The BBC reports that archeologists working in Pompeii recently discovered a 2,000-year-old fresco that depicts a pizza, or at least a flatbread-like disc that may be a precursor to what would eventually become pizza when tomatoes migrated* to Italy from the Americas centuries later:
It blew my mind when I first learned that tomatoes weren’t a thing in Europe until around the 1500s. Before I heard about that, I figured Julius Caesar and his contemporaries were chowing down on spaghetti with marinara sauce, calzones, etc.
Sadly, that was not to be, but at least they had flatbread, which can be pretty tasty with the right toppings. We made a flatbread recently featuring feta cheese, artichoke hearts (the marinated kind that come in little glass jars), roasted red peppers, sauteed mushrooms and kalamata olives — topped with a drizzle of good olive oil and a dusting of freshly grated pecorino. It was delish!
Open thread.
*Am I suggesting tomatoes migrate? Of course not, but many species of birds do. Perhaps birds gripped New World tomato vines in their talons and flew east…
SiubhanDuinne
What blew my mind was learning that, even after tomatoes were introduced to Europe, the Italians (and, I suppose, others) thought they were poisonous and wouldn’t eat them. What. A. Waste.
Mike E
It really depends on the air speed velocity of the laden birds and…oh, never mind.
I’ll come in again.
Jerry
Huh. I always assumed that they came back home from the new world by the explorers. Isn’t that how hot chile peppers got to Asia? The Euro explorers bringing it with them and trading for spices and whatnot*?
*Don’t ever forget about whatnots.
PDXBob
Most likely, migrating birds ate tomatoes and pooped the seeds across the land. So, yes, tomatoes migrate.
Alison Rose
Pizza with pesto is delish.
Yeah, wasn’t it tomater sauce that Brutus and his bros were slathering all over themselves?
trollhattan
Tomatoes AND potatoes AND corn. Oh yeah, tobacco.
It would seem Ukraine has some kind of Jackalope precursor, based on this photo.
https://twitter.com/reshetz/status/1673303142014889987?cxt=HHwWhsC91fKV4rguAAAA
Old School
According to Wikipedia, the earlier documented usage of the word “pizza” was in AD 997 in Gaeta, Italy.
If only this artist would have used labels….
Yutsano
Tomatoes have the unfortunate pedigree of being part of the nightshade family. They do in fact greatly resemble their deadlier cousins in the leaves. But much like potatoes Europeans were slow to adopt tomatoes into their diet. Once they did however, it was like they had always been in their cuisine.
EDIT: I wonder what latkes were made from before potatoes…
Ixnay
This is the beginning of a python skit, right? African or European ?
Jeffro
Betty we must be on the same wavelength – tonight is a long-awaited, much-anticipated, highly-salivated DR. HO’S PIZZA NIGHT here at the Fro household!
(Dr. Ho’s is one of those places that turns up on VA ‘best of’ lists all the time, and with good reason – their pizza is amazing! It also has kind of an oddball menu outside of pizza)
Btw if Fro Jr should stop by and try to tell y’all that the Mellow Mushroom has better pizza, well, that’s just because he’s young and doesn’t know any better.
prostratedragon
Thought balloon: Hmmm, I have most of that in the fridge now …
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: It’s giving Night of the Lepus vibes. Sic it on putin!
El Cruzado
Not to mention that the Italians didn’t know pasta until Marco Polo brought it back from his little journey East.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: My father would say that his Slovak peasant mother considered tomatoes poisonous but would use them to give color to soup. 🤔
CaseyL
My last night in Oslo, Norway, having reached such a saturation point of eating salmon that I was sick of it (something I could have sworn was Not Possible), I went to a nice Italian place on the water and had pizza for dinner.
Which I had been craving for days.
The whole thing, too. I told the server that I might need something to take leftovers with me, and then proceeded to hoover up the entire pie
ETA: It was not a huge pie; I think it was a one-person pie. But still…
Ruviana
@trollhattan: and also chocolate and vanilla! I only recently learned about that last one. The whole Columbian exchange dramatically altered European cuisine. And of course Europeans killed a lot of people and provided new diseases so it all evens out. Do I have to note that there’s some snark here? Okay then, so noted.
Jeffg166
I found a tomato plant growing under my old pear tree. Moved it to where the rest of the tomato plants are. This will be the surprise tomato for the year. No idea what it will be.
dlwchico
So Little Caesars has been lying to me all this time?
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: A shellshocked jackalope.
Please let that terrible war end soonest, with a Ukrainian victory.
Jeffro
@El Cruzado: No tomatoes AND no pasta?
what the heck were they eating up until then? (I think the answer is “fish and vegetables” but I’m not sure)
Elizabelle
I fear there may be a turtle on that table.
Ohio Mom
@Yutsano: A quick google yielded this: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/the-great-latke-lie/420018/#
Baud
@Ruviana:
Well, Europeans did export horses, if you’re looking for a positive example.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
McConnell?
No wonder the volcano erupted.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: Garum.
Redshift
Yeah, after finding out about tomatoes, peppers were the one that really blew my mind. So many cuisines are defined by hit peppers, it’s hard to imagine what they were like before them.
karen marie
@Yutsano: Turnips?
BeautifulPlumage
I gave up all nightshades several years ago based on the fact they have a compound that may aggregate rheumatoid arthritis* and eating that way is hard. So many dishes have potatoes or tomatoes.
I found that I no longer had sinus drainage after every meal (I used to joke that I was allergic to eating because I always had to blow my nose after eating). I did experiment with a tomatoes & arugula salad a couple years back and, sure enough, had a sinus episode 2 hours later.
* lots of it in my family but not something I suffer from
twbrandt
@CaseyL: I was in Oslo a couple of weeks ago and was amazed to see a place advertising “Detroit-style” pizza. It’s a thing, if you didn’t know. As I live near Detroit, I have it a lot. I didn’t try the Norwegian version, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: And guns. You don’t get the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors without both. And then Custer lives. What kind of world would that be?
Redshift
@Yutsano:
Turnips, maybe? That’s what potatoes replaced in a lot of Europe (though apparently in Ireland they mostly replaced oats and barley.)
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: by…by itself??
japa21
@Jeffro:
I have had “pizza” twice in Virginia. I don’t know why I tried a second time, maybe hoping the first time was just a mistake. Hard to believe, but I might actually prefer a Poppa John’s over Virginia style, and I positively detest Poppa John’s.
Snarki, child of Loki
Being southern Italy, that antique pizza would have mozzarella di buffala on it.
Even in this modern era, that’s not something you can get easily unless you’re in Rome or parts south of Rome.
Redshift
@Ruviana:
Yeah, and in most of the places we think of vanilla coming from, it’s pollinated by hand because there are no natural pollinators (since the whole ecosystem is different.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: Do I look like a fucking food historian?
Suzanne
Tomatoes are one of my top-ten foods. Holy cannoli.
Yes, I’m Italian. Here for tomatoes and cannolis.
Elizabelle
Liz Cheney trending on Twitter. Link to last night’s full program at the (NYC) 92nd Street Y, if you’d like to watch it for yourself. Gazillionaire David Rubinstein moderated.
WaPost tries to turn it into a horse race story. (Will Liz run for President, or won’t she?) Use that free week of WaPost access!
Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’
CarolPW
@Baud:
That’s because the Amerinds ate all of horse precursors in the Americas.
Alison Rose
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know why, but I want this as a rotating tag.
Redshift
@japa21: Huh. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m not aware of a “Virginia style” pizza. There have been various oddball places that stretch the definition of pizza, but I don’t think that’s just here.
M31
hahaha what if Cortez had been confronted with an Inca army riding Megatheriums?
Omnes Omnibus
@M31: Aren’t they giant sloths? I am sure they would have had time to prepare to repel any sloth cavalry charge.
CarolPW
@M31: They might have been awfully slow. If they had done a breeding program to get llamas and alpacas to be as large as camels, they probably could have gotten somewhere.
Pharniel
@Snarki, child of Loki:
That picture looks almost exactly like the tomato-less pizza we had in Rome.
It was also delicious, if oily.
Elizabelle
And: Actor Julian Sands’ remains have been identified; found a few days ago on Mount Baldy in Los Angeles area. He’d gone missing in January.
His family seems to have already made their peace with his having died while hiking, one of his favorite things to do. He was wonderful in Room with a View.
Elizabelle
I can’t really think of any “Virginia style” food. Maybe colonial peanut soup?
North Carolina has barbecue. Maryland has crabs. Delaware has … maybe the same problem as Virginia there.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolPW:
Said the little Eohippus,
“I am going to be a horse!
And on my middle finger-nails
To run my earthly course!
I’m going to have a flowing tail!
I’m going to have a mane!
I’m going to stand fourteen hands high
On the psychozoic plain!”
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Damn, that sucks, but it’s not unexpected given that he’s been missing for half the year. I had such a crush on him in Room With a View.
Martin
One of my son’s favorite pastimes is when playing video games or watching movies set in a different period, identifying all of the things that are incongruous. Medieval European scenes showing potatoes – nope, they’re from South America – didn’t get to Europe until the 16th century.
I was playing a game where I’m on a Russian train and he’s yelling from the other room ‘those are North American train couplers! they didn’t have those in Russia!’
I find it infinitely amusing.
brendancalling
@trollhattan: Creepy Jackalope Eye!
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Virginia has ham? NC has at least two kinds of BBQ that I know of: the regular tomato-heavy Southern style type and the thin, vinegary kind over chopped pork that’s popular in the Piedmont. Both are excellent in my book!
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
My apologies. That sounds very sad, but I have no idea who that is, so it’s hard to be moved. Nevertheless, my condolences to his family and friends and admirers.
Mike E
@Betty Cracker: “Lexington” style, and Eastern ‘cue
boatboy_srq
Tomatoes are in the same family as Deadly Nightshade, which is (surprise) highly toxic. Ancient botanists recognized the relationship between the plants and (wrongly) assigned them both the same toxicity. It took encountering the Aztecs, for whom tomatoes were a staple, for Europe to learn that they were safe, and even then adoption took some time.
Pizza in Pompeii – or whatever preceded the modern pie – is quite the archeological coup.
Redshift
@Martin: Speaking of obscure history like that, my friend the dog expert complained about Afghan hounds appearing in Titanic, because they weren’t introduced into Europe until later.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: You would like the movie Room with A View. Helena Bonham Carter. Simon Callow. Daniel-Day Lewis. Maggie Smith. Judy Dench. A Merchant-Ivory production. Wiki link. Nominated for 8 Oscars; won 3.
For whatever reason, the only line I remember is “Italians drive them.”
Time to see it again.
Jay
@Jeffro:
garum, (fermented fish sauce) and boiled buckwheat.
prostratedragon
Jeffro@20: Don’t forget legumes. Lots of beans and things made from bean flour.
Elizabelle
@boatboy_srq: Europeans: “Aztecs eat them? Aztecs eat human hearts!”
The Spanish make great use of tomatoes with gazpacho. Yum.
Jay
@Suzanne:
leave the tomatoes, take the cannoli.
Elizabelle
@Redshift: I was sad to find out a champion French bulldog was aboard the Titanic. (Expensive little thing — the equivalent of $13,000 today).
Did not fare any better than most of the passengers.
Frank Wilhoit
@SiubhanDuinne: Thus Wikipedia: “…Reynoldsburg [Ohio] is known as ‘The Birthplace of the Tomato’, claiming the first commercial variety of tomato was bred there in the 19th century.”
Tony Jay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Boxing Helena? Arachnophobia?
For a while he had a bit of a lock on ‘very polite but weird Englishman’ in not very major American films.
gvg
@Elizabelle: Peanuts originated in Bolivia. Spread through South and Central America. Spanish and Portugese explorers who brought it back and it spread various places including Africa where it did well and was popular and then was brought to North America with the slave trade. It was used here more than most places. In the Civil war, Union troops found they liked the peanuts (protein source) and took it back north with them. Both sides troops used it and the US used peanuts and peanut butter as staples in both World Wars. Wiki can be interesting. I had read years ago it came from Africa, which was evidently wrong. glad I checked.
I have read that a large percent of the modern world diet comes from the America’s. For some reason we had a lot of tasty plants. I look at the prior European diet and go blech. Of course I understand that they still don’t appreciate corn and think it is just animal food. More for me.
hells littlest angel
I can’t imagine how on Earth that would damage Trump. If she wants to hurt him, she should just enthusiastically endorse Biden.
oatler
@boatboy_srq:
“The Supersizers Eat Ancient Rome” has comic examples of 20th Century Britons dealing with spelt, duck tongues, and…garum.
Elizabelle
@gvg: Interesting about peanuts. I would have guessed Africa, too, because of their peanut/”groundnut” stew. Tasty.
Thinking good thoughts of George Washington Carver, too.
prostratedragon
@SiubhanDuinne: Leaving Las Vegas. Too bad, though it has been pretty clear for a while. Another interesting actor passed, Frederic Forrest, age 87.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle: Oh, I’m sorry.
trollhattan
Since he loves Putin so very much and lost his own personal supreme leader Bolsonaro, why doesn’t Glem just decamp Brazil for Russia? Oh, wait, unwelcome lifestyle. Too bad, Glem, keep looking for the
real killernazis. I hear they’re everywhere (with politics you espouse).https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1673717815012933632?cxt=HHwWgIC2oYXfnrouAAAA
karen marie
@Snarki, child of Loki: Or Trader Joe’s.
schrodingers_cat
OT
Some coloring firsts that I want to share
Watercolor in coloring book
A portrai
Both are from Daydreams by Hanna Karlzon
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano:
Pork and shellfish.
zhena gogolia
@Tony Jay: He was recently in a version of Ordeal by Innocence, I think.
CaseyL
@twbrandt: I saw that, too, and had no idea what it referred to.
Even more amusingly, “pizza” appears to also be used as a generic term for any American-style street food. We had taken a bus to Voss, to catch a train to Oslo, and had a couple hours to kill, so I went into town looking for food. Saw a place with a big sign “Pizza!” – but when I went in, there was no pizza whatsoever to be seen. Burgers, yes; lots of burgers. And burritos. But no pizza, not even on the actual menu.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: Looks as if I’m wrong, I must have dreamed it.
CarolPW
@Elizabelle: A lot of that stuff gets mixed up. Although yams are African in origin, sweet potatoes (unrelated to yams) are from the Americas.
I just got the book Precious Cargo: How Foods from the Americas Changed the World by Dave DeWitt, and am looking forward to having some things untangled. I’m pretty good on plant origins (and how on earth Italians cooked without tomatoes, polenta or zucchini) but always interested in learning more. And to many a life without chocolate is no life at all.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Elizabelle: Was about to say, “the Weird Food Map to the rescue” but, well… you can decide if this rescues either state from your point.
Delaware: Creamed Chipped Beef
Virginia: Peanut Soup
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
That Pompeii style pizza looks like it has pesto sauce instead of tomato. Pesto pizza is delicious
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: You are just the person I wanted to see. I have an IRS question, what does a non-profit have to do to lose it tax status as a non-profit.
Ohio Mom
@Redshift: Good guess but according to that Atlantic article, very early “latkes” (the name came centuries later) were pancakes made of grain, then many, many years later, fried cheese. The only constant is foodstuffs fried in oil.
CaseyL
@Elizabelle:
RIP Julian Sands.
I remember him best as Franz Liszt in the movie “Impromptu.” A thoroughly delightful period movie about the romance between George Sand (played by Judy Davis) and Chopin (Hugh Grant) – with Liszt there as Chopin’s friend – and Bernadette Peters as Liszt’s mistress. Hell of a cast – besides the ones already mentioned, there’s Emma Thompson and Mandy Patinkin.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: 😢 Poor little thing.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Surprised on the question of tomatoes migrating, that nobody yet has mentioned this film on the subject.
eclare
@Elizabelle:
Memphis here. NC does not have barbecue, unless you consider a chunk of chewy meat with no spice or sauce barbecue.
Give me a pulled pork plate any day.
MinuteMan
@Jeffro: Consider yourself luck: my 20-something son still prefers frozen pizza to homemade!
C Stars
I ate a whole tomato like an apple this morning, along with a can of sardines. I didn’t eat the sardines like an apple. I’ve been really busy with work lately and yesterday, not checking news. Mr. Stars came home from work and said “Did you listen to the tapes?!?!?!?!?” Amazed by his capacity to still be shocked by anything TFG related.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
And chiles, many kinds of beans, peanuts, pineapple, papaya, squash, pumpkin, chocolate, vanilla, sunflower, and rubber. Plus turkeys.
Brachiator
Lots of fast food stalls in ancient Pompeii
And a little social history:
It is amazing that the sites are still yielding new details about ancient life.
p.a
If you ever are with Italians carping on pineapple/ham/bacon/spam pizza kick ’em in the naughty bits: there are numerous intertube vids of Italians happily scarfing down hot dog & french fry pizza.
Also too, that stuff from Chicago is delicious, but it’s a casserole, not pizza.
prostratedragon
@CaseyL: Hey, I should look that up. Like the cast!
Roger Moore
@El Cruzado:
This is a culinary myth. There’s evidence for pasta in Italy at least back to the Etruscans. Also, too, Italian pasta is quite different from Chinese noodles, most notably in being made from durum wheat.
prostratedragon
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: An answered prayer. Love those tomatoes rolling on the march.
Omnes Omnibus
@prostratedragon: It’s fun.
Caveatimperator
There’s a Reddit board called AskHistorians where people can ask historical questions and get very well-researched answers. One of my favorite posts there was something like this: “I am a middle-class person in Rome in the 1st century CE. Can I get the ingredients to make a cheeseburger?”
In the responses, people pointed out that apart from the the tomatoes and a few other modern ingredients (mayonnaise, for example), you can. They talked about what kinds of breads and cheeses were known to the Ancient Romans. They mentioned that getting ahold of a pork burger might be easier because ground pork was a meat you could buy even if you weren’t very wealthy, but beef was more expensive. They talked about the way lettuce and onions were used in Roman cuisine. They mentioned that cucumbers were known but pickles were not. There were seasonings and sauces and spreads available too, ranging from accessible (garlic, mustard, vinegar), to more expensive (black pepper, from the Roman trade with India) to known but not really used in Roman cuisine (butter.)
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon: Mandy Pantinkin as Alfred de Musset, how can you go wrong?
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Virginia has its own take on what is usually called “country ham.” Smithfield ham is a big deal from the Hampton Roads area.
prostratedragon
@C Stars: ” ate a whole tomato like an apple”
Doesn’t everyone? That’s the main reason I buy raw ones. And what are sardines without red salsa? (Admittedly, mustard’s not bad either.)
Elizabelle
@CarolPW: That book sounds wonderful. Enjoy.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: That’s hilarious.
NotMax
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I will be interested in the answer. Having spent the first fifteen years of my working life in the non-profit world, I can say that some of them really should have their status revoked, but I’ve never heard of it happening.
I’ve seen non-profits close themselves down, and here in 2009 in southwestern Ohio, the people organizing the local area Party threw a fit because the IRS was researching (pretty thoroughly) whether they should be given tax-exempt status
The publicity probably helped their cause, they became an official non-profit but I think their case was weak — who could ever believe they were non-partisan!
I don’t think they exist anymore.
japa21
@p.a: You are referring to deep dish pizza which is not really Chicago pizza. Chicago pizza is thin crust pizza and is delicious, best pizza anywhere.
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
The thing about tomatoes being adopted slowly always seems strange to me. Yes, they’re in the same family as deadly nightshade, but they’re also in the same family as eggplant, which was eaten in Europe well before Columbus. The Europeans would have seen the Native Americans happily eating tomatoes with no ill effect, so you’d think they would have figured it out. And chiles were adopted very quickly, and they’re in the same family.
CarolPW
@Caveatimperator: They had olive oil and eggs so they could make mayo.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
You might remember Julian Sands from the Marple episode “Towards Zero” (picture)
Eyeroller
The tomato, at the time usually more like cherry tomatoes, was originally imported into Europe as an ornamental. They are attractive vines when they have a lot of red fruits. The Spanish adopted it into their cooking quickly, but other Europeans didn’t. Apparently it wasn’t just due to their being nightshades; their high acidity released lead from the pewter plates widely used back then, resulting in some degree of lead poisoning.
NotMax
@Steeplrjack
College roommate used to receive CARE packages from parents which included Smithfield ham spread.
Otherwise know known as a jar of viscous salt with ham flavoring.
Ptui.
trollhattan
@Ohio Mom: After $cientology won their lawsuit against the IRS I suspect you have to issue stock, give fat bonuses to your board, and build a for-profit coal power plant to lose 501(c)(3) or (4) status. Also, too, Shelby County.
Didn’t the IRA raise funds for weapons through US churches and CBOs and the like, during the Troubles?
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Via my group’s SMS chat, found out that our store manager got the axe.
RaflW
Since it’s an OT, I’m going to take a second to whine: We’re having some dark ages cabin fever here in Wisconsin. Our 2.5PM (smoke) AQI is over 300 µg/m3, which is the ‘health emergency’ level.
We have window a/c and a decent stand-alone HEPA filter running, so it’s ok, but the air temp and breezes are perfect for deck time … but the Canada smoke is not good, so we’re peering out into the murk behind closed patio doors. Blergh.
Steeplejack
@gvg:
I can’t remember which was which, but I remember my Tennessee mother telling me that when she was growing up in the ’30s and ’40s some people were prejudiced about cornmeal: white was for people, yellow for animals—or vice versa.
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Reason?
NotMax
@gvg
Used to audibly chuckle at any marketplace scenes in the syndicated Hercules TV series.
Baskets of ears of corn, tables brimming with bananas.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Not sure, I’m sure I’ll find out more when I go in. I’ve heard rumors that he and the district manager didn’t get along.
ETA: And I’m off to the Home of the Orange Apron, day 4 of 6.
eclare
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Whoa!
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Apparently there’s some kind of kerfuffle with the Mormon Church being investigated for its investment arm. The claim is that it’s effectively a for profit hedge fund hiding behind the religious exemption. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out.
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Such sad news about Julian Sand.
Agree that this is a delightful movie.
NotMax
@RaflW
Hang a brisket or two and some racks of ribs out on the porch?
;)
CaseyL
@Roger Moore: There is a story, possibly apocryphal, about Thomas Jefferson eating an entire raw tomato in front of an apprehensive dinner gathering, to prove it wasn’t poisonous
He was a big tomato advocate; possibly the first white person in the US to grow them in quantity. (Not sure if we were the US yet; this may have been before 1776.)
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
That’s another one that seems amazing: what was polenta made from before maize was brought from the new world? IIRC, it was made from chestnuts.
C Stars
@prostratedragon: I’m the only one I know who eats tomatoes like that. I always get weird looks, but it seems obvious that that is exactly what they were designed for.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Beautiful!
narya
@p.a: @japa21: “Stuffed” pizza is vile. The top so-called crust never bakes, so you essentially are using raw pizza dough as a topping on your pizza. And I’m not particularly fond of the thin-crust versions, either–that crispy crust isn’t as good, IMHO (though I realize MMV on this particular issue). The final straw, for me, is cutting it into squares instead of pie slices. That’s just wrong.
I have found good pizza in the city (Piece, Union Pizza in Evanston), but in general I’m not a fan. Yes, I am from the east coast; ask me about cheesesteaks while you’re at it.
C Stars
@Roger Moore:
Was this not tacitly understood by, like, everybody, even the LDS themselves? The plaintiffs must have found some juicy evidence.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Maybe you’re thinking of Towards Zero? (See #106.)
C Stars
@japa21: I’m going to Chicago next week. Have had Chicago-style pizza here in the bay area (Zachary’s is the local favorite) but I am not a big fan of the pizza soup deal. So looking forward to maybe having a thin crust style. Lou Malnoti’s? That’s where people are telling me I gotta go, but it looks pretty soupy.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Oh, here we go. 🙄
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I don’t think so. I have distinct memory of him showing up as a detective and my being shocked at how bald he was.
narya
@C Stars: No! Try Piece, on North Avenue–they also brew good beer. Parking can be a nightmare, but there’s a blue line stop a block or two away. If you’re on the north side, Union Pizza in Evanston is good, too.
zhena gogolia
All this talk is making me crave, you know what? One of those greasy Ray’s slices from about 1978. Nothing like it.
ETA: And I used to live in New Haven, so, yes, I do know what good pizza is.
japa21
@C Stars:
Depends where you are. Rosati’s is good, but there are a lot of local spots which are very good. Chicago’s a big area. Where will you be.
Roger Moore
@C Stars:
There is a whistleblower. If they follow standard practice of awarding the whistleblower with part of any legal recovery, they could wind up a billionaire for their trouble. I remember seeing something on the 50 largest endowments in the world, and the LDS church endowment dwarfs the biggest universities’.
Anyway
I love a New Haven “apizza”.
narya
@zhena gogolia: There’s a scene in “Saturday Night Fever” where Travolta’s character gets two slices and stacks them to eat them simultaneously. A slice is a time-honored way to grab a quick bite, IMHO.
zhena gogolia
@narya: Has to be with a paper plate. Or just let it drip onto you.
cope
@C Stars: Forget the pizza, you can get decent pizza most places. Check out some Italian beef and/or Maxwell Polish sandwiches. Those are unicorns difficult to come across elsewhere.
Steeplejack
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Did he or she deserve it?
Hmm, I think back to my time at Barnes & Noble. Our mean-girl store manager certainly deserved to be fired, but the whole corporate management structure was so awful that we probably wouldn’t have gotten anyone better.
Jay
@narya:
thin crust needs to be cooked in a wood fired oven at 700 degrees. Not many places can manage that. The dough needs to be double worked. It’s an art. Toppings need to be thin, thus the Margherita, thin tomato sauce, buffalo mozza, maybe proscuttio, fresh basil. Not a take home or delivery food.
narya
@zhena gogolia: One year when I was living in Philadelphia, I had tickets to 16 Sixers’ games with a friend; I’d stop at this pizza place a half block away and grab a slice on my way to the subway.
bjacques
@Alison Rose: or this jaquelope…
https://flic.kr/p/wdvQAN
narya
@Jay: No lie told.
ETA: Candlelite Pizza, also far north, is sorta classic (and pretty decent) as well.
cope
Also, apropos of nothing, when I was in grad school at the University of Illinois in the ‘70s, there was a Little Ceasar’s across from one of the houses where I lived. Horrible pizza but a point of interest because the owner/manager was Tony Curtis’s brother. Looked just like him.
Shana
@Yutsano: According to PBS latkes were made from ricotta cheese prior to potatoes.
Dangerman
It was a pizza. Nearby drawings had pictures of alcohol and men belching and adjusting themselves.
prostratedragon
C Stars@122: Yeah, guess I get that a lot too. Even in the family growing up, I think my mother and I were the only ones who did it, so 2 of 4 nuclear and more extended who were around a lot. Mom ate green ones sometimes, which was too much for me.
Searcher
On the other hand, the Romans would have had all of the ingredients for a chicken-bacon-ranch pizza.
kalakal
@Baud: And if you’re being foodie. Onions, apples, almonds, wheat, rice, bananas, citrus fruits
Jay
@Steeplejack:
One of the things about The Orange, is everything is a firing offence. They have a dress code, they don’t enforce, Break schedules they don’t cover. Rule on rules on rules.
All it takes is getting sideways with somebody higher up on the food chain, and they have a reason to fire you.
VJ in appliances, who was doing $150k in sales a month, was fired for not wearing a shirt with a collar. That was the excuse they used. Reality was, he complained about the Store Manager not going after the delivery chain and the Insurance company for damaged goods,……….. twice.
Tony Jay
@zhena gogolia:
I hadn’t seen him in anything for years, probably a couple of decades, but for me his early roles sadly branded him with that very cosy, Edwardian, proto-Julian Fellows brand of Merchant Ivory upper-class poshness that has now been rendered irredeemably toxic by all of the privileged rich-boys who were subsequently able to ride their accents and private school connections into vast, unearned power because ‘posh was cool’.
Not his fault. My failing.
SiubhanDuinne
This entire post has been invalidated: PIZZA HAS BEEN CANCELLED!! Evan Hurst at Wonkette has the deets.
pluky
@Elizabelle: Virginia has ham!
prostratedragon
One of those greasy Ray’s slices from about 1978.
Hush! That tears it. This thread has been hard enough to dip into off and on, but I now have to order pizza for dinner. Preferred the NYC version, which is fairly well replicated in Ann Arbor, and agree that so-called Chicago style is something other than pizza, as well as not typical of Chicago. Think it’s the hard water here, but something makes the crust on many pizzas not to my liking. However, Home Run Inn of Bronzeville has a good basic pie and is down the street.
Shana
@Pharniel: We once had an amazing pizza in Venice. Sliced onions sauted slow and low so they were almost disintegrating, but not in the least browned like carmelized onions along with wonderful oil-packed tuna, a bit of mozzarella and shaved parmesan. It was a totally different combination and so yummy.
Uncle Cosmo
@El Cruzado: Americans have been bamboozled into believing spaghetti with meatballs is the quintessential Eye-talian dish, when in fact none of it is Italian:
FTR asking for pasta con polpette is a good way to get fingered as americano no matter how good your Italian accent is.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Biden wants everyone to eat nothing but ICE CREAM!!!
zhena gogolia
@cope: That’s funny! Ed Asner’s brother had a comic-book store in Kansas City, KS, and he looked just like him, too.
ETA: I guess it was a record store! My memory failed me.
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon:
Same. I am trying to remember who delivers to Sighthound Hall, since I feel too lazy to put on the tactical gear (pants!) and go get a pie from the Italian Store or Lost Dog Café.
Roger Moore
@Jay:
One point I would make about pizza is that the traditional style of pizza has some serious problems with moisture. Fresh mozzarella is a moist cheese, and a lot of traditional toppings also tend to release liquid when they’re cooked. Those thin crusts tend to get swamped by all the liquid coming from the cheese and toppings, so the middle of the pizza gets soggy. This is why American pizzas tend to use sauce that’s cooked down, low moisture mozzarella, and relatively low moisture toppings like dry sausage and precooked vegetables and mushrooms.
narya
@Uncle Cosmo: Now you’re making me think of “Big Night.” The FTNYT had a recipe for the timpano (somewhat simplified), and I actually made it once. Hmmm . . . I’ll have to do that again sometime.
Jay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Guess I’m not going to New York for pizza, I’ll just have to suffer with the three great places* around here.
would be 4, but T went in and did a pick up, and the place was filthy. Great pizza though, like really great, to the point that we were considering to offer to scrub the place out, for a couple free pizzas.
evodevo
@SiubhanDuinne: Same with potatoes…of course, both plants ARE in the nightshade family, so …..
Old School
@Ohio Mom:
The most common reason is probably from not filing a tax return, but their are other ways to lose exempt status.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
He’s going to get us all addicted and then he’ll CANCEL ICE CREAM TOO!
prostratedragon
cope@137 has the right idea for Chicago visitors. Those are much harder to find elsewhere. Even a good Vienna beef hotdog at a stand is pretty special.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
hot out of the oven, in a hot dry oven, the moisture isn’t even close to being a problem,
put it in a box and drive it home, big problem.
Some foods just don’t travel well,
narya
Oh! One more Chicago food recommendation: Ceres’ Table, on Broadway. They have a pizza oven, but they also have a lot of really good food.
twbrandt
@prostratedragon: are you in Ann Arbor?
karen marie
@CarolPW: Sweet potatoes are also called yams here in the US. The yams that are not related to sweet potatoes – or what I’ll call “western yams” – are African yams.
My family lived in Ibadan, Nigeria in the early ’70s as my dad had gotten a job as an electrical field rep for an architectural firm that was constructing facilities for the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (part of the “Green Revolution“). One of the crops they grew on the IITA site was sweet potatoes. I don’t know how much Nigerians enjoyed them (I was 13 when we arrived there in October 1970) but I was delighted, baked sweet potatoes being one of my favorite things to eat – cold enough to hold and eat like an apple. Nom! Not something you’d want to do with an African yam, although they are delicious in many different methods of preparation.
C Stars
@narya:
@japa21:
@cope:
Thank you thank you thank you. Piece, Union Pizza, Rosati’s, and maybe look for Italian beef or Polish sandwiches instead. We are staying in the most touristy place in the world, Embassy Suites downtown 😂 but then are heading north up to a lake house for a week. Really only have time in Chicago for the MSI (which I’ve planned a day for) and then a day and a half or so of kicking around.
prostratedragon
Recent review of Italian beef spots. Can recommend Buona based on the quality of their sausages.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
My God. Joe Biden is the greatest senile mastermind the world has ever seen!
evodevo
@Elizabelle: Vuhginnya ham, honey…
narya
@C Stars: Have fun!! I also like the Field Museum (and it’s easier to get to from downtown)–it’s on the same campus as the aquarium and planetarium. In case you missed it, Ceres’ Table, on Broadway, is pretty accessible by public transportation (red line to Belmont, or Broadway bus north) from where you’re staying.
Shana
@narya: Oooh, that’s only a few blocks from where we used to live.
Steeplejack
Wordle 738 Tue.
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Shnikeys! Late to do the Wordle today, and this is another “lightning strikes” coup for me. Usually I’m a solid four, with a smattering of threes and fives.
Shana
@Steeplejack: One day last week my regular starting word was the answer.
Steeplejack
@twbrandt:
Chicago, I think.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: Very good. I love Wordle. Have been enjoying Spelling Bee too, although some days are easier than others.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Love that movie! The mister and I quote it sometimes when weather spoils our plans: “Stupid, stupid rain!”
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Yeah, my bike ride didn’t happen today.
Steeplejack
@Shana:
Yeah, that is the only way I’ll hit it in one. I’m really big on getting my vowels sorted out, and my second word happened to use, in just the right place and combination, the two vowels I hadn’t already tried.
prostratedragon
@twbrandt: No more. ABD UM.
Jeffro
@japa21: even in Virginia we don’t know what “Virginia style” pizza is…we just know from good stuff like Dr. Ho’s ;)
Ken
@Baud: Perhaps a compromise can be reached. I have had a dessert that’s a giant cookie in a pizza pan, hot from the oven with scoops of ice cream on top. Now, let’s imagine that with a yeast crust instead of a cookie, and tomato ice cream…
Roger Moore
@Uncle Cosmo:
Spaghetti with meatballs is the quintessential Italian-American dish. I’m not sure exactly how that figures into the cuisine overall. Some national cuisines are very specific about ingredients and recipes, so if you aren’t doing things in the very traditional way it’s not part of the national cuisine. Others are much more forgiving and care more about the general approach to cooking and happily adapt themselves to new ingredients.
Jeffro
LOL
See, that’s what happens when you put too much ‘garum’ on your plate…try a little hot honey next time, or something… =P
Kirk
@Elizabelle: The thing is that the ground nut is not a peanut. The African slaves found something similar in the US and used it.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: Brunswick stew, maybe? That’s pretty “Virginia”.
That and ham biscuits!! mmmm
Jeffro
@Jay: WE WERE JUST WATCHING THAT LAST NIGHT! =)
I swear, ‘The Godfather’ must be at least 10% of all movie references/quoted lines (and with good reason)
DrDaveChemist
@zhena gogolia: If we’re playing the lookalike brothers game, Hal Linden (Barney Miller) had a brother who taught my music appreciation class at Bowling Green State University in Ohio in the late ´70s. Strong visual resemblance and also a very similar voice.
eclare
@Jeffro:
I always thought Brunswick stew was from Brunswick GA.
Jeffro
erma gerd!
We’ve decided* that unless it’s an emergency, we’re never having frozen pizza again (and since I do the grocery shopping and won’t be buying it anymore, in an emergency, we’ll just have to have..something other than frozen pizza =)
*as of about an hour ago
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan:
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git…
Jeffro
@eclare: I think you’re right…but they serve it all throughout VA (and perhaps the South in general?)
hmm
VA ham biscuits it is!
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Brunswick County, VA, would like a word.
(I’m agnostic—looked it up on Wikipedia.)
prostratedragon
@Jeffro: we’re never having frozen pizza again
Say it like Scarlett O’Hara!
lowtechcyclist
@Shana:
CRANE, right? I know several people who use it as their starting word. There was much rejoicing that day.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Never heard of that county! Got no dog in this fight, I don’t care for it. I just always got the impression, given how ubiquitous it was in ATL, that it was a GA thing.
TriassicSands
What amazes me is that 2000 year-old fresco with colors that are still quite vibrant. I’m going to start burying lots of things in volcanic ash.
twbrandt
@lowtechcyclist: I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus: Outdoor exercise today would be a net life-shortener I suspect. My partner noticed the Whitewater Aquatic Center recently posted a sign extolling their superior air filtration system. Kinda weird to drive 15 mins from a lake to go swim, but healthier!
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Agree on all counts, but, like I said, I was compelled to look it up. It’s another one of those dishes where various locales squabble over the origin or the “real” version. You know, like Memphis and barbecue. 👀
Jeffro
@Steeplejack: (via a 1993 NYT story)
All I really know is that a) it’s awesome and b) Mrs. Fro freaks out if I add the lima or butter beans to the whole pot before she’s had a bean-free serving
Roger Moore
@TriassicSands:
It’s not that surprising. Frescos are designed to be durable. The whole idea is that you paint in fresh (fresco) plaster which then dries to make a very durable medium. IIRC, they use mineral pigments for their paints rather than organic dyes, which results in a color that is resistant to bleaching by light.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Thin ice, very thin ice…
TriassicSands
I have it on good authority that they ate out regularly and frequently had the famous Big Machiavelli.
Sigh. I apologize. I hate puns.
zhena gogolia
@DrDaveChemist: This is cool!
Jeffro
OT but it looks like even though we’re past the primaries here in VA, we’re going to have to wait until after the November elections to see what we’re doing with our budget surplus.
Youngkin the Almost-Anointed wants permanent tax cuts; the Senate Dems refuse to sign off on that.
All too predictable! The Gov, of course, could choose to just, you know, move on and govern…but he wants to present himself as the Second Coming of Saint Ronnie.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Thanks.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
😬
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Hahaha….I have some principles. And credentials. I was on the Pork and Bean Counters team in the World Championship Barbecue contest here.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
So I presume brisket is right out?
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Get the fuck out of here with your Texas meat!
hilts
The Best Pizza In Every State | 50 State Favorites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHZxV1UDEE
Every Pizza Style We Could Find In the United States
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4L2uGof2As
hilts
@Elizabelle:
Agreed, this is a very sad ending for a talented actor.
Craig
@prostratedragon: RIP Chef. He just wanted to cook man!
ljdramone
@twbrandt: I stopped at the Austrian equivalent of a truck stop near Salzburg some years ago, and they had a big sign in their restaurant advertising “CANADA STYLE WAFFLES”.
Maybe waffles with maple syrup, maybe with poutine, maybe both. I chose not to investigate further.
StringOnAStick
@Yutsano: I know certain people today who won’t eat tomatoes, potatoes, peppers or eggplant because of the nightshade association. More for me, but I have had to eliminate all cow dairy items due to gut problems with it, which started as sinus problems so the allergy can start there and then become a bigger deal. Thankfully goat cheeses don’t bother me at all.
karen marie
@Kirk: That’s interesting. At least between 1970 and 1973, in Nigeria, what I was offered as “ground nuts” were indeed peanuts.
eclare
@StringOnAStick:
Tom Brady follows that diet. Plus some more weird stuff. Hard to argue with the results, though.
I don’t really understand the premise of avoiding these plants?
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Meowch!
Wyatt Salamanca
@Elizabelle:
Thanks for sharing this link. In addition to electing idiots, we also have the problem of electing too many cowards.
Exhibit A – Ron DeSantis
DeSantis Refuses to Say Whether Trump Violated Peaceful Transfer of Power: ‘I Wasn’t Anywhere Near Washington That Day’
h/t https://www.mediaite.com/politics/desantis-refuses-to-say-whether-trump-violated-peaceful-transfer-of-power-i-wasnt-anywhere-near-washington-that-day/
StringOnAStick
@eclare: Nightshades as a family includes some truly deadly species, the old “deadly nightshade” is a real thing. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplant are all in the same family, so is a guilt by association thing, though plenty of people are allergic to especially peppers and eggplant. There does seem to be a higher level of allergic reactions to the fruit of these plants.
I follow the no cow dairy diet because otherwise my guts are in a constant state of unpleasant cramping. Once I stopped the dairy, that stopped, with the side benefit that the migraines that had returned went back to wherever they came from, so very likely they were linked.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Elizabelle:
These words are like the Good Housekeeping seal for me. I’ve never been disappointed with any Merchant Ivory film I’ve seen.
Origuy
@Uncle Cosmo: Italians do eat meatballs, polpette can be found in many restaurants in many varieties, usually as a starter. However, on top of spaghetti all covered with cheese is not done.
eclare
@StringOnAStick:
Huh. Well like you said, more for me! And thanks for the answer.
lowtechcyclist
@Steeplejack:
I had to look up where it is. I knew there was a Brunswick County in VA, but since I had no idea where it was, I figured it must be Southside, which is the only part of Virginia I’ve spent practically no time in. And I was right. It’s on the NC line, SSW of Richmond and Petersburg.
lowtechcyclist
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Anything he didn’t see with his own eyes, apparently he knows nothing about. Well then.
StringOnAStick
@eclare: You are welcome! Going dairy free has had its moments of “dammit, I like that and can’t have it!” , but thanks to there being more goat cheese makers and coconut based ice cream (Nada Moo vanilla is excellent!) It’s not so hard anymore and I don’t miss it. I have to be careful when eating out though because it just isn’t worth the results. Dropped my cholesterol 40 points too.
twbrandt
@ljdramone: I live very close to Canada, and I have never heard of Canadian-style waffles..
StringOnAStick
@Redshift: Vanilla is fun, it’s the tiny, tiny seeds of an orchid seed pod/bean. I thought that was interesting.
eclare
@StringOnAStick:
Great for the cholesterol! I don’t have any dairy issues, but I have recently switched to soy milk for cereal to lower my cholesterol intake because I eat cheese pretty much every day.
mrmoshpotato
Surprised no baseball games were postponed due to wildfire smoke.
Anyway, go Cubs! And let’s get some cook-ies!
Wyatt Salamanca
@lowtechcyclist:
Ron DeSantis is a pale imitation of Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes.
Elizabelle
@Wyatt Salamanca: They were an incredible team.
prostratedragon
Jeffro@209: Youngkin wants to be Bruce Rauner 2,0?
prostratedragon
@234: Furthermore the Symphony just finished over an hour of blowing away at Millenium Park. Sounded great anyway.
Quinerly
@Betty Cracker:
Will have to weigh in on NC barbecue. PORK.
It’s a big division in the state. Books have been written on it. Families break up over it.
Eastern NC barbecue is the vinegar, pepper based one. Chopped pork. With hunks of pork skin…those brown bits that are so yummy. The Piedmont is somewhat the dividing line. Actually, I think I recall Greensboro is the divide. Western part of the state is “Lexington Style”…..and coming from Eastern NC (“born and breaded” there) I have to say the Lexington style is GROSS…..ketchup, sugar, butter.
I grew up in the land of the Skylight Inn, Bum’s Restaurant, B’s Barbecue, Pete Jones Barbecue. Wilber’s Barbecue, and Parkers.
Here’s a great link about the area of my roots. Barbecue is PORK. Whole Hog….chopped.
https://roadfood.com/restaurants/skylight-inn-whole-hog-bbq/
Quinerly
@Mike E: yes!
Quinerly
@eclare:
I am going to pretend that I never read this heresy.
Quinerly
@Jeffro: gotta have butter beans in Brunswick Stew. And a small amt of corn. I love Brunswick Stew. I miss it from Bum’s Restaurant.
C Stars
@StringOnAStick: I LOVE eggplants. But last time I ate them, in a caponata, I noticed my face feeling hot. When I looked in the mirror there were these awful stripy, hot, itchy welts across the bottom half of my face. Pretty sure it was the nightshade
Elizabelle
@Quinerly: Parkers!!
Ruckus
@cope:
There is a Little Ceasar’s next door to where I live. Gives the neighborhood a bad name. Not sure it’s the worst pizza in the world but it is for sure in the running.
Ruckus
@eclare:
I used to use almond milk but switched to oat milk and find it better tasting and am once again able to eat cereal.
phdesmond
@CarolPW:
polenta (n.)
etymonline.com:
Old English polente, “a kind of barley meal,” from Latin pollenta, polenta, literally “peeled barley,” related to pollen “powder, fine flour” (see pollen), but the ultimate origin is uncertain. English later reborrowed it 19c. from Italian polenta (from the Latin word) for “porridge made of corn (maize),” a principal food in northern Italy, originally made from chestnut meal.
Carlo Graziani
Cane sugar was also a New World import. Medieval Italian desserts were usually sweetened with honey. Siena’s panforte is an example of the art.
Carlo Graziani
@phdesmond: I have a canister of the stuff in my pantry right now. It’s more useful in the colder months, but cooled and fried it has summer crostini possibilities as well.
sab
Asia and Africa already had edible nightshades. Europeans would have known the difference.
American cookbooks still warn you not to eat potatoe eyes. The tubers are delicious. The leaves are still toxic nightshade. Ditto tomatoes. Our ancestors were a bit uninformed but not superstitious idiots.
SWMBO
@Alison Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgj3nZWtOfA
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
More likely introduced by Marco’s father and uncle, who returned to Venice after a 15 year absence, the greater part of that time spent in the court of Kublai Khan in China. First time his father (Nicola? Too lazy to look it up.) had seen his son.
Young Marco was induced to join them the next time they journeyed there a couple of years later, when he was 17.
Father had been given a passport with the Khan’s seal affixed which granted him and his party not only safe passage once inside China’s area of influence but required residents wherever they stopped to extend all hospitality.
NotMax
Damnation. Coding fail Fix.
@Uncle Cosmo
More likely introduced by Marco’s father and uncle, who returned to Venice after a 15 year absence, the greater part of that time spent in the court of Kublai Khan in China. First time his father (Nicola? Too lazy to look it up.) had seen his son.
Young Marco was induced to join them the next time they journeyed there a couple of years later, when he was 17.
Father had been given a passport with the Khan’s seal affixed which granted him and his party not only safe passage once inside China’s area of influence but required residents wherever they stopped to extend all hospitality.