foodmuseumblog

Own "The Last Supper," NM-Style

The Hispanic Arts Building at the New Mexico State Fair is not a favorite, usually, tilting way too far towards dancing skulls, and bleeding martyrs, but this time, the largest piece on display caught my attention.

Now-- many people do not linger on the "supper" aspect of TLS, but we foodies do. And here is a hardcarved table, with painted chairs for each participant, commemorating that breaking of bread. It's the work of three members of one family, Robert, Desmond and Roberto Gonzales, the painting employs natural pigments, and the price tag is $35,000.

 

 

Russia's Putin, Venerated by Female, Veggies-Only Sect

You cannot make this stuff up. A group of women that comprises a religious sect in a Russian village has decided that Vladimir Putin, the former KGB bad boy and Prime Minister, is imbued with the Holy Spirit. As such, they are venerating him, while keeping to a strict diet of "turnips, carrots, peas and buckwheat," according to a report from The Telegraph.

Food Underlies Nowruz, the Persian New Year Celebration that Begins (More or Less) Today

Celebrated by Iranians, people in Afghanistan, Kurds, and by many others with ties to Persia and to Zoroastrians, Nowruz and the coming of spring underscores rebirth, and reaffirmation of growth and abundance. Alas, this year, it also marks a violent confrontation in Libya.

Nowruz or New Day, "has been celebrated for at least 3,000 years and is deeply rooted in the rituals and traditions of the Zoroastrian (This was the religion of ancient Persia before the advent of Islam in 7th century A.D.), " according to this piece from the Iran Chamber Society, a non profit that seeks to promote understanding of Iran and its history.

The seven traditional items key to the 13 day celebration are these:

"Seeb (apple), Sabze (green grass), Serke (vinager), Samanoo (a meal made out of wheat), Senjed (a special kind of berry), Sekke (coin), and Seer (garlic). Sometimes instead of Serke they put Somagh (sumak, an Iranian spice). Zoroastrians today do not have the seven "S"s but they have the ritual of growing seven seeds as a reminder that this is the seventh feast of creation, while their sprouting into new growth symbolized resurrection and eternal life to come."

As the new spring dawns, I am visualizing benevolent dictators, and peaceful gatherings around food everywhere.

 

 

Egypt et al: Celebrate the Prophet's Upcoming Birthday with Feasting or Fasting, or Not at All.

Beginning in the 8th c in Mecca, many of the faithful have celebrated the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, by sharing food with the poor. But Islamic scholars do not seem to agree on A--whether to celebrate the Prophet's birthday at all; B--whether to feast or fast. 

Centuries of learned discussion still have not pinned down the appropriateness of any birthday party, if you will. The Prophet is said NOT to have celebrated anyone's birthday. ( Jesus of Nazareth likely had little hoopla around his own birthday, right? At the time...)

So, the day, this year February 15, is a not entirely approved Islamic celebratory entity. Apparently Sunnis adopted what was a Shi'ite festival as their own, in the 12th century, and that may have opened a continuing messy theological can of chickpeas...

What to do? Fasting has its place, but is not the least bit celebratory. Parades, typical of the celebrations in many Muslim countries, make one hungry. The solution likely is to share bits of sweets, possibly nibbling one or two, and lie low.

Curiously, the biggest celebrations--festivals, feasting-- of the Prophet's birthday are among the Hindus of northern India.

A good cookie, however, knows no religious boundaries. I found the following recipe for Asbusa ( Egyptian Cookies,) at a website called Cooking with The Bible, a choice that seems utterly correct for this post.

Asbusa (Egyptian cookies)            

• 2½ cups sugar
• 2 lb. cream of wheat
• ¾ lb. butter
• 16 oz. plain yogurt
• water as needed
• slivered almond halves

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Bring all ingredients to room temperature. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and cream of wheat. Add butter; mix by hand, rubbing the butter, sugar, and cream of wheat between your palms for 10 minutes or more until the mixture is very well blended.

Fold the yogurt into the dough and knead by hand until the dough feels smooth. (If it feels dry, add water 1 Tbsp. at a time so when you hold it in your hands it feels like pie dough.)

Butter a 13″ x 9″ pan and pat the dough into the pan with your hand. With a sharp knife slice the dough in 2″ squares or into diamond shapes. Press one almond half onto the surface of each piece. Bake for 30–40 minutes or until golden brown.

Yield: 12–16 servings

Deliver Me From Bland!

Amazingly, I ate lunch at my second Seventh Day Adventist-inspired vegan joint in almost as many days. This one, Little Lad's, is in Portland, Maine, and it seems that the same fellow started them both--and others. So maybe he likes bland food that features  descriptive names but tastes almost exactly the same?  ( New Hampshire's stuffed pepper did have a tasty tomato sauce.)

We ate lentil pilaf, Armenian style,  "Shepherd's Pie," fresh corn, slabs of potatoes, and salad. I doubt that an Armenian came within an inch of those lentils.  The corn and the salad were fine. When I asked for black pepper, I was told that the cooks think pepper is tough on the digestive tract, so no dice. The salt, too, was hidden, but available.

Little Lad's sells perfectly popped and seasoned popcorn in bags that is exceptionally good, I must say. They give you small sample bowls with your lunch and, of course, I bought a bag to take away. (If the popcorn is distinctive, then why is the carb-heavy food so...?)

A fellow blogger who lives near London makes delectable vegan food--as do many others inclined in that direction--so there is no reason for same to be utterly lacking in distinction. Or spices.

For supper in Portland? Gilbert's Chowder House--homemade onion rings! Fried clams with bellies! Oh yes, mighty fine, as a once in a blue moon treat. We neglected to have cole slaw.

Tomorrow I head south, back to the wicked NY/DC metro corridor, where  I most likely will not be enticed into another such vegan eatery.

ps   Don't miss eating at Flatbread if you are in Portland. Pizzas and ethical stances of distinction.

Sugar, Pineapples, and Missionaries in Hawaii

PE-Obama is vacationing in Kailua, Oahu, on land that was "once was the private estate of Samuel N. Castle, a sugar magnate whose Castle & Cooke company was one of the Big Five firms that dominated Hawaiian politics for decades," according to the Washington Post.

Samuel Castle came to the islands in the 1850's as a missionary, saw an opportunity, and teamed up with Amos Cooke to start a general store. Soon Castle and Cooke began investing in the sugar cane business, then pineapple plantations...and eventually they were Dole and then Dole became them and it's confusing even to Wikipedia.

Interestingly, the Asian native sugar cane was brought to the Americas and grown on mega plantations in Brazil, for example, still today's largest producer.  The South American pineapple, made the opposite journey, and became a staple in various tropical climes in Asia. Thailand grows most of the world's pineapples today. ( Zero pineapples on Maui now?)

African slaves were brought into Brazil from the 1600's to do the hard and dangerous labor of growing, harvesting processing the cane into sugar. Europeans demanded this sweetener, first for their chocolate drinks, later for their teas and coffees.

So-- the Hawaiian sugar/pineapple story began with the efforts of Christian preachers and teachers---the first such venture to Hawaii apparently was in 1820, when an earnest group from Massachusetts arrived to save the souls of an apparently very happy, relaxed group of people ignorant of their spiritual peril. As the source Mass Moments, put it:" The islanders were friendly, curious, and easy-going...(they) were accustomed to going without clothing and to gathering their food and fish from the wild. They were completely uninterested in most things the Americans considered important, chiefly farming, sewing, and cooking...."

Sorry, native Hawaiians.

BTW   An exhaustive effort to chronicle all Obama food-related "things" can be found here.

Easter for Grownups

A substantive Easter basket is filled with foods with which to break your fast on Easter morning. In Ukraine these would include the garlicky sausage, kovbasa, hard-boiled eggs, baked cheese, paska or yeasty Easter bread, along with cinnamon babka, butter, horseradish and beet relish. ( A macchiato, too, please!)

The egg as pagan symbol of the life-giving sun ( see yolk) somehow became enmeshed with the blood of Christ ( red), and the tears of Mary ( many colors.)

The Ukrainian eggs or pysanka shown here are the work of artist Sofia Zielyk.

Expressive Chocolate Statue Draws Ire

Apparently a statue of Christ on the cross made from 200 pounds of chocolate is mightily annoying the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. 

According to today's AP story,  "This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” said Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, a watchdog group. “It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding.”

Dubbed " My Sweet Lord," the piece is the work of Cosimo Cavallaro and is to be put on display this Monday at the Lab Gallery of Manhattan's Roger Smith Hotel. ( You can view the statue well on the artist's website. )

Again, according to AP, " Cavallaro, who was raised in Canada and Italy, is best known for his quirky work with food as art: Past efforts include repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying 5 tons of pepper jack cheese on a Wyoming home and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham."

Wow!

Since the hotel has been besieged by angry phone calls, it's possible the gallery may not go ahead with plans to display the 6 foot tall, anatomically correct chocolate Christ.

Can't help but wonder what will happen to all that chocolate....

Fasting with Veggies

Just had a call from a person about to begin a fast for spiritual reasons. He asked if a potato were a fruit or a vegetable--apparently veggies are ok on this fast. So I said that the spud was  in the vegetable column and definitely not a fruit. I explained, however, that many veggies , botanically speaking, are fruits because anything edible that develops from a flower is a fruit.

But the potato, an underground tuber, the storehouse for the potato plant of excess nutrients the plant does not need at the time, may not exactly be what the spiritual fasting gods ordered either, growing in the dark as it does.....

People of Baghdad Attempt to Celebrate Id al-Fitr Despite Continuing Violence

These excerpts from a Sunday story in the NYTimes once again highlight the food factor underlying much of what is ongoing in Iraq: 

"Attacks have spiked in Baghdad since the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting and repentance that will come to an end this week with the three-day holiday of Id al-Fitr, when Muslims traditionally gather with their families to celebrate the end of the fasting period...

On Sunday, shopping areas in Baghdad were crowded as residents stopped by bakeries to purchase sweets and picked through racks to buy new clothes for the coming holiday. ... a bomb exploded and wounded four people near the al-Farasha bakery in eastern Baghdad, where shoppers were lined up to buy holiday sweets."

Id al-Fitr is the event celebrating the end of the month-long fast of Ramadan, this year starting October 24, when families and friends gather to eat and renew the ties of community. It begins with prayers thanking the Creator for their blessings, and expressing joy, forgiveness and peace.

Typically the first food eaten at the close of Ramadan is the date, considered by  many to be the fruit of the world's oldest food producing plant.

Rice Flour Flower--India

Foodie just looked through photos taken by her niece,  a teacher,who recently spent four months exploring India. She turned up a few food tales along the way for her eccentric relations at The FOOD Museum. Here's one--  in India's southernmost state, Tamilnadu,  she encountered women drawing a flower in rice flour every morning, as a kind of welcome mat at the entrance to their homes. These "kolams" are evidently always done by women, and they are done as a blessing but also a literal offering of food to insects and other small crawly critters who relish rice flour. In return, the small beings bless the household.

Google informs us that the flower is probably a pumpkin flower, and that a wad of cow dung often forms the center.But Foodie wonders about this as the pumpkin, and all squashes, are natives of the Americas.... ( No issue with the cow dung!)

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. )

High Tea Ruled OK by Supremes, in Sacramental Settings

The Supremes have spoken unanimously in favor of allowing followers of a tiny religious sect to continue to use hallucinogenic tea called hoasca in their ceremonies.  And as the Brazilian-origin sect known as O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal exists right here in Foodie's territory of New Mexico, this is indeed pertinent news. The Washington Post reports this , Feb 22:

"In his opinion, ( Supreme Court Chief Justice John) Roberts wrote that everything the government said about the DMT ( dimethyltryptamine)  in hoasca also applies to the mescaline in peyote, which Native Americans have been allowed to use in religious ceremonies for 35 years.

"If such use is permitted . . . for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans practicing their faith, it is difficult to see how those same findings alone can preclude any consideration of a similar exception for the 130 or so American members of the UDV who want to practice theirs," Roberts wrote."

Known more commonly by the Quechua word ayahuasca, hoasca refers both to the Amazonian rainforest vine itself and the brew made from it. Wikipedia provides an exhaustive look at this sacramental tea often tied to shamanic ceremonies.  It is listed as a Schedule I drug under the U.S. Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

(Photo of hoasca from www.gameshout.com.)

Utah Mormons Weigh More, But Less Than Before

OK, so they weigh less more than they did in 1996.  More than non-Mormon Utahans. True. Foodie really should focus on the improvement--according to a Brigham Young University study reported by AP February 14, back in 1996 Mormon adults were on average 5.7 pounds heavier than their non-believing fellow citizens in Utah, with a 34 % chance of being obese.

Today Mormon adults only weigh 4.6 pounds more than those other Utahans and have a 14 % likelihood of being obese.

So Mormons in Utah are slugging down fewer Cokes than they did 10 years ago. Foodie can attest that her in-person gustatory encounters with Mormons have always included massive offerings of Coke--so she figures cutting back on the sugary syrupy stuff alone could account for this dramatic improvement.

"Danish" Redux

Following up on the Danish-renamed-Mohammed controversy, this report from Reuters confirms that Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency says "Danish pastry," all made in Iran,  will henceforth be called "Roses of the Prophet Mohammad." 

Speaking of roses, they use rose water extensively in Iran as a sweetener, an ingredient Foodie came to dread as a Peace Corps volunteer there.  The real stuff is made from rose petals, and as such, Foodie thinks it should remain an ingredient in cosmetics, not food. ( Yes, Foodie knows that many fruit trees are related to the rose.)

         

German-Born Pontiff Puts His Own Mark on Mass

( Don't get your knickers in a twist, folks, this is a JOKE! Thank you.)

Divinely (and Satanically) Inspired Eats, IV

Alert foodie Linda B. informs us that right now on EBay the Mephistophelesiannically inclined can purchase  a hunk of sundried tomato closely resembling the big bad guy downstairs. ( Current bid, $6.66. )
Foodie herself just does not see the evil one herein.  It's that old "eye of the beholder" thing. But hey...

To quote from the seller in Grandview, MO: 

"....a manifestation of the Horned One in the form of a dried tomato discovered on my Whole Foods goat cheese (Yes, GOAT CHEESE) and tomato pizza."

 

Divinely Inspired and Other Eats, III

Alert foodie Freda informs us that "a face of Jesus" marble cake is on eBay UK, currently going for about  9GBP ( $18) with six days to go.  Seems that someone was baking a cake for a child's birthday--when he/she went to slice it in half in order to frost middle and top,  " I noticed a face looking out of the cake at me bearing a remarkable likeness to Jesus Christ. Realising the important nature of this discovery I have now frozen the cake to preserve it's religious significance."

The cake owner feels this is a sign right in line with the ecclesiastical grilled cheese, pretzel, etc, previously reported right here.   One waggish eBay commenter suggested that with sugar being bad for us, surely Jesus should appear in a lettuce leaf or broccoli. The cake seller was not amused.

Mona Lisa, maybe? Modigliani/Picasso, maybe? Japanese Anime, maybe?

Papal Diets...

                                                 

Let's slip out to McD's for some fries, Holiness.      

You  probably know a Pope died recently. Foodie noted one report on JPII, when he was still described as "recuperating," that said he had eaten "Caffé e latte con 10 piccoli biscotti e uno yogourt" ...Coffee and milk with 10 little cookies and a yogurt.   
Or were they really biscotti, the hard as wood, must-be-dunked-in-tea-or-coffee-to-be-chewed,  items offered next to the register at every coffee bar in North America?


Foodie will never know, but she did stumble on a book she is hot to explore--it's called "Buon Appetito, Your Holiness: The Secrets of the Papal Table," by  Mariangela Vicini and Mariangela
Rinaldi.

What secrets? In the 13th century Pope Martin IV evidently loved eels waayyyy to much,  and Pope Joan, RC's only female pontiff ( 9th c.) adored "paprika oysters".  Foodie finds this dubious as paprika was derived from chile peppers, and these were growing way across the ocean delighting native Americans at that point, and unknown to Europeans. ( Except possibly those rascally Basques!)  The Catholic Encyclopedia denies the Popess ever existed, but then... the legend relates that  Joan was said to have given birth quite inappropriately while on a papal procession and the crowd lost no time in stoning her to death. No word as to the fate of her child.

Anyway, turning back to JP II. Did he demand  kielbasa for breakfast?  Have a Papal penchant for sushi?  Foodie will let you know.

 

Feeding Tubes Follow Eating Disorder

We suppose there are times when feeding tubes conveying products simuilar to Ensure or other mixes sometimes called "blenderized" foods  are welcomed by patients and their families--they are medical necessities.  And comatized folks, many of whom will wake up to lead decent lives, surely benefit from these methods.
But to feed an unresponsive someone for 15 years through a tube surgically inserted in her stomach?
Ironically, the actual Terri in the news these days suffered grievously because she was over weight.  She hated her state of body, feared she would never attract a mate, and thus dieted fiercely to become acceptably thin. She found her husband and then worried she would lose him  if the pounds didn't stay off.  According to several news sources, she became a vomiter and one day vomited so much her potassium-deprived heart stopped.  The lack of oxygen to her brain thus caused the state she has been in for 15 years.