Food Trucks

I have been reading a collection of essays titled Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love. Although there's a bit of history of lunch wagons at factories during World War II, and of earlier mobile ethnic food vendors, the majority of the material is about the 21st century. Several new developments in the world of food trucks in a number of cities in the US and Canada are discussed in articles by various authors focusing on specific places and their problems.

The New York Police Department towing the food truck of Patty's Tacos,
which was singled out for rigorous enforcement and eventually driven out
of business a few years ago. (Illustration from p. 95)

A major theme is the conflict and contrast of two trends: immigrants who are barely able to make a living selling their ethnic cuisine and modern foodies inventing upscale food-truck dining, including fusion cooking, local and organic foods, and other popular dining modes. Uneven and often unfair enforcement of laws often make the immigrant experience more difficult than that of Anglo foodies.

Quite a few organizations have been formed to promote and protect food trucks and their role in street culture. Also, in some cities, food trucks have been viewed as having the potential to supply "food deserts" with better quality produce or other food -- though this has not succeeded in any of the reported areas.

In sum:

"The sale of food in the streets has a long, contentious history in the United States and abroad. Street vendors regularly inflame 'quality of life' concerns among brick-and-mortar business owners large and small, as well as among concerned residents, who press municipal officials to remove vendors from 'their' corner or block, a NIMBYism that invariably requires police intervention to be achieved." (p. 47). 

Almost every food fad and fashion has been represented in food-truck culture. In one city, for example, would-be sellers have to show the attraction and value of their offerings, which seem to be pretty typical throughout the places mentioned:

"Successful applicants advertise that their food trucks serve 'traditional' ethnic foods (including traditional Belgian waffles, authentic Salvadoran pupusas and pasteles, traditional Korean bulgogi and bibimbap, authentic Japanese gyozas, classic Aussie pies, and traditional UK tandoori) or that they serve modern 'fusion' cuisine (along the lines of kimchi tacos, butter chicken schnitzel, Filipino sliders, pizza perogies, yam tempura burritos, and, of course, Japadog’s famed hot dogs topped with pickled ginger and wasabi mayonnaise)." (p. 246). 

The central focus of Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice -- as the title suggests -- is very issue-driven. Central conflicts exist over rights, responsibilities, privileges, and prejudices concerning mobile food sales. Laws about food trucks have always emphasized food safety, traffic safety, and control of location of the trucks, including control of litter and control of crowds. Some of the main conflicts and issues:

• Immigrants with limited capital and limited English skills have traditionally made a living by making and selling cheap food to people in their community. In recent history, they have often owned food trucks, and prejudice against their groups has caused authorities to treat them harshly, especially being very zealous in enforcement of food safety laws, traffic laws (like where they can park) and other laws.
• Questions of authenticity and cultural appropriation come up all the time, as actual natives present the cuisine of their own countries (such as Mexico) but Americans who know the laws better and have more money to invest can out-compete them.
• Restaurant owners and other business owners, in efforts to suppress competition, have traditionally used their influence to restrict food trucks -- whether owned by immigrants or not. 

Unfortunately there is a lot of very unpleasant academic jargon used excessively in the essays. Some of the individual authors are especially outrageous in this respect. For example: "urban life involves constant and shifting tension between acts of performative agency and restrictive policy." (p. 190). Or this sentence:

"Stepping outside the logic of the market in defining these spaces, it becomes clear that the spaces food trucks occupy are momentarily transformed, turned into a temporary social space where everyday life expands and contracts before allowing the space to resume its normative function." (p. 195).

Inevitably, there is a certain amount of repetition among the descriptions of the issues for the various places. However, it's pretty interesting. The editors offer this summary:

"The question is who gets to define these new identities: Is it the immigrant and working-class vendors themselves, or is it the privileged foodies who are, perhaps unwittingly, participants in cultural appropriation?" (p. 314).

The editors of this collection are Julian Agyeman, Caitlin Matthews, and Hannah Sobel. Each essay describes the experience of a different municipality with food trucks, including New York City; New Orleans; Columbus, Ohio; Montreal and Vancouver, Canada; Chicago; Los Angeles; Durham, NC; Portland, OR; Atlanta, GA; and a couple of others.

Wordy Wednesday: Another Peter Diamond Detective Novel

Peter Lovesey's Beau Death -- number 17 in the Detective Peter Diamond series -- was published a while back, but I've just read it this week and very much enjoyed it. The plot, about an exclusive club in Bath that celebrates the history of a fashionable 18th century resident and social leader of the town, has plenty of historic background, presumably accurate, as well as very good suspense in the police solution to two murders. Also some amusing food scenes -- my usual focus.

During the investigation of a body found when a wrecking ball is tearing down a very old building, the police interview many many people, investigate a number of leads -- and often have to stop for food. Detective Peter Diamond is a lover of pub food, so he's not too happy when his friend Paloma arranges a meal at a Mexican restaurant so that he can interview Estella, an expert in the era when the body was thought to have been abandoned:

Estella liked Mexican, so the meeting had been set up for Las Iguanas in the courtyard in Seven Dials, reached through a passageway from Westgate Street. Paloma and Diamond got there early and found a table close to the window.  

“Are you okay with Mexican food?” Paloma said.  

“Now you ask.”  

“Actually I asked Estella and she suggested here. It’s not exclusively Mexican. I’d call it Latin American really.” 

“Fair enough.” Diamond was more of a pub food man: pie and chips. “I’m sure I’ll survive." ... 

They agreed on tapas for starters but the two women’s choice of a dish called blazing bird flavoured with flaming hot habañero sauce was a step too far for Diamond. He settled for a Cuban sandwich and asked for a large jug of water and three glasses. (pp. 44-47). 

Later, a second murder victim also becomes Diamond's responsibility. This victim is young and hip: his kitchen is definitely an indicator of his lifestyle. Looking around:

He’d already concluded that the guy existed mainly on meals he microwaved. There wasn’t a toaster, a blender or a crockpot. The saucepans on the hob looked squeaky clean. The pedal bin was empty. There was little in the cupboard above the microwave except two mugs and several plates of different sizes, a packet of cornflakes, a cut loaf and teabags. The coffee was in a packet inside the fridge— which also contained milk, apple juice and two cartons of spread that Diamond opened, just to be certain. (pp. 226-227).

Diamond searches a little more -- the man was definitely not cooking much, mainly reheating frozen meals, but nothing unexpected is found with them in the freezer. Following a hunch, Diamond looks into the cornflakes box; the cereal had mostly been replaced by packets of cocaine. His fellow detective asks: “What made you think of the cornflakes?” Diamond answers: “The crockery. He had plates and mugs, but no bowl. How would he eat his cornflakes on a flat plate?” (p. 230).

Beau Death is a very good read. I think it's in fact better than many of the previous sixteen novels in the series. However, even though I have read them all, my memory for them is amazingly weak! Don't give me any exams about them.

And for Wordy Wednesday --

I noticed one very amusing Britishism in the book -- a word that was entirely new to me. Diamond and his colleagues had been trying to figure out the role of a particular individual in the complex case they are working on. Diamond, frustrated and tense, speaks half to them and half to himself: "He was chuntering. 'Ten years . . . ten years was what he said . . . ten years easily. But that isn’t twenty. What was Spearman doing for the other ten?' (p. 351).

Chuntering: a new word to me. As the context suggests, chunter means to mutter or to talk in a low inarticulate way, according to Merriam-Webster online. Or according to the Collins online dictionary, it's "British informal. to mutter or grumble incessantly in a meaningless fashion." A nice word for Wordy Wednesday.

Good Food

Buttermilk Roast Chicken

-- from Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (recipe online here).

We enjoyed Samin Nosrat's Netflix special, and later read the book. Her enthusiasm for this recipe is enormous, so we decided to try it. I used Kefir in place of buttermilk but otherwise followed her recipe as written, including putting the legs of the chicken in the corner of the oven as in my photo. I doubt if this really made any difference, as I think my oven heats pretty evenly.

My usual way of roasting chicken (rubbed with oil and sometimes a spice rub, cavity filled with aromatics) produces a very similar result, so I don't see what the big fuss is about. Further, the Kefir/buttermilk that ran off the chicken made a TERRIBLE mess of my roasting pan, which doesn't necessarily happen when I do it the usual way. I probably won't do this one again.

Tortilla Espagnol

The classic Spanish potato omelet: an old favorite from the tapas bars of Madrid and everywhere in Spain.

Pizza

-- from Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish (p. 218)

It's hard to capture how beautiful this pizza looked fresh out of the oven.

Another success from Len's experiments with a variety of breads and yeast dough.

Well, that's what we have been cooking this week. Simple but enjoyable.

A Mural That Isn't There

The Madonna of the Victories by Andrea Mantegna (1496)
Oil & Tempera on Canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris.

The history of this stunning painting begins with a mural on the wall of a house in Mantua, Italy, which depicted the Madonna with saints. In around 1495, a Jewish banker named Daniele Norsa purchased this house, and received official permission from Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, to remove the mural. Bad idea! The populace reacted violently, stirred up by a mystic priest who predicted the destruction of Norsa's house and replacement of it with a chapel and a magnificent painting: a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Although the general population of Italy at the time was very anti-Jewish, families like the Norsa family were often invited by the rulers to provide financial services, which were off-limits to Christians because any loans at interest were classified as usury. The profits accrued from Jewish banking were heavily taxed by the rulers, who managed to profit from "usury" even if they couldn't practice it. This had the additional benefit of directing hostility on the part of debtors towards the Jews, not towards the rulers whose profitable role was often quite hidden.

Jewish Italians had little choice but to be bankers. They were prohibited from most other professions and occupations, and had no civil rights, though their ancestors had lived in Italy since Roman times. Essentially, they had to bribe the rulers for the right to live and work in their territory; they were always at the mercy of the rulers and sometimes of the mob. The Norsa family had lived in Mantua for generations, and mostly had been protected by the Gonzaga family; in fact Isabella d'Este, the Marquess of Mantua, had tried to avoid anti-Jewish violence somewhat earlier when she was left in charge during one of her husband's absences.

Protests against Norsa's removal of the mural became violent, and Gonzaga was obliged to react. He had recently been in service to Venice as a condottiere, or hired general, in one of the numerous wars that were taking place in Italy at the time. Chronically short of money, he was looking for a way to finance a memorial to his great victory at the battle of Fornovo: just what the mystic, Girolamo Redini, predicted. The painter Mantegna was in Gonzaga's service, and Gonzaga wanted him to create a great painting. A chapel -- Santa Maria della Victoria -- would be built to commemorate his accomplishment, with Redini's dream painting in the place of honor. If you look at the painting, above, you can see a portrait of Gonzaga in armor, kneeling before the Madonna's throne, along with a wealth of symbols from Renaissance religious iconography (more at this blog post).

Although Norsa had already promised to commission a replacement mural on the wall of his house, this wasn't enough. The house was razed to make room for the chapel, and Norsa's assets were confiscated to pay for both chapel and painting.

I have been fascinated by Mantegna and by this history of the mural that isn't there for a long time. In 1998, I visited Mantua trying to learn more about the history of the Norsa family. We found the chapel, but it was closed and evidently rather run down and in need of maintenance. A web search today indicates that it's been restored and is now open to tourism.

Here are some photos that we took in Mantua:

Mantua, Chapel of the Victories, 1496, on the site of the Norsa home.
Mantegna's painting was in the place of honor until Napoleon conquered
Italy and took it for the Louvre.

Another Madonna of the Victories by an unknown painter.
At the bottom are portraits of the Norsa family.
This painting hangs in the Basilica of Mantua.

Portraits of the Norsa Family. The men are wearing the Jewish badge. In Renaissance Italy, the badge was a circle. 

The synagogue of Mantua.

Notes:

• Information about the Madonna of the Victories is available in the book Andrea Mantegna and the Italian Renaissance by Joseph Manca. (2015)
• For more about the Norsa family see this page of Jewish Virtual Library: Norzi.

"The Goodness Paradox"

It's still good weather for staying home and reading here in Michigan.

However, we did manage to take a walk in the half-frozen, foggy woods.

What I've been reading.

Richard Wrangham is a very provocative author. Ten years ago, his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human was controversial, but over time, its premise seems to have been fully accepted and absorbed into the general view of how humans evolved (my review here). Wrangham's new book, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, was published last month. In it he explores another question about human evolution: how do groups of humans live so peacefully together but engage in various types of group violence? How do you account for the "great oddity about humanity ... our moral range, from unspeakable viciousness to heartbreaking generosity"? (p. 4)

Although aggression occurs among humans in all modern situations, and even in the few well-documented primitive bands of hunter-gatherers, the impact of conflict between humans in these circumstances is minimal compared to acts of violence in the wild among our closest primate relatives: chimpanzees. However, in contrast to human calm in day-to-day living situations, Wrangham points out, we are belligerent when it comes to group-on-group action; war, in particular, is a very human activity. He questions how we evolved the individual tendency to virtue with the group tendency towards violence.

Wrangham distinguishes between two types of aggression: reactive aggression (response to a threat) and proactive aggression (cooly planned acts of violence). He explores a huge body of knowledge in anthropology, primatology (his original field), evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and other natural history to formulate a detailed description of these contrasting forms of action. He explains what happens in the human brain, what happens between individuals, and what happens in groups.

Chimps, our closest relatives, are very different from us when it comes to reactive aggression -- they are highly violent to one another and often kill other chips in their own and other troops. One observation Wrangham quotes is from a primatologist who pointed out that if you subjected a troop of chips to the crowding that one experiences in an airplane, they would resort to extreme violence against each other; however, someone countered, before the humans get on the plane, they have to be searched for bombs. Though humans are able to inhibit their violent impulses at being crowded together, they have an ability to plan and coordinate attacks for more-or-less abstract motives -- which chimps are completely incapable of.

Humans evolved their suppression of reactive aggression in order to live in highly cooperative and calm situations. Wrangham makes the case that this evolution took place through a process called self-domestication, which has many consequences beyond suppressing our reactive aggression. Like the animals we live with (especially dogs, the domesticated descendants of wolves), we have tamed ourselves to create a calmer domestic life for ourselves. He also describes one comparable result of self-domestication of the bonobos, which are very similar to chimps but are comparatively non-violent in their collective lives. The descriptions of these two species -- which are quite closely related to one another and to us -- and his explanation of how they evolved is fascinating.

Our human and pre-human ancestors, Wragham explains, domesticated themselves by a long process beginning 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. This was possible for a number of reasons, especially the human ability to use language for group planning and action when needed to eliminate group members who were a threat to the peaceful lives of others. As rogue group members were eliminated (a hypothesis he supports through many diverse types of evidence), the survivors became more and more domesticated, resulting in the way humans live now. Wrangham not only describes the evolutionary process, he also explores many of its ramifications for our modern lives.

I've given only the barest outline of this challenging book, and maybe I haven't done such a good job. If you find my summary hard to believe, I urge you to read it for yourself and see the evidence.

Loving Madhur Jaffrey

"Today's Special" is a pretty ordinary movie about an Indian-American man named Samir and how he finds his roots. It has a few really fun things going for it, including very good actors and wonderful images of food. When it was new in 2010, famous film critic Roger Ebert summed up one of the best elements of the production:

"The movie's in joke is that Samir's mother is played by Madhur Jaffrey. She is not only a considerable actress, but a world-famous chef... . Here she plays a typical Indian mother, despairing of her Westernized son and her impossible husband. It's like having Julia Child play the chef's matriarch."

Although the plot and characters are unfortunately very predictable, sometimes painfully so, the movie is carried by the great food and kitchen scenes in the restaurants where Samir, the main character works. (Samir is played by Aasif Mandvi, who also co-wrote the script.)

At the beginning, Samir is the sous chef in a very pretentious, high-pressure kitchen in a French restaurant in Manhattan, but he quits when the owner tells him he has no imagination for cooking. Though he wants to go to Paris to apprentice with a famous chef, circumstances prevent this. Instead, he takes over Tandoori Palace, his family's very ordinary Indian restaurant that his father has allowed to slide into something less than mediocracy. Of course he finds a way to turn this failing dive into a great success, relying on a taxi driver who can cook and also who dispenses tons of wisdom. And falls in love, obtains the approval of his parents, embraces his ethnic identity, walks the streets of New York and takes the subway, and generally goes through all the plot elements that you could expect, but it's still fun to watch!

Here are a few screen shots to illustrate what I liked in this movie:

Mixing Indian spices.

Beautiful food served in the newly wonderful Tandoori Palace.

More beautiful food.

Madhur Jaffrey

The kitchen of Tandoori Palace

Plating food at the upscale New York restaurant at the beginning of the movie.
Maybe by now some of the styling is a little dated.

I am grateful to one of my blogger friends, who mentioned this movie. Unfortunately I don't remember who it was.

Wordless Wednesday: Sourdough Pancakes

Two Yiddish Books

Photo of the Yiddish Book Center (https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/) in Amherst, Massachusetts. (2003).
The architecture echoes the look of Eastern European shtetls of a century or more in the past.

A few days ago, the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, sent me two recently published books as a bonus for a recent contribution to their efforts. Publications of newly translated books are part of the center's mission to make available lost or ignored but worthy representatives of Yiddish literature. The smaller work, Radiant Jargon, contains a small selection of poems about Yiddish and translation: some of these poems are by classic Yiddish authors from the early 20th century, and others, and also translations, by modern poets, some of whom have been interns at the center.

The more substantial book, Seeds in the Desert by Mendel Mann (1916-1975), contains a selection of short stories and sketches about the early days of Israel, the lives of Jews in Eastern Europe during World War II, and other vignettes about Jewish life in the mid-20th century. The introduction also provides an interesting summary of the life of the author, whose name and work were entirely unfamiliar to me up until now.

Many of the stories offer just a very small episode from life in Israel or elsewhere; however most of them inform the reader of how these new Israelis had survived and escaped their past. Some stories are set far from Israel, for example, the story "Laughter from the Skies" (p. 96-103) takes place in the Australian outback about a Jew who takes revenge on a former Nazi who had murdered  his family. Another story, "Cain Laments at Night" (p. 114-119), set during World War II, is about a Jewish boy named Emmanuel. He was hiding in a shtetl from which he was to travel to the larger town of Rovno (also called Rivne), but he was unable to keep up his pretense of being a partner with some Ukrainian soldiers. The problem occurs when he encounters a market woman wrapping her goods in pages of the Talmud, which he takes away and pockets. With the soldiers, he consumes "pork, black bread, eggs, and bottles of vodka," but despite this un-Jewish act, they notice him respectfully holding the scrap of paper, and torment him. Emmanuel, too, takes his revenge.

A very typical story in this collection is titled "The Encounter in Ramat Gan" (p. 59-64) It begins with these words: "'Excuse me...' I said. 'I think I know you... we've met somewhere before...'" The narrator was speaking to a woman on the street, walking with a small child. He describes a hot day in Ramat Gan, where he was waiting for a bus. He tries to explain to her what he remembers: "I traveled across Ukraine with the Soviet army, and somewhere in a shtetl in Volhynia I met you. It was  a strange encounter. Don't you remember the Russian soldier who talked to you in Yiddish? Have you forgotten a night journey in a truck with two armed soldiers?" She denies this: "I don't want to know you!" she shouted.

The narrator thinks about her all night. In the morning he sees her again, while waiting for his bus, and follows her. Angrily she says "The woman you met is dead. She doesn't exist any more." She calls their former meeting a surreal dream. She accuses him of trying to make a legend of his past. Then she produces a long story of how they met during her ordeal during the war, her abuse by peasants, her encounters with Russian officers, and more war stories. The narrator, she recalled, had been a Jew in disguise as a Russian soldier -- obviously hoping himself to evade the murderous Ukrainian and Nazi troops. She describes how he helped her get to the Rovno where there were "thirty Jewish families," and he could leave her with an elderly Jewish women who would protect her. But after telling her detailed memories, the woman concluded: "Everything I have told you was invented, a lie, a mistake. My life has started now, here, with my husband and children. Forget, and let me forget."

A majority of the stories in the book have a certain similarity with this encounter and with the woman's wish to erase her past. The new country of Israel, where most of the stories take place, offers a new life for the former victims of European persecutions. The sun burns hot, it's difficult to earn a living, and many of the characters struggle to adapt and to earn their bread. But it's all new and full of promise. I've made it sound simplistic, which it isn't -- it's a very interesting book of stories about a few moments in the lives and memories of a variety of characters.

Now, about Rovno, which is mentioned in several of the stories, along with a few other nearby locations in a region of Ukraine. These references were especially interesting to me because my mother's parents and other relatives came from the Rovno shtetl in the early 20th century. I've never known much about it other than generalizations about shtetl life. I suspect that some distant relatives were still in Rovno during World War II, but I don't know anything about them, and I was fascinated (when I looked it up after reading Mendel Mann's stories) to learn that Rovno was important during the early days of the war. In looking for information, I was also astonished to learn that the mother of Israeli author Amos Oz was a native of Rovno (source).

I also learned of the end of the Jewish community of Rovno, which the author of the stories must also have known. I read this: "The majority of the Jews of western Ukraine town of Rovno, around 23,000 people, had been murdered shortly after the Germans invaded in June 1941. Between 5,000 and 7,000 Jews remained in the ghetto that was established there." In July of 1942, the remainder of the Jews were murdered in a cooperative act by the SS Nazi soldiers and the Ukrainian militia, which supported the invaders. (source)

A street in Rovno before the war. From the JewishGen Website. (link) 

Murals in South America

"Mural Monday" is a blogging event where a large number of lovers of street art share images on blogs from around the world. I've enjoyed the diversity of murals from every continent except Antarctica. This event is sponsored by Sami, who lives in Perth, Australia. For more murals, check her blog each Monday -- here: https://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com/

South America has been less well-represented among the many murals posted. So I decided to do something about that! First, I'll repeat a photo I took last year in Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world:

"Todos somos Fuentealba" -- political wall art which intrigued me on our brief tour of the small downtown (which is
mainly souvenir shops where I didn't go). A friend explained that Carlos Fuentealba (1966-2007) was a socialist/labor activist in Argentina. During a protest, he was shot in the back by a policeman.

This was the only mural I photographed during that trip, which was mainly dedicated to wildlife and other outdoor activities, not to cities. However, my birding friend Pam has been on a very long trip including both cities and wildlife in Chile, Argentina, the Faulkland Islands, Antarctica, and other destinations in South America. She photographed a number of murals, and kindly gave me permission to reproduce her photos here.

Pam's Photos of Murals in Valparaiso, Chile:

Pam's Photos of Murals in Buenos Aires, Argentina:

Finally, from our visit to the Upper Amazon in 2017.

Along the route from the riverboat landing to the airport in Iquitos.
Houses beside the road were vividly painted.

Also near the road, there were long walls covered with murals. Hard to see from the moving limo.

Decorating cities of all types with beautiful, interesting murals seems to be a worldwide trend at the moment. Historically, mural painting has some deep roots: for example, in Italy. A reproduction of some murals from ancient Pompeii appears in our local campus museum. Much later, Italian home owners often painted religious murals on their outside walls. The tradition continues: I once stayed in a hotel facing a building in Pisa, Italy, that had been painted by muralist Keith Haring (1958-1990).

In the early part of the 20th century, Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was famous for his murals -- a fine example of his work is in the central courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Regional American painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) produced some famous murals at about the same time. At present, the secret identity of the British muralist Bansky receives a lot of press. The more I think about this, the more I want to know.

Polar Vortex Reading

Do you believe that some individuals have a second sight, or clairvoyance, or can read other people's minds? Stephen King's 1977 work The Shining calls this ability "the shining." And it's not always a happy talent to have. But whether it exists in real life or just in novels, King's exploration of this phenomenon impressed me quite a bit.

Being a new reader of King, I expected a much more conventional horror story. I found instead that I was reading a psychological thriller. The ghosts, demons, and unnamable powers that inhabit the isolated, snowed-in Overlook Hotel in this story are eerily able to exploit the mental and psychological weaknesses of the characters that they terrorize. As readers, we are in the heads of these victims of supernatural horror. Every detail reinforces both terror and psychological realism -- even the simple act of making lunch, punctuated by internal voices in parenthetic italics:

"All of these actions, so common and so much a part of her life before the Overlook had been a part of her life, helped to calm her. 

"She melted butter in the frying pan, diluted the soup with milk, and then poured the beaten eggs into the pan. A sudden feeling that someone was standing behind her, reaching for her throat. She wheeled around, clutching the knife. No one there. 

"(! Get ahold of yourself, girl !) 

She grated a bowl of cheese from the block, added it to the omelet, flipped it, and turned the gas ring down to a bare blue flame. The soup was hot. She put the pot on a large tray with silverware, two bowls, two plates, the salt and pepper shakers. When the omelet had puffed slightly, Wendy slid it off onto one of the plates and covered it. (pp. 541-542). 

Or the comfort of soup to Danny, the 5-year-old boy whose "shining" is the center of the entire book:

"(Why are you here?) 

"After the walk behind the Overlook, he and Mommy had come back and she had fixed him his favorite lunch, a cheese and bologna sandwich plus Campbell’s Bean Soup. ...

"Mommy had eaten half a sandwich, no soup. She said Daddy must have gone out for a walk of his own since both the VW and the hotel truck were in the parking lot. She said she was tired and might lie down for an hour or so, if he thought he could amuse himself and not get into trouble. Danny told her around a mouthful of cheese and bologna that he thought he could." (p. 245-246).

Of course we know what trouble Danny can get into while his mom is sleeping and his father is missing!

Likewise, soup can't assuage the growing horror of the Overlook's supernatural and dangerous residents:

"The three of them were in the lobby. Jack had built a roaring blaze in the fireplace. Danny was bundled up in a blanket on the small sofa .... He was sipping hot noodle soup from a mug. Wendy sat beside him, stroking his hair. Jack had sat on the floor, his face seeming to grow more and more still, more and more set as Danny told his story. Twice he pulled his handkerchief out of his back pocket and rubbed his sore-looking lips with it.  

"'Then they chased me,' he finished. Jack got up and went over to the window, his back to them. He looked at his mommy. 'They chased me all the way up to the porch.' He was struggling to keep his voice calm, because if he stayed calm maybe they would believe him." (p. 431). 

Stephen King's books have sold 350 million copies, so I assume that several million words have already been written about him, many admiring! At this point, I don't think I have much more to add. Anyone reading this blog has probably at least seen one of the film versions (1980 and 1997) -- not me, somehow.

The thermometer when I got up Thursday. That's a minus sign at far left.
Not long afterward we spent quite a bit of time thawing out frozen pipes.

While I've been reading, record-low temperatures and wind chills are keeping large numbers of people indoors here in the midwestern states. No doubt many of them are eating soup like the characters in The Shining. We definitely had soup for lunch Thursday: Trader Joe's Sweet Potato Bisque with additions of leftover roast chicken, spices, and a can of chick peas.

When I saw the weather prediction, I decided to read King: an author who is often highly praised, but whose novels I had never read. The Shining is sometimes said to be his best. When I ordered my Kindle copy I had no idea that most of the action takes place during a blinding snowstorm, when the characters are cut off from help and from all outside contact. Quite a choice!

New in my Kitchen

First: this wonderful gift -- a Mona Lisa Scrubee. Plus Starry Night too.
Thanks Arny & Tracy!

My kitchen in January has seen a large number of new food items (or items we haven't had for a long time). These come from Trader Joe's, Ikea, Cost Plus World Market, and elsewhere. During our week's trip to South Carolina, we also tried some delicious new foods, but for this post I'll stick to just what's new in my Ann Arbor kitchen. And I'm sharing with the blogger event "In My Kitchen" at Sherry's blog: http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com/.

From Trader Joe's: Langostino Tails, which were delicious and tender.

From Ikea: mustard with dill.

Quadratini are good cookies! Ate them in 2 days.

Ikea Müsli with raspberries and Keffir.

A few condiments: two salsas, apricot-rose jam, Pickapeppa sauce.
We haven't had Pickapeppa for a while. It has a very good mild pepperiness.

Trader Joe's Harissa Salsa is hot. Is it
Moroccan? I don't know! But good in soup.

New for baking: two bannetons for proofing loaves:

The ridged surface of the banneton impresses a pattern on the loaves
as they rise. These are new in our kitchen for Len's bread-making.

After it rises, the loaf is turned out on a peel and slashed.
Then thrown onto a hot baking stone as quickly as possible.

The finished loaves have a ridged pattern left by the banneton. This batch was amazingly delicious.