Jews together, whether they are secular and minimally observant like me, or like Esther, who is highly observant. Esther reminded us that among many meanings, Passover represents the birth of the Jewish people. In her view, the careful and limited diet at Passover represents the care with which one feeds a newborn baby!



The ingenuity of Passover desserts also fascinates me. Without careful thought, what baked goods could be made without flour or leavening? And for those who keep kosher there's the added requirement that a meat meal (the usual choice for the Seder) include only non-dairy desserts. Well, in the photo above, you can see three classics -- left to right: sponge cake, carmel fudge torte (in Lori's extraordinary version), orange and nut torte with non-dairy frosting. Everyone was offered full-sized portions of every dish -- I opted for small bites, but we were made welcome to also take home what we couldn't eat.

My friend Abby is the master of the nut torte, but otherwise among the versions of these desserts, Lori's were far better than most that I remember. These three cakes, along with some extraordinary brownies, were waiting for the participants when we arrived; we also watched demonstrations and tasted several other baked goods.



Also on the demo table, were both basic and unusual ingredients for Passover baking. The usual: matzo cake flour, nuts, eggs, coconut milk (to substitute for heavy cream), lemons, and oranges. Unexpected: confectioner's sugar made without cornstarch; vanilla extract made without grain alcohol; specially handled chocolate and cocoa powder. For pie crusts, Lori makes her own graham crackers from Passover ingredients -- another unexpected item.

Lori's Simply Scrumptious Catering provides meals or pastry for weddings, family reunions, business meetings, holiday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and many other celebrations. Menu choices include a variety of ethnic and American dishes; while she offers kosher catering, she also does lots of work outside this area.