Red Hot Chili Peppers

August 15, 2023

As a child, my palate was left muted by egg salad sandwiches on wonder bread; mild sauce from Taco Bell was about all I could handle without having a firey animated reaction to chilies. Of course, now, I double dip on scoops of spicy chili crisp, which is why I'm so enthusiastic about a new cookbook coming out in August called Chili Crisp by James Park and photographed by Heami Lee that includes recipes like Instant Tan Tan Shin Ramyan with ground pork with gochujang and chili crisp with bok choy, Chili Crisp Bilgogi Deopbag with Korean beef and rice, and spicy Silken Tofu Soup. My first time working with peppers did not go well; I sliced some jalapeno peppers for homemade guacamole, mistakenly did not wear gloves, and picked away the seeds. My hand was soaked in milk for five hours to alleviate the burn. In Brooklyn, I loved to eat at a Caribbean Roti shop. I would order my sandwich loaded with chili sauce and sit down with my pale, prone-to-redness, part Scottish skin, pretending I could control the spice without succumbing to more water, please. Over the years, I've learned to love America's chili peppers, also known as capsicum, "all capsicums are native to the Americas." (Owen), which "...were unknown outside the tropical and subtropical regions of the Western Hemisphere before 1492. "(Andrews). These days Capsicums are available worldwide, prevalent in most cultures, and particularly loved in Korean, Szechuan, and Mexican cuisine. 

• Andrews, J. (2000). Chilli Peppers. In K. Kiple & K. Ornelas (Eds.), The Cambridge World History of Food (pp. 281-288). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521402149.030
• Owen, R. (2014). Capsicum, In The Oxford Companion to Food. : Oxford University Press.
• Davidson, A. (2007). Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2nd edition, 2007

Red Bull Gives You Wings

August 8, 2023

The British Library has a collection of illuminated manuscripts and I came across digital scans of mythological creatures such as the unicorn and dragons and Christian depictions of angelic animals. I was familiar with the pegasus and a griffin but not the red-winged ox. In illuminated biblical manuscripts, the winged bull, a sacrificial animal, symbolizes Saint Luke, and this holy cow crosses many cultures. As a recent vegetarian, I have given up the consumption of all-American cheeseburgers, which I overindulged when I fell into the Keto cow killing trend; now, fully maxed out in my participation in sacrificial cow slaughter for consumption, I am willing to accept the cow as a divine bovine. In Hinduism, the cow is worshiped; and in many places in India, cattle slaughter is prohibited. America, take note. Like European depictions of saintly wise angelic cows, India also has the goddess of cows called Kamadhenu. In Mesopotamia, there was a winged cattle goddess called Lamassu. My research into Saint Luke's red-winged bull encountered a reoccurring earworm that made its way into my ear "Red Bull Gives You Wings," which was an advertisement slogan from the nineties for an energy drink company that marketed a product loaded with sugary syrup and caffeine. The logo for the drink includes two red bulls, and the advertisements generally show a can of Red Bull with angelic wings. 

Food Stamps

Cookbooks: Savor the South

Eating Alone

August 5, 2023

One of my biggest complaints is how America treats the vulnerable and alone, such as orphans, widows, the unhoused, mentally ill, seniors, and unmarried adults. It's almost impossible for the disconnected to survive without a strong community. I've always lived in neighborhoods with strong and powerfully successful communities like the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and the Desi community in New Jersey, with core religions and cultures strengthening the bonds of individuals and families, community meals being a big part of establishing such a connection. At the same time, some people live without others—the Jane Eyres of the world. On a recent season of My 600-lb Life, several patients discussed being abandoned by their mothers and feeling isolated and therefore learned to cope and soothe their emotions with food addictions. Broken communities break my spirit; people eat alone and suffer the effects of societal detachment. I have witnessed - and experienced - too many solos barely making it, and life almost becomes unbearable when hardship strikes, which pushes individuals into further isolation and despair. I wish we had a better communal system to help single moms, orphans, the unhoused, refugees, the abused, the neglected, and foster kids. The most significant societal need is more affordable housing for 300 million Americans and counting. What about building more communal apartments with shared kitchens to address the housing crisis? Let's stop eating fast and alone and perhaps restore communal kitchens, dinner parties, and community potlucks. Build more cities, and ditch the environmentally destructive suburban model. 

Persephone and the Pomegranate

August 4, 2023

The Greek myth of Persephone is about Demeter, the goddess of crops losing her daughter when Hades took her away to the underworld. Demeter searched endlessly for Persephone, and in doing so, she "neglected the earth to such an extent that it became barren." (Leeming) Which "... brought a blight onto the earth and a famine for the human race.." (Suter) With the despondent mother, Hades, bound by the power of Zeus, released Persephone back to her mother; however, the darkness of Hades maliciously fed the young goddess food from the underworld. Eating the forbidden seeds of a pomegranate - a symbol of death and fertility - forces Persephone to spend one season each year - winter - in the underworld. While Demeter's daughter is in the deep darkness of the cold earthen Hades, nothing grows on land due to her mother's sadness. Once her time bound to Hades is over, "Persephone burst forth annually from her underground place, representing the springing forth of Demeter's bounty in the spring." (Leeming) The mother and daughter are rejoined for three blissful seasons of the year, where the harvest grows, and life brings back the fruits of the fertile earth. 

• Leeming, D. (2005). Demeter and Persephone. In The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. : Oxford University Press. 
• Suter, A. (2002). The Narcissus and the pomegranate: an archaeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Ewers

Spirits and the Egos

August 2, 2023

This week, I pushed through two more food-related books, A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2006) by Tom Standage and Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll (2019) by Andrew Friedman. Together they are somewhat obscure; one is about the history of drinking worldwide, focusing on beer, wine, whiskey, and drug-infused coke. The other book is about a group of rebellious and egotistical chefs who are difficult and preachy about healthy and decadent foods for high-paying customers while looking down on the majority who eat processed crumbs. It's a weird world in the restaurant industry, especially when I look at it from the angle of class. Who can afford to eat at restaurants? Who can afford to bankroll a restaurant? The high-dining restaurant industry seeks perfectionism and distinction, either with the quality of food, the source of food, the design of food, or the creativity of food, and for some reason we praise this perfection. The book's title is misleading; drugs and rock & roll have been omitted; this is not a free-spoken Anthony Bourdain book about drugs and rock & roll; this book should be called Chefs, the Assholes of the Industry. The only chefs I come out liking are Jonathan Waxman and Wolfgang Puck. This book feeds the egos of domineering, over-popularized chefs and lacks cultural and economic diversity. However, it is an example of everything wrong with the restaurant industry; only the popular get the praise, and we are obsessed with idols. Tom Standage's book A History of the World in 6 Glasses explores world cultures and the consumption and distribution of drinks; it's a much more exciting read for curious minds interested in the history of food and beverages. 

Tontine Coffee House

August 1, 2023

As a disconnected New Yorker, I often try to cling to connection and belonging to NYC, which is why I'm so fascinated by one of my ancestors from 200 years ago: a wealthy merchant who made a living as an esquire, a property king of New York, and an insurance broker who ran in the circle of wall street men who built the New York Stock Exchange and established the Buttonwood Agreement. He spent his time at the Tontine Coffee House, a social gathering watering hole that opened in 1792 at Water Street and Wall Street in lower Manhattan. The Tontine Coffee House was built "...by wealthier businessmen of New York," and "203 shares... were sold for $200 each to fund the establishment of a coffee house." (NYHS) The coffee house was a "clearing house for all matters of mercantile importance." (The Sun 1898) The New York Historical Society collects the Tontine Coffee-House Records which contain receipts, among other important papers related to the existence of the Tontine Coffee-House; the historical society mentions that before the construction of the T.C.H., merchants and traders "...would have to travel a significant distance for their daily coffee." (NYHS) The creation of the venue allowed for many social transactions to occur, "...coffee drinkers congregated to talk politics, religion, justice, and the daily news among tradesmen, importers, financiers, and ship captains—a truly democratic setting." (Courtney) I would like to find a description of the inside of the coffee house, the atmosphere, and what was on the menu, but I only have a shell of an idea about this establishment, "...the coffee house played host to auctions, banquets, and balls, among others." (Cosma) In 1793 over a hundred wealthy businessmen dined at Tontine Coffee House to celebrate the formation of the establishment. (Bayles) In 1794 one could "lodge and board there at a common table, and... pay ten shillings currency a day, whether you dine out or not." (Ukers) But what was on the menu? "In addition to coffee, wine, and other beverages were served..." (Ceurvels) I imagine and speculate they dined on the traded food commodities of the time, such as oysters, molasses, beef, pork, corn, rye, flour, Indian meal, rice, peas and beans, potatoes, onions, oats, flax, apples, pimentos, sago, sugar, chocolate, and honey, with drinks like brandy, coffee, gin, rum, whisky, ale, and perhaps not tea. The Tontine Coffee House turned into a tavern in 1826. (Cosma) Most important to the history of the Tontine Coffee House, slavery was not abolished in New York until 1827, so for 40 years, the coffee house sat in the center of human trafficking in New York. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice has a database to search the enslaved and slaveholders called the New York Slavery Records Index. My New York ancestor was an early Jewish colonialist, and his daughter married a Mohawk leader of sorts and moved to British North America (Canada). Perhaps, not enslavers, but they certainly became affluent from such an exploitative early American colonial system, and my ancestors benefited enormously from the trade for about 100 years until the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression wiped away all signs of their wealth. I was born on the impoverished side of history, post-Great Depression economic crash, with alcoholics leading the family to poverty and misfortune – a fascinating and eccentric family. These days, I, the alive descendant, sip my coffee and unsuccessfully fight economic systems of exploitation and inequality 35 miles away from the former site of the Tontine Coffee House, once the center of trade in New York and which established our free market capitalistic society; with men drinking cups of imported coffee next to the New York harbor full of imported and exported goods.

• Ukers, W. H. (1922). All About Coffee. United States: Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company.
• Guide to the Records of the Tontine Coffee-House1738-1879 (bulk 1791-1871) MS 631. (n.d.). http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/ms631_tontine_coffee_house/ms631_tontine_coffee_house.html 
• Ceurvels, T. (2015). Coffee. In Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover's Companion to New York City. : Oxford University Press. 
• Courtney, M. (2008). Coffee. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. : Oxford University Press. 
• Bayles, W. Harrison (1915). Old taverns of New York. New York, Frank Allaben Genealogical Co. 
• Cosma, S. (2012). The Origins of the New York Stock Exchange. ECONOMIC SCIENCES SERIES, 1344.
• The Sun (23 Jan. 1898. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1898-01-23/ed-1/seq-10/>
• Gazette of the United-States (12 March 1791). Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030483/1791-03-12/ed-1/seq-1/>

Eating Meat in America

The Lug and Can Label Collection

Badboy Roy Choi

Nationalmuseum Sweden

American Cuisine by Paul Freedman

Lewis Hine (1874 - 1940)

The Meatpacking Jungle

July 23, 2023

There are many printed versions of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair; the book cover for this post, I feel, sums up the book in a grotesque way. The Jungle is Upton Sinclair's anti-American dream anthem; the story represents a chaotic and disorganized civil society. It's an out-of-control work of fiction about the unbearable, if not a dramatic, concentration of an anti-capitalist representation of the meat industry's horrific effects on employment and home environments circa 1905. The book covers topics of gangrene, abuse of power, formaldehyde in blue milk, the pickling of old rotten meat, blood poisoning, death, disfigurement, maiming, child labor, poverty, trickery, greed, unfairness, corruption, starvation, alcoholism, cronyism, abuse, and pimps. What a dreadful and unfair story about the theoretical concept of goodness destroyed by cold, harsh reality and the brutal world of the American Dream. A world in which humans take advantage of other humans in a desperate form of mass survivalism during the Second Industrial Revolution. An endless cycle of unfairness centers in Packingtown, also known as the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, where the meatpacking and alcohol agricultural industries encouraged the consumption of alcohol. Salons provided the workers warmth and a mind-numbing substance to balance the frozen Chicago toes, woes, and misery created by low pay and unsafe working conditions. What a disgusting book, another motivator to go vegetarian and become a socialist. 

Pine-Apple Cheese

July 22, 2023

Pineapple cheese was an expensive American cheese available in the 1800s and discontinued in the 1930s. During its prime, it could be found sold at Macy's and other grocers along the East Coast. The Norton family in Litchfield County, Connecticut, invented it, which is sometimes called Goshen cheese, after the location of the Norton factory. Pineapple cheese is compressed and molded, made with flax nets, and covered in linseed oil to give it the pineapple look. Some reports identify English Stilton as the inspiration for Norton's Pine-apple original recipe. As the company expanded and became popular, the Norton family opened another cheese factory in Attica, New York. The Grocer's Encyclopedia from 1911 mentioned pineapple cheese was similar to cheddar, and the aged rind was used as a baking container for macaroni and cheese.

• Publow, C. A. (1910). Fancy Cheese in America: From the milk of cows, sheep, and goats. American Sheep Breeder Company. P. 22. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t3gx4sw1f 
• Mangan, G. (2022). The Story of Pineapple Cheese. Connecticut History. https://connecticuthistory.org/the-story-of-pineapple-cheese/ 
• Edmundson, W.G. (1845). The British American C, Vol.1. Eastwood & Co. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009136218 
• The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.), 09 Aug. 1895. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92051487/1895-08-09/ed-1/seq-5/>
• Connecticut western news. [volume] (Salisbury, Litchfield Co., Conn.), 24 July 1889. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027718/1889-07-24/ed-1/seq-4/>
• Ward, A. (1911). The grocer’s encyclopedia. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/grocersencyclope00ward/page/n15/mode/1up 

1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition April 30, 1904 – December 1, 1904. Source: St. Louis Public Library Digital Collections. 

A Fiery Field of Ergot

July 20, 2023

It's been a rainy summer, and rainy days make me think of sitting around drinking earl grey tea and eating rye toast with Irish butter. Growing up, I consumed a lot of rye (my favorite type of bread). Considering ergot rye hallucinations and risk of limb loss was never a forethought. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that contaminates grains during substantial rainy seasons, which can cause death. "Typically, ergotism in humans arises from consumption of bread, especially that made from rye. The alkaloids have considerable stability and survive both baking and boiling." (Bennett) One theory suggests Ergot poisoning may have caused accusations of witchcraft in North America and the "...dancing manias and other crowd excitations that erupted periodically in western Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries." (Kroll) As well as " ...symptoms that could be interpreted as bewitchment or possession by the devil."(Bennett). In the painting, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, attributed to Pieter Huys, "The burning city in the background and the disembodied leg… may be references to ergotism or Saint Anthony's Fire, a widespread and deadly disease of the period with symptoms that included hallucinations and gangrene." (Stinebring) Naively, I fantasize about living off the grid, having a homestead, growing a field full of grain, harvesting my own rye with a sickle, and baking bread in a prepper oven; with my luck, my first loaf would be laced with fungus, and my homestead would quickly turn into a psychedelic Bosch painting, with dancing tomatoes, flying witches, and talking owls, while I jump over a moon made of swiss cheese. Perhaps, I'll leave grain harvesting to Cargill, the billionaire grain dynasty, and remain close to a grocery store.

• Epidemic Ergot Poisoning In England. (1928). The British Medical Journal, 1(3503), 318–318. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25328006 
• Thompson, B. (2011). ergot. In The Oxford Companion to Beer. : Oxford University Press.
• Bennett, J.W., & Bentley, R. (1999). Pride and Prejudice: The Story of Ergot. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 42(3), 333-355. doi:10.1353/pbm.1999.0026.
• Matossian, M. K. (1983). Bewitched or Intoxicated? The Etiology of Witch Persecution in Early Modern England. Medizinhistorisches Journal, 18(1/2), 33–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25803730 
• Matossian, M. K. (1982). Views: Ergot and the Salem Witchcraft Affair: An outbreak of a type of food poisoning known as convulsive ergotism may have led to the 1692 accusations of witchcraft. American Scientist, 70(4), 355–357. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27851542 
• Stinebring, A.C. (2015). The Temptation of Saint Anthony | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436702 
•  Kroll, J. (2010). ergotism. In The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. : Oxford University Press. 

Rufus Estes (1857 - 1939)

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

July 18, 2023

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's exhibit Memory Map at the Whitney Museum of Art. The artist comments on the Federal Government's food programs within indigenous territories through her artwork. One work is a canoe painted red filled with single-use food containers such as plastic water bottles and paper coffee cups. According to the show's curator Laura Phipps, "...these items are by-products of the US government's interference in the lives of Native Americans, the introduction of unhealthy commodity foods when traditional farming and hunting were ruthlessly curtailed."(Phipps) Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's work is critical of the government, and rightly so. However, according to the USDA, the current Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative "promotes traditional foodways, Indian Country food and agriculture markets, and Indigenous health through foods tailored to American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) dietary needs. USDA is partnering with tribal-serving organizations on projects to reimagine federal food and agriculture programs from an Indigenous perspective and inform future USDA programs and policies."(USDA) In theory, the USDA's Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) should help address some of the "unhealthy commodity foods" imported to indigenous territories, as there seems to be a push to promote foraging of native foods, saving seeds and cooking with indigenous ingredients and recipes provided by chefs like Sean Sherman. The USDA photographs from 2013 document the standard practice of distributing overprocessed nonperishable options like apple juice, cereals, canned sweetened fruits, and white crackers. The most recent 2023 list of foods available for the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) includes much of the same with peaches in syrup, canned beef, canned spaghetti sauce, bleached flour, American Cheese, buttery spread, and canned condensed Cream of Chicken soup and many other highly processed foods. 7 out of 91 listed items are traditional foods. Bison, catfish, blue cornmeal, wild rice, salmon, and walleye are the only traditional foods on the list. Hopefully, during Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's lifetime, she will see changes in how indigenous communities obtain, produce, and consume foods. The Memory Map exhibition at the Whitney will be on display until Aug 13, 2023.

• USDA Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative. (n.d.). USDA. https://www.usda.gov/tribalrelations/usda-programs-and-services/usda-indigenous-food-sovereignty-initiative 
• USDA Foods Available List for FDPIR | Food and Nutrition Service. (2023). https://www.fns.usda.gov/fdpir/usda-foods-available-list-fdpir 
• U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2013). 20130424-FNS-RBN-6171. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/16179676986/in/album-72157648714598229/ 
• U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2013). 20130424-FNS-RBN-6212. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/16203659031/in/album-72157648714598229/ 
• Phipps, Laura. “My Roots Extend”: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and the Landscape of Memory. (2023). Whitney Museum of American Art. https://whitney.org/essays/jaune-quick-to-see-smith 

Orange Juice

The Drunkard Toby Fillpot

July 16, 2023

Museums across America range in topics, such as Natural History Museums and Art Museums, and some perhaps are more narrow, like The American Toby Jug Museum, which collects over 8,000 Toby Jugs. One day a week, visitors can walk into the museum with shelved bobble-headed Funko Pop-like ceramic characters while their 16,000 drunk eyeballs stare back at the visiting oglers. Tobies are British pub mugs invented in the late 1700s by Staffordshire English potters. The Jugs are memorized in Charles Dickens's novel Barnaby Rudge (1841), about riots in London where the author describes the scene with the drinking cup as follows, "..this Toby was the brown jug ... raising the vessel slowly in the air, that at length Toby stood on his head upon his nose, when he smacked his lips and set him on the table again with fond reluctance." (Dickens) The jug is emblematic of a drunkard named after a British character from a poem by Francis Fawkes (1720 - 1777) called The Brown Jug about Toby Fillpot/Philpot. In the 18th century, "Toby jugs were first made at the Staffordshire pottery of Ralph Wood."(Clarke). According to the Washington Post, the name might've originated from "...Sir Toby Belch, the jolly drunkard in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night..." (Wahington Post) The most prominent American collector of Toby Jugs, Stephen Mullins, the founder of The American Toby Jug Museum, passed away in 2019 after 65 years of collecting the ceramic decorative drinking mugs. The Chicago Sun-Times printed his obit, "Mr. Mullins once said he decided to open a museum devoted to Toby jugs because "my wife told me I had to get them out of the house." (O'Donnell)

• Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens. (1841). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/917/917-h/917-h.htm 
• Clarke, M. (2010). toby jug. In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. : Oxford University Press. 
• O’Donnell, M. (2019). American Toby Jug Museum founder Stephen Mullins of Evanston is dead at 86 - Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/6/28/18761610/toby-jug-museum-stephen-mullins-evanston-obituary 
• Washington Post. His collection of 8,000 Toby Jugs became a museum. (2018, November 19). Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/his-collection-of-8000-toby-jugs-became-a-museum/2018/10/11/e85eea56-c66c-11e8-b2b5-79270f9cce17_story.html