Category: Culture

Rolling back the clock on sweets

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These will be ready to eat tomorrow.

There are a couple of scenes in the BBC series Cranford, which is set in Cheshire around 1840, in which some children get very excited about the fact that their cherry tree has come into season. The children get a big thrill out of helping the new doctor in town knock cherries out of the tree. The BBC series, by the way, is based on the novel Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, a less well known but witty and competent 19th-century writer.

Children love sweets. In those days, cherries were high in the hierarchy of sweets, something for children to get excited about. These days, what child would pay the slightest attention to a cherry tree, or plain fresh cherries? Even though sugar was common in the 19th century, you could be sure that children in those days got a great deal less of it, especially provincial children. Sugar has, of course, gotten cheaper and cheaper, and the newest innovation in cheap sugar is high fructose corn syrup. Government corn subsidies help make it cheap, no matter how much evidence links high fructose corn syrup to Americans’ health problems.

But we don’t have to eat it. I can testify that if we stop eating processed sweets, we become more like the children in Cranford. A raw peach once again becomes a sweet treat. Watermelon is thrilling (the watermelons here have been inexpensive and very good this summer).

One of my grandmothers was a genius at making pies. I don’t think I can remember there ever not being at least one kind of pie in her pie safe. Usually it was a fruit pie, though she sometimes made custard pies. Still, nobody was fat, because it was home-cooked, and the dinner (which is what they called lunch) and supper tables were loaded with a variety of home-cooked foods including lots of vegetables. Once again, drawing on the insights of Michael Pollan, our grandmothers proved that a little homemade pie won’t hurt you.

You can get the Cranford series on DVD. I understand that the BBC has another season in the works to be shown in Britain this year around Christmastime. I’d expect it to be available in the U.S. next year.

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The ladies of Cranford eating sweets

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Judi Dench as Miss Matty, Elizabeth Gaskell

What's beneath the eggs ?

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Guest Post by Anivid

Is it sauercraut ??
Is it beans ??
Is it rice ??
NOPE 😉
It’s hash brown …… sort of.
Hash Brown made of raw potatoes, which after grating is placed in a strainer, and rinsed thoroughly in lots of water until the outgoing water is free of cloudyness.
– and why is that ? – for extracting the starch which else would be responsible for the whole item clotting together in a kind of porridge 😉
Then the grated, washed potatoes are placed in a cloth, wrapped up tight and squeezed until the water is drained.
Next some parsley (or other tasty, healthy stuff like grated carrots*) is added – and the mix placed on a hot oiled frying pan.
Fried on both sides – or all over (stirred, not shaken 😉
Then we place some roasted champignons at the side – and fried eggs on top.
Voila – enjoy !!
* The root of plants being just like the egg of birds – it contains everything necessary for the whole individual to grow & unfold 😉

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After the sumptuous meal we take a little chicory coffee for rounding off.

Signing out: Anivid, Southern France, Gastronomy & Culture.

Living to be 100

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The Island of the Ancients

The Huffington Post has an article today on the growing number of people living to be 100 years old. One of the reasons cited for this is “improved diet.”

I think it would have been more accurate to say “the possibility of improved diet.” The diet of the average American has decidedly not improved. The July 20 issue of the New Yorker trumps the Time magazine piece on why Southerners are so fat with a piece on why Americans are so fat. The position of the New Yorker piece seems to be that the obesity epidemic of the past few decades has primarily been caused by corporate influences — food engineering, corporate agriculture, corporate research on food’s addictive qualities, pushing larger portions, marketing, etc.

We can take advantage of brilliant new research on diet and health, we can take advantage of the availability of healthier foods, and we can cook the right stuff for ourselves at home. Or we can eat what television commercials tell us to eat and make certain corporations richer. That’s what it really boils down to.

From Time magazine:

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Time magazine has a lame piece today on why there is more obesity in the South than in the rest of the country. They’re right about some things, for example the correlation of health and weight to income. But they trot out all the old stereotypes about biscuits, fried chicken, and pie. Southerners have always been poor, but they have not always been fat, as an examination of any collection of old photos will show you.

As a Southerner, a foodie, and a person who takes careful note of what people have in their carts in the grocery store line, I claim the standing to comment knowledgeably on this question.

1. Southerners have stopped cooking from scratch. This is clear from the contents of their grocery carts.

2. Southerners have too little color in their diets. Pretty much everything in their grocery cart will be meat or something white.

3. Southerners consume astonishing quantities of canned and bottled sweet drinks. By weight, sweet drinks are probably the main items in their grocery carts. Few even seem to make fresh iced tea at home anymore.

4. Southerners eat too much meat. They seem to have cut way back on pinto beans, which, in my childhood, you were guaranteed to get at least twice a week.

5. Southerners eat too much cheap white bread and too many chips.

6. Southerners buy very few fresh foods, not even fresh potatoes. It took me a while to realize that people aren’t interested in starting gardens because they aren’t interested in what comes out of gardens.

7. When Southerners eat out, whether at fast food places or not, they eat even more calories than they eat at home. Restaurants compete on price and the size of the portions.

If Southerners could go back to the era of homemade biscuits, all would be well. People made biscuits because it was hard to get white bread, or the white bread cost more. Biscuits come from an era in which everything came from the kitchen, from scratch.

Michael Pollen’s rule of thumb is the best I’ve ever heard: It’s about remembering and honoring what our great-grandmothers cooked. Many Southerners seem to have forgotten.

Hymns in strange places

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Frédéric Chopin, nocturne in G minor, Opus 37, No. 11

Some years ago, a friend who is a professional pianist (and not a very nice person), hearing what I was playing at the piano, made the rude comment, “Hymns are the lowest form of music, you know.” Instantly angry, I threw an insult back at him: “No. Jazz is the lowest form of music.”

I was listening to the Chopin nocturnes tonight, partly because, at last, I can. The speakers and stereo amplifier are in a more or less permanent place in the newly painted radio room, and the iMac (and therefore iTunes) is now connected to the sound system.

Again and again in the nocturnes, Chopin gently slips away from the wild rubato rhythm and falls into a strictly timed four-part hymn, or anthem. The four measures above are just one example. If you’d like to find and listen to this example, the hymn starts about three minutes into Claudio Arrau’s seven-minute recording of this nocturne. Adjust the times for whatever recording you may have.

Anyone who thinks hymns are the lowest form of music knows nothing about human voices singing in chorus in four-part harmony. In the nocturnes, I would say that these hymn-like sections were a form of musical contrast for Chopin, a way of anchoring and grounding the wildness of the nocturnes.

Ice cream for Lunch.

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By Anivid in the south of France

It was a sunny day in April, a perfect day for trying out an ice cream dessert before the saison of tourists started.
Instead of lunch of course – ice cream desserts being on the rich & heavy side, especially when being enjoyed in the most luxurious place of the town 😉
The one I chose, called Melissa, consisted of vanilla ice cream, drenched with sauce caramel, sprinkled with caramel pieces, nuts, grilled pine kernels, cinnamon (your mouth water starts forming ??) and topped with a lot of chantilly (whipped cream). Finally two sticks of wafers as antennae for decoration.
It was served with the usual tap water carafe.
Need I say it was heavenly ??
Especially the combination of icecream and pine kernels was delicious, pine kernels as a soft chew together with the soft caramel and ice enveloping the toungue.
There was just the correct mix of everything, and it was so sweet & cold as to rise the IQ (my mother always told me to keep my feet warm and head cold 😉 and as the brains preferred energy source is carbohydrates – I thought my choice very wise (and my mother’s maxime satisfied 😉

I sat outside by the little stream led through the city and thoroughly planted with beautiful flowers following the changing seasons.
There might be not so pretty quarters elsewhere in the municipality, but the stream with its flowers & bridges are always kept picturesque – a joy to greet for citizens & visitors.
The pleasure costed app. 14 $ – and my mouth can still remember the feeling of its cornucopia 😉

Signing out Anivid, Southern France, Gastronomy & Culture

Denmark

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Wikipedia

Those who say that the United States is on a course toward European-type socialist democracies could be right. Let’s take a look at Denmark…

In the past eight years I’ve made two business trips to Denmark and spent four weeks there. I helped install a Danish publishing system at the San Francisco Chronicle, so I worked closely with a Danish company, and lots of Danes, for several years. This publishing system, by the way, is the system that’s also used at the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Danes are fantastic engineers and smart, honest businesspeople.

Most of these factoids about the Danish economy come from the Wikipedia article on Denmark:

— Denmark has a free market economy.

— Denmark has a large welfare state.

— Denmark has one of the world’s highest levels of income equality.

— Danes are very productive, and Denmark’s GDP per capita is 15 to 20 percent higher than the United States.

— Denmark holds the world record for income tax rates.

— All college education in Denmark is free.

— 80% of employees belong to unions.

— Denmark spends about 1.3 percent of GDP on defense, compared with about 4 percent in the United States.

— The national health service is financed by an 8 percent tax. This is a local tax on income and property.

— According to Statistics Denmark, the unemployment rate in Denmark in January 2009 was 2.3 percent.

— In some surveys, Denmark is ranked the happiest place on earth.

— Denmark was ranked the least corrupt country in the world in the Corruption Perception Index.

— According to the World Economic Forum, Denmark has one of the most competitive economies in the world.

I realize that Denmark’s model probably would not scale up in a workable way for the United States. Still, in my opinion, we should be studying some of the European models and not let ourselves be scared by them. They work.

So the New York Times confirms my guess…

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New York Times: A Los Angeles neighborhood where the creative class wiped out

It looks like I beat the New York Times by two days on this trend. The Times has a story today about the retreat of the creative class:

The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.

I wrote earlier this week about my fear that, when times get hard in cities, the creative class will be the first to go.

Let’s keep in mind, though, that the energy of the young and creative will always go somewhere. It is irrepressible. In the 1970s it took on a rebellious tone and went into place such as communes, or ghettoes such as Haight-Ashbury. During the decline of Rome it took on a more reclusive tone and went to abbeys and monasteries. We will soon start to learn what the creative class will do during this downturn. Will it be rebellious? Reclusive? Nerdy? Super-green? The response of the creative class will be a key factor in setting the tone of American culture for the coming era. If the response is constructive and creative, that could be a wonderful thing. If the response is angry and rebellious, watch out.