foodmuseumblog

Saintly September Stuff-Fests, Italian Style

The first time young Foodie tasted mussels ( drowned in marinara sauce,) was in New York's Little Italy during the San Gennaro Festival celebrated in September along Mulberry Street. The 11 day event is a lovely exercise in Italian-food gluttony, with cannoli sampling high on the list.

Around 300 AD, the eponymous saint from Napoli, whose crime was ministering to imprisoned Christians, survived being tossed in an oven,  placed on the rack,  and presented to wild beasts for their delectation in an arena. ( "What am I to you, " he wailed, "Just a cut of meat?!) He did not make it, however, through his beheading.

In any event,  San Gennaro became revered and New York has been putting on his festival for 78 years.  The folks on the other coast have been in the biz five years now. Los Angeles Italian-Americans, like the people in New York, created a foundation to host their festival and both efforts fund philanthropic undertakings for those in need. In LA you can play boccie with "Hollywood's most prominent Italian-American celebrities," and all the ricotta cheese you can eat comes from Precious, the company whose name is imbedded in the official festival title.

In a neat piece of synchronicity (?), in New York the statue of San Gennaro is paraded around Little Italy and then  returned to its rightful place at the Most Precious Blood Church on Mulberry St.

Total Disclosure: A PR lady emailed me about the LA San Gennaro event---but hey--some people like to plan their foodie adventures well in advance, right? So mark your bi-coastal calendars now.

Another One:  Las Vegas   http://www.sangennarofeast.net/

Other Italian Festivals: http://www.italylink.com/festivals.html

( Love the smoking Mt Vesuvius behind S.G. )

Explosive Spuds--Want Ammo with That?

The same McCain Foods French fry factory in northern England discovered armaments recently in two separate batches of potatoes. On a Friday, the tip of a shell. On Saturday, a hand grenade. ( The Great War? World War II?) Police detonated both items. No tubers were harmed any more than usual.

( Left: Not a potato.)

Unpoetically, as far as we know the grenade was not the "potato masher" variety much valued by German troops during World War II.

( Hand grenade pic from www.crownpointantiques.com. Potato masher grenade from www.wwiidaggers.com/ ART.htm)

                                                                   (Right: Not for mashing potatoes.)

                                                                                                                      

A Riff on Memorial Day --or--How She Does Go On

Backyard grilling, potato salad and cole slaw,  the opening day of many community pools, the faux first day of summer,  America's Memorial Day today is far from its origins in an era when many more people had actually experienced the loss of friends and family to war.

It began semi officially in May of 1868  as  a way to honor the Civil War dead on the winning side of the conflict. General Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic was the prime mover behind the day  "designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.." Back then it was widely known as Decoration Day. Southerners on the losing side did not cotton to the fact that their war dead were overlooked, and held their own remembrances on other days. After World War I, the day was expanded to embrace those fallen soldiers as well. It became a national holiday in 1971.

This website  created by veteran David Merchant, who has several eclectic web offerings,  laments that Memorial Day has lost its sacred tone.

" Traditional observance of Memorial Day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country."

Merchant suggests that the seductive three day weekend aspect of Memorial Day has further diluted its impact...

According to one "holiday" website, many people evidently are confused as to the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day as both focus on the military. Carrying no culinary baggage we know of,  Veterans Day is celebrated on November 11. First established as Armistice Day to note the end of "the war to end all wars," WWI, it now embraces veterans of all kinds, some dead, some not. 

And then there's June 14, Flag Day. And the 4th of July, another picnic-y celebration.

Foodie recently met a very young woman whose husband, just out of high school, is an infantry soldier serving in Iraq. He joined "because after high school he didn't know what direction to go," she said. "He just figured maybe he could get money for college. He scored very well on all the tests and expected to be placed in Army intelligence. "

With the military honored appropriately, maybe it's time for a national holiday noting all the other people who serve America--teachers, plumbers, poets, oceanographers, social workers, arborists and nurserymen, cartographers, law enforcement and firefighters, cooks, medical researchers, painters, civil engineers, veterinarians, nannies and babysitters, farmers and gardeners, dock workers, techies of all stripes, librarians, public defenders, shrinks, truckers, musicians, satirists, mail carriers, Peace Corps volunteers, home health aids, historians, bloggers...

Yeah well, OK, come on, let's eat!  Back to the day's typical menu, this one from texascooking.com:

• Southwestern Barbecued Chicken
• Cowboy Pinto Beans
• Grilled Corn on the Cob
• Grandma's Cole Slaw
• Dish Bread
• Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream
• Grandma's Sugar Cookies

Or this one:  Baked beans, grilled onions/eggplant/peppers/tomatoes/zucchini, spud salad, Belgian endive salad with walnuts, blue cheese and grapes, garlic bread, and grilled beets rolled in dill butter. Fudge cake.

    (Spud salad pic from http://www.bernhards.at/.  which makes the salad Austrian, probably served warm. Yum.   Check out Chef Bernhard's website:  "Learn how to cook Austrian food, detailed descriptions of Austrian recipes.  This website is made for all people in cyberland who want to learn about Austrian cuisine, Austrian cooking and the Austrian way; what do Austrians eat, Austrian dishes that you will meet on the menu of Austrian restaurants and many more mainly traditional food recipes.")

From Lychee to Snickers in 4000 Years

Archaeologists surmise that the royals who lolled in the imperial garden in China's  Guangdong province 2000 years ago ate well.

According to the People's Daily OnLine, "Members of the royal family of the Southern Yue enjoyed the beautiful scenery in the garden while tasting delicious fruits such as lychee, Chinese black olive, melon, persimmon, date, grape and apple," Zhao ( Zhijun) said.  Zhao is a researcher with the Institute of Archaeology.

In unearthing the oldest imperial garden yet found in China, scientists came across more than 100,000 seeds, preserved for thousands of years in a well. ( Were they spat into it??)

China is the original home of numerous food plants that have traveled the world and its farming practices are as old as or older than anything in the Fertile Crescent or the Andes. As James Trager points out in his uniquely useful book, The FOOD Chronology, in 479 BC when Confucius died he left behind numerous songs that mentioned "at least 44 different food plants. (The Old Testament mentions only 29.)"

China news from the 21st century--Snickers will be the official chocolate of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Rescuing the Really Rotund

If you weigh in the vicinity of 700 pounds, plan to have your heart attack in Tampa, Florida. Tampa Fire Rescue Station 20 has just purchased a new ambulance that can handle weighty patients. The vehicle's stretcher ( only for those 700 pounds and under,) comes with a nifty lift.  For people weighing over 700 pounds, the rig makes use of a folding metal ramp and a winch. The "bariatric" vehicle costs about $15,000 more than a regular ambulance.

( NB Foodie just looked up bariatric in her Random House Dictionary of the American Language, edition, 1969--ohmygawdyes, it was a wedding gift!!--and found it not.  Yes, she knew what the word meant ( please!,) BUT, she suddenly wondered if it was a "new" word and clearly this is proof that it is.....so the medical specialty must be as well, and that means, obviously, that back in 1969 the "fat person" was a rarity. Don't some of you remember? You would see a reallllly fat person once in a blue moon and if you were a kid you would stare a bit and your Mom would remind you of your manners, ( recall those?) and then you would go  on your way marveling at the fatness thing. )

p.s. Bariatric is not in Foodie's 1985 compact edition ( it's huge) of the Oxford English Dictionary either. Is obesity on a mass scale less than 21 years old ?

Musings on Mullet

Today, children, we turn our attention to the magnificent leaping mullet, the mostly-vegetarian fish with a gizzard ( tastes like flying chicken?) and the focus both of a kiddie book, The Wise Mullet of Cook Bayou, and an October event in Florida's northwest panhandle with the enticing name Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival.

The book was written by journalist and native Floridian Timothy Weeks. It tells the strong simple  story of three mullet in a Florida bayou who choose different life paths, with the "wise" one making out the best. Weeks says his book is based on a story by the Persian Sufi mystic Rumi, a philospher and poet who inspired the "whirling dervishes," those for whom dance was a pathway to the Divine.  Many old hand Floridians say the mullet "leaps for joy," as often as it leaps to avoid danger, so the Rumi connection is fitting.

Weeks' children's book project became a family affair. His mother, Jeanne, did the illustrations. His sister, Kimberly Bryant did the editing, and his Dad, David inspired his early interest in mullet. Crazy as it may sound, this shiny, tidy book laid out with a combo of hand drawings and computer graphics, smells terrific, sort of a petroleum and printing press melange. The odor does not from the two recipes by Jeanne at the back  for Golden Brown Mullet and Cheese Grits, staple foods of the denizens of Cook Bayou.  ( Contact Weeks directly for the book-- educators can obtain a teaching packet as well. )

Once we saw the mighty leap of one of these fish in Florida, we decided perhaps we harbored a mullet-within, and became loathe to eat them. Before the infamous net ban of 1995, mullet was the least expensive fish in local Florida markets. Today it's harder to find, though the smoked mullet at South Pasadena's( St. Petersburg) Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish is a favorite.

For more things mullet, visit the B.B. Mullet Festival in Niceville, named Boggy Bayou until the citizenry wanted a more Up Town name. You and 100,000 other visitors will eat 10 tons of mullet ( we know, mullet doesn't sound scarce) during three days, October 20, 21 and 22.

(For exhaustive info on fishing mullet in the UK, click here. Seems they will bite at flakes of white bread..)

As for the fabled "do," known as The Mullet, no mullet possibly could leap to the notion that its arrangement of fins (?) ( see the mullet pic up top) would spawn an entire culture. Wikipedia says the mullet --short everywhere, but long in the back, was sported by fishermen in the 19th c to keep the backs of their heads warm.

Department of Idle Poly-Culinary Googling

Feeling chipper and sanguine this morning, Foodie impulsively Googled "Condi Rice and rice." Up popped this priceless offering from The Amateur Gourmet Blog dated May 24, 2004, two long years ago almost to the day: Condoleezza Rice Pudding with Berries of Mass Destruction.

Damn, we 're so glad Al Gore invented the Internets!

Eat Your ( Newish) Veggies

California Vegetable Specialties, based in Rio Vista, CA, south of Sacramento, appears to have only one vegetable in their line--the sublime Belgian endive.  Established in 1983, CVS apparently is still the only commercial producer of endives in the United States, and it grows both red tipped and pale yellow tipped endives. ( Curly endive or escarole is a bitter salad green. Belgian endive always refers to the chicory--origin plant.) Liberating itself from Old World terms, CVS markets its product as California endives. That's probably a good idea as many Americans cannot differentiate between Belgium and Belgian, for reasons unknown....

Foodie ate many tons of endive during the eight years she lived in Belgium, in a small  village outside of Brussels. Endive baked with ham and smothered in a white sauce, braised with lemon and butter, and less commonly, fresh, sliced into salads.  The remarkable second growth of the chicory root---you've seen chicory growing by the side of the road, a pretty blue-flowered weed--chicons in French or witloof in Flemish came into being as a new vegetable in the mid-19th century.

Just about the newest, almost routinely accepted veg on the block is broccolini, the cross between Gai Lan or Chinese kale and broccoli that was introduced to the U.S. market in 1998 by Sakata Seed Company, based in Yokohama, Japan.  (Incidentally, Sakata says that 80% of the broccoli grown worldwide is from Sakata seed.)

Moonshine for Your Car

Dogwood Energy based in Tullahoma, Tennessee urges you to build your own still. That is, if you want to make fuel alcohol for your automobile at about $.75 a gallon right at home, and if you have access to lots of: "corn, barley, kitchen scraps, or even molasses."  And large plastic drums, copper pipes and other unnerving looking goods.

Kitchen scraps are currently fueling Foodie's compost heap but she does dream of converting her ancient Volvo into a used French Fry oil-mobile.

Coming soon-- the 100 Calorie Martini?

The Washington Post's Judith Weinraub is taking another look at the 100 calorie packaged snack business, a concept apparently created by Nabisco, that has garnered $100 million bucks since its inception in the summer of 2004. Overpriced mini cookies and crackers, and now tiny cans of softdrinks, are part of the craze. The notion is that if what you want to snack on comes in a  package, you will eat all it contains. Therefore, a smaller package is bound to be better for those who might be compelled to consume an entire bag of  say, Cheetos.

Rather than buy these tiny packs filled with dubious delights, Weinraub suggests the following:

"A tablespoon of peanut butter on cucumber or apple slices or in a celery stalk is a nutritionally sound and satisfying snack. Half that amount of peanut butter thinly spread on two small graham crackers works, too. So does half an ounce of cheese on a couple of crackers or a slice of whole-wheat diet bread. A half-cup of blueberries with skim milk is full of disease-fighting antioxidants. A half-cup of fresh orange juice is loaded with potassium. An individual serving size of nonfat yogurt gives you calcium. Even a mini bagel or a very small baked potato (about 3.5 ounces) with salsa makes the grade. And if you're really carb-crazed, you can count out 25 chocolate-covered raisins, 21 M&Ms or 25 small jelly beans."

But if you want a martini it's about 184 calories, plus the olive.

USDA Has Beef With Too Much Testing

What started out as mild interest by Foodie in a tiny beef story, is now a consuming desire to know more about the USDA denying slaughterhouses the right to test their own cattle for mad cow disease. Here's where it began.

USA Today reported recently that chef David Burke,  owner of davidburke & donatella in New York, and David Burke's Primehouse in Chicago, now owns, along with investors, a $250,000 Angus bull, the better to insure the quality of the beef that will turn up at his restaurants, presumably.

The bull hangs out at Creekstone Farms in Kentucky, from which Burke has bought beef for some time. ( Creekstone's steaks and roasts carry the Certified Humane Raised & Handled Label. )

While the bull story caught our attention, of far greater interest was this. Foodie discovered that Creekstone had made news two years ago by deciding to  set up its own mad cow testing unit, in part to assure its Japanese customers. ( The company slaughters over 300,000 animals a year.)

An LA Times story ( April 20, 2004) reported this:

"According to the Washington Post, Creekstone invested $500,000 to build the first mad cow testing lab in a U.S. slaughterhouse and hired chemists and biologists to staff the operation. The only thing it needed was testing kits. That's where the company ran into trouble. By law, the Department of Agriculture controls the sale of the kits, and it refused to sell Creekstone enough to test all of its cows. The USDA said that allowing even a small meatpacking company like Creekstone to test every cow it slaughtered would undermine the agency's official position that random testing was scientifically adequate to assure safety.  ( Emphasis Foodie's.)

What it didn't say was that the rest of the meatpacking industry was adamantly opposed to such testing, which is expensive, and had no desire to compete with Creekstone's fully certified beef. "If testing is allowed at Creekstone . ," the president of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. told the Post, "we think it would become the international standard and the domestic standard, too."

On March 23, 2006 Creekstone finally filed suit against the USDA. " Creekstone has sued USDA for refusing to allow the company to voluntarily test cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) at its Arkansas City, Kansas facility." Read the company press release in full.

"No one in the USDA or the meat industry will admit it, but there is only one real reason for banning private testing: more mad cows will be found. All the other excuses are just rationalizations." Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, authors, Mad Cow USA. 

( Photo of Texas Black Angus Bull from www.deercreekangus.com)

Make Food, Not War--Dolley Madison

Lounging on a chaise in the garden on Mother's Day Foodie read a review in the Sunday NYTimes of a new book on Dolley Madison. ( A Perfect Union by Catherine Allgor.) Most of us know about Dolley's safeguarding of Washington's portrait during the Brit invasion in 1814. The reviewer, Mary Beth Norton, Pitt Professor of American history at Cambridge, writes this: " ...perhaps it was more significant that Dolley also left behind a meal ready to be consumed by 40 guests." She goes on to say that Dolley's "indispensable contribution to the nation, according to Allgor, consisted of providing spaces in which men and women of the early Republic could socialize, gossip and learn to deal with one another outside the formal halls of government."  And eat fine food. (  Dolley was reknowned for her peppermint ice cream.)

Foodie began to wonder if Dolley was hoping to soften the malicious intent of the invaders by deliberately leaving them a delicious meal OR if she and her guests simply abandoned their dinners.

Walmart---Going Organic

Organic Rice Krispies? Hell has frozen over. Walmart is going to be selling more organic produce and organic processed foods--it's working with big brands-- starting this summer in an attempt to attract more "up scale" customers, and, of course, to get a piece of the growing organic niche.

According to today's NYTimes piece by Melanie Warner,

"Wal-Mart says it wants to democratize organic food, making products affordable for those who are reluctant to pay premiums of 20 percent to 30 percent. At a recent conference, its chief marketing officer, John Fleming, said the company intended to sell organic products for just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents.

Food industry analysts say that with its 2,000 supercenters and lower prices, Wal-Mart could soon be the nation's largest seller of organic products, surpassing Whole Foods. Already, it is the biggest seller of organic milk.

While organic food is still just 2.4 percent of the overall food industry, it has been growing at least 15 percent a year for the last 10 years. Currently valued at $14 billion, the organic food business is expected to increase to $23 billion over the next three years, though that figure could rise further with Wal-Mart's push. "'

Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association feels Walmart is not interested in the "principals behind organic agriculture."  He also is concerned that because demand for organic is outstripping supply, Walmart will begin buying from China, a country with "dubious organic standards and labor conditions."

Deadly Cherries, Zachary Taylor, and The Al Franken Show

This morning ( our own) Tom Hughes of The FOOD Museum was a contestant on The Al Franken Show, on  Air America Radio. Why? Because Tom correctly answered the question,"What fruit killed President Zachary Taylor?"  Then he went on to play successfully the faux game show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Lie to Me."

Since he's from The FOOD Museum Tom knew that "Old Rough and Ready" purportedly ate too many bowls of cherries with "iced milk" on July 4, 1850,  got gastronentiritis, and died.

Whither the Peruvian Anchovy

Peruvian conservationist Dr. Patricia Majluf has just received the UK's prestigious Whitley Gold environmental prize for her campaign against "the impact of anchovy fishing" and her efforts to preserve coastal ecosystems.

According to a BBC News report, 

" We hope the award will help [Dr Majluf] in her fight to bring an end to unsustainable fishing practices along this globally important coastline," said Edward Whitley, founder and chairman of the Whitley Fund for Nature.

The Peruvian anchovy fishery is the largest single species fishery in the world.

Much of the catch is processed into feed for fish farms in the developed world.

Some populations of sea-birds have fallen by 95%, thought to be principally down to a lack of anchovies to eat.

"The decline in the anchovy populations to put fish on our tables has at the same time reduced the ability of their predators, sea-birds and cetaceans, to survive," said Mr Whitley. "

Curiously, back in 2000, the Peruvian government, backed by the FAO, began a campaign to encourage Peruvians to eat more anchovies, a highly nutritious food possibly wasted on the fish at the fish farms of the world. The campaign faced some hurdles--first, many Peruvians negatively associated the fish with the poor. Secondly, improper handling of the small fish had caused many who did eat them to fall ill. Thirdly, even though the FAO deemed the anchovy population "plentiful", weren't they all going to the fish farms?

It is unclear how Dr. Majluf's campaign and that of the Peruvian government will dovetail.

( Anchovy processing photo by K. Iversen.)

Astonishingly Fine Armenian Baklava

Last night an old friend flew into town. After we caught up a bit, he pulled out of his luggage two plastic containers of baklava--"this is not that commercial store-bought stuff," he said. "This is the real thing, made by an old Armenian lady in Massachusetts my family knows."

The first bite changed everything Foodie had ever thought about baklava. Distinct flavors one could distinguish-- Walnuts.  Honey.  The pastry itself, pierced by one clove.  Not icky sweet, and no sign of the dreaded rose water. Perfect with coffee. Full disclosure:  we had one each last night, and one each for breakfast this morning.

Baklava, paklava, or pahklava,  is an ancient sweet, common to so many Middle Eastern countries that its origins are obscured. According to this history, the Armenians contributed cinnamon and clove to the recipe.  Arabs added the rosewater Foodie finds hard to bear.

Sometimes one is lucky enough to eat the best.

( Actual Armenian baklava pictured.)

"Organic, Inc."

The author of the highly readable Organic, Inc. --- Natural Foods and How They Grew ( Harcourt, Inc., $25, ) begins his book as a customer, wowed by the seductive offerings of Whole Foods, and drawn to the fresh locally-grown produce of farmers' markets. Samuel Fromartz, a business writer, sets out to discover why he and other consumers buy organic foods.  In the course of his odyssey he meets most of the big players in this complex business, as well as several small growers and many others involved in organic food.

His first chapter, Humus Worshippers, reveals a 1998 study done by the University of Washington's Chensheng Lu of children in the Seattle area , testing their urine for levels of pesticide residue. He found them in hundreds of 2-5 year-olds. But one child of the study had none. He lived in a family that exclusively ate organically grown food.

Many people have chosen to go with organic for that reason alone--but consumers have other reasons---better support for the environment and sustainability, positive health benefits, economic support of local growers and so on.

Astonishingly, we live in an era in America when only 1% of the population farms, down from 25% in 1940.  Fromartz profiles the 30 year efforts of the Crawford family's New Morning Farm in central Pennsylvania. New Morning exemplifies the successful small farm protoype--it is organic, independent, and "local," and also very clever in the way it markets its fares outside traditional outlets.

Fromartz also looks deeply into the doings of giant organic firms like  California's Earthbound Farms, and Colorado's Horizon Organic and tofu-based White Wave, both now owned by Dean Foods.

While organic farmers and the US government have reached an agreement as to what constitutes "organic growing," they have wrestled long, hard, and not terribly successfully with  what makes a finished product "organic." Fromartz moves through this complex, would be-acronym-littered--NODPA, NOFA, NOSB--field as well as anyone could.

In the end, the author decides that consumers of organic foods and products are in a way conflicted, spending top dollar for items an individual thinks matters lost, such as organic milk for children,  and staying mainstream with say, canned baked beans. And dabbling in gardening.

Read this book.

Eclectic Yet Utterly Useful Food News

Foie gras banned in Chicago. Human fat melted away via infrared laser. Tottenham Spurs football club felled by food poisoning incurred at a buffet right before they played West Ham United.

Food news is becoming eclectic indeed. Malaysians from the state of Terengganu have taken and eaten so many giant leatherback turtle eggs in recent years the turtle is almost extinct. This has prompted officials to change the symbol of the state from the delicious turtle to the no-way-we can-eat-Nemo clown fish.

The volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini or Theta that buried Crete's Minoan culture apparently has been accurately dated to between 1627 and 1600 BC thanks to the radiocarbon dating of a "gnarled olive stump," that was alive and then buried under the lava.

Celebrate during May!

National Asparagus Month                                             
National Barbecue Month
National Egg Month                                                            
National Hamburger Month
National Salad Month
National Salsa Month
National Strawberry Month
National Herb Month
National Chocolate Custard Month

Finally, to kick off the week with an amuse bouche:

"I once talked to an old cannibal," the famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski once recalled, "who, hearing of the Great War raging in Europe, was most curious to know how we Europeans managed to eat so such huge quantities of human flesh. When I told him the Europeans did not eat their slain foes he looked at me with shocked horror and asked what sort of barbarians we were, to kill without any real object."

( Photo by Eric Limon, www.blacklightphoto.com/)

"Stupid" Fruit? And What to Eat on Cinco de Mayo.

The Guardian's resident (?) greengrocer, Charlie Hicks, recently wrote about new and what he calls "weird" fruits and veggies appearing in some UK supermarkets. Here's his take on the pitahaya, a tropical fruit Foodie cannot recall sampling:

"This is my favourite stupid fruit. These things look like purple hand grenades. They have white flesh with little black seeds - and absolutely no discernible flavour."

Pitahaya is a desert plant fruit originally from Central America and a huge hit in Vietnam for over 100 years.  Google came up with a Malaysian company that apparently sells both the fruit and a juice drink made from it.

Clearly Foodie needs to head to a Vietnamese restaurant, and ask for the flavorless fruit, but, as today is Cinco de Mayo, she will probably make up a green chile black bean burrito  at home instead.

On the other hand, C de M actually commemorates a nasty and useless battle in Puebla, Mexico on May 5, 1862 that pitted outnumbered Mexican militia fighters under General Zaragoza against Napoleon III's French troops. The French, though handily slaughtered, were only briefly defeated, and controlled Mexico City until 1867.

So maybe Foodie  should enjoy a simple French omelet. 

On second thought, maybe something from Costa Rica. It abolished its armed forces in 1949.  Alas, though a friendly, bird-filled gorgeous country, Costa Rica has generally unimaginative food. Sigh.

( Fruit photo by David S Chow)

Breakfast With Viktor in Vilnius

  A rare photo indeed. Take it from The FOOD Museum--pictures of people eating or about to eat are scarce as hens' teeth. Why? Perhaps because most of us don't look that great with our mouths wide open, forking it in, so to speak. And photos of folks waiting politely to eat are static, like this one.

Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko hosted Veep Dick Cheney at the meal in Vilnius today, right before Cheney's speech that tore into the Russians just a tad. ( It was a gathering of leaders from the Baltic region.)

We doubt they are about to munch typical Lithuanian breakfast fare such as sour cream dough buns, filled with cooked bacon and onions. Looks like smoked salmon, maybe. With mimosas...But we'd love to know what they ate and when they ate it. ( See Post below re Katherine H.)

( Photo by Mykola Lazarenko, NYTimes May 4, 2006.)