foodmuseumblog

Linger Lodge (Posted Here Feb 23) Redux: LA Times

See  Photo 21 on "What Did You Eat This Weekend?".....

Guest Foodie Blogger: Meat-Based Treats, San Francisco

Intrepid Greeniac, farmer, and bon vivant, Sam Smith of Shelburne Farms, Vermont, shares random offerings he encountered in San Francisco.

"The best breakfast ever!   Three kinds of smoked meat in a paper cone, from Boccalone at the Pier." 

Or are they all "tasty salted pig parts?" Boccalone is the salumeria offshoot of Incanto, a SF Italian restaurant. Salumi is Italian for cured meats, mostly pork-dervied, with the "sal" of course referencing salt.

Later, at a bar in the Mission District, more meat for Sam--the fabled BLT Bloody Mary, often but not always made with bacon-infused vodka. Note the charred curve of bacon on the side.

A nauseating concept to those of us who feel meat has its place, but not in a tall glass, slurped up with a straw. But, yes, Foodie recalls a collegiate era of Singapore Slings. The drink had a raffish beginning at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, in 1915, and by the late 1960's contained a mad swirl of Cointreau, cherry brandy, pineapple juice, gin, and more... OMG, no wonder we were all losing our cookies in Times Square that fateful night.

( Thanks, Sam---and send me your foodish findings/notions, people!)

Mazzaro's Italian Market: Don't Brave Saturdays Unless That's Your Only Shot

Mazzaro's in St Petersburg, FL,  is so beyond description, or comparison with other entities--even in Italy--that we give up. I can tell you that select tour buses stop there. And that people drive hours from other parts of Florida to shop/eat/hang there. Their employees are loyal, and calm, and cheerful, even when customers are dithering over which biscotti to buy, or how much fresh pasta to haul home.Pear and gorgonzola pockets? Yes! A pound.

The crunchy, perfect, crispy panini sell out early in the day, and the coffee is roasted in front of your eyes. This celebratory, sprawling place, that is part deli, part bakery, part coffee bar, part cheesery and winery, part lunch joint, started out doing coffee roasting, and things just grew from there. Founded by wayward Pennsylvanians with major loyalty to Pittsburgh, Mazzaro's is where you jockey for parking, and then wait contentedly for your chicken parmesan sandwich, knowing both will work out beautifully.

 

Owner Kurt Cucarro's blog supplied these stats re Mazzaro 2010:

13,853 lbs. Cheese cut and wrapped in the Cheese department.

Italian Cookies from the bakery, 3838 lbs.

2925 lbs. of Fresh Pasta.

4435 Cannolis

Olives by the pound 2991

4500 pounds of Fresh Roasted Coffee

10,000lbs. of Flour for Bread

34,570lbs. of prepared food in the Deli

1 Semi Truck full of Wine (about 20 pallets)

Fat Americans, Again

So I've been away, traveling up and down the east coast, visiting friends and family, and doing some biz.  I pulled into a roadside rest area somewhere in New England with the usual fast food subjects on hand and decided to buy a coffee at Cinnabon.

As I stood in line, naturally I noted and smelled the alluring and catastrophically caloric buns. (730 calories per bun, according to the Internets. ) Now hey--I love to eat something divinely wickedly tasty once in a while. But of late I have been, shall we say, cutting back? So I spotted some tiny versions of the full-sized buns and when it was my turn asked for one, with the coffee.

"Honey, you have to buy 6 of those," said the clerk.

'This, " I blurted out, gesturing melodramatically and then slapping the counter,  " is why Americans are so fat!"  Rather than calling security, the woman serving me the coffee threw her head back and guffawed with gusto. 

"Ain't that the truth, honey, ain't that the truth."

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.

Art, Fast Food, Dying Warhorses

You may have seen the headline--McD's is thinking of putting one of their joints in the "food court" that serves the Louvre in Paris.  I can barely believe I am juxtaposing the words "food court" and Louvre. I haven't been there in a while but hitting a little bistro around the corner would have been my choice, after a morning spent tromping through the galleries.  But I need to enter the 21st c., don't I?  Apparently the Champs Elysees McD's is the most successful in the entire McD universe.

Gourmet Magazine, on the other hand, must not be shining brightly enough for Conde-Nast. It is ceasing publication of the ancient ( est. 1941) food journal by the end of this week, astonishingly. The company's Bon Appetit--less grand, less precious, more accessible? will carry on, for the moment.

My mother subscribed to Gourmet for several years in the 1970's, but the real Conde Nast star in our house was always The New Yorker. I've been reading it since I could read, and love it still.

Homage to Teddy, and Mocha Chip

Ted Kennedy was enjoying mocha chip ice cream, my personal fave, in his last days, according to this piece in today's WaPo.

While the Howard Johnson's Mocha Chip of my ( and Kennedy's) youth is long gone, the flavor has resurfaced in offerings from Starbuck's--Java Chip Frappuccino comes close. The Internets tell me that Honey Hut, in Cleveland, Ohio, sells a nifty mocha chip.

M. chip was one of the original 28 flavors of ice cream from Howard Johnson's menu--he started his business in Quincy, Massachusetts, with homemade ice cream, doubling the butter fat content, and attracting a slew of customers.  His first roadside restaurant in 1929 led to a chain of 400 by 1954. Cleverly, Johnson had forseen the need for family eateries along the nation's toll roads.

Alas, by the late 1970's, the Hojo roadside joint was fading, as the company zoomed into the lodging business. Thereafter the brand was bought and sold many times over.

Today there are 3 actual HoJo restaurants in operation, in Bangor, Maine, Lake George, NY, and Lake Placid, NY. I visited the Lake Placid place a few years back, and gorged on fresh onion rings, fried clam roll and, mocha chip ice cream. Heavenly.

FYI  Keep up with the HoJo saga here--apparently we may see a return of Hojo's!

Musings on Food Deserts, and Coffee Shops with Locked Outlets

Years ago we lived in a food desert, apparently. We were in DC, on Capitol Hill, right across from Eastern Market. OK, we didn't.  But the tiny, cramped grocery store we frequented--the aisle could accommodate only one skinny collapsible  stroller at a time---closed down soon after we arrived. So we relied on the Market for some things, and piled into a car to hit the traditional supermarket, several blocks away. 

We could buy yogurt and milk at the  liquor store, two doors from our house, mind you. 

But this was in such sharp contrast to the varied foods sold in small shops on the Lower East Side of New York, where we lived back in the early 70's. Cheese shops, green grocers, bagel joints, bakeries, Italian delis, fruit-sellers, and bodegas in adundance.

Meanwhile, the joys of cafe-sitting with one coffee all day while plugged into the Internet? Disappearing, perhaps. As more ( out of work) people crowd in and dominate tables, coffee shops, themselves struggling, are fighting back, according to this piece about New York in the Wall Street Journal.  Maybe laptoppers should be welcomed only at long counters equipped with plugs, with a time limit derived from a complicated formula based on food/drink consumed.

Further:

Food desert as defined by Wikipedia:  "A food desert is a district with little or no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet, but often served by plenty of fast food restaurants."

On food deserts from Chicago-based Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting.

Today I Will Eat Persian Food

Today I will go to Pars Restaurant in Albuquerque where I will eat stewed eggplant with cinammony overtones, along with aromatic rice. I will have yogurt with chopped veggies on the side. I will have tea in glass cups without handles, but before that I will sip the yogurt , mint and fizzy water drink known as "dugh."

If I decide to indulge in what we once ate regularly in Iran, as Peace Corps vols, I will try chicken kabobs, the chicken marinated overnight in a tasty yogurt concoction. ( We became veggie-fishitarians in 1975...) The rice will be served with grilled tomatoes, a tiny dish of sumac, and a raw egg. I will mix the egg into the rice and sprinkle some sumac on top.

I will likely finish up with two tiny pieces of baklava, seasoned with rose water.

I will wear green.

The Tea House, Santa Fe

Now that we are all drawn outside to sit, sip, chat, snack, imbibe, one of my new favorite places in Santa Fe is the Tea House which, oddly, specializes in teas. ( It has all those other cafe-ish things as well. And it's nifty inside as well as outside.) The TH artwork pictured really says Polly, Put the Kettle On, doesn't it?

Love Florida Farmed Oysters? Not So Much.

Oysters are not for everyone. Many the friend has wrinkled a nose when I suggested, '"How 'bout some oysters?,” though there are exceptions. Years ago we were with a bona fide oyster pal eating at his favorite joint in New Orleans—the spectacular bivalves were maybe 25 cents each, with an equally non pricey pitcher of beer.

Generally I do not accompany shellfish with beer— crisp white wine or champagne, lemons, black pepper, a good baguette and butter, yes. On our trip around France working on a book about food heritage---buy it—we sampled the best.

My first venture into mega oyster land was here in Florida, where they grow their own, 90% of the FL crop, in Apalachicola.  We had joined friends at a Chinese bigger-than-Tao's Buffet, and were tucking into the clams in broth, mussels, shrimp wrapped around scallops, lightly battered and fried, when we were urged to try the oysters.

As I tend to avoid these huge places, having once experienced a bizarre post-buffet reaction, I hesitated re the oyster array. ( I never try the sushi, however fresh and delectable looking.) To my surprise, the oysters appeared to have been opened moments before, and a huge bowl of lemon wedges perched beside the their tray. They looked fine.

Alas, these easily renewable, sensibly processed oysters had no taste. Zero. And not a hint of the sea. No fresh ocean-breeze scent, no salt water hint. Zip. I tried two, just to be fair. Nada.

The clams, on the other hand, most likely also farmed, were delicious.

Tropical Thoughts

No easy Internet availability, but loads of  foodish experiences here in western central Florida, the Tampa Bay area.

--A bungalow garden with an ancient, tall, still-productive grapefruit tree. A huge fruit bonked me on the head and I retaliated by juicing it. Gorgeous.

---Sacred Lands, where the Spanish first toed the sands in Florida. You can visit this remarkable site,  and get a private tour from the exhaustively well-informed owner, Sundays at 4 pm. Shells dating back over 500 years litter the middens and mounds here---the place is also a licensed nursey that sells plants, and you can sample the local "black tea," made from a plant well known to native Americans, an Ilex, member of the holly family.

--A spectacular Vietnamese restaurant, Ha Long Bay, where we dined at a circular table mostly on Chinese Dim Sum, ironically. Yum. Otherwise,  I did not try the chewy-looking chicken feet, as they too closely resembled those of my pet hen from long ago. Our Vietnamese  friend who took us to the restaurant has a property on which he will plant only edible items, whether shrubs or trees or green plants. Many sweet potatoes, and some herbs and fruits unknown to us, from Vietnam.

--A feast with friends of both Maine and Florida lobsters, clams, mussels, crab legs, clam chowdah....OY!

--Noting that mango and papaya trees grow here like....weeds?

When in Palatka, Try the Rings

Florida's oldest diner is not a pretty sight. No one climbing up its steps would be surprised to learn it's been around since 1932. It looks it. Its garish awnings, dating from the 1960's, most likely, add nothing to its aura. The diner even sits in Florida's joke town, Palatka, cousin to Peoria. That said, be sure to stop here when in the area.

If you're a homemade onion ring fan, that is. Family and friends likely are weary of hearing me ask at eatery after eatery--”Are your onion rings made here, by any chance? From actual fresh cut onions? With a flaky batter?” The typical eagerly apologetic “No, but they're really good!” does not cut it with me.

There is no frozen onion ring on the planet worth eating, people.

The Palatka diner rings are so fresh, thick, golden and flaky, so perfectly dunked and then drained in hot veggie oil, there is no icky, soggy residue when they are served up hot, sweet and perfect.

Yes, I added some salt. That's allowed. 

Our party of 4, which had stopped just to stick our heads in the diner and move on, ordered two servings and ate them both right then and there, standing up at the counter. “ Just like at HoJo's in the olden days,” I said. Affirmative shakes of heads.

Superlative rings.

It's Angel's Diner, Palatka, Reid Street. Inland just a tad from St. Augustine.

Charmless, ( Tasteless,) Chain Food

In recent weeks,  for the first time I have ventured into two chain restaurants that purport to be "neighborhood" joints where everyone gleefully gathers after work, after the game, to enjoy, depending, authentic Italian food, or basic American edibles. 

The Olive Garden--"When you're here, you're Family--" featured huge salads made with mostly the white bits of iceberg lettuce, plus 3 canned black olives, tasteless tiny loaves of bread, limp, unlayered eggplant parmigiana, tasteless old calamari, and no olive oil on the table. When I asked for some, the waiter looked at me oddly, then returned with a small saucer filled with oil. If this is Family, give me Friends...

Applebee's--"Welcome to Applebee's"--served up fish and chips that were 90 percent beer batter and oil, 10 percent no-taste fish, fries pretending to be fresh cut---they had evidence of skin on them-- and barely passable cole slaw. The tartar sauce was the only item with any taste and even it seemed more like some kind of  overripe dip.

Two examples of American chain cuisine. OMG. Granted, I only had one meal in each, but I felt I had been served up prepared food ( from Sysco?) that had been heated up, not cooked. Tasteless stuff. Appalling when compared to actual, flavorful food. Amazingly bad.

Remember HoJo's luscious, freshly made onion rings? Anyone?

Anyone?

Chocolate As Our Meso-American Ancestors Intended

Yesterday I made my second visit to New Mexico's chocoholic mecca, cozy, eclectic Kakawa Chocolate House in Santa Fe. This time I drank a  tiny cup of silken Mayan Full Spice, a concoction that is superb, its taste best delineated  as "complex." The proprietor, Mark Sciscenti, is a self-described Chocolate Historian, who  creates elixirs ( drinks), handmade chocs, and wheat-free pastries.

Cacao, vanilla, chiles, all solid American foods, star in Mark's heavenly offerings, along with many other ingredients, other than wheat. ( For the heat averse, Mark makes a less pungent Modern Mexican drink that my pal enjoyed.)

While I was  sipping my elixir, I overheard Mark mention that he was seeking someone local willing to supply him with spelt and barley. Anyone?

NB  No "caca" was involved in the making of any products at the Chocolate House.

Obama Chooses Corned Beef as Friday's Transition Sandwich

Taking a break from naming the top grads of Yale and Hahvahd to posts in his ( can't come soon enough) administration, Barack Obama made a foray to Manny's Deli  on Friday to revel in the aromas of deli-land he has most likely missed. He departed fairly quickly with 3 corned beef sandwiches, possibly slathered with  mayo/mustard,  and 2 cherry pies.  Not a bad combo of urban ethnic and all-American patriotic Mom pastry, to my mind.

I would have loved to have overheard the chat with the hovering Secret Service guys before this excursion into "real life."

O: Gentlemen, I have a hankering to stroll over to Manny's for some lunch.
SS: With all due respect, sir, send a flunky. Think of the crowds, the streets having to close, the kvetching and hand-rolling....
O:  You think I should send  Rahm?
SS: Well he is, you know...
O: An actual Jew. Who might know his way around a deli.
SS: Well...
O: While I, a Hawaiian-American Muslim....
SS:  Ha, ha, sir, very good.
O: Guys---I know this is tough on you, but since I am PEOTUS, and I desire a deep sniff of bagels, dill pickles, peppery pastrami, potato salad, borscht, pumpernickel bread....
SS: The whole enchilada.
O: Sorry turn of phrase, but, YES.
SS: On it, sir.
O: OK--Let's schlepp!

World's Largest Restaurant

Apparently you and 6013 other diners can eat Syrian, Chinese or Indian food at the Damascus Gate Restaurant in a suburb of Damascus, Syria. The three year-old mega eatery recently made the Guinness records list.  Hard to say exactly what the place is like,  ( the restaurant's website is no longer up and running,) but the food is said to be good, and it looks as if customers there enjoy an indoor/outdoor experience. 

This place caught my eye because it's named for the  famous Damascus Gate built in Jerusalem's wall in the  1500's. The gate leads visitors directly into the Muslim market, and appears to bisect the Christian and Muslim sectors.   Somehow this is a metaphor to chew on.

Biggest is not always better, of course,  except in decisive American elections.

( Thanks tohttp://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/adjudications/080609_Largest_restaurant.aspx for photo.)

The Food Thing--Not A Top Political Theme

In these troubled times, it appears that businesses that offer "restorative" value will survive--places that  keep older cars up and running, for example, as nobody's buying new cars.  Consignment shops and discount clothiers  are doing well, apparently, though there will always be the Saks and Neiman Marcus customer...  Netflix is booming, as staying home becomes increasingly inviting (required.)  Full-service, sitdown restaurants are hurting----if you have to pay your mortgage and your utilities, and money is tight, no fancy restaurant meals, right? Yet what the biz calls  "no frills" eateries such as Chipotle are holding their own. I would guess that meatloaf and mashed potato comfort food joints are still getting customers as well.

Yet even eating at home is looking more expensive with fuel costs, world droughts, and more weighing in.  Unlike European shoppers, Americans are accustomed to "cheap" food in their supermarkets. Until fairly recently they have not valued the labor of the botanists and plant pathologists,  the farm workers and  farmers, the truckers and food vendors. Thus there is a reluctance to put tariffs on imported food goods --it could raise the cost to the consumer.

Read this September 23 AP piece out of  Lansing, Michigan---" Presidential candidate John McCain is heading into the heart of Michigan sugar beet country to visit a solar research center near Bay City.

But if he stopped Tuesday to talk to any sugar beet farmers, he likely wouldn't get a very warm welcome.
The GOP senator is a longtime critic of tariffs on imported sugar. He says they force consumers to pay more. McCain told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that he would "stop subsidizing sugar."

Ray VanDrissche (Van-DRISCH) of the grower-owned Michigan Sugar Company in Bay City says the tariffs are needed to keep other countries from dumping sugar here and wiping out domestic sugar growers.

He says McCain's remarks show he's "not very supportive of agriculture.""  ( Mind you, sugar, though important, is not a substantial food.)

Back in September, Thomas Frank offered up this in his article in the Wall Street Journal:

"For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies.

Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer's crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called "Freedom to Farm" and loan deficiency payments -- each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, "Get big or get out."

A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him.""

Even though no one on the planet can function without eating, food is often taken for granted, especially where widespread hunger is uncommon. With voters  riveted on taxes and economic woes, neither of the two Presidential candidates, frankly, is making noise about farm and food issues:

Sustainability, healthy soil and clean water, local sources of quality food, strengthened  family farms, reasonable prices for both grower and consumer!

Food is a boring topic,  some say, unless you and your family are without it. 

ps    Sugar is big business in the US.  ( From the same AP story: Sugar beets are a major commodity in Minnesota, North Dakota, Idaho and Michigan, and also are grown in California, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon and Washington state. Sugar cane is grown in Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii and Texas.)

Maine Farmers Sample Others' Provender

Our Mainiacal Summit Springs Farm-ers, Sonya and John, recently stepped out of their mud-encrusted togs and into clean jeans and headed out to savor what their colleagues in the growing biz were providing.

Here's John's report: 

"The Savoring the Harvest dinner was put together by the Oxford County Ag Group, who describe themselves as “a coalition of organizations and individuals who support agriculture in western Maine and believe working farms produce healthy economic growth“.  Along with local chefs and producers, they staged the dinner to celebrate the bounty of the season and promote the “buy local” message.
    As you all know by now, we love food--both the growing and the consuming--and this event was right up our alley.  The five-course extravaganza began with fresh bread from LolliePapa Farm in South Paris (the baker is Jeanette Baldridge, a friend and fellow vendor at the Bridgton Farmers’ Market) accompanied by a butter/herb spread and a goat cheese/roasted pepper spread, plus fresh crudites.  The official first course consisted of goat cheese and caramelized onion crustini plus  cucumber and green bean “guacamole“, roasted red potato stuffed with carrot puree, and a tomato bursting with quinoa taboule.
  Excellent creamy roasted pumpkin or corn and potato chowder came next,  followed up by a mixed green salad with maple mustard dressing.  Then  vegan veggie pot pies or a chicken breast with a pear sauce atop sweet potato “haystacks“.  We went for the chicken, and it was divine.  The sweetness of the pears and the sweetness and saltiness of the roasted sweet potatoes complimented each other wonderfully.  Dessert was another hard choice:  apple crisp or a 5-layer chocolate/raspberry/almond torte. We gorged on the towering torte.
    Throughout the feast, the chefs responsible for each item would come out  to explain to the crowd their creations,  reveal where the ingredients were from, and speak their piece about the importance of local eating:  the quality, the freshness, the satisfaction of helping local farmers and retailers, etc.  All in all, it was a wonderful evening of eating amazing food and mingling with other like-minded folks who care tremendously about the health of their bodies and of their communities. "

And as a bonus, our farmers discovered they need not drive into Portland in order to eat out well--they'll be trying the Rising Sun Café and Bakery or the McLaughlin Garden Café, both in South Paris; the Taste of Eden Café in Norway, an all vegan breakfast, soup, and sandwich establishment; the Brick Restaurant, a family-style place on Main Street in Norway; and Café Di Cocoa over in Bethel. 

(Norway and Paris are not as distant as one might think, apparently, though Beth-El has not been seen in at least 2000 years.)

(Diners at McLaughlin Garden Cafe .)

Food Entrepreneur Newman Slips Off Planet

Paul Newman, the actor who died this weekend, was also the founder of the Newman's Own brand of food products, begun as a lark, that has donated $200 million to charity. It started with salad dressing, brewed up with  writer pal A.E. Hotchner for Christmas gift-giving to family and friends, and now, in its organic configuration, Newman's Own Organics, even produces decent quality pet foods. 

Dare we call Newman a "foodie?" Perhaps, more accurately, a guy who liked decent eats.
According to a piece in the Hartford Courant by Linda Giuca, "He really loved good food, so he was really involved in the business," said Kirsten McKamy, who worked for Newman's Own for eight years. "He wasn't just a figurehead; he came up with ideas."

In 2006 Newman cconceived of another foodish notion--he partnered with chef Michel Nischan to create The Dressing Room restaurant next to the Westport Playhouse in, Westport, Connecticut. The restaurant celebrates regional American food and serves up local produce and meats.

Even Newman's last cinematic endeavor had a food theme-- he provided the narration for a documentary film called The Price of Sugar-- the movie explores the story of Haitian workers brought across the border into the Dominican Republic to labor in the sugar cane fields. Not surprisingly, they are housed in poor conditions, they toil 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, and are expected to be grateful. The Spanish priest who attempts to improve their lives has some success, then is reassigned to a post in Ethiopia.  ( Alas,  apparently there is no oil on the island of Hispaniola.)

At the end of the NYTimes obituary by Aljean Harmetz,  Newman is quoted: “We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

( Newman eats multiple hard-boiled eggs in the 1967 flick, Cool Hand Luke.)