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Photo: Today’s farmers’ market basket—apples, apple cider, 2 & 1/2 years cave-aged raw milk cheddar cheese, and lamb and steak from Smith Meadows Meats.
For Del Ray Farmers’ Market shoppers: don’t trust on-line schedules that report that the Del Ray market ends the first Saturday in December. The salty dude who sold me the aged cheddar above told me that the Del Ray market will continue on. A small but hardy group, including the cheese and yogurt seller, Smith Meadows Meats, and a few others, will try to keep selling all winter on Saturdays, the regular market day.
Photo: Front entrance to Shelly’s Back Room in Washington, D.C.
The day before Thanksgiving. Sitting around with Amah (my grandmother). She’s doing the Post’s crossword puzzle. I’m reading Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, which I bought at Mount Vernon on Monday.
We’re listening to NPR:
This is the Thanksgiving edition of All Things Considered. Tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day will be 12 continuous hours of world music.
Yikes.
Carlos is out doing work on the house. He requests documentation.
I help Amah with the crossword puzzle.
“Four letters, Japanese noodles.”
“Soba.”
We eat leftover butternut squash soup for lunch.
Off to the antique shop on Mount Vernon Avenue. Buy W. Somerset Maugham’s Introduction to Modern English and American Literature (1943). We get dressed to go out to dinner at Jackson 20.
Personally, I think aestheticizing the sense of taste is a classist, morally indefensible notion, a function of privilege rather than of necessity, especially when it comes at such expense…
Isn’t the economy collapsing precisely because the means of human subsistence have metastasized into abstract, tradable commodities, removed from the reality of daily life except as tools of finance?
—From “Comic Strip,” by Chris Ware, The New Yorker, November 24, 2008
Photo: Preparing cucumbers.
For a recent dinner party, I decided to make spiced pecans, jambalaya, cornbread, sweet cucumber and radish salad, buttered peas and onions, and, for dessert, a fig, pecan, and bourbon bundt cake. The recipes come from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook and a special issue of Gourmet which focused on southern food. None of this is food I ate growing up in Orange County, New York, about two hours from New York City. Some of it I have tasted in my travels, some I had never eaten before. I prepared my ingredients and cooked, even as I felt the weight of my foodie readings on-line and in print, including my collection of cookbooks, which are sometimes screeds advocating a “lifestyle”: vegetarian, flexitarian, locavore, nose-to-tail, the oxymoron “humane butchery,” faddist and deconstructed, old-fashioned and real—the philosophy of cooking loomed in the background as I sliced radishes.
I was making dinner for some friends. I enjoy the process of the handmade, the scientific and the mystical union of grain and water and heat: I like to cook.
Photo: Cornbread in cast iron.
I cannot cook from inside some authentic tradition, reach back to my roots, for my roots have been all but ripped out and discarded in the typical American hybrid fashion. Joined with my parents’ rejection of their ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds was the fact that we ate everything growing up. Ask me what a typical dinner was at home and I have no answer: typical was not knowing what we were going to eat. Sure, the plate was often composed of a meat and a vegetable and a starch, but I remember nights of the multiple artichokes or tempura or burritos or stir-fries. For special breakfasts, we’d eat bagels and lox or bacon and eggs. At the bachelor pad of my newly single father, we’d eat pickled herring in sour cream or Italian subs with mozzarella balls that had been scooped from the deli counter’s stainless steel vat of brine. In the summer at home we grilled corn and burgers, we ate “big salads” kept in a giant green Tupperware bowl in the fridge. If we named our food culture it might be “American sundry.” We had traditions like eating lobster at my grandparents’ home in Maine, but that was more an accident of geography than generational continuity. Perhaps there was an authentic fish stew or a beloved recipe from my grandmother for a uncooked cranberry relish that told us we were with family.
I held on to the mythology of a family recipe in the form of that cranberry relish. I ate it every year growing up and disdained the sad, canned, sweet cranberry sauce so often found on other tables. One year, far from family in Hawaii, my roommate and I were hosting a grand Thanksgiving. I called my grandmother for the cranberry relish recipe, and she said, “Well, it’s fresh cranberries, oranges, walnuts, and sugar, you just put them in the blender. It tastes better if you make it the day ahead.” I was taking notes, feeling pride in the passing of generational knowledge. She sighed, “I don’t know the exact amounts. You’ll find the recipe on the back of any bag of cranberries you buy in the supermarket.” Ah. And so I did. My tradition is therefore taken from wherever I choose to take it. At this dinner party I steal some southern cooking and make it mine.
Photo: Cooking.
I steal from Naples, Laos, Hunan, Vietnam, Catalonia, Lowcountry South, Southern California, New England, Bolivia (more Chuquisaca than La Paz), Lebanon, Belgium, Morocco. Yet, I try to buy local food, local beef, pork, kale, radishes. I eat everything, but I sometimes revert to meatless eating because I apologize less to chickpeas than to chickens. And I really really love beets. I peel, I chop, I fry, I boil. Instead of grace, we have taken to saying a Zen prayer I found in The Tassajara Recipe Book: “We venerate the three treasures, and are thankful for this food, the work of many people, and the suffering of other forms of life.” Or sometimes it’s just a quick “Itadakimasu” (“I humbly receive” in Japanese).
Photo: Fig cake batter.
I am not much attracted to deconstructed food, food outside the context of shared enjoyment. I am not much interested in fads per se, but how can one ignore the news of what might be good, or more importantly, what might be rediscovered? The older I get and the more I cook the more I believe in simple food, housewife food, whether that be a housewife in Mumbai or Paris or Alexandria (Virginia or Egypt). I must steal recipes and make my own book of classics. Some favorites now include chickpeas and pasta from Naples (or rather, from inland Campania), a faux-Japanese steak salad from a Jamie Oliver cookbook, a “Moroccan” lentil soup from Fields of Greens, and now a jambalaya from the Lee Bros.
My aesthetics are in the work, the actual preparation and application of heat. I make dishes. I feed people. I dislike the word “foodie” because it implies some of us are not influenced by food, are not making conscious or unconscious choices about what we eat. Are we (fortunate ones) not eaters a few times a day? Perhaps you do not cook or think much about food, but if you eat, someone else cooked, someone picked, prepared, canned, and something died to feed you.
I like to cook and I have the time, so this is not a chore, but a privilege of leisure and wealth. I recognize this, and try to honor the food, where it came from, and the people that brought it to me. Itadakimasu indeed.
Callinectes sapidus, the most famous American crab, has a natural range which extends down the eastern seaboard from Delaware Bay to Florida and beyond, but is mainly caught in the Chesapeake Bay area. [...] These are handsome crabs, and their scientific name is suitably honorific. Callinectes means “beautiful swimmer” and sapidus means “tasty.” Warner [Beautiful Swimmers, 1976], whose admirable book has all the information one could desire about the blue crab and ways of catching it and the people who live by catching or dressing it, remarks that it was Dr. Mary J. Rathbun who gave it its specific name and that, although in her long career at the Smithsonian Institution she identified and described 998 new species of crab, this was the only instance in which she alluded to culinary quality.
—The Oxford Companion to Food
We’re in Urbanna at Carlos’s aunt and uncle’s place. We’re all fiercely chilled out. Life is good. The neighbors invite us over to eat some crab. So off we go with cold beer: in the garage—suddenly a king’s banqueting hall—are tables piled high with blue crab. I have never seen so much crab fresh from the pot and free. We look at each other and back at the crabs. I love my husband, but at that one moment I really love that pile of crabs. It’s a mirage of Old Bay and sweet body meat.
In the back of my mind I wonder about all the reports I’ve read about the blue crab populations, overfishing, global warming affecting the Chesapeake Bay seagrasses (where the post-larval crabs hide), and the collapse of the Bay’s fishing industries. As we’re smashing shells with wooden mallets and ripping bodies open, our host tells how he caught these himself in a crabpot. He answers questions about restrictions on size, throwing back the females, and the crabbing season. He gives us his secret crab steaming recipe. He seems quite knowledgable, law-abiding, and freakishly generous, so I just forget myself in the pile in front of me.
A boatload of crabs argues for having on hand a large quantity of good, crisp, mild beer to allow the delicate crab flavor to shine through. A jelly jar of a quiet, fruity, more minerally Chardonnay (a Chablis, for example) or a Gavi would be terrific too.
—From The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook
The blue crab is a bottom-dwelling creature that lives and breeds in a variety of nearshore habitats. The heart of the blue crab fishery was traditionally the Chesapeake Bay area, but now equal amounts come from the Carolina coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The blue crab has the potential to support a sustainable fishery due to its one- to two-year maturity period. The crabs are caught in traps that take little bycatch of other marine life. However, many blue crab populations have been on the decline, due to habitat loss caused by pollution and coastal development. In the Gulf of Mexico, shrimp trawlers take juvenile crabs as bycatch before they have the chance to mature and reproduce. More basic science regarding the blue crab population cycle is needed, and while Maryland/Virginia crab management is proactive, management of other domestic and international blue crab fisheries could be improved.
—Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch
The various seafood watch sites give mixed reviews to eating blue crab. None discuss the ethics of an offering of hand-caught free crab (and beer) in the neighbor’s garage.
No, this pole [the Great Pole of Weirdness] is different. It is dark like a stovepipe and slick with human grease, criss-crossed with long scars and teeth marks that will give you a queasy feeling if you stare at them too long. Desperate men have struggled and slid down this pole, and only a few have gone up. It is like Jack’s beanstalk, with a long root on the bottom end.
La bas. Down there. Where the beasts are all blind and the doomed scream all night in the darkness. Spiro Agnew is down there, and Richard Nixon will join him soon enough….There is also Lyndon LaRouche, Jim and Tammy, Michael Deaver, Patrick Gray and maybe Gary Hart….
And there are also the old-timers, the vets: Boss Tweed, Phillip Nolan, Joe McCarthy, Martin Bormann, Caligula, Marshal Tojo, James Hoffa and a whole crowd of mutants and zombies like Papa Doc, Hubert Humphrey and the ineffable Ulysses S. Grant.
—Hunter S. Thompson, “Swine of the Week,” Sept. 14, 1987
Before I leave the house in Alexandria to catch the metro to Vienna, I go shopping in front of the bookshelves, staring at some Mishimas and Twains. Carlos says, “Take this,” handing me Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine, Gonzo Papers Vol. 2, “it’ll get you hopped up.”
But on the train, I find all the old stories of Meese and Reagan and Haig and Buchanan and Biden (!) and Hart, the news I half-remember from my youth suddenly blooms into a stale taste in my mouth, a combination of dread and nostalgia. I’m joining my sister-in-law for our first major political rally, both of us on the cusp of 40. On her birthday—today—her present will be either an old hound-dog or a squealing puppy. I need a bourbon.
Photo: November 3rd, 6:30 pm outside the Vienna Metro station.
In this atmosphere of political schadenfreude, enjoying the spectacle of our own past (thankfully passed) elections, the mood is enhanced by a sax player at the exit of the metro station. He’s doodling along short versions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Down by the Riverside,” which seems to fit the night, while five or so party volunteers wait, patiently holding up signs. A McCain supporter and an Obama supporter stand next to each other and chat amicably, laughing and joshing while throwing out phrases like, “the utter disaster of this administration.” I ask if I may take a photo of them together, and the McCain supporter says, “Sure. We’re both for a free press.”
Photo: Route 234 on the way to the Prince William Fairgrounds.
And off we go for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to the Prince William Fairgrounds, a trip that should take 30 minutes. Spirits are high. On Route 234 people have left their cars somewhere in the dark and are walking along the road. We are crawling along, catching up on family gossip.
Photo: Hustling to the venue at 9 pm.
We park on the track of the Old Dominion Speedway, watch a Mini-Cooper make a jaunty-fast round of the empty track, and then we settle into parking spots that will take hours to depart. Onward to the fair!
We arrive just in time to realize Obama is going to be late. So we settle in, listen to soul and hip hop and the occasional Springsteen, and stand among thousands and thousands of people. Later we will be told we are 80,000 strong. Obama in his speech will bump it to 100,000.
We get speeches from the 18-year-old son of a congressman (or some such) who is voting for the first time (as is a big cheering portion of the audience), and more from various coat-tail riders. More music. A musician says, “I’ve been told I gotta give you one more,” and we all say “No…” in a 80,000 mouth sigh. “Thanks a lot,” he laughs. Time goes by. More music.
Then slightly bigger fish arrive: Governor Kaine is excited Obama has come to Virginia and is giving Virginia a chance to go blue after 44 years. The former governor and U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner lays out some careful words: People of Virginia, take me on the Obama ride. OK, OK, but bring us what we want. Bring out the Voice. The crown chants O-BA-MA, it dies out, and we mutter among ourselves. He’s an hour late.
And then he’s there. Lots of woos and yays. He apologizes for his lateness (traffic at Dulles), thanks various people, tells us we show grit and determination for trekking out to see him “on a school night.” My sister-in-law says, “But it’s not a school night, all the kids are off tomorrow in Virginia.”
He gets to it:
After the first bit about how we, the American people, have raised him up, given him hope, given him more love than he’ll ever need, he speaks of decency and dignity in politics. I’m thinking of Thompson’s Great Pole of Weirdness and how I had felt when Clinton was elected—and then later. And how I feel now when Carlos reads aloud the Morgan Stanley statement.
Obama continues, “One hundred thousand people is a pretty representative sampling size. Let me see with a show of hands, how many of you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year?” Hands go up, I’ve never seen thousands and thousands of hands flutter up as in a city of Arnold Horshacks, “Ooh, ooh, Mr. Obama!”
Obama then offers us a Babette’s Feast of political dainties: tax cuts, health care, alternative fuels, emphasis on early education for children, paying our teachers better (my sister-in-law cheers), taking care of military families (“Oh, that’s me! Yay!” clap clap), ending the war in Iraq, balancing the budget…I want to start singing:
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
You never change your socks,
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks.
The shacks all have to tip their hats
And the railroad bulls are blind,
There’s a lake of stew and of whiskey, too,
And you can paddle all around in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
Hooray! O-BA-MA! Yes we can! Everyone cheers, hooray! But then, he warns us that we may have to wait a bit for this great vision. We have to dig ourselves out of the hole Bush and his sidekick McCain have dug for us. We moan. Boo.
Then he tells us a story about County Councilwoman Edith Childs, and her famous “Fired up! Ready to go!” [The scansion is difficult. My Yankee mouth wants to say, "Fire it up" because fired in two syllables requires a twang.] It’s the story of the early days of the campaign. He visits a small town and is discomfited by Councilwoman Childs’ chanting, over and over, “Fired up!” He purrs, in a tone suited to an intimate dinner party after a few rounds of good wine, “But here’s the thing, Virginia, after a minute or so, I’m feeling kinda fired up.” And we answer back with some erogenous cheering. “I’m feeling like I’m ready to go!” He works it a bit with some back and forth chanting. Ready to go, ready to go. Ready to go, ready to go.
It’s over. We shuffle-shuffle out, a happy crowd, groups starting chants “Fired up! Ready to go!” which is answered with “Hurry up! We’re ready to go!” It takes an hour to get to the car, we nap in the car for an hour waiting for the parking lot to clear, and I get home at 2:45 am. Carlos mutters sleepily, “How was it?”
“It was good. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Happy Birthday, Pia. I hope you get your puppy.
