One of Sully’s stunt stand-ins published a bunch of emails from readers about RisottoGate, one from some idiot who said his parents liked soup when they were poor, so why should homeless people eat risotto, the others making the sensible comment that who cares if the food sounds fancy given that it may be cheap to prepare.
That brings me to the central point of all the right-wing wankery about risotto and arugula and Dijon mustard: it’s not about the actual expense of the food, it’s about the kind of food real Americans would want to eat. And it strikes me as being a lot like how communists might have seen the world, you know, the bourgeois scum eat chicken kiev, real comrades eat borscht. I have limited evidence for believing communists felt this way — a passage from the book “Burgundy Stars” that describes how the French left once opposed haute cuisine and a story from a friend who took the communists who hid him as a baby to a fancy restaurant that they mocked.
But you guys usually know a lot more about this stuff than I do, so let me ask: did — or do, I know there are still communists — communists have crazy ideas about what the proletariat should eat in order to stay uncorrupted?
John Cole
I dunno, but thirty years ago when my sister was five years old, my mother asked her what witches eat, and she replied:
“Dead fish and ugly vegetables.”
Which to this day I still think is genius.
Old Gringo
Will there be a “Girls Gone Galt!” thread anytime soon?
If not, I’ll go have a bowl of prole soup.
cgp
Oh yeah, for every social group there must be some sort of purity or social standards of belief and practices to keep. Accepting that the last eight years were a complete and utter disaster is ours.
JL
I have no idea but the question is irrelevant because we obviously have a problem with food that is not prepared with macaroni and cheese. Plus, I think that God created all starches which make them special.
JGabriel
DougJ:
Err, I don’t know. It’s kind of a cliche, but all the communists I’ve known have been pretty well off financially, and like a good restaurant and fancy meal as much as the any other Manhattanite.
.
Jim
Who’s “Patrick Appel” when he’s at home? And why is he a stunt stand in?
Dennis-SGMM
It’s simpler than that: no poor person should eat anything that the lowliest Alabama cracker hasn’t eaten – or couldn’t pronounce.
Bourbaki
Well Mao (supposedly) said something along the lines of: you can’t be a revolutionary if you don’t eat chiles.
Polish the Guillotines
Don’t you get it? It’s all about purity of essence. The Gourmet Left is trying to sap our precious bodily fluids.
calipygian
The Sheep
Represent the mass proletariat, manipulated to support Napoleon in spite of his treachery. They show limited understanding of the situations but support him anyway, and regularly chant “Corn mush good, polenta bad”. At the end of the novel, one of the Seven Commandments is changed after the pigs learn to walk on two legs, so they shout “corn mush good, polenta better”. They can be relied on by the pigs to shout down any dissent from others.
beltane
What’s especially funny is that most “real American” types think humble vegetables like kale and rutabaga, things their ancestors ate out of necessity, are somehow snooty and elitist. Sorry folks, but all those tough, rugged pioneers of the wild west were not eating Hamburger Helper.
Old Gringo
Prole Soup
Lunch in the commune with the radio.
It doesn’t look like Chicken Kiev to me.
demimondian
The communists I knew — and lived among — ate quite well indeed. They weren’t huge fans of expensive restaurants, because they viewed them as wasteful, but they certainly had no trouble preparing and consuming great food.
As Pete Seeger once put it, “I’m a communist, not an ascetic.”
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I don’t know if the Commie Russkies had official food-of-the-people sort of ideas but it’s easy to think that a culture that had Comrade Zhdanov telling people what art it was OK to draw and what ideas it was OK to think would have someone like him saying what food was suitably revolutionary to eat.
The layers of straw-manitude around this whole “arugula munching elitist” sort of crap are astounding. As the OP says,
others making the sensible comment that who cares if the food sounds fancy given that it may be cheap to prepare.
That’s it exactly – it isn’t that the food is elitist, even, it’s that it sounds like it ought to be elitist from the point of view of a non-existent idealized American heartlander.
Plato would have hated this whole shtick.
El Cid
Exactly right. I’ve always seen the Republican ‘real American’ schtick as the close analog to critiquing ‘bourgeois’ values, who’s TruProle and who isn’t.
You could even wonder why they’re always criticizing the Khmer Rouge, who hated the educated and sent those fancy types into the rice field to get all muddy and humiliated and worse. Except the Republican revenge fantasy involves force marching Berkeley / San Francisco / New York ay-leetists out of their organic wimpie vegan restaurants and into a Wal-Mart where they’re forced to eat at the in-store McDonalds and then watch as shirtless fat redneck guys go 4-wheeling in a Hummer and have to watch Red Dawn / Walker Texas Ranger 24 hours a day and then pray at the Creation Museum every night.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Nope. It’s about reflexively screaming about anything that they perceive as being endorsed by bleeding heart DFHs. See for example Camp McCain’s brilliant response when Obama mentioned that keeping your tires properly inflated was a good idea. I swear you could kill off all of these assholes with one well placed MoveOn.Org add imploring people not to eat cyanide.
Excellent post title. Again. Also.
Edit: WTF is the ad in the sidebar? Wookie sex. Cripes.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@El Cid: Except the Republican revenge fantasy involves force marching Berkeley / San Francisco / New York ay-leetists out of their organic wimpie vegan restaurants and into a Wal-Mart…
Damn, that’s funny. I bet if you pitched that at Breitblart’s Big Failywood they’d get a donation drive going to make it into a movie. Possibly a comedy (yeah, yeah) like An American Carol but it could work as an absurdly serious drama too.
mark b
Haven’t seen it so I’ll lead with my chin: In Russia, food eats you.
Danton
I knew some Italian communists. They ate Italian food.
LB
Soviet Union had shortages of many types of food other than basics such as bread or potatoes; in many regions even meat was hard to find. So of course traditional peasant foods were promoted as most appropriate. There was this popular verse for example: ‘Eat you pineapples and quail, you capitalist pig, soon you will be executed’ (rough translation).
Silver Owl
I am pretty amazed at what things turn men into pussies in a conservative he man manly man’s eyes. It is everything.
They quiver in endless fear for their manhood. There is not one issue that conservatives do not dumb down to the level of making it about their manhood.
Nothing. LOL!
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Nope. It’s about reflexively screaming about anything that they perceive as being endorsed by bleeding heart DFHs.
You’re right. I keep overthinking this stuff, forgetting that the opposition isn’t actually thinking.
The tire gauge kerfuffle is a perfect example. The pubbies could have shrugged and said nothing, but there is that pathological need, now that they’ve cranked the crazy dial up so far the knob broke off, to not only attack everything the Democrat Party does as “bad” but as “the worst thing that has ever happened ever.”
SGEW
Not quite “I will hang the last capitalist by the entrails of the last priest,” but it’s still pretty catchy.
stacie
Not sure so much about the Soviets, but dietary elitism is an extremely common cultural phenomenon.
Once potatoes found their way to Ireland, the English elevated bread (wheat) to a heightened status and spent generations slagging on the potato eaters of Ireland. I believe Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was contemporaneous to much of this. I think that Michael Pollan put these ideas into my head in his excellent “The Botany of Desire.”
Real Americans may like cheeseburgers with yellow mustard, but Awesome Americans lactoferment their food.
JL
When did arugula replace quiche as elitist food? It certainly is healthier, I just can’t remember the exact timetable.
Bootlegger
Culturally pure diets are common. Its a rare culture that will eat “anything”. Since they seem high on purity these days food purity should surprise no one. It is, pardon the pun, deliciously ironic for supposed Defenders of Freedom to have any say in what other people are eating.
Martin
I’d say that broadly it is true, in the sense that communist policy would focus on tearing down those social elements that could not scale to the entire population. That is, if there wasn’t enough dijon (or equivalent) for everyone, then it would be rejected as a state function and somewhat looked down upon.
But by implementation, it’s largely not true. Sure, the state publicly wouldn’t go off and call for the production of something that only a privileged subset could benefit from, but they’d tolerate a privileged subset having that thing if they acquired it. If that makes sense.
What’s so funny is how incredibly anticapitalist it is. At the same time the wingnuts are screaming about ‘keeping what they’ve earned’, they criticize anyone out of their inner circle from actually spending what they’ve earned.
Jay B.
From the idiot:
It’s as if they don’t actually understand that these ingredients can be combined to make “fancy” foods too — at barely no extra cost.
Peppers, eggs and potatoes can become a Fritatta or an Omelette. Eggs and Bread can become bread pudding or “French” Toast. Pasta, sauce and occasional seafood would be a $18 entree at most places on the Lower East Side these days. There’s no end to this stupidity.
What’s really funny is that by pure coincidence, I had dinner with the chef (Rich) from MEANS that night and clued him on the “controversy”. He laughed and Googled his name — it made its way around the liberal blogosphere. He wondered, sensibly, why Gunlock didn’t just call him. He would have been happy to tell her why rice, pumpkin and turnips were given to him by restaurants and grocery stores instead of them throwing them out to make something for people — many of whom aren’t homeless, but are on hard times.
Jesus wept. What do you make the stock with? How much meat should the stew have? What if it had pumpkin in it? Or some other kind of squash?
What’s wrong with risotto is that this fucking moron has no idea that it’s only rice.
Bootlegger
@stacie: Just beat me to the point Stacie, and well said too. It wasn’t just England either, the continental Europeans wouldn’t touch pig food, i.e. ‘taters, either. Now excuse me while I go eat my dog.
Josh
At socialist restaurants in the Thirties and Forties U.S., my father tells me, you could eat whatever was available so long as you didn’t insult the waiter by tipping.
I’ve known Reds who were disgusted by the idea of, say, a $120 dollar restaurant meal; but you don’t have to be a Commie to be bothered by that kind of extravagance. Doesn’t seem to me that any prudery as to what was appropriate to eat really caught on among American socialists: by and large, those in the working class wanted to live it up on occasion, while those who were well-off wanted everyone else to live well too.
What we see in the wingnutosphere is xenophobia: ridicule of mustard with a French city in its name. Again, the people I’ve known who were or imagined themselves Left radicals felt an obligation to eat exotic and international foods by way of showing that nothing human was alien to them.
Joshua Norton
Someone should tell the referenced idiot that his poor soup slurping parents were actually dining on Potage de Pullet.
Bourgeois elitists.
Old Gringo
“In communist system is dog eat dog. In capitalist system is the other way around.”
Allegedly a rough translation of actual Czech saying.
glasgowtremontaine
Another reason for serving glamorous food: because you’re working with leftovers donated by glamorous restaurants.
John Cole
@Jay B.: The accountant stopped by the other night and commented.
El Cid
Because that would have been journalism, and it would have implied that the TruProle feelings of the people dining at the food bank / shelter were worthy of empirical research. That is the opposite of true.
The proles are to be told by conservative ideologues what they like and don’t like, so, thankfully, it makes the work of conservative writers easier — they reflect upon their own instant prejudices, confident in the knowledge that they know the True Hearts of the Commoners, or at least what the commoners should be thinking.
Actual research to back up your prejudices is gay, elitist, and maybe even Muslim.
Laura W
@John Cole: I never saw that. Glad you brought it up again. Nice. I think I’ll go treat some nice people to some Italian sausage kale
ricerisotto right now.Raenelle
“Communists” is about as generic as “Americans”–Bolsheviks or Maoists, Stalinists or Trots, etc.
But, in the 1930s in Russia, when Stalin consolidated his power and party members from genuine working-class backgrounds began to rise through the party ranks, the party began to discriminate against loyal revolutionaries who nonetheless had bourgeois or kulak backgrounds–you could be, they said, objectively anti-revolutionary, even if, subjectively, you believed yourself to be completely loyal. So, there was something of a scramble to show off your objective proletarianism. It became a badge of honor to be plain, with rough edges. They discriminated against bourgeois art, bourgeois science, bourgeois sentimentality, bourgeois attitudes toward sex, bourgeois tastes in music, bourgeois affectations and manners and styles of dress. So, probably food, too.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Mark 6:41-42g
41 And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all.
42 And they did all eat, and were filled.
42a And a many headed beast rose from the pit.
42b And it opened its mouths and shrieked.
42c Why are you feeding these deadbeats?
42d What kind of fish is that? Sea bass? They should eat tunafish from a can and be grateful!!
42e And the beast ate a few Cheetos and resumed.
42f Oh, oh, oh, look! Whole wheat bread. Well la-di-frickin-dah! Why can’t you eat white bread like real … uh … where is this?
42g And the beast sank back into the pit.
See also, John 2:1-9h The Wedding at Cana and the many headed shrieking beast.
Robert Waldmann
I have never met a communist who disapproved of risotto. Actually, I have never met a communist who disapproved of food for being bourgeois. I have known lots of communists (all Italians which helps explain the risotto part).
Joshua Norton
Gawd. They didn’t evolve very much. They just became Walmart Repugs.
Laura W
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
WWJD with box wine?
DZ
This is such silliness. If one is eating a chicken breast, wherever and however, then one is eating 95% of what makes Chicken Kiev. Take one boneless, skinless chicken breast, pound it out into a cutlet, place a chunk of butter in the middle, roll it up tight, dust it in flour, saute in butter and olive oil until golden brown and eat. That’s Chicken Kiev. Place ham and Gruyere in the middle, do the rest and you have Chicken Cordon Bleu. Don’t roll anything, saute the cutlet, add chicken stock, lemon juice, capers and parsley and Chicken Piccata. Please
Scott H
It’s a twofer. The usual wanker cohort exposing both their pathetic antipathy to the poor & a fundamental ignorance of cooking: turning simple, inexpensive, and healthful ingredients into appealing and delicious meals.
Comrade Desert Hussein Rat
This from the crowd that undoubtedly bitches about the thin spread at recent NRO gatherings now that the sugar daddies have started to cut back on wingnut welfare.
“Can you believe that Barack Obama ate brown mustard on his hamburger? Pardon me while I open another bottle of this Moet.”
Good idea, GOoPers. Let’s write sneering observations on what poor people eat in the midst of the worst recession in 75 years. That’s the way back to power.
Idiots.
jenniebee
Fresh vegetables are anti-corporatist. What’s your problem with Kraft foods?
I’m serious – it’s really that locovores and people who prepare fresh foods from scratch and who point out that it tastes better, is healthier and cheaper are posing a direct challenge to large-cap corporations’ domination of the American food market. Which, in wingnut, is a frontal assault on the fabric of capitalism.
Does anybody have a link to the Bill Kristol piece where he scolded people for choosing local food because it’s local?
Joshua Norton
The thing that makes food “fancy” is adding an extra word or two to describe it. While he was crying into his plain old soup, the fancy restaurant downtown was selling the same thing as Hearty Homemade Soup at $5.00 a bowl. When they called it pot-au-feu they got $10.50.
Robin Kunde
I grew up in the GDR. I’m a bit too young to really remember what was going on, but I know that the common people were being deprived of all but the most basic foods and amenities. Perhaps not because of ideology, but because of trade restrictions and general economic exploitation by our communist “comrades”. All the same, trying to spend your money on importing fancy “western” items made you suspect in the eyes of the party and the political police.
MikeJ
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines
Jesus was way cool.
Woodrowfan
the poor are poor due to their moral weakness, therefore giving them good food is a reward for them being immoral. They should be eating lousy food as penance. /wingnut
Little Dreamer
Whatever foods wingnuts approve of, I’m sure that Big Macs would be included.
Old Gringo
There was a maxim of Soviet origin I would assume: “Bread for all before caviar for any.”
All Russian cuisine is based on “peasant food”.
The Soviet Union covered a very large geographic area with many very diverse ethnic populations and can be divided into culinary regions of the North, South and the republics that comprised the original Russian Federation. The southern region had the caviar due to its geographical location being warmer and having access to the seas year round, especially the Caspian sea, where the best caviar comes from.
Ayn Rand allegedly replied to this maxim:
“In order for all men to have bread, it is imperative that some men first have caviar.”
If any of you are recovering Randroids and can attest to the veracity of this attribution, the Randroid at the link would be tickled pink.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Woodrowfan: They should be eating lousy food as penance. /wingnut
Lousy food? Pah! Appeasement!
They should starve!
/ultra-wingnut
Josh Hueco
I don’t see it as being communist. I always thought the conservative fixation with exalting the most unhealthy, ignorant, violent and antisocial aspects of this country’s culture as some sort of heartland purity was just the cracker version of Keepin’ It Real.
harlana pepper
ugh, please don’t ask me to try and crawl inside the grey matter considered to be their brains, i’m watching them right now on climate change legislation, cspan, they’re just being such fucking asshole losers
HEY, YOU LOST!
geg6
I actually met and spent a week with actual Soviet commies while in college. It was during the early Gorby era and they had sent their legislators to various states to observe how our state legislatures worked (oxymoron, I know). As a poli-sci major specializing in the Soviet Union, I got to squire one them around Harrisburg for a week. He had nothing but disdain for fast food joints and our numerous fried snack foods. But was struck speechless by the bounty of our supermarkets and farmer’s markets. And he was rapturous over diners and the number and variety of ethnic restaurants. He couldn’t get over how easy and relatively cheap it was to eat and/or cook flavorful, nutricious food here and, one night when we got drunk as hell at the hotel bar, went on a beautiful rant about how stupid we Americans were to eat the crap we eat when we have everything his wife or mother could have dreamed of to fill the pantry and we turned our noses up at it. Now, yes, he exaggerated a bit, but not by much. And he wasn’t marvelling over the prime rib (though that too) but the greens and squashes and variety of inexpensive meats and the oceans of grains and legumes. In other words, the cheap stuff that the asshat at Sully’s is calling elitist.
Svensker
Where I came from, minestrone would’ve sounded mighty elitist and exotic. We didn’t eat vegetables unless they were canned or frozen. A meal consisted of a piece of meat, potatoes in some form and the aforementioned frozen or canned vegetable. Italian food was suspect and only indulged in by swarthy types (who probably reeked of garlic). So what is this elitist guy talking about with the minestrone already?
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Yes, but he could make wine out of Thames River water?
El Cid
A glimpse at a restaurant revisiting nostalgia for early Soviet dining via the Kyiv Post:
I’m hungry now. Guess I’ll go stir up some proletarian bites.
noncarborundum
@Silver Owl:
When I was just out of college the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche came out. My first thought was, “No, real men eat whatever the f^ck they want.”
Martin
I think you touch on part of the controversy. It’s isn’t so much that the food costs the same, it’s that someone would take extra time on what they consider to be, essentially, vermin.
Real americans throw scraps at the dog. They don’t spend 30 minutes turning those scraps into a meal. The controversy makes no sense to us because we’re assuming the homeless are people. They don’t see it that way.
harlana pepper
Listening to Marsha Blackburn speak is like fake french-manicured fingernails scraping across a blackboard
SpotWeld
The GOP loves symbols.
The Flag, the bible, the constitution.
When you can get everyone to revere a symbol, you no longer have to bother actually following up with what it symbolizes.
You must respect the flag!! (But freedoms, not so much)
You must let people own guns! (But responsibility, eh, you can figure it out for yourself.)
You must live humbly, and eat accordingly (But if you’re poor you must actually suffer! And if you’re wealthy, it’s no one’s business.)
In this philosophy you have symbolically match the rhetoric.
Poor = threadbare, cold and hungry
Of the people = Bland, inoffensive and willing to make fun of people who are different
Just look at Rush’s famous “phoney soldier” quip. Someone who outwardly matched all his criteria for reverence failed to match the rhetoric/mythology. Therefore he must be false.
Now look at Obama and the GOP template for “successful politician”.
Is it any wonder they are freaking out?
Nylund
How long before they get mad a politicians for wearing “elitist” suits as well? “Real” Americans only wear t-shirts with a silk-screened graphic involving the flag and the sleeves cut off.
Oddly, my wife’s redneck (their word choice) has a farm where rhubarb grows wild. I always pick some for pies and whatnot when I go visit the farm, but they NEVER eat it (they seem to subsist on Cheetos from what I can tell. The puffy kind, not the crunchy ones). They laugh and laugh when I go out to pick some. They think its the funniest thing ever and like to tease me about it.
geg6
Martin: You’ve hit the nail right on the head. Those who are going to that food kitchen for a meal are not, in wingnuttia, people. They are vermin. Gawd, I just can’t think that way on the fly. Someone always has to point me that way before I get it.
wilfred
This is just class memory of sumptuary laws imposed on the poor and working classes throughout much of European history: white bread versus coarse baurenbrot.
These people only and always talk about one thing – old wine in new bottles, to belabor the point.
Dave_Violence
Leftist liberal assholes should mind their own business concerning food in general, which you have not done and cause havoc on the rights of free men. Rightwing assholes should shut up and eat.
Americans have the right to eat whatever they can afford and want to eat.
Vegetarians are devil-worshipers, too, BTW.
mandarama, Eager Minion
@harlana pepper:
Feel for me, hp…she is my congresscritter. My expression for her is “realtor on crack.” I do call her office fairly often to remind her staff that not all her constituents are wingnut obstructionists. I’m sure it’s pointless, but I like annoying this one lady who answers the phone.
Martin
Wut? You just said they had the right to eat whatever they can afford and want to eat…
Ash
Sort of OT: Newt Ginrich was just on The Daily Show and made me want to throw a giant object at my television.
GregB
I don’t seem to recall any rightwing fist pounding over the delicate dining tastes of rock ribbed Republican and Bush flunky, L. Paul Bremer.
Seen here offering up a culinary delight that is, how shall I say, rather French.
-G
jl
I think people should eat what they want to eat.
I have one caveat:
If a person can tap into my tax dollors via a social insurance system when they get diabetes, heart attack or stroke (which they can now via the emergency room and Medicaid), then unhealthy food should not be subsidized with agricultural subsidies or tax breaks.
So I would crack down on government freebies for agribusiness, and if that affects the way people eat, then too bad.
Other than that, I am OK with whatever people want to shovel down their gullets.
If a food bank wants to make healthy and fancy food, and can do so at low cost, and people want to eat it, I think that is a good thing.
jl
And another thing, I think the ketchup being the only all American condiment is a fraud to begin with. I grew up out in the boondocks California Central Valley. As a kid I saw how the hard working hardscrabble folks ate their fast food.
Mustard goes with burgers and hotdogs. With pickle relish and onions. That’s what I grew up with dammit. Ketchup was for fries.
But I never saw anyone get dissed because they wanted ketchup or just mayo, or some other odd thing on their burger. Coz we had manners, dammit.
The red or green salsa on the burritos debate, however, caused tragic schisms in many towns.
Martin
Green. Only pedophiles like red sauce on burritos.
jl
What do you put on a Magos teriyaki chasu Burrito burger? Ask the wingnuts that and watch their heads explode.
I haven’t been to Magos in West LA in years, so I am not sure if they are still serving totally insane food. But things like that did, and perhaps still do, exist. I would like some advice on the appropriate all American condiments for that noble, very fancy, dish.
jl
@73 Martin: Oh yeah!? OK, I got your number, buddy. I cannot type out what green sauce people are. This is family blog.
Bill E Pilgrim
The only Communists I’ve known were an elderly English theater director who ate the best food you could get, and someone I dated who grew up behind the Iron Curtain who told me that they treasured good food and wine whenever they could get it because you couldn’t all the time.
She also told me that when a Western book got more or less smuggled in, they’d all pass it around until it fell apart from being read, and then they’d all discuss it endlessly over good coffee.
In short they valued culture, food, and so on to a point we can only imagine, mostly because they couldn’t gorge themselves on consumerism, so things like this were all they had.
In shorter: the right wingers in this country are completely full of it, eating the best food they can find and pandering to some gross cartoon image of the average Jane or Joe.
binz
@Martin:
Excellent observation. It fits perfectly with the hypocrisy of wingnuts — IOKIYAR, rules are for other people, it’s not a war crime when they do it, laws are for little people, privatize the profits social_ize the losses, don’t want to pay taxes but want someone to police the neighborhood and put out fires and pick up the trash and keep mexicans out and maintain the roads and interstates and come save their ass when disaster strikes; government aid/subsidies/handouts = lazy leech nigger/mexican welfare queen except when they need the social safety net then it is their due that society fucking owes them and it must be for being white because working a job is what almost every adult in this country does regardless of color, ethnicity or orientation; contracts with corporations and the wealthy are sacred but labor agreements suck the blood from the most productive members of society which are them because it must be because they are white since gainful productive employment is what almost every adult in this fucking country
hasused to have regardless of color, ethnicity or orientation; and of course it’s always caveat emptor unless they get screwed when they find mold in the walls of their new home or their spouse dies on the operating table from the wrong anesthetic; and when they are female choice is what they are glad to have but they want to deny it for other women and when they are male abortions are what the women they pay to fuck without protection must not have but when their daughter needs one well that’s different.Bill E Pilgrim
@Laura W:
Arrrgh. That actually gave me the horrific and yet prescient image of what the Last Supper would be like were it to happen today: At a “Pie-Tanza” in a suburban strip mall, with Leroy Nieman capturing the scene for posterity.
BC
Part of this is trying to separate out what Christianity says about the rich and the poor – you know, a rich man has as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel has of going through the eye of a needle; the condemnation of the rich man because he didn’t feed the poor beggar at his door; etc. Conservative Christianity began to really make headway in this country because they were able to do two things: make people feel comfortable with their racial prejudices and make people feel comfortable with their material assets. One of the ways they’ve done the latter is to insist that in the US, there are no “poor.” Heavens, they have – cell phones, granite countertops, $100 sneakers, etc. Now, by God, they even have gourmet food – risotto, pumpkin soup, arugula. Proof that the poor in this country are probably the luckiest duckies around – they eat well and don’t have to pay taxes. Who could ask for anything more? Give me a tax cut.
jmbl
I read a description of the original all-American white man pioneer and working class meal in some social history of the U.S.
Fried Salt Pork
Fried or boiled Cabbage
Hoecakes (Buckwheat pancakes)
It didn’t say where the ketchup went, or maybe I forgot.
Anyway, ketchup is just Asian fermented fish-sauce with the fish taken out, isn’t it. Or is that an urban legend?
BC
Oh and the arugula and Dijon mustard stuff – that’s to show the country how “elitist” Obama is. They really want to glide over his life story – how he really did go to the top from the bottom without benefit of a legacy entrance to an Ivy League school, without a trust fund. How he turned his back on a lucrative law practice to be a community organizer. Fact is, middle America has been eating more “exotic” foods in the past 30 years. Not just iceburg lettuce, but the romaines, butter, red leaf, and arugula. Look at any supermarket condiment shelf and you’ll see about five or six alternatives to the yellow mustard – several kinds of brown mustard, honey mustard, Dijon mustard, etc. Look at the coffee shelves and you’ll see the whole bean from everywhere. The America that the rightwing fantasizes about (they certainly don’t live it) changed in the 1970s and the 1980s as far as food goes. When neighborhood supermarkets stock this stuff in such quantities, you know it’s because it’s what sells. And it’s middle America that’s buying it, not the elitists.
pseudonymous in nc
The first commenter who talked about her Italian heritage seems to have entirely missed the bit about the function of risotto in Italian cooking. It’s porridge, one version of the starch plus water plus something substantial combo that pops up across the entire planet. In parts of Italy where corn is more common than rice, it’s polenta, which is just grits, and surely grits has down-home cracker-barrel approval, right? In the regions with potatoes, it’s gnocchi. In other places, it’s pasta. Or farro.
For the sake of fuck.
(Oh, and Laura W, if you’re prepared to go into town, the Wine Market on Biltmore Ave has fun Garnacha.)
Bill E Pilgrim
@jmbl: @jmbl:
I think you’re thinking of the legends about the origin of the word, or perhaps it’s morphed into one about the origin of the stuff itself now. It had to do with Chinese characters for fish and sauce, or Malay in some theories.
This is the one I’ve heard that seems more likely to me, from Wikipedia:
American anthropologist E.N. Anderson claimed that ketchup is a cognate of the French escaveche, meaning “food in sauce”.[9] The word also exists in Spanish and Portuguese forms as escabeche and escaveach, “a sauce for pickling”, which culinary historian Karen Hess traced back to Arabic iskebey, or “pickling with vinegar”.[9] The term was anglicized to caveach, a word first attested in the late 17th century, at the same time as ketchup.[9]
Not to be confused with “kvetch”, as in what people would do if they didn’t get ketchup with their French Fries.
Don’t get me started on French Fries, by the way.
Anne Laurie
All cults, I mean religions, keep strict lists of Pure and Impure Foods. The peculiar American brand of ‘communism’ neocons & their fellow wingnuts remember was more of a cult than a viable political party, therefore its historical obsession with consuming the ‘correct’ foodstuffs while discussing the ‘correct’ books / movies and providing ‘correct’ opinions. The modern Republican party is devolving into the same sort of beleagured permanent-minority cult, therefore the Repub obsession with what pore folk should & shouldn’t be allowed to consume.
Prof. K&G
@jmbl: You’re right about the origins of ketchup. Hoisin and Oyster sauce – those were the first things called “ketchup.” It’s also the reason why Pad Thai made with ketchup is pretty close to authentic.
But hey, the americanized version is pretty good. I remember reading an article somewhere (probably in the New Yorker) about how ketchup is almost the perfect condiment – it’s sweet, salty, sour and umami-ey all at the same time.
And now, completing Professor Kum&Go’s free association theatre, I thought this article about the american origins of sriracha chili sauce was pretty awesome.
rufustfyrfly
This Real America® nonsense always reminds me of Cultural Revolution-era China. The Maoists took the fetishization of poor, rural members of the majority ethnic group and elevated it to an art form. They actually made many young urbanites go out to live and work on the farms, so that they could learn the ways of the true peasant cadres.
From what I recall, seeming too aristocratic in your tastes was definitely not a good idea–you risked being sent out to the countryside, publicly humiliated, or worse.
Martin
Polenta is elitist. Grits are American.
As spotweld said, the symbols matter more than the substance.
4jkb4ia
@Jay B.:
Risotto isn’t only rice, though. It is arborio rice, which is imported. I now have a cheaper recipe for vegetable stock but the first one was a whole production with 7 kinds of vegetable.
Chuck Butcher
Martin @60 hit on it, dog scraps. We don’t get it because we don’t think that way. It does not occur to the left to see poverty as a symptom of subhuman-ness. The astonishing piece is to watch people teetering on that edge of disaster lap up this crap.
4jkb4ia
In fact, I unrecommend “The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook” for being too fussy in general.
Bill E Pilgrim
@rufustfyrfly:
I’d say “how ironic” that it’s the extreme right in our country peddling this now, but since they can’t seem to keep straight whether they’re fighting socialism or fascism
to begin with it’s all a muddle anyway.
They should really just put it all into one slogan: “Democrats: bad! For some reason!”
jl
Thanks to @83 and @85 for the info. I guess either could be the case, though modern U.S. ketchap tastes more like a pickle thing than a fermented thing to me.
I know the Greeks and Romans had a fermented fish sauce, usually made with herring, I think. So, who is to say ketchup couldn’t have developed from fish sauce solely in Europe.
I think the Asian fermented fish sauce is very good, if handled with appropriate care.
I am moving from ketchup and fries to aioli and fies with lemon drizzled over it. I guess I will have to kiss elected office goodbye. I will torn to shreds.
(BTW, jmbl is really jl -the reply widget burped, or something else weird happened when I submitted.)
4jkb4ia
Joan Nathan also has a recipe for kasha porridge with pumpkin which was eaten as an everyday meal by two escaped refuseniks.
jl
@92 4jkb4ia: kasha? That is communist and elitist and sissy and otherwise very damnable. If you have buckwheat, you make hoecakes. Fried on shovel blade, over the fire. That is an all American dish.
TenguPhule
Those who eat cavier first, eat a bullet next.
4jkb4ia
I think “elitist” in a food context is code for foreignness. How much the food costs or whether it was grown with chemical aids seems secondary.
4jkb4ia
@jl:
Kasha is heimish and an element of one of the blandest cuisines in the world.
Old Gringo
Name your poison.
Caviar has high levels of mercury. Bullet has high levels of lead.
Mike G
For all their bitching about “political correctness” and applying that term to some mythical leftish sociology professor’s preferences, the rightards are obsessed with bullying others into conformity of action, thought and consumer choice, be it “patriotic correctness” regarding flag pins, pledges, salutes and other such symbolic rubbish, or “gastronomic correctness” against those whose food choices aren’t redneckish and anti-cosmopolitan reverse-snobbish enough for them.
Mike G
For all their bitching about “political correctness” and applying that term to some mythical leftish sociology professor’s preferences, the rightards are obsessed with bullying others into conformity of action, thought and consumer choice, be it Faux News-style “patriotic correctness” regarding flag pins, pledges, salutes and other such nationalist bigotry, or “gastronomic correctness” against those whose food choices aren’t redneckish and anti-cosmopolitan reverse-snobbish enough for them.
El Cid
@Mike G: This is actually worth repeating.
Joshua Norton
‘It is by baubles that men are led’
— Napoleon Bonaparte
Andrew J. Lazarus
The butter for Chicken Kiev must have chives. Please alter comments above.
Comrade Kevin
@Old Gringo:
Want us to kill you now, or later?
Martin
Well, we’ll see what happens in California. 6 ballot initiatives, and the 5 initiatives that would have had any real impact (good or bad) were defeated. The 6th is symbolic, impacting pay during budget deficit years.
I think the initiatives should have all been defeated, but the state is almost back where it started…
Paula
Martin @60 hit on it, dog scraps. We don’t get it because we don’t think that way. It does not occur to the left to see poverty as a symptom of subhuman-ness. The astonishing piece is to watch people teetering on that edge of disaster lap up this crap.
Thirded.
Seriously, each serving of my pasta primavera is like 2 dollars less than a comparable serving of microwaveable mac n cheese @ some grocery stores. Fresh basil, too.
pdbuttons
left/ right
if i may stumble
in any direction…
i will find a store with in
within 2 miles tha that has a coffe aisle
geez louise
america
love it and shop it
Cpl. Cam
I don’t know about uncorrupted but a radical author named Chernyshevski wrote a novel that influenced Lenin called “What is to be done” in which the revolutionary protagonist eats loads of beaf in order to have the strength to overthrow the beaf-eating aristocracy.
This is all according to a book called “The Bolsheviks” by Adam Ulam I read recently, apparently this stemmed from the views of a materialistic philosopher named Feuerbach who famously said “man is what he eats” and recommended that the revolutionaries eat beans rather than potatoes, again, to conquer the beaf-eating aristocracy.
I can sort of see this “you are what you eat” mindset taking root in the “minds” of right-wing fundies (I mean shit, most of them believe in creationism.)
Obviously if you eat spinach queche you are an effete pussy who can’t wait to surrender to the caliphate but if you eat t-bone steaks and tobasco you are a fire-belching, bad-ass who will nuke-the-shit-out-of-the-fuckers. It’s why only the most deranged are pushing this shit.
asiangrrlMN
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I wanna know what Hannity, et. al, eat every night. In fact, I want to know what the woman who wrote the initial article eats every night. Fucking A. I remember a time when Chinese food was considered exotic, foreign, and otherwise, unpalatable by Americans. In fact, I got teased for some of the food I brought to school from home. Now, Asian food is trendy and considered consumable by Americans. Same food, different attitude.
What the fuck ever.
TenguPhule
There but for a single paycheck go I…’
TenguPhule
Then Americans got a hold of it and made it oversalted, localized and otherwise undigestable.
These days you have to usually have go to the local China town if you want the good old style Chinese cooking like the little old lady you saw cooking behind a counter with roast ducks and crispy pork glistening under a hot lamp.
pdbuttons
geez/ be happy yo
i get chinese food menus up my ding a ling
adverts everytime the ding dong day… in the mail
i got my fav/ u 2
God bless tis blessed plot…
salt is my yeast problem
JGabriel
@Bill E Pilgrim:
“Democratses! We hates’em, gollum!”
.
asiangrrlMN
@TenguPhule: What you have to do is go to the dirtiest, ugliest, most tacky shithole Chinese restaurant you can find. Then, you have to NOT LOOK AROUND as you eat the best goddamn Chinese food you’ve ever had. Don’t even think about going into the bathroom. If you are Chinese or can bring someone Chinese in with you, then you can eat off the secret menu.
Seriously, though, do not look into the corners.
CD
DougJ, I think this finally comes down to a question of class distinctions. The “serious” commentators don’t want poor people putting on airs, or acting like anything less than entry-level human beings. Gotta keep the “hired help” in their place. Might as well have volunteer soldiers complaining about their fifth deployment. Etc.
Old Gringo
After the “Girls Gone Galt!” if you please.
asiangrrlMN
@Old Gringo: You want to see Malkin, Coulter, Ingram, et. al get nekkid? You must be a glutton for punishment.
Mr p
So in addition to everything else wingnuts don’t understand food eitheither. Teh shocking!
Lupin
French food is Teh Gay.
bago
@Lupin: That would explain the obsession with sauces.
omen
so, conservatives have a radar out to pick up on identifiers, such as arugula, that mark liberals for their treasonous traitory in order to put them on a list marked for future pogrom.
(not really, just that the communism reference reminded me of that. yes, i’m aware that’s what the right alleges of the left.)
omen
@asiangrrlMN:
girls gone galt? must be something in the air. somebody already conceptualized that barf fest.
http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2009/05/hard-to-believe.html
redstar
As a communist (really, party member and all here in France) I have no idea what this is all about. Looks to me like more craziness we’ve come to expect from the Americans who get their collective neuroses spoon-fed to them via a steady diet of religion and televised propaganda.
Though it is true there is no way I would spend €250 for a meal in a restaurant, but not for what it served, simply for the ostentatiousness of it.
Oh, and the Dijon mustard to which you refer. The graines now come mostly from Canada, and the main brands of it (Maille and Amora) are owned by a Dutch company (Unilever) who is closing the plants in any around Dijon to send the production to low cost manufacturing countries (Poland and Czech Republic). Globilisation, something it doesn’t seem the average American has even the slightest clue of.
harlana pepper
Oooh, booga, booga! Michael Steele sayin’ scary words, baaad Obama, gonna getcha, gonna getcha. I iz a skeert.
((yawn))
heh, everybody calling into cspan this morning thinks he is a complete dick. repubes are so screwed. can’t say that enough, btw.
harlana pepper
repube caller on the line, re who should lead the party;
response: we need somebody like Bobby Jindal.
they are so fucked.
yeah, i said it again
harlana pepper
balloon juice is just a bunch of foodies masquerading as politically astute progressives.
;^)
Josh Hueco
God, I hope so. After 8 years of Bush/Cheney I feel like I have PTSD.
OT, but the Clippers won the first pick in this year’s draft. Blake Griffin, you poor bastard. :(
wilfred
What?? Sriracha is American? Sounds fishy to me; there’ll be a lot of crushed Asians with that.
omen
@redstar:
and Häagen-Dazs is a US brand.
it’s not so much the origin of the thing but the name. anything that sounds “foreign” gets demonized. for example, can’t get any lower on the food chain than french fries, but even that got demonized.
it’s the beavis and butthead rule in effect. anything that sounds “funny” gets set up for ridicule. this kind of focus on triviality is what happens when a political party loses their rationale for existing.
Dennis-SGMM
@redstar:
Tell that to the textile workers.,
Napoleon
@Svensker:
The exact opposite for me. I grew up in a town with an extremely large Italian population and most local hole in the wall restaurants I ate at as a kid had minestone (and wedding soup, my favorite).
TR
Completely OT, but I just flipped over to Morning Joe on MSNBC — yes, I’m a masochist — and they were discussing a new Rolling Stone piece on the state of the GOP.
The author made reference to a George P. Bush quote about how Charlie Crist is “batting for the other team,” and Scarborough put on the faux-idiot attitude he loves to use and said, “Batting for the other team? My, whatever could that mean?”
Pretty heavily dropping a Crist-is-gay hint on national TV. It’s clear this is going to be an issue in the Florida primary campaign, as the right wing tries to tear down Crist by any means necessary.
Come on over to the Democratic Party, governor. You seem fairly sane on most issues, and as far as your batting preferences, we just don’t give a shit.
Dennis-SGMM
All they have to do to avoid the opprobrium of the nutters is to put the words “deep fried” in front of everything – whether it is deep fried or not.
cleek
oh, BTW, the economic collapse? that was totally the fault of Congress !
Napoleon
@cleek:
A perfect example of why I would not even line a bird cage with Newsweek.
aimai
The funniest thing about that stupid letter is that Risotto is rice–rice and pasta, two of the cheapest things you can eat, and very filling too. Its like insisting that “polenta” is some high class furrin dish but corn grits is real amurikan.
Of course, as everyone else pointed out, the whole thing is an excercise in a pincer approach–poor people should suffer the humiliation of being given cast offs and knowing they are cast offs and also that the desire to give poor people something of actual value is elitist and wrong.
I’m reminded of a long ago MASH episode in which everyone in the camp is asked to donate food for some needy group. In the end the rich lieutenant with the prissy airs and the expensive tastes gives something incomprehensibly weird like a tin of foi gras and some caviar and everyone makes fun of him for its impracticality and foreignness and absurdity. And with tremendous dignity he says (more or less) “I’m giving what I like and what I think is important. What kind of a person would I be to presume that other people aren’t worth the things I think are worthy?”
If the writer of that stupid letter thinks that “stew” and “soup” were good enough for his family *now* that would be a different point. Then you’d merely have the absurdity of someone writing in to protest other people’s volunteer labor and the cooking of “tomatoes for poor people because I don’t like tomatoes.” Or “I love meat and two veg, how dare they offer two meats and three veg?”
aimai
Stav
Risotto is rice…and whatever you can throw in it. It is the second cheapest dish in the world. Number 1?
Well, several years ago my cousin invited my wife and I to dinner where one of the courses would be polenta.
My wife mentioned this to my aunt who went ballistic. “Polenta? Polenta? What kind of BS is that? I am a refugee. I had to eat so-called polenta every single day for five years. Polenta my ass. It’s corn meal and now that I’m not poor I will never eat that crap again in my lifetime!”
omen
@TR:
i enjoyed the chutzpah of his defending eliot spitzer’s peccadilloes.
gee, joe, were you relating?
Bill E Pilgrim
@wilfred:
There will??
Sriracha is people! It’s people!
El Cid
@cleek: It’s an interesting twist, though, on blaming Congress for the failure of the market — he’s blaming the House for failing to pass the 1st bailout bill, which, for good or ill, was torpedoed by Republicans.
Anyone remember Newt flaunting his proud idiot ass on TV on how they were going to defeat this Democrap soci alism, only to suddenly lose his shit and start getting called by hysterical Wall Street types and went on the air to reverse course and tell Republicans to support the very same ‘bailout’ bill about which he had the previous night been cheering about its imminent failure.
It was all kabuki theater for him and other major Republican leaders, who didn’t realize Democrats weren’t going to let Republicans force the D’s to pass the unpopular bill without them — they expected the D’s to surrender again, and Pelosi didn’t. The Dems only delivered enough votes to require substantial (R) support.
I think this is a very naive way of looking at the situation, where there were no real systematic problems and what counts is the value of the stock market — when, in fact, the stock market is supposed to be driven by objectively measurable factors based on the financial strength of the corporation issuing stock.
Yet it’s anything but the typical weirdo barking about “Barney Frank” and “Chris Dodd” and ACORN and all the rest of it.
cleek
sriracha : people | fish sauce : anchovies
Kirk Spencer
@Laura W:
Black Box Wine, perhaps.
cleek
yup.
though doesn’t it seem odd that the words “Republican” or “Democrat/ic” or “GOP” don’t appear anywhere in the piece? to me anyway, it seems odd to extrapolate from a single House vote to a financial meltdown without even mentioning the motivations behind the individual votes. why keep readers guessing about why the vote turned out how it did ?
Marshall
In Romania, Ceausescu had ideas about food and health, and put the population on a enforced “scientific” diet (little meat, lots of veggies, etc.). Some of this was to save cash, but there was also a strong nanny state aspect. He also was very against smoking, again for health reasons.
He was the only Eastern European dictator shot after the fall of Communism.
JGabriel
@Stav’s Wife’s Aunt:
So glad to find out I’m not the only person who hates that polenta shit. It always feels like eating a particularly crumby and pale hockey puck.
.
Laura W
@pseudonymous in nc:
I’ve been meaning to get up there for two years. I’m not big on trips into Asheville for pleasure but maybe that’ll change.
@Kirk Spencer: I used to see that in CO but not here, that I am aware of. But I don’t walk the box wine aisle so it may be there. I’d be inclined to try the Shiraz next Fall, but not a big Chard drinker, esp. when it’s a bulk product. Too much oak and vanilla candle wax used to “enhance” often times.
Nothing like continuing wine chat over coffee. I don’t know what I’ll talk about if I ever get back on my diet and cut out the wine. You guys will really miss me then.
Marshall
I went to the USSR back in the 1970’s. You learned not to look much at the menu in a restaurant there. A typical experience was that they would come, give you the menu, and in 20 minutes or so come back and tell you that the only thing actually available was the corned beef (or whatever), and then you would say “I think I’ll have the corned beef.”
I didn’t complain much about the food itself, but the choice was almost always limited.
grendelkhan
I recently read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Fear of Falling; she mentions some left groups which made the mistake of caring too much about the cultural symbolism of food. Here’s the same story related in an interview:
It’s not exactly “long live the white bread eaters!”, but it does demonstrate how food can be a powerful symbol, divorced from its own reality.
cleek
i’ve been buying Vendange’s half-liter wine boxes. they’re acceptable as wine, but an A+ for convenience.
Dennis-SGMM
@cleek:
What a relief to find out that the financial collapse was the fault of Congress and in no way caused by the actions of those in the financial sector.
grendelkhan
@grendelkhan: Pardon me; the shitsucking blog comment software somehow managed to mangle a simple blockquote, and I didn’t notice it before the timer ran out. In case it’s not obvious, the central three paragraphs are all part of the same blockquote.
omen
@cleek:
i like how they ignored deregulation.
anon
“‘Eat you pineapples and quail, you capitalist pig, soon you will be executed’”
i haven’t heard this, but my family had never even seen a banana until we came to the US (this resulted in an unfortunate banana addiction for one of my brothers). there was a constant shortage of food in the soviet union (even in ukraine, “the breadbasket of the soviet union,” where my family is from). my parents have never mentioned anything about certain kinds of foods being kosher for true communists to eat, but i think it’s cuz there wasn’t actually a choice unless you were a party member and then you went to restaurants sometimes (my parents didn’t even have their wedding dinner in a restaurant).
as for the kinds of things i most enjoyed in my mother’s cooking before i became a vegetarian, the list is long and varied and would probably gross some folks out. there’s of course salad olivier (a gift from the gods which i now prepare without chicken), eggplant ikra, salad vinigret (beets, beans and other fall vegetables), herring in a fur coat (layered dish with pickled herring on the bottom, then onions, then beets, then mayo), holodets with chicken (very delicious although it seems crazy now), and one of my favorite foods of all time: cake napoleon (which my mother would prepare from scratch over two days for birthdays and other special occasions). other common dishes include pelmeni, shish kabobs (this was my parents’ favorite thing to eat when they went on vacation to the black sea), potatoes in all kinds of ways, borscht, pickled everything, breaded and fried everything, and something disgusting that involved slices of deep fried eggplant covered in mayo (unfortunately this was the only way my mother ever prepared eggplant and it scared me off eggplant for years). i don’t recall my mother ever having made chicken kiev.
for years now though my mother’s cooking could mostly be described as russian fusion. she is an experimentalist and not a purist. i’ve never heard either of my parents say that one kind of food is bourgeois and another is of the people. they like food, generally rich and hearty food, they like good cheese, and they like desserts. :)
Col. Klink
Having lived half my adult life in former Communist countries I could probably dish out a long diatribe on the eating habits of communists and former communists. It would go something like this in the end though:
1980 – anything not from motherland bad (except for me!)
2008 – former communist but now ‘biznessman’ millionaires eat gold leaf sushi becauze iz very expensive, and must show off massive, gauche wealth!!!
I think in this case of Risotto-gate, however, it is really nothing more than the all American Eric Cartman factor at work. ‘You’re poor Kenny! Damn it Kenny, you’re poor!’ It’s harder to humiliate people who actually get a healthy meal now and then, and ultimately the point of the Eric Cartmans of Wingnutia is to mock, humiliate and ridicule those poorer than themselves. A good ginger-pumpkin soup is simply not something these damn poor free-loaders deserve in their eyes, and hey, I don’t eat it so there is no way in hell you deserve such a thing. That’s pretty much the mentality.
P.S. I had mamaliga last night. It’s not so bad folks! :-)
steve s
I just moved back to North Florida (temporarily) and I was talking to some of my borderline-retarded relatives and mentioned Crist and one of them sneered “Crist ain’t no republican. He’s a rhiii-no.”
Had to resist the urge to say “Good! That means he’s at least not a complete idiot.”
Kirk Spencer
@Laura W: Oh, BB isn’t my favorite box wine. It’s just the easiest example to toss to people.
I have found some surprisingly good wines in boxes. The best thing is that I can have a glass or two a day for several days without worrying about oxidation. No more “do I empty the bottle, accept a deader drink tomorrow, or just go ahead and start a mother?” Yeah, it means I no longer make vinegar, but I’m surprisingly unburdened by that loss.
One thing about box wines – none have the complexity and maturity that comes of aging. At least, not yet. Aging needs just a little oxygen to happen – say, the air that’s in the neck of the standard wine bottle. I’ve actually seen some suggestion of intentionally adding a small bit of air during packaging and then shelving the product for a time so as to get the aging, but as far as I know nobody has done this yet.
omen
@grendelkhan:
the trick is to blockquote paragraphs one at a time.
3 graphs = 3 blockquotes
Betsy
I spent a year living and working in a homeless shelter in New Mexico (shout-out to any St. E’s staffers who happen to read this blog!). Dinners there were made by volunteer groups/families, who would sign up for one night a month or one night every couple of months to make dinner for about 40 people. Many of these were church groups; some were clubs or other social organizations; some were families who wanted to do good work and teach their children to do good work. Although they could use whatever ingredients we had on hand in the freezer, mostly they brought their own. And because most of them cared deeply about treating the poor with respect, they all wanted to make the best food they could. Depending on the group it could be mole and burritos and pork stew, or lasagna and salad, or roast beef and potatoes and green beans, or whatever – they all had different cultural standards for what made good food. But part of food preparation is a desire to provide health, sustenance, pleasure, and comfort, and very few people who genuinely care about charity believe in doing so in a miserly or grudging spirit. Making resources stretch as far as possible, yes. But doing so in a generous-hearted manner that didn’t require them to provide the worst possible food, just to make sure the poor people were sufficiently humbled.
Betsy
And can I just say that having spent a year living and working in a homeless shelter, I get furious when anyone tries to say that people wouldn’t be poor if they just worked hard. It is so much more complicated than that. Some of our guests were the most hardworking people I’ve ever encountered, going out at 6 AM to do day labor and returning 12 or 14 hours later. Others lost their homes when health problems cost them their jobs and medical bills piled up, and they shuttled from family member to family member until there was no place left to go. Others had profound drug or alcohol addictions. Others had severe mental illness. Some had been in prison, which makes it virtually impossible to get decent work once you’re out.
I’m not saying they were all good and noble people; certainly not. Most were very troubled. A few were downright evil. Many were truly lovely and good and generous and hardworking. But it was complicated and difficult; and if the solution was just to “work harder” we’d have hardly been necessary.
vanya
My grandmother was always very proud of her polenta. Polenta and risotto were dishes that distinguished the honest intelligent hard working immigrants from Northern Italy from the mouth breathing criminal terroni from Naples and Sicily and their idiotic red sauces. The symbolism of food has always been important.
Stav
Two things:
I love the Nrthern Italina slam on the southern Italians right above this post. I haven’t heard those things in while, but Vanya is right, the N. Italian food is much better, and sadly hard to find in Boston.
2) Hey DougJ, the Post’s managing editors are doing a chat at noon. They tend to go for very focused newspaper-y questions!
omen
even this anti-elitist food posture is hypocritical.
californian wingnut duncan hunter was bragging about gitmo’s gourmet fare and how well detainees are fed:
sure duncan, you can kidnap me off the street and deprive me of freedom for no reason, as long as you feed me well.
Jay B.
Well, that’s because of the starchy consistency you get with that particular grain. But really — and I mean really, really — you can use any white grain rice and it still tastes pretty much like risotto. It may seem gauche of course, but it’s not a stretch.
And whoever above thinks Polenta is grainy and hateful, you haven’t had the right kind yet. Cooked, cooled, grilled and served with bacalao — it’s perfection.
noncarborundum
@Marshall:
On the other hand, I was in Budapest in 1981 and my recollection is that the choice (as well as the food) in restaurants there was excellent. And also very inexpensive compared to Vienna, where I’d been previously. Of course, Hungarian communism was a somewhat different animal from the Soviet species.
Interrobang
redstar — You say that all the grains for Dijon mustard now come from Canada? That might explain why over here in Canada it’s so perishin’ hard to get mustard other than Dijon, or that honey crap. No offense, but I loathe Dijon mustard and would practically give my right eyetooth to find a good local source for pound jars of Hebrew National. I miss having friends in New York City, dammit.
Comrade Darkness
@Marshall, couldn’t have him yapping about who is favorite cronies were for years to come. They wanted to be in charge, thank you.
poor people should suffer the humiliation of being given cast offs and knowing they are cast offs
Ding. That and waaaah! that boy has something nicer than me, mommy!
I’m sure Jebessus was completely silent on this topic, too. Otherwise they would be taking their guidance from Him.
Comrade Darkness
@Jay B., Any short grain rice will do. The key is to fry it in oil until it gives off a nutty aroma before adding any liquid. The US does grow “arborio” type rices domestically, and they are MUCH cheaper than the imported and cook up just fine.
Risotto’s a great dish for mass feeding of a large crowd, something the critics are unable to grasp because, frankly, I suspect they are ignorant about cooking, period. The real problem here comes from knowing how to make tasty things on the cheap, something many express jealousy of, in my personal experience. My response is always: cook more often, it just takes practice and a willingness to fail at things you are trying for the first time.
DougJ
I really mean Maoists and Soviets, I guess, not communists. People are right that contemporary western communists aren’t like this at all in general.
DougJ
He could make a believer out of me.
Jimmy Higgins
Dario Fo, the Italian communist playwright and Nobelist, and his wife, the equally red Franca Rame, were among the founders of the now-global Slow Food Movement. Which is an obvious communist plot.
pseudonymous in nc
This is a dead thread, but red wines that can cope with a few days of opening — and I have a couple in my stash — are a joy to the world.
omen
@JL:
i believe it was when obama complained about the cost of arugula at whole foods market.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200708280009
something kinda hard to resist ridiculing. too tempting a set up.