American Beef

Old Borax's Poison Squad

September 1, 2024

I listened to The Poison Squad (2018) by Deborah Blum on audiobook a few months ago, and I remember it being action-packed. I should read the book for a more toned-down version to appreciate the content. Another book about Wiley is The Chemistry of Fear Harvey Wiley's Fight for Pure Food (2021) by Jonathan Rees. More influential was the documentary version, The Poison Squad, a John Maggio-directed PBS documentary based on Deborah Blum's research. The film has turned me into a Dr. Harvey Wiley sycophant; here is a summary: Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley (1844-1930) was a social justice activist and chemist who grew up in a progressive home part of the Underground Railroad in Indiana. Wiley believed in pure foods and fought against fraudulent foods, false advertisements, and harmful preservatives. He fought against big corporate fraudsters that would lie and cheat consumers, and in the early years, while working at the USDA, he pissed off some powerful men in the food industry, which made his work more difficult and made him stronger. According to Deborah Blum, "one very obsessive and determined person can change the world, and he did." Wiley's crusade against poison in food led to the passage of the Pure Food Act and Meat Inspection Act as consumer protection laws in 1906. Teddy Roosevelt (president), Upton Sinclair (journalist), and Dr. Harvey Wiley (scientist) and public outrage over the conditions of food led the way towards radical change towards healthy foods free of borax, formaldehyde, and other harmful preservatives. Before the 1906 Food Act, milk, meat, and butter were adulterated and fraudulently mislabeled, dangerous, and resulting in death. Wiley's Test Kitchen, aka The Poison Squad, an experimental restaurant that served poisonous meals to volunteer subjects or documented the effects of preservatives on human beings to collect data and prove that preservatives in foods were harmful to the public, is how he became known as Dr. Harvey Wiley and the Poison Squad coined by a Washington Post reporter. Dr. Wiley (also known as Old Borax) changed America for generations of families and led to the foundation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Harvey Wiley eventually married a feminist librarian by the name of Anna Kelton Wiley, "in 1917, Mrs. Wiley was arrested outside the White House with 40 other women's suffrage pickets. She was released five days later and often said afterward that she considered the incident “the highlight of my life” (New York Times 1964). Thank you, Wiley family, for contributing to positive social change. 

• The Poison Squad. Directed by Maggio, John. Public Broadcasting Service, 2020. https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/the-poison-squad.
• Carlin, Joseph M. "Wiley, Harvey." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. : Oxford University Press, 2012. 
• The New York Times. “MRS. H. W. WILEY, SUFFRAGETTE, DIES; Aided Husband in Fight for Pure Food and Drug Law.” January 7, 1964, sec. Archives. https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/07/archives/mrs-h-w-wiley-suffragette-dies-aided-husband-in-fight-for-pure-food.html.

Franciscan Arzneibuch (1675)

Pharmacopoeia (15th Century)

Chinatown (2019)

Women Churning

American Grub (2013-2017)

Ashe County Cheese

August 28, 2024

The Ashe County Cheese factory is located in West Jefferson, North Carolina, and is owned by Mike Everhart and Tom Torkelson. Since the establishment of the Ashe County Cheese Factory viewing room in the 1980s, it's been a touristy destination where visitors can watch cheesemakers produce squeaky cheese curd in metal vats (Martin 2009). Directly across the street, visitors can purchase freshly churned butter and "hoop cheese, cheese bricks, cheese spreads, cheese curds, sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, pepper jack"(Byyan Mims 2018) from the Ashe County Cheese Store. In the early 20th century, Ashe County dairy farmers contacted Kraft to open a cheese factory to help support local dairy farmers and develop a productive dairy industry in Ashe County circa 1928. The Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corporation opened the cheese-making factory in 1930. "Kraft began operations after buying out a small local cheese plant"(Skyland Post 1941). Ashe County milk comes from Guernseys, Shorthorns, and Jerseys. Cows were raised on "natural blue grass pasture lands watered by cool, pure mountain streams, free from wild onions, garlic, and other off flavored weeds and cool climate, this section is ideally adapted to the dairy industry" (Skyland Post 1941). This blue grass flavor and fresh mountain spring water contributed to the North Carolina's mountain cheese and it's "...reputation for the fineness of flavor" (Skyland Post 1936).  By 1941, 11,000 dairy cows were milked in Ashe County (Skyland Post 1941). The Kraft cheese factory and modernization contributed to the distribution of wealth in the area as well as improvement in hygienic standards, "one cannot visit the Kraft cheese plant without being impressed with the cleanliness and the scientific handling of the milk from the moment it arrives"(Skyland Post 1941). By 1944, "Ashe County was a leading cheese producer in the South" (Skyland Post 1944). Production was affected by the great depression, droughts, and war. During World War II, food rationing began in 1942, and Kraft cheese production ceased until 1944. Ashe County milk was diverted to the U. S. Government and armed forces, dehydrated, and turned into milk powder for World War II efforts (Skyland Post 1942). In the postwar years, Kraft ramped up production; according to John H. Kraft, “It will be the responsibility of our industry to drive harder than ever before toward expanding cheese consumption by improving the efficiency of our operations and the quality of our product” (Skyland Post 1944).  Until 1975, Kraft operated the West Jefferson, North Carolina cheese factory. Today, "Ashe County Cheese, the state's largest and oldest cheese producer..." (Byyan Mims 2018). If you are ever in West Jefferson, North Carolina, stop by the Ashe County Cheese and watch the separation of whey from squeaky cheese. 

• Martin, Edward. "Curd your enthusiasm: reared in Wisconsin dairy country, Mike Everhart had grate expectations for the state's only cheese factory." Business North Carolina, vol. 29, no. 9, Sept. 2009, pp. 54+. Gale General OneFile.
• Mims, Bryan. "HOLIDAY HANGOUT: THE CENTER OF THE CHRISTMAS-TREE WORLD AND NORTH CAROLINA'S CHEESE MARKET IS NESTLED IN AN INCREASINGLY POPULAR WESTERN HAMLET." Business North Carolina, December 2018, 86+. Gale General OneFile.
• The Skyland Post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.), 03 Sept. 1936. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92073203/1936-09-03/ed-1/seq-16/
• The Skyland Post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.), 19 June 1941. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92073203/1941-06-19/ed-1/seq-2/ https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92073203/1941-06-19/ed-1/seq-9/
• The Skyland Post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.), 19 Nov. 1942. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92073203/1942-11-19/ed-1/seq-1/
• The Skyland Post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.), 10 Aug. 1944. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92073203/1944-08-10/ed-1/seq-4/

Takeout: Pig. Chicken. Cow.

Mushroom Hunting

Eating Camelid Meat

August 20, 2024

Most people are detached from the meat production process: living animal to butchered animal to cooked animal served on a plate. I'm next to an alpaca farm, reading about eating llamas. Eating South American camelids (llamas and alpacas) is less prevalent in North America, and finding alpaca, llama, or camel meat at a nearby grocery store is unlikely. I was reading Clare Sammells' article about the stigma of eating llamas in Bolivia and how the meat is similar to pork in that it can contain parasites like trichinosis, cysticercosis, and sarcocystosis. In the nineties, when the author interviewed Bolivians about the consumption of llama meat, most non-indigenous community members refused to eat it and considered it dirty and harmful. However, the Indigenous communities have survived on high-protein llama meat for centuries. Dried and salted llama jerky is popularly eaten with potatoes. According to Sammells, during Spanish colonialism, the catholic church banned the consumption of camelids because it was associated with indigenous pagan religious sacrifices (Sammells 1998, 27).  Historically, Peruvians were concerned "... that eating alpaca meat may cause syphilis or leprosy" (Markowitz 2012, 38), and the consumption of South American camelids is associated with poverty and disease; "alpaca... is a food of the poor" (Markowitz 2012, 39). However, food consumption trends have changed. On Gordon Ramsay's show, Uncharted, chef Ramsay struggled to breathe at a high altitude in Peru, yet set out to cook a high-brow culinary version of alpaca hearts for indigenous Peruvian farmers outdoors in the Andes. In Peru, "...llama provided a number of products, including meat, sinew, hides, dung, and served as a beast of burden. The smaller alpaca was highly valued for its fine wool, but also provided meat..." (deFrance 1996, 24). In addition to jerky, alpaca meat can be turned into kebabs, steak, and soup. (Markowitz 2012). If I can find it, I will try camelid jerky, hopefully trichinosis-free! 

• Markowitz, Lisa. "Highland Haute Cuisine: The Transformation of Alpaca Meat." In Reimagining Marginalized Foods: Global Processes, Local Places, edited by ELIZABETH FINNIS, 34–48. University of Arizona Press, 2012. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1814g4b.5.
• deFrance, Susan D. "Iberian Foodways in the Moquegua and Torata Valleys of Southern Peru." Historical Archaeology 30, no. 3 (1996): 20–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616475.
• Popova, T., Tejeda, L., Peñarrieta, J. M., Smith, M. A., Bush, R. D., & Hopkins, D. L. (2021). Meat of South American camelids - Sensory quality and nutritional composition. Meat Science, 171, 108285–108285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2020.108285
• Sammells, Clare A. 1998. "Folklore, Food, and National Identity: Urban Legends of Llama Meat in La Paz, Bolivia." Contemporary Legends, New Series 1: 21-54.

What's in a MRE?

Nightmare Food Fuel

Feminist Tea Ceremony

Family Album: America 1950s-1970s

Sue Ann Nivens

August 15, 2024

I grew up watching Golden Girls and loved Rose Nylund; therefore, I love Betty White and Sue Ann Nivens. I'm beginning a long journey into feminism and food. Mary Tyler Moore's show was a big deal, and Mary Richards was a role model for women in the 1970s. Sue Ann Nivens's character from the Mary Tyler Moore show is an excellent character to break apart when discussing American gendered roles. Sue Ann Nivens, the character in Mary Tyler Moore's show, is a sexualized domestic goddess who cooks amazing treats for TV viewers watching The Happy Homemaker Show. Sue Ann Niven's character is a woman longing to be a happy homemaker. I haven't watched every episode yet, but I've gathered that Sue Ann Nivens is stuck in a sexualized motherly kitchen role. Interestingly, Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls is a similar character but prudishly desexualized, motherly, unintelligent, and a caretaker in her community serving baked sweets. Sue Ann Nivens and Rose Nylund are television female characters in the kitchen as comic relief, spotlighting real issues that are not so fun for women's history. Two cookbooks come to mind related to Betty White: The Golden Girls Cookbook: More than 90 Delectable Recipes from Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia (2020) and The Golden Girls Cookbook: Cheesecakes and Cocktails!: Desserts and Drinks to Enjoy on the Lanai with Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia (2022) by Christopher Styler. 

Vimto

August 14, 2024

Vimto is a British soda that keeps popping up in my readings, and I want to try it. It's popular in Africa and the Middle East due to British colonialism. John Noel Nichols invented the beverage in England in 1908 as a health tonic. "Vimto, a fruit-juice cordial made of raspberries, grapes, black currants, and spices" (Ahmed 2023). However, the exact list of ingredients is proprietary. According to Angela Tregear, the drink was influenced by the "...medieval practice of cordial-making for restorative and medicinal purposes..."(Tregear 2003). Some reviewers, community members, and anthropologists like the beverage, and some despise it; if I can get my hands on one, I'll take a side and elaborate more. It looks like Ziyad Brothers Importing distributes Vimto in the United States. I'll see what I can track down in the real world.

• Tregear, A. (2003), From Stilton to Vimto: Using Food History to Re-think Typical Products in Rural Development. Sociologia Ruralis, 43: 91-107. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9523.00233
• Ahmed, Ifrah F. “Vimto Is a Sip of Home.” Eater, December 5, 2023. https://www.eater.com/23983368/vimto-drink-flavor-black-currant-ramadan-eid.
• Burnett, J. (1999) Liquid pleasures: a social history of drinks in modern Britain (London, Routledge)
• Mason, L. (1999) Traditional Foods of Britain (Prospect Books: Totnes, Devon)

Feminism and Consumerism

August 2, 2024

Feminism to the rescue. I finally watched the Barbie movie. I rarely watch TV or movies (I have too much to read), but I sat down and managed to watch most of it until all the beer-drinking Kens started a war in Barbie's Dreamland, and then I left the room. Barbie is a modern-day global feminist. Amazingly, that one film grossed $1.45 billion and circled the globe, spreading feminism through American brand consumption. My mind is so engrossed with Barbie; Greta Gerwig and her husband are geniuses. The scene in which Barbie listens to Ken playing the guitar for four hours while smiling is hilarious! I'm still traumatized by the time that happened to me in college; I sat for what was probably two minutes but felt like hours and listened to a man play the guitar talking about how talented he was, and my face hurt trying to pretend to smile, it was a very uncomfortable experience, Gerwig nailed it. As a kid, my Barbieland included Midge, who looked like me, tan with matching hair, and I remember feeding the doll popcorn. As a child, I was always golden brown, and my sun-bleached brown hair had all these wild natural tones, blues, blondes, and reds, which I can still see in photos. When I left my outdoor life underneath that permanent above-head radiating sun that had added fire to my soul, my skin changed color like a Hypercolor shirt; I changed from hot to cold, perhaps confusing for a child; I became ghostly pale and stayed indoors. After my voyeurist experience in Barbie Land, I walked around the Real World as a consumer, picking items off shelves and passing a large display of Berry Pebbles, cereal "celebrating women who rock" with Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone and Betty Rubble holding a large stone bowl full of colorful rice cereal and celebrating the women of Bedrock. The growing push for empowerment will hopefully strengthen the rights, respect, treatment, and opportunities for women idealistically away from the gender normative categories that have conditioned social expectations for both men and women. The Barbie movie addresses such issues when the Kens took over Barbieland, and the women became brainwashed into subservient roles, delivering beer. There will be a continuation of pushing forward and regressing. As long as young women are reminded not to fall into the gender trap that has marginalized and repressed women for so long, i.e., women as food caretakers, which is one of those categories that prevents true equality, women's empowerment will strengthen, but it's important not to return to the limited opportunities of the 20th century. The Barbie movie and Berry Pebbles cereal are marketing feminism in food and feminism in film. Social movements and ideology have always been woven into the marketing of food products; what influence will such marketing tactics have on society?  I like the fact that both commercial products are pink and purple. For a few years, pink became a symbolic power color for feminism, with the pussyhats beginning around Women's Day in March 2017. Perhaps I'll buzzcut my hair and start wearing pink. 

Fruit Cocktail

July 31, 2024

This morning, I filled a glass jar full of blackberries growing in my "vineyard," aka one wildly twisted vine next to a parking lot sometimes sprayed with pesticides. My berry-picking experience could be more idyllically romantic. Yet, I am thankful to be able to pick my own fruit and herbs, which is quite a different experience from when I was a kid growing up on foods heavily influenced by technology: canned, fast, or frozen meals; fresh was rare. Breaking down my childhood meals and thinking about what nourished me and allowed me to survive for this long, my first thoughts steered towards the canned fruit cocktail; such a product created many food memories for the little version of myself. I sat digging for slimy orange diced cubes and halved ovular grapes. I remember spooning for red-dye maraschino cherries and the disappointment of only finding one severed half in the metal tin can. Heavy syrup generally coated the grapes, peaches, pears, cherries, and perhaps pineapple, which I don't remember being in the compote; the syrup is what preserved the texture and shape of the fruit. I recently bought a can of fruit cocktail to relive my childhood experience, but it contained fruit juice, which turned all the chopped-up bits into mealy mush with little half-rotten brown grapes. It was so gross; fruit cocktail in a can is disgusting, and I've probably eaten hundreds of cups of processed fruit mush as a runt. "In 1928 came the fruit cocktail (a posh name for fruit salad" (Ayo 2012).  According to Stephanie Esther Fuglaar Statz, who wrote a 350-page dissertation all about the history of the fruit cocktail, "in the 1920s, UC [University of California] provided specialized research for fruit processors through the Fruit Products Laboratory led by William V. Cruess. The lab helped solve problems common to food processors and create new products, such as fruit cocktail" (Statz 2012, 289). The mainstream production of the fruit cocktail became prevalent in 1934 (Statz 2012, 306), and the canned food product was (and still is) regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration (Statz 2012, 10). Food rationing and shortages during World War II affected the canning and production of Fruit cocktails (Statz 2012, 169). The Fruit Cocktail is widely referenced in newspaper advertisements and can be topped with whipped cream, added to Jello molds, or used in a fruit cake. However, I don't recommend any of these recipes because fruit cocktail is disgusting. 

• Statz, Stephanie Esther Fuglaar. California's fruit cocktail: A history of industrial food production, the state, and the environment in northern California. University of Houston, 2012.
• Ayto, John. "cocktail." In The Diner’s Dictionary. : Oxford University Press, 2012. 

The Molasses Disaster (1919)

July 30, 2024

Molasses is a sweet black syrup, and my mom fed me spoonfuls of this thick, iron-rich vitamin when I was a kid. During colonial times in Boston, molasses was used in "Indian pudding, Boston baked beans, and molasses-ginger cookies" and salt pork and "used to distill rum" (Morgenroth 2006). Molasses was also a key food ingredient contributing to human slavery. 

"...molasses, the by-product of the refinement of sugar cane, was brought by ships to New England and turned into rum. The rum was shipped to West Africa, where it was traded for slaves. The slaves, human cargo, were shipped to the West Indies and traded for still more molasses—and so on, leading to good cooking, good drinking, good profits, human misery" (Morgenroth 2006).

New England's Boston is known for the 20th-century food product disaster in which a portion of the city was left ruined by the molasses trade. For some reason, which I have not identified, stories about disasters like the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 are popular with elementary school boys, or at least that's what I observed during my volunteer hours at school libraries; they would go rabid for disaster.  The Molasses Flood of 1919 was a tragedy, and people died; the event occurred on January 15, 1919, in an Italian neighborhood of Boston when a molasses storage tank ruptured, causing a 40-foot wave of sticky sweet goo to smother its inhabitants and crush buildings, and kill horses. The storage tank, which held over two million gallons of molasses, shipped in from "Cuba and the West Indies" (Morgenroth 2006), was built and owned by the Purity Distilling Company and the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA). Purity Distilling Company produced ethanol from fermented molasses, which was used for alcoholic beverages as well as explosives for World War II (Morgenroth 2006). When the tank exploded, USIA blamed Italian anarchists for the disaster (Quinzio 2015), which proved untrue in 1925. "Cleanup crews used salt water from a fireboat to wash away the molasses..." (Wikipedia 2024) The Great Flood was not the first molasses disaster; on September 20, 1911, molasses flooded New Orleans streets, killing fish and attracting flies (The Tacoma Times 1911). It turned out that Isaac Gonzales, a Puerto Rican whistleblower, alerted management of the serious faults of the USIA tank. Gonzales' complaints were dismissed by the USIA and deemed "paranoid" (Geib 2012), and the powers that be did not listen until after the deadly event (Morgenroth 2006). What I find fascinating about this story is that we have a corporation that was focused on profit and, as a result, did not listen to a marginalized and silenced Puerto Rican man; the alcohol company also attempted to blame the demonized community of the time, Italian immigrants, for wrongdoing. It's an excellent example of dysfunction, discrimination, and those in power not listening to nightmarish warnings, hence resulting in many deaths, including the neighborhood children attracted to the seeping syrup leaking from the faulty molasses tank. To learn more about the disaster, read  Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, written by Stephen Puleo in 2019, published 100 years after the deadly Boston disaster. 

• Morgenroth, Lynda. Boston Firsts: 40 Feats of Innovation and Invention that Happened First in Boston and Helped Make America Great, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central
• Quinzio, Jeri. "The Boston Molasses Disaster." In The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. : Oxford University Press, 2015. 
• Wikipedia contributors, "Great Molasses Flood," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Molasses_Flood&oldid=1237049013 (accessed July 28, 2024).
• Geib, Samantha. 2012. "Research Strategies Award Essay: The Boston Molasses Disaster" (2010). Ames Library Awards. 2. https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/ames_award/2 
• The Tacoma Times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.), 20 Sept. 1911. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085187/1911-09-20/ed-1/seq-8/>
• Boston Daily Globe (1872-1922); Jan 18, 1919. DEATH TOLL FROM TANK DISASTER 13: TWO MORE BODIES FOUND BENEATH ...ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Boston Globe pg. 1 (accessed July 28, 2024).

Greenpoint, Brooklyn (2012-2015)

July 29, 2024

When I become nostalgic for Greenpoint - when it was an isolated little sleepy carcinogenic peninsula before the grandiose Bloomberg skyscrapers surrounded its borders - I visit Polish communities on the outskirts of New York; I buy Polish chocolates, juices, canned herring, teas, and pickled vegetables, and I chat with the cashiers about disliking, loving, or missing Greenpoint. I've been going through my archive of photographs, and I found some 11222 meals from 2012 to 2015.  Although we rarely ate out because the Rent is [was] Too Damn High, I still managed to enjoy the best of the best, and I'm happy to say only one of the above restaurants has shut down, Lobster Joint, which closed in 2024. Troost (2011), Karczma (2007), Paulie  Gee (2010), Five Leaves (2008), and Glasserie (2013) are still around. When I first moved to Greenpoint in 2007 (Williamsburg in 2002), there were few restaurants to choose from, and the neighborhood still smelled of the moving plumes. Brooklyn Label (closed) was one, and Papacitos (closed), Ott Thai (closed), Cristina's (new owners), Three Decker Diner (new owners), etc. Like most restaurants after COVID-19, the roaring eating days collapsed due to mandates, fear, and restrictions. I'm delighted to see that most of the restaurants in my memory have survived through the hardships, and I hope they continue.

Georgia Cupcakes

July 28, 2024

The number of ideas I have is a blessing and a curse. Georgia Cupcakes is one of my project ideas for a food business that has been sitting around in a folder for years. The theme piggybacks off of a few concepts: the artist Georgia O'Keefe, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the supreme court case about the bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for the LGBTQ couple, and Georgia, the state and its role in forced sterilization. Truthfully, I'm thinking of the magical realism book Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead. Like Newman's Own Foundation, all the proceeds would go towards various organizations supporting LGBTQ equality, women's rights,  reproductive rights, and the arts, including visual and culinary arts. Each cupcake would be psychedelic colors with food coloring modeled after the flora's petals, pistils, and stamens. Of course, cupcakes could have no meaning at all; they could just be delicious little cakes with sweetly frosted flowers for everyone to enjoy. Perfectly insatiable for TikTok and Instagram. 

NYC Art Grub (2011-2018)

Presidential Banquets

Veep: Kamala Harris ♀️

July 25, 2024

A few weeks ago, I decided I wouldn't vote in the 2024 election for president of the United States. Donald Trump, with his finger-licking KFC chicken from Queens, rose to god-protected immortal status after surviving an assassination attempt in my mom's hometown town of Butler, named after Richard Butler. The definition of a butler also means "a... cup-bearer to a monarch or nobleman... a... servant... managing the wine cellar and dining arrangements, supervising other servants, and greeting visitors..." (OED 2024).  I will admit here that I am very thankful that Trump did not die, and I loved reading Hillbilly Elegy and value J.D. Lance's life experience and concerns about class inequality, and I am a big supporter of the South Asian American communities (Edison) and Usha Chilukuri (San Diego), but I am a big NO to government corruption, nepotism, and cronyism, i.e., Trump's well documented previous leadership style, and I am deeply concerned for the potential threats to immigrant communities. Facing the landslide defeat of Biden and the endless historic struggle of the marginalized against majority power. I foresee Trump will be king, and his family will rule the majority of Americans for the next 100 years. But then, suddenly, Joe Biden was diagnosed with Covid and dropped out of the race. Perhaps two gods are playing against each other here. Enter Kamala Harris. A woman. A leader. She was a fierce criminal prosecutor who nailed Trump's cronies during Senate interviews; as I watched, I realized she was the most magnificent woman I have seen in politics, and I love her for her legal tackles. No matter what weakness, no matter what people tell me about Kamala Harris, I support her like I supported Obama. You can do it! The next three months will likely be ferocious; food is often used as a symbol to connect to voters; Trump will use fast food, Christian companies, American companies, foods demonized by liberal communities, Euro-American foods, etc. Harris will support marginalized community businesses, health-conscious foods, and foods rooted in the traditions of diverse American communities, and perhaps there will be some crossover. Regardless, I support Kamala and will be voting in November.

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “butler (n.),” June 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1167954491

Grocery Shopping by Helicopter

The Apocalypse and the Monk (ca. 1047)

July 23, 2024

Beatus of Liebana was a Spanish monk who wrote a Christian codex about St. John's inferno, the Book of Revelation, known as Commentary on the Apocalypse around  776.  In 2017, John Williams and Therese Martin published Visions of the End in Medieval Spain Catalogue of Illustrated Beatus Commentaries on the Apocalypse and Study of the Geneva Beatus. This book explores the 29 (the number changes) remaining illuminated manuscripts based on the Spanish monk's concerns with the world's end. My focus, of course, is the food symbols used within the illuminated manuscripts: harvesting grapes, drinking wine, foxes eating chickens, the river of life, a sea of fish, plants, birds, and an ark of animals. The manuscript depicts many demons and monsters. "Illuminated Apocalypses achieved great popularity in England in the 13th century" (Challis 2001). One of the illuminations depicts an apocalyptic vineyard, "...the angel cast his sharp sickle onto the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth, and cast it into the great wine press of the wrath of God... and the press was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the wine press..." (Williams 2017, 189). Celibate biblical monks and whoever wrote revelations connects wine with women and immorality.  I'm sure any woman who tried to challenge such depictions in HIStory was burned at the stake for HEResy. The demeaning depictions of women and food in the Commentary on the Apocalypse by the monk from Liebana made me feel repulsed. Earlier tonight, I watched Mad Max (2015). It's an apocalyptic society ruled by war-mongering men, with young women confined as concubines and obese women as dairy cows producing "mother's milk," a horror film for women.  However, a new depiction of the story is Furiosa (2024), which is now in theaters as a feminist heroic film. There are correlations between Mad Max's apocalypse and the Spanish Monk's Apocalypse. Illustrations from the Spanish Beatus manuscript are captivating, and I can understand the influence of biblical allegories on the impressionable public.

• Challis, Kate. "Apocalypse manuscript." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art. : Oxford University Press, 2001..
• Williams, John. Visions of the end in Medieval Spain: catalogue of illustrated Beatus commentaries on the apocalypse and study of the Geneva Beatus. Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
• Beatus, Saint, Presbyter Of Liebana, Died 798 Author, and Facundo Scribe. Beato of Liébana: The Codex of Fernando I and Doña Sancha. [León, Spain: publisher not identified, 1047] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667862/.

Foraging Cookbooks

The Bear

LGBTQ Chefs

July 20, 2024

Receiving good news can be uplifting; my good news is I just found out one of my high school classmates, who I deeply respected, has transitioned. This news is filling me with inspiration and joy. Rigid socially constructed gendered roles are unnecessary and problematic. I grew up as a tomboy; I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but as a kid, I spent much time outside, climbing trees and playing with toads, tadpoles, dogs, spiders, and snakes. My feet were covered in dirt, and my hair was rarely brushed. I was very physical; I played a lot of sports. When I moved, I had to give up all my tomboyishness. Due to the weather in my new environment, I stayed inside and gave up sports because they were identified as boyish. I conformed. My teenage years were more liberating; I was again free to roam. I cut off all my hair and feeling free; I met my Bikini Kill/Sleater-Kinney friends. I had good times in those late teens and early twenties years; my freedom lasted until my late twenties, when I conformed again, got married on Halloween, and somehow walked right into the confines of a gender trap. I still have access to the mountains and my rough and tough outdoor space, but I'm still trying to break the gender mold that has hardened around me.  I am thankful for all the brave transitioners et al.  I want to celebrate all the people who are liberated from the confines of strict gender roles. I wish you all great success in your new life. The above cookbooks are from LGBTQ chefs who break gender conformity and boundaries. Thanks for being role models.

History of Cookbooks

Looted Haggadah Manuscript

Pan-American Exposition

July 17, 2024

My great-great-grandfather, a Jewish detective in Buffalo who enjoyed making violins in his past time, left a small trinket that has survived and is now in my possession. It's a tiny pin of an American buffalo from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. One of my other possessions, a ring from my grandmother, was mistakenly flushed into the New York sewage system. Little objects—some survive, some do not. Like all other World Fairs, the Pan-American Exposition exhibited new inventions, food products, and various food-related displays such as wine exhibits, a dairy building with various cheeses such as pineapple cheese, an ostrich farm, and an abhorrently racist plantation. One part of the grounds was a reproduction of the town of Nuremberg, Germany, called Alt Nurnberg, which provided visitors with a large outdoor eating space and restaurants. Nuremberg, during the stormtrooper years, was an antisemitic propaganda hub contributing to Hitler's rise to power and was later heavily bombed throughout World War II. Afterward, it held the location for the Nuremberg trials in 1945-1946 (the beginning of international criminal law). At the Buffalo Exposition, there were also restaurants to eat and drink at Lüchow's, Soda Fountains, Midway Oyster House, a Mexican restaurant, the Plaza Restaurant, and the Pabst Brewing Pavillion. Welch Grape Juice, Lowney Chocolate, Nestle,  Libby, Knox, Heinz, and Borden's Condensed Milk set up food booths at the fair. Archives and museums have preserved many examples of souvenirs, from frying pan pins and glassware to spoons; I am fascinated by World's Fairs for food history. However, the expos also represent systemic racism and the exploitative history of marginalized communities. One hundred twenty-three years ago, President William McKinley was assassinated at the Temple of Music concert hall at the Pan-American Exposition on September 6, 1901, by a Michigan radical socialist anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. James Benjamin Parker, an African American waiter at the Plaza Restaurant, tried to block the assassination attempt. Unfortunately, McKinley later succumbed to death by gangrene, but Parker remained a hero for protecting the president. Czolgosz was executed. The Appeal, an African American newspaper, has pretty good coverage of James Benjamin Parker. 

Wong Lo Kat

July 16, 2024

The version of Wong Lo Kat tea I am currently sipping is soaked wood pulp. Normally, my teas include leaves or flowers, but this is the first time I've consumed boiled wood. "Wong Lo Kat Medical Tea... [was]... initially set up in 1840 in Guangzhou.." in Southern China (Wong 2000, 225), and "...it gained so much popularity... after the first tea shop was created in Guangzhou, China in 1853" (Kwong 2023). This Hong Kong produced tea was purchased at one of the many Asian grocery stores in my neighborhood. It should be boiled "for two hours" (Hayes 1983, 210). It is said that this tea reduces heat and fever. One article from 1974 claims it is prescribed for hangovers. Perhaps I will cool down in this endless heatwave that is restricting my movement and breaking down my electronics. According to the Po Wing Hong Food Market in Manhattan, "It can help to detoxify our bodies and quench thirst. The packet contains over 10 types of natural herbs, which have a cooling effect when we have been overheating by stress, sleep deprivation or eating too much fried food or junk food" (Po Wing Hong 2024). According to the Kwong, Eastern Medicine believes "...Qi (the body’s vital energy) flows along meridians (channels) in the body and keeps a person’s spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health in balance" (Kwong 2023, 7). Commercially canned Wong Lo Kat beverages are available and include the following ingredients, "...Water, Sugar, Mesona (Chinese), White Frangipani, Microcos, Chrysanthemum, Japanese Honeysuckle, Heal All, and Chinese Licorice." (Kwong 2023, 6). From what I can decipher on the packaging, which is almost like money, with many hidden layers of graphics and text, is that the ingredients include Microcos paniculata, Cratoxylum formosum, Helicteres angustifolia, Ficus microcarpa, Rosa laevigata Michx, etc.  I respect all cultures and traditions and think often about the concepts of belief and trust in foods.  I am generally skeptical of established Western medicine and have more faith in "hippie" health treatments, perhaps because it's a culture I identify more with. Wong Lo Kat is a new food product for me; it claims antioxidant and medicinal properties, but I lack knowledge of Chinese languages, which would allow me to research it further. I lack Chinese familial traditions and cultural understanding of Chinese medicines or even Western humoral theories. With my lack of knowledge, I must decide based on trust, faith, and trial and error. Do I trust and believe that Wong Lo Kat tea will help me? Or will it harm me? Or perhaps neither? The tea is making me tired. My skin feels cool. So perhaps it is working as advertised. 

• HAYES, J. W., and James Hayes. “CHUE MO PENG (猪も病), A FEVER REPORTED FROM VILLAGES IN THE HONG KONG REGION, AND ITS CURE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER VILLAGE REMEDIES FOR EXCESS HEAT.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 23 (1983): 209–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23886802.
• Wong, Wendy Siuyi. “Establishing the Modern Advertising Languages: Patent Medicine Newspaper Advertisements in Hong Kong, 1945-1969.” Journal of Design History 13, no. 3 (2000): 213–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3527050.
• Kwong, Valerie, "The Antioxidant Content of Wong Lo Kat Tea" (2023). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1313. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1313

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