Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA wasn't exactly what I was expecting. What I thought would be a bland warehouse with long neon-lit corridors and waxy linoleum floors turned out to be a grand, quasi-historic monument of a building. The foyer boasted red plush carpet and a curved twin stairway hugged by gold side-rails that led up to a mysterious second level, where glittering chandeliers hung from the cavernous ceilings. Unfortunately, all the glamor was somewhat tarnished by the addition of cheap aluminum folding chairs lining the walls of the entranceway, and the veritable Babel of foreigners gradually filling them and all the empty space around them. The foreigners were all well-dressed, perfumed, clean-cut and professional-looking. I cast an eye at all the tailored suits and stiletto heels and, in my denim skirt and thrift-store collared button-down, felt uncharacteristically underdressed. But there was a discernible note of nervousness in the air, a hint of desperate anticipation that soured the atmosphere, a cross between an opera house and a dentist's waiting room.
Like a plucky artisan in a sea of disinherited nobility, I acted cool and disinterested. I took a seat in an empty chair and opened up Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism (volume one, chapter one: The Origins of Dialectics). There was still a good hour-and-a-half until the time printed on my invitation, but already the foyer was beginning to fill to capacity. Ushers dressed in suits and pastel ties flitting through the crowd, instructing people to have a seat and wait. Most did, either sitting placidly with their arms crossed or fidgeting anxiously with their invitations. A small but tenacious contingent, though, strode boldly up the stairs, as if they expected a second, higher tier of administration in the balcony above the rabble. "Why are people going up the stairs? Do we need to go up the stairs?" someone called to an usher. "No, no... they're just going to use the bathroom. Please stay here and wait," the usher said, a note of frustration creeping into his overly polite voice, and then went to chase down the upstart stair-climbers.
More and more people drifted in, and the noise level in the foyer rose steadily. When the ushers finally announced that we were to form two lines, left staircase for guests and right staircase for oath-takers, there was hardly any room to move. A thick snake of bodies began pushing itself up both staircases, forcing the ushers to chirp in barely-contained panic: "Careful, please! No pushing! Please, be considerate of those around you. There's plenty of time. Please, please -- proceed slowly." The snake did not relent. It just kept churning steadily up the steps, only narrowing at the very top, where two ushers were checking invite letters and green cards. I began to feel sorry for the ushers and their desperate politeness, as if they'd somehow been transported from their modern-day office jobs into the 18th century to act as slave-overseers and were really apologetic about it. They all spoke clearly and distinctly, drawing out every syllable like adults addressing well-mannered children. To break the officious atmosphere, they would ask how we were doing, or which countries we were coming from. I imagined there were quite a few people with actual titles here, well-educated dignitaries, respected professionals who examined the ushers with world-weary eyes. If they'd been more comfortable with the language, they'd certainly have knocked these provincial bureaucrats down a peg or two, but for now they were forced to nod and murmur deferentially. When I reached the top of the stairs, the usher took my invite and flipped it over to make sure I'd filled in the "Signed at____" portion correctly. "Excellent!" she said, her stern face breaking into a warm, motherly smile because I'd written "Worcester" instead of the popular mistaken answer, "Boston." She had the same smile on her face as my third-grade math teacher. "Yeah, thanks," I said acidly, snatching the letter back. Her grin faltered, but she had to move on quickly to the next person in line. "Worcester. Change that from Boston to Worcester. Do you understand me? Do you speak English? Where's your interpreter?" I heard her saying to the wizened old Asian woman behind me.
Before going into the main room, I went through a small convention hall, where a conveyor belt of teen volunteers handed out packets of citizenship information ("Learn About Our Flag!", "A Citizen's Handbook," "A Welcome From the President") and miniature American flags. A quiver of panic ran through me when I saw the flags, and my mind flashed back to high school pep rallies. Trying to suppress my tenth-grade instinct to run and hide in the girl's bathroom, I went to find my seat.
The auditorium was even more regal than the entrance. Elaborate marble balustrades lined the walls, along with framed oil paintings of the Founding Fathers, and the ceiling was a richly-stuccoed neoclassical confection dotted with pink and blue frescoes. But the centerpiece of the room, hanging in the front and covering up an ancient brass organ, was a giant screen with a moving graphic of a billowing American flag, with the caption "Celebrate Citizenship, Celebrate America" emblazoned in the center. The young man next to me -- mid-twenties, slender, dressed in all black -- took a picture of it with his phone and started texting rapidly. There was something familiar about the wariness in his gray eyes, the slightly defensive hunch to his bony shoulders, the ironic smirk on the corner of his lips. Russian, I thought and knew he was thinking the same thing about me. True to the iron-clad law of "Slavic brotherhood," neither of us said anything or looked at each other again.
We waited. For ages. For three hours, while the auditorium filled up with over 700 people. I read about dialectics (from Plotinus to Hegel) until my eyes started to glaze over, then closed them and nodded off into fitful half-sleep, waking up every time the loop of patriotic music broke off, paused for a moment, then restarted. The thought crossed my mind that when airlines hold people hostage in cramped quarters with no food or water for hours on end, it's a scandal, but when the Department of Homeland Security does it, it's a celebration. In the balcony above us, the "guests" were snapping pictures, waving homemade signs, playing with their toy flags. At noon, the ceremony finally started. The PowerPoint projector switched from the billowing flag slide to a five-minute film on the importance of immigration in this country (presumably assembled before the whole Arizona debacle). Amid the kitschy stock footage, I noticed an archival clip of immigrants arriving on Ellis Island, the same clip I'd watched over a dozen times in Yuri Tsivian's Soviet film class and analyzed for coded ideological content. I was still trying to remember what Tsivian had said about the peculiarity of the camera angle, the way it made the static ship look like it was moving, when somebody got on stage and led us in the oath. Just like in school during the pledge of allegiance, I couldn't bring myself to repeat it. I mouthed some of it -- "...bear arms," "without any reservations in my heart," "so help me God" -- and blah blah blahed the rest. A judge came in and officially approved the motion to make us all citizens, and everyone started clapping. Some people waved their flags. The PowerPoint presentation moved to the final slide: a rousing rendition of "Proud to be an American" over video clips of happy children running through wheat fields. I desperately fought off the urge to crawl under my chair.
Afterwards, we had to wait some more, this time for the elderly, pregnant, and disabled to come get their citizenship certificates first. There was a small commotion in the row behind me; somebody had lost their invitation, which it was necessary to have in order to receive the certificate. The Indian man sitting behind me found it on the floor and handed it over to its owner, who breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"Now that would be funny," the Indian man said, "if you lost it at the very last minute. They'd probably put you in the back of the line, and you'd have to start all over again. Another ten years."
The owner of the invitation laughed goodnaturedly, then said in lightly Arabic-accented English, "Yes, no kidding. It really has been ten years for us. We started before 9/11, and then after that, you know... everything slowed down. I can't believe it's finally over. It feels so good."
And, just like that, I didn't know what I hated more -- the overblown ridiculousness of the ceremony, or my own smug, entitled detachment from it. I hadn't waited ten years for this moment. I hadn't even waited ten months. I didn't really give a damn, because as inconvenient as it was to carry a Ukrainian passport, I never really had to worry about being searched at airports, or having the wrong skin color or accent, or being threatened with deportation to a country where I'd be arrested just for thinking half the stuff I think, let alone writing it down for the world to see. All this time, I've operated under the assumption that I was different somehow, special, more in touch with the populist ethos via the grassroots immigrant experience. But when I had to spend the night in the Amsterdam airport because even a one-night layover required a visa, I didn't feel any solidarity with the various undesirables -- African, Asian, Muslim -- who slept in the cramped airport seats next to me. And I certainly didn't feel any solidarity with this motley group of foreigners around me, all dressed up and staring with happy, shining eyes at the giant illuminated screen. I just felt embarrassed, alienated, and alone. I guess when it comes down to it, I realized, I've been American all along.
The screen was raised but the projector stayed on, casting a red-white-and-blue veneer over a portrait of George Washington. I stumbled out of the auditorium in mild shock, picking up my certificate and stuffing it into my bag. Like a half-delirious debutante, I made my way down the red carpeted steps and wove through the throng of friends and family that had gathered in the foyer to welcome their born-again American loved ones into the world. I hadn't eaten since the Dunkin Donuts bagel twist at eight; it was now close to two. Without stopping or looking back, I trotted hurriedly to the train station, "Proud to be an American" still pumping through my head.
When I got back into Boston, I was equal parts starving and exhausted, so I grabbed a Milky Way from a kiosk in the subway. I handed a dollar to the young Arabic-looking man working the counter and turned to go, but he called after me. I turned back, reaching for my wallet thinking I'd underpaid, but he met me with a half-sly, half-shy, all-flirty smile.
"Where are you from?" he asked sweetly.
"Ukraine," I replied, then almost slapped myself. Why did I still automatically do that? Why couldn't I just let go of these stupid essentialist truths? Of this semi-constructed foreigner persona? Why couldn't I let myself blend in?
"Oh? You here for school? How do you like Boston?"
"Yeah. Uh, it's nice."
"What's your name?"
I paused. He was looking at me with so much openness and adoration, it was hard to believe. I wanted desperately to tell him what happened today, to explain the mixture of absurdity and mortified revulsion I felt during those four long hours. To make a genuinely human connection with someone other than the only person I could ever truly count on to understand me, the scathingly ironic, rootless cosmopolitan voice inside my head. Instead, I mustered up all the coy femininity I could and gave him a friendly smile.
"I'll see you around," I said, and went to catch my train.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Hollywood will destroy us all
I keep meaning to write about my newfound obsession with late Milos Forman films; specifically, Amadeus, Leibniz, and the rhetoric of failure as theorized by 17th century theology. Instead, I spent today cleaning the house and watching Julie and Julia, as a result of which this post will be about... you guessed it.
Dinner.
When it comes to dining alone, I'm as guilty as the next lazy foodie of taking startlingly little care of what goes into my stomach. Often on solitary nights, "dinner" is an umbrella term for such diverse crimes against mindful eating as: microwave popcorn, raw veggie sausage, eggs (just eggs!)... and, when the old mood's really taken a nosedive, the classic sweet-savory-carby trifecta of Ben & Jerry's, brick of cheese, and a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Don't judge me. But once in awhile, and especially after watching the lovable culinary antics of Meryl-Streep-as-Julia-Child (and Amy Adams as, swear to God same exact face as a girl I went to college with, zomg!!), I start to feel ashamed that I always save my kitchen skills for the sometimes-appreciative masses, but somehow rarely think to splurge on myself. Tonight was one of those nights that I needed to be reminded of the independent existence of my own taste buds, apart from the influence of elaborate homecooked meals for friends and loved ones.
There is one major problem, however, with the cooking-for-one endeavor. When planning a meal for others, part of the fun is guessing their tastes and putting together something that syncs up, not just flavor-wise, but in sociological terms -- will it be something fancy, pre-plated, with garnish? quick-and-dirty finger food? a cheeky haute-cuisine adaptation of an old childhood classic? Especially since I never had anything resembling a standard American baseline to work from (I still have to read the box to figure out how to make Kraft Mac & Cheese or an Oscar Meyer hot dog), my flexibility in this respect is dizzying. I can happily cook anything for anyone, from just about any regional and class background... but when it comes to what it is that I want, I tend to start complicating things with all manner of useless intellectualism and second-guessing, all of which just leaves me starving and scraping clean a can of refried beans at 9 o'clock at night.
Luckily, this evening, I had a few solid parameters to work around. First was the fact that, probably due to Cinco de Mayo and summer being generally around the corner, I've recently become obsessed with all manner of salsas. Since I learned to roast peppers, I've been excited to show off by making things like a really tasty grilled pineapple and pepper salsa (bee-tee-dubs, this is a fantastic food site for the non-fussy non-pro) a few nights back, to go with some otherwise boring but oh-so-healthy broiled salmon. Second, in an early scene in Julie and Julia, Amy Adams is whipping up something that looked to me like salsa on bruschetta, which reminded me that I still had some red onion and cilantro in the fridge that needed using up fast. And lastly, after last night's epic dinner here -- an enormous bloody rare burger smothered in boursin and grilled onions/mushrooms, fries, onion rings, and a chocolate malted frappe -- I was understandably concerned aboutgout fresh vegetable intake.
So, in the interest in simplicity and healthfulness, this is what I had for dinner tonight: Mango avocado salsa on toasted pita bread, with homemade sangria. Proportions scaled to feed one person*; double for a cute, funky, dressed-down light dinner date that will most probably get you drunk (and/or laid!).
Mango avocado salsa
1/2 mango, diced
1/2 avocado, diced
1/2 beefsteak tomato, diced
1/4 red onion, ... you get the picture
1 Anaheim hot pepper, seeded, deveined, etc.
juice of 1/2 lime
juice of 1/4 orange
splash of olive oil
handful of cilantro, roughly chopped
pinch of kosher salt
Mix all of the above in bowl and refrigerate. In the meantime, toast some pita bread. I ended up experimenting (inadvertently, ahem) with lightly-toasted soft pita pockets filled with salsa and hard-toasted homemade pita chips loaded up with salsa. Though it was the result of a timing fluke, I actually preferred the over-toasted pita that led to chips. The crunchy chips/sweet-tangy-spicy salsa is just too perfect a combination to pass up.
Sangria
1/2 bottle of old/cheap red wine
1/2 bottle Orangina (or, in my cheapskate case, Stop & Shop brand orange seltzer)
splash spiced rum (Sailor Jerry!)
1 small apple, chopped
1/2 orange, chopped
1 lime, cut into wedges
ice
Combine all of the above in a pitcher. Or, in my aforementioned cheapskate case, an old coffee can, because you've never bothered to buy yourself a real pitcher. Cover, refrigerate for about an hour... or however long you can wait to start drinking. Yes, this serves one, on a Wednesday night, if that one is me.
And, for dessert, pick out and devour the fruit that's been soaking up all that alcohol. With some ice cream, maybe, if you're still lucid enough to be concerned with appropriate pairings. Otherwise, kick back with the entire David Bowie discography and call it a successful singles night.
Bon appetite!
*Sidenote: may require late-night raid on the cheese drawer and an impromptu peanut butter + fig jam + feta sandwich to supplement. So much for health!
Dinner.
When it comes to dining alone, I'm as guilty as the next lazy foodie of taking startlingly little care of what goes into my stomach. Often on solitary nights, "dinner" is an umbrella term for such diverse crimes against mindful eating as: microwave popcorn, raw veggie sausage, eggs (just eggs!)... and, when the old mood's really taken a nosedive, the classic sweet-savory-carby trifecta of Ben & Jerry's, brick of cheese, and a bag of salt and vinegar chips. Don't judge me. But once in awhile, and especially after watching the lovable culinary antics of Meryl-Streep-as-Julia-Child (and Amy Adams as, swear to God same exact face as a girl I went to college with, zomg!!), I start to feel ashamed that I always save my kitchen skills for the sometimes-appreciative masses, but somehow rarely think to splurge on myself. Tonight was one of those nights that I needed to be reminded of the independent existence of my own taste buds, apart from the influence of elaborate homecooked meals for friends and loved ones.
There is one major problem, however, with the cooking-for-one endeavor. When planning a meal for others, part of the fun is guessing their tastes and putting together something that syncs up, not just flavor-wise, but in sociological terms -- will it be something fancy, pre-plated, with garnish? quick-and-dirty finger food? a cheeky haute-cuisine adaptation of an old childhood classic? Especially since I never had anything resembling a standard American baseline to work from (I still have to read the box to figure out how to make Kraft Mac & Cheese or an Oscar Meyer hot dog), my flexibility in this respect is dizzying. I can happily cook anything for anyone, from just about any regional and class background... but when it comes to what it is that I want, I tend to start complicating things with all manner of useless intellectualism and second-guessing, all of which just leaves me starving and scraping clean a can of refried beans at 9 o'clock at night.
Luckily, this evening, I had a few solid parameters to work around. First was the fact that, probably due to Cinco de Mayo and summer being generally around the corner, I've recently become obsessed with all manner of salsas. Since I learned to roast peppers, I've been excited to show off by making things like a really tasty grilled pineapple and pepper salsa (bee-tee-dubs, this is a fantastic food site for the non-fussy non-pro) a few nights back, to go with some otherwise boring but oh-so-healthy broiled salmon. Second, in an early scene in Julie and Julia, Amy Adams is whipping up something that looked to me like salsa on bruschetta, which reminded me that I still had some red onion and cilantro in the fridge that needed using up fast. And lastly, after last night's epic dinner here -- an enormous bloody rare burger smothered in boursin and grilled onions/mushrooms, fries, onion rings, and a chocolate malted frappe -- I was understandably concerned about
So, in the interest in simplicity and healthfulness, this is what I had for dinner tonight: Mango avocado salsa on toasted pita bread, with homemade sangria. Proportions scaled to feed one person*; double for a cute, funky, dressed-down light dinner date that will most probably get you drunk (and/or laid!).
Mango avocado salsa
1/2 mango, diced
1/2 avocado, diced
1/2 beefsteak tomato, diced
1/4 red onion, ... you get the picture
1 Anaheim hot pepper, seeded, deveined, etc.
juice of 1/2 lime
juice of 1/4 orange
splash of olive oil
handful of cilantro, roughly chopped
pinch of kosher salt
Mix all of the above in bowl and refrigerate. In the meantime, toast some pita bread. I ended up experimenting (inadvertently, ahem) with lightly-toasted soft pita pockets filled with salsa and hard-toasted homemade pita chips loaded up with salsa. Though it was the result of a timing fluke, I actually preferred the over-toasted pita that led to chips. The crunchy chips/sweet-tangy-spicy salsa is just too perfect a combination to pass up.
Sangria
1/2 bottle of old/cheap red wine
1/2 bottle Orangina (or, in my cheapskate case, Stop & Shop brand orange seltzer)
splash spiced rum (Sailor Jerry!)
1 small apple, chopped
1/2 orange, chopped
1 lime, cut into wedges
ice
Combine all of the above in a pitcher. Or, in my aforementioned cheapskate case, an old coffee can, because you've never bothered to buy yourself a real pitcher. Cover, refrigerate for about an hour... or however long you can wait to start drinking. Yes, this serves one, on a Wednesday night, if that one is me.
And, for dessert, pick out and devour the fruit that's been soaking up all that alcohol. With some ice cream, maybe, if you're still lucid enough to be concerned with appropriate pairings. Otherwise, kick back with the entire David Bowie discography and call it a successful singles night.
Bon appetite!
*Sidenote: may require late-night raid on the cheese drawer and an impromptu peanut butter + fig jam + feta sandwich to supplement. So much for health!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Vanitas
Given the unseasonably warm weather this spring (80s in early May?), the citizens of the greater Boston area have shed their down comforter coats early to reveal both their soft white underbellies and snazzy new summer attire. The other day on the T, that neat cross-section of urban fashion, I noticed something a bit surprising: the appearance of high-waisted shorts and skirts... not on out-of-touch grandmas or soccer moms, but ultra-hip kids.
Maybe this is only surprising for my generation. I came of age at the peak of the great Low-Riding Pants Phenomenon of 1998-2002, when the mass popularization of the thong coincided with Old Navy jingles set to limbo music, enticing all 12-25 year-olds with the provocative query: "How low can you go?" I'm fairly certain that every sartorial cohort tends to place special and totally arbitrary emphasis on one particular part of the body. Today, that part of the body appears to be the legs: whether stuffed into skin-tight skinny jeans or leggings, highlighted by big clunky boots, or exposed via micro-shorts. But back in my day, legs were irrelevant, practically canceled out of existence by shapeless, baggy boyfriend jeans or voluminous circus-tent raver pants. The corporal focal point of my generation was -- appropriately enough for the early adopters of blogging technology -- the navel, flaunted through a combination of midriff-bearing tops and low, low, low-slung bottoms. To wear any pant, skirt, or short that rose higher than the hipbone was unthinkable. To be caught dead in a lower-body garment that actually covered the navel -- anathema.
Which is why seeing hip young things wearing skirts and shorts that creep up into the rib region is a so disturbing to me. Not because I think it looks stupid or weird (what fashion trend doesn't?), but because this is the first time in my relatively short life that I've been directly confronted by the cyclicality of fashion, the way it insidiously perpetuates itself by replacing one look, line, or silhouette by its opposite, thus casting all conservative hangers-on of the past into the dreaded territory of "so last season." Skinny jeans, this generation's answer to the wide-leg carpenter pants I still own and wear, were a harbinger, but the high waist silhouette is the nail in the coffin, the done deal of the late 90s as anything but a retro throwback to be ironically appropriated by future fashion aficionados.
But it's not just clothes that follow this pattern; everywhere you look, fashion is the guiding force that's quietly, relentlessly shaping our daily lives. Fifteen years ago, nobody outside of a 20-mile radius in Northern California gave a damn about organic produce; now, "green" and "organic" are the words of the day, used to move everything from vegetables to shoes and cars. Product packaging has changed, the color palette shifting from eye-catching neons to earthy browns and greens, the material mimicking Spartan textures like cardboard and burlap. Cheetos bags now come adorned with blurbs about the wholesome goodness of American corn. Overnight, we all became concerned environmentalists, just like, overnight, we decided that low-rise jeans look trashy, while high-waisted shorts look sophisticated and cool.
Except, "we" obviously didn't actually decide anything -- it was a complex interaction between a few avant-garde cognoscenti, a savvy team of marketing middlemen, and the massive weight of the American advertising machine. Countless focus groups, meticulous market research, and a sum total of months, perhaps years of intense number-crunching have all come together to instill in any sensible young person the absolute necessity of buying organic, rBGH-free yogurt from Whole Foods, as well as the equally inalienable necessity of buying high-waisted silk sailor shorts from Urban Outfitters. We sail through the aisles and proudly claim our product of choice, resting assured that we, unlike those unwashed masses who guzzle Go-Gurt and sport flares from last century, are in the know. And next season, when the restless winds of fashion again pick up and shift, we'll be forced to internalize a new necessity or risk becoming the cavemen fashion victims we despise.
In short, forget safety pins, leather jackets, and torn fishnets. The truly subversive fashion choice for this season's sartorial rebel:
Maybe this is only surprising for my generation. I came of age at the peak of the great Low-Riding Pants Phenomenon of 1998-2002, when the mass popularization of the thong coincided with Old Navy jingles set to limbo music, enticing all 12-25 year-olds with the provocative query: "How low can you go?" I'm fairly certain that every sartorial cohort tends to place special and totally arbitrary emphasis on one particular part of the body. Today, that part of the body appears to be the legs: whether stuffed into skin-tight skinny jeans or leggings, highlighted by big clunky boots, or exposed via micro-shorts. But back in my day, legs were irrelevant, practically canceled out of existence by shapeless, baggy boyfriend jeans or voluminous circus-tent raver pants. The corporal focal point of my generation was -- appropriately enough for the early adopters of blogging technology -- the navel, flaunted through a combination of midriff-bearing tops and low, low, low-slung bottoms. To wear any pant, skirt, or short that rose higher than the hipbone was unthinkable. To be caught dead in a lower-body garment that actually covered the navel -- anathema.
Which is why seeing hip young things wearing skirts and shorts that creep up into the rib region is a so disturbing to me. Not because I think it looks stupid or weird (what fashion trend doesn't?), but because this is the first time in my relatively short life that I've been directly confronted by the cyclicality of fashion, the way it insidiously perpetuates itself by replacing one look, line, or silhouette by its opposite, thus casting all conservative hangers-on of the past into the dreaded territory of "so last season." Skinny jeans, this generation's answer to the wide-leg carpenter pants I still own and wear, were a harbinger, but the high waist silhouette is the nail in the coffin, the done deal of the late 90s as anything but a retro throwback to be ironically appropriated by future fashion aficionados.
But it's not just clothes that follow this pattern; everywhere you look, fashion is the guiding force that's quietly, relentlessly shaping our daily lives. Fifteen years ago, nobody outside of a 20-mile radius in Northern California gave a damn about organic produce; now, "green" and "organic" are the words of the day, used to move everything from vegetables to shoes and cars. Product packaging has changed, the color palette shifting from eye-catching neons to earthy browns and greens, the material mimicking Spartan textures like cardboard and burlap. Cheetos bags now come adorned with blurbs about the wholesome goodness of American corn. Overnight, we all became concerned environmentalists, just like, overnight, we decided that low-rise jeans look trashy, while high-waisted shorts look sophisticated and cool.
Except, "we" obviously didn't actually decide anything -- it was a complex interaction between a few avant-garde cognoscenti, a savvy team of marketing middlemen, and the massive weight of the American advertising machine. Countless focus groups, meticulous market research, and a sum total of months, perhaps years of intense number-crunching have all come together to instill in any sensible young person the absolute necessity of buying organic, rBGH-free yogurt from Whole Foods, as well as the equally inalienable necessity of buying high-waisted silk sailor shorts from Urban Outfitters. We sail through the aisles and proudly claim our product of choice, resting assured that we, unlike those unwashed masses who guzzle Go-Gurt and sport flares from last century, are in the know. And next season, when the restless winds of fashion again pick up and shift, we'll be forced to internalize a new necessity or risk becoming the cavemen fashion victims we despise.
In short, forget safety pins, leather jackets, and torn fishnets. The truly subversive fashion choice for this season's sartorial rebel:
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Correlation, causation, snack-cakes
Apropos to all this foodie business...
I recently read this article in The Atlantic about the rise of obesity in America. This is how it starts:
The article goes on to tell the familiar story of the alarming increase in overweight Americans, from 45% of the total population in 1960 to 68% in 2008. It lays out the various problems in determining why the so-called obesity epidemic is happening and possible methods of curbing it. But what struck me was that opening paragraph. Read that passage again, skimming for content and making a few obvious extrapolations: in the 40s and 50s, Americans are smoking like chimneys... in the 60s, people finally wise up to lung cancer and start to cut down on smoking... around that time, they also start getting chubbier.... Today, Americans are probably the most stringent non-smokers of all the developed Western nations. We're also the fattest. Um. Wait.
I've seen scores of articles on obesity that compare today's food industry to the tobacco industry of yore -- manipulating consumers through advertising, tinkering with the addictive properties of their products, shadily shilling to kids and minorities. But nowhere have I seen anyone discuss the very glaring fact that heavy smoking drastically curtails appetite, both physiologically and physically, giving people less time to snack. Could it be that all this talk of increased sedentary lifestyles, overgrown portions, high fructose corn syrup, etc., are all missing the point? Could it be that, since the coming of modernity, we denizens of the developed, industrialized world are simply bored and looking for a quick, relatively cheap drug to keep us riding a dopamine high, and various mass-producing industries are happy to feed that need? Could it be that nicotine once did the trick, and now it's soda and family-sized Cheetos bags? Everyone loves to cite the "French paradox" as some amazing mystery of modern dieting. How is it that a society priding itself on staples like cheese, baguettes, and macarons can have the slimmest women in all of Europe? Is it because they have a happier, healthier, granola-crunchier relationship to their food? All signs point to not really. But, they sure do smoke a lot!
Anyway, I don't think I'm saying anything super revelatory, but it's strange that there hasn't been more publicized discussion of this. Given that recent efforts to cut down on smoking in various puff-happy parts of the world -- for instance, Japan -- have coincided with sudden mysterious spikes in obesity levels in those countries, speculation invites itself. What if, rather than plastering restaurants with calorie counts or encouraging unrealistic levels of athleticism in the general population, the solution to this "epidemic" can only come with the invention of a new drug, addictive and short-term euphoric but not detrimental to health? A real-life soma, perhaps? Scoff at the dystopian element if you will, but mark my words...
I recently read this article in The Atlantic about the rise of obesity in America. This is how it starts:
In 1948, Congress doled out $5 billion to Europe in the first installment of the Marshall Plan, the World Health Organization was born, a simian astronaut named Albert I was launched into the atmosphere (he died), and doctors in Framingham, Massachusetts, an American everytown that once was a seat of the abolitionist movement, began a pioneering study of cardiovascular disease. Its initial results helped persuade the American Heart Association, in 1960, to push Americans to smoke fewer cigarettes and, a year later, to cut down on cholesterol. Today, thanks to a long-running public-health campaign, Americans have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, they smoke less, and fewer die from cardiovascular disease. In fact, from 1980 to 2000, the rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease fell by at least half in most developed countries.
Would that we had had similar success battling obesity.
The article goes on to tell the familiar story of the alarming increase in overweight Americans, from 45% of the total population in 1960 to 68% in 2008. It lays out the various problems in determining why the so-called obesity epidemic is happening and possible methods of curbing it. But what struck me was that opening paragraph. Read that passage again, skimming for content and making a few obvious extrapolations: in the 40s and 50s, Americans are smoking like chimneys... in the 60s, people finally wise up to lung cancer and start to cut down on smoking... around that time, they also start getting chubbier.... Today, Americans are probably the most stringent non-smokers of all the developed Western nations. We're also the fattest. Um. Wait.
I've seen scores of articles on obesity that compare today's food industry to the tobacco industry of yore -- manipulating consumers through advertising, tinkering with the addictive properties of their products, shadily shilling to kids and minorities. But nowhere have I seen anyone discuss the very glaring fact that heavy smoking drastically curtails appetite, both physiologically and physically, giving people less time to snack. Could it be that all this talk of increased sedentary lifestyles, overgrown portions, high fructose corn syrup, etc., are all missing the point? Could it be that, since the coming of modernity, we denizens of the developed, industrialized world are simply bored and looking for a quick, relatively cheap drug to keep us riding a dopamine high, and various mass-producing industries are happy to feed that need? Could it be that nicotine once did the trick, and now it's soda and family-sized Cheetos bags? Everyone loves to cite the "French paradox" as some amazing mystery of modern dieting. How is it that a society priding itself on staples like cheese, baguettes, and macarons can have the slimmest women in all of Europe? Is it because they have a happier, healthier, granola-crunchier relationship to their food? All signs point to not really. But, they sure do smoke a lot!
Anyway, I don't think I'm saying anything super revelatory, but it's strange that there hasn't been more publicized discussion of this. Given that recent efforts to cut down on smoking in various puff-happy parts of the world -- for instance, Japan -- have coincided with sudden mysterious spikes in obesity levels in those countries, speculation invites itself. What if, rather than plastering restaurants with calorie counts or encouraging unrealistic levels of athleticism in the general population, the solution to this "epidemic" can only come with the invention of a new drug, addictive and short-term euphoric but not detrimental to health? A real-life soma, perhaps? Scoff at the dystopian element if you will, but mark my words...
Navel grazing pt. 2: lunch
A friend of mine once said, of the weird and unpalatable-to-Westerners traditional Czech foods like lardy pork and fried cheese -- "It's a starvation culture. Any place that's experienced hunger is going to have a different relationship to food."
That idea struck an unintentionally personal chord in me. In college, I went through a year-long experimental phase of eating no more than 1,000 calories a day. After losing 40 pounds and ending up the spitting image of an Auschwitz internee, my attitude to food had, quite fittingly, begun to resemble that of the Eastern European starvation culture from which I originate. Suddenly, something like chopped raw onion or cabbage was no longer just an ingredient -- with a little seasoning, it could actually function as a meal. More importantly, no scrap of leftover could go to waste. After years of mocking my grandmother and mother for their propensity to polish off foods that had obviously already gone south, I found myself blithely biting into soft, acrid fruit or hunks of stale, mold-speckled bread, all in the name of stubborn starvation-induced frugality.
A rather grim beginning for a lighthearted food blog entry, I realize, but this really does confirm for me that taste is nothing more a mechanistic response to environment and has the ability to get radically rewired. Though I'm fortunately no longer pathological about it, I still find that my attitude to food has a decidedly peasanty aura: when I cook, I like to make big, hearty meals that can get repurposed into creative leftover cuisine, and my favorite dishes tend to be eat-again things like soups, stews, and casseroles. I'm also obsessive about not letting groceries go bad, but actively tailoring my cooking to make use of anything that's in danger of entering expired territory. Lunch is the perfect example of this in action. It's a liminal meal, and as such is forgiving of a bit of derivativeness from the night before. When I cook during the week, my lunches tend to be comprised of dinner leftovers, sometimes hastily refurbished1, and sometimes as-is hunks of meat, fish, and veggies. On weekends, though, lunchtime is the time for quick and tasty pantry-clearing, ranging from a simple pasta sauce concoction2, to the more time-consuming strata or panade3.
At the midpoint of sophistication between these two culinary poles stands the exotic-sounding but actually stupidly easy and rapturously delicious Spanish omelet, otherwise known as frittata. I love frittata. It's the dish I make most frequently, and the thing I could happily eat every day, if the thought of skyrocketing cholesterol didn't give me slight pause. The greatest thing about frittata is that you can put literally anything in it -- and as much or as little of that thing/things as you want -- and it will be filling and tasty and good. All you need is some eggs and cheese, and the rest can be totally improvised. The basic recipe is this: take anywhere from 4 to 8 eggs (I usually use 5 for a 2-person meal), beat them up in a bowl with some seasoning and grated hard cheese of your choice, and throw them in an oven-proof pan along with whatever other ingredients you want to use (cooked veggies, meats, toasted bread cubes, herbs, greens). On medium heat, shovel the mess around the pan until the eggs begin to form curds but are still pretty wet on top (~3-5 min). Top with a generous handful of shredded cheese and pop under a broiler for a few minutes, or until the cheese on top is golden-brown and the omelet has pulled away from the pan. Let cool slightly. Take a moment to appreciate your tremendously privileged, well-fed position in life. Eat.
1 Take: a handful of shredded roast chicken bits, the last of the arugula beginning to wilt and cling to the bottom of the bag, the wedge of cheese that spared my knuckles from being brutalized by the grater. Make pasta, reserve cup of hot cooking water. Put arugula on bottom of large microwave container, finely dice cheese & throw on top of arugula. Pour hot pasta & water on top of greens and cheese, add a pat of butter, chicken & a pinch of preferred herbs & spices. Close container, shake, toss in school bag and waltz out the door.
2 The last roasted red pepper and the marinating liquid in the jar (I've since learned to make them yourself: highly recommended) + leftover soy chorizo from Vegetarian Wednesdays (new household tradition) + 3 cloves of garlic, minced + generous dousing of paprika & cayenne + olive oil and a med-heat pan = delicious quick pasta sauce.
3 Technically, this was my dinner last night and as such does not belong in the "lunch" category, but I still love my version of this recipe too much not to share: Take that half a loaf of stale bread you've got lying around your pantry/freezer, leftover cooked veggies (I used marinated & roasted broccoli, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini, and sweet potato), pantry protein of choice (a can of chickpeas), any other deliciousness you might have in reserve (a hunk of leftover polenta), a cup or so of shredded cheese (Parm & aged cheddar), and some stock. Cube bread, drizzle with olive oil, toast. Layer on bottom of 2-quart casserole dish, add layer of veggie filling, layer of cheese, and another layer of bread-filling-cheese. Top with hot stock, bake covered in 350-degree oven for 45 minutes, uncover & bake for another 15, top with more cheese & stick under broiler for another few minutes or so. Let cool 10 min, garnish with a little chopped greenery (basil) and dig in.
That idea struck an unintentionally personal chord in me. In college, I went through a year-long experimental phase of eating no more than 1,000 calories a day. After losing 40 pounds and ending up the spitting image of an Auschwitz internee, my attitude to food had, quite fittingly, begun to resemble that of the Eastern European starvation culture from which I originate. Suddenly, something like chopped raw onion or cabbage was no longer just an ingredient -- with a little seasoning, it could actually function as a meal. More importantly, no scrap of leftover could go to waste. After years of mocking my grandmother and mother for their propensity to polish off foods that had obviously already gone south, I found myself blithely biting into soft, acrid fruit or hunks of stale, mold-speckled bread, all in the name of stubborn starvation-induced frugality.
A rather grim beginning for a lighthearted food blog entry, I realize, but this really does confirm for me that taste is nothing more a mechanistic response to environment and has the ability to get radically rewired. Though I'm fortunately no longer pathological about it, I still find that my attitude to food has a decidedly peasanty aura: when I cook, I like to make big, hearty meals that can get repurposed into creative leftover cuisine, and my favorite dishes tend to be eat-again things like soups, stews, and casseroles. I'm also obsessive about not letting groceries go bad, but actively tailoring my cooking to make use of anything that's in danger of entering expired territory. Lunch is the perfect example of this in action. It's a liminal meal, and as such is forgiving of a bit of derivativeness from the night before. When I cook during the week, my lunches tend to be comprised of dinner leftovers, sometimes hastily refurbished1, and sometimes as-is hunks of meat, fish, and veggies. On weekends, though, lunchtime is the time for quick and tasty pantry-clearing, ranging from a simple pasta sauce concoction2, to the more time-consuming strata or panade3.
At the midpoint of sophistication between these two culinary poles stands the exotic-sounding but actually stupidly easy and rapturously delicious Spanish omelet, otherwise known as frittata. I love frittata. It's the dish I make most frequently, and the thing I could happily eat every day, if the thought of skyrocketing cholesterol didn't give me slight pause. The greatest thing about frittata is that you can put literally anything in it -- and as much or as little of that thing/things as you want -- and it will be filling and tasty and good. All you need is some eggs and cheese, and the rest can be totally improvised. The basic recipe is this: take anywhere from 4 to 8 eggs (I usually use 5 for a 2-person meal), beat them up in a bowl with some seasoning and grated hard cheese of your choice, and throw them in an oven-proof pan along with whatever other ingredients you want to use (cooked veggies, meats, toasted bread cubes, herbs, greens). On medium heat, shovel the mess around the pan until the eggs begin to form curds but are still pretty wet on top (~3-5 min). Top with a generous handful of shredded cheese and pop under a broiler for a few minutes, or until the cheese on top is golden-brown and the omelet has pulled away from the pan. Let cool slightly. Take a moment to appreciate your tremendously privileged, well-fed position in life. Eat.
1 Take: a handful of shredded roast chicken bits, the last of the arugula beginning to wilt and cling to the bottom of the bag, the wedge of cheese that spared my knuckles from being brutalized by the grater. Make pasta, reserve cup of hot cooking water. Put arugula on bottom of large microwave container, finely dice cheese & throw on top of arugula. Pour hot pasta & water on top of greens and cheese, add a pat of butter, chicken & a pinch of preferred herbs & spices. Close container, shake, toss in school bag and waltz out the door.
2 The last roasted red pepper and the marinating liquid in the jar (I've since learned to make them yourself: highly recommended) + leftover soy chorizo from Vegetarian Wednesdays (new household tradition) + 3 cloves of garlic, minced + generous dousing of paprika & cayenne + olive oil and a med-heat pan = delicious quick pasta sauce.
3 Technically, this was my dinner last night and as such does not belong in the "lunch" category, but I still love my version of this recipe too much not to share: Take that half a loaf of stale bread you've got lying around your pantry/freezer, leftover cooked veggies (I used marinated & roasted broccoli, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini, and sweet potato), pantry protein of choice (a can of chickpeas), any other deliciousness you might have in reserve (a hunk of leftover polenta), a cup or so of shredded cheese (Parm & aged cheddar), and some stock. Cube bread, drizzle with olive oil, toast. Layer on bottom of 2-quart casserole dish, add layer of veggie filling, layer of cheese, and another layer of bread-filling-cheese. Top with hot stock, bake covered in 350-degree oven for 45 minutes, uncover & bake for another 15, top with more cheese & stick under broiler for another few minutes or so. Let cool 10 min, garnish with a little chopped greenery (basil) and dig in.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The poetics of space
A house that is not my house. A bed that is not my bed. A soap that is not my soap. An eight-point compass with the directions rearranged. A globe that is not my globe. A fistful of waxy colored candy that is not my fistful of waxy colored candy. A sense of longing that is not my sense of longing. An ice-chip fisheye that is not the playing marble of my wayward youth. An orange peeled on a plate. A needle that is not my needle. A crooked door that is not my crooked door. A hush that is not my hush.
My biggest problem is these lyrical limbs, doctor. They're forever tangentially stretching, unfolding to encompass the expanse of one discrete space, yet always forgetting that even in the narrowest of confines, there exist hairline fissures deeper than ocean trenches, garbage pails more cornucopic than banquet halls, viscous stains more commodious than the cosmos. And always always always, at the moment of maximum contact, in the cradling embrace of the wood and plaster nook in the fleshy, fibrous crook, there's that rough slap from the back of the turned-away mirror, like the reddish blackness of the inner lid. You might say it's the place you can't see that you see from, (-- though you could say that about the overexposed negatives of someone else's vacation photos), the point at the fulcrum that ensures the pivot of the hinge, (the double-blind taste tests of someone else's dreams...) the desperate jump that proves the paltry surmountability of the abyss. (A door that is not a door to a house that is not a house.) I guess you might say that's the place I've been looking for, doctor, through the endless tessellated refractions on the right side of the mirror. Help me find it. That elusive blind alley where sight begins.
My biggest problem is these lyrical limbs, doctor. They're forever tangentially stretching, unfolding to encompass the expanse of one discrete space, yet always forgetting that even in the narrowest of confines, there exist hairline fissures deeper than ocean trenches, garbage pails more cornucopic than banquet halls, viscous stains more commodious than the cosmos. And always always always, at the moment of maximum contact, in the cradling embrace of the wood and plaster nook in the fleshy, fibrous crook, there's that rough slap from the back of the turned-away mirror, like the reddish blackness of the inner lid. You might say it's the place you can't see that you see from, (-- though you could say that about the overexposed negatives of someone else's vacation photos), the point at the fulcrum that ensures the pivot of the hinge, (the double-blind taste tests of someone else's dreams...) the desperate jump that proves the paltry surmountability of the abyss. (A door that is not a door to a house that is not a house.) I guess you might say that's the place I've been looking for, doctor, through the endless tessellated refractions on the right side of the mirror. Help me find it. That elusive blind alley where sight begins.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Navel grazing
Let's get serious for a moment and talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: food. Now, on a scale ranging from Kobe Beef And Quail Egg Connoisseur to Ketchup-stained Fried Food Schlub, I'm quite solidly in the middle. a) I'm more intrigued than horrified by KFC's Double Down (though I hear it's disappointing even for the non-gourmand). b) Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits is one of my favorite eating establishments, ranking easily among 400-dollar dinners at top urban eateries. c) I've been known to consider the following as meals in themselves: chunky peanut butter from the jar; an entire papaya, seeds and all; a can of refried beans. But, I also appreciate delicacies generally reserved either for the abjectly starving or the finer palates of the gustatory bourgeoisie: organ meats, fish eggs, mollusks.
That's why I was equal parts titillated and chagrined to read this, a week-long food diary by the New York Times' new food critic, Sam Sifton. Titillated, because the eye-popping calorie counts and daily drink totals redeem my own tendency toward hedonistic overconsumption. Three beers and a tumbler of bourbon? In the SSB household, we call that a Tuesday! Chagrined, because the people who commented on the entry were irascibly self-righteous. How can you eat like this? How can you drink so much? Don't you know that if you don't eat more vegetables/eat less bread/cut out alcohol and coffee and dairy and sugar... you'll DIE?!? Of all the myopic idiocy that happens online, it's incredible to find such a stupefying sense of moral outrage applied to the fucking food diary of a fucking food critic.
Since I'm not a professional eater, I won't bore all two of my readers with a similar project, a week's worth of food, calorie, and exercise totals (let's just say that, calorie-wise, I'm probably not all that far below Sam, scaled to relative size and gender). But I will bore you with the highlights of my typical daily meals, starting with my favorite and most important meal of the day: breakfast!
I love breakfast. If left to my own devices, I tend to wake up ridiculously early, and, generally, the thought of breakfast is what does it -- both because I have a fairly humming metabolism and tend to wake up starving, and because I have a hopeless caffeine addiction and always wake up NEEDING coffee. I love breakfasts out -- decadent eggy dishes, bagels and smoked fish, sides of sausage, bacon, homefries, and biscuits. I also love unconventional breakfast choices, like toast smeared with hummus, or goat cheese, or mashed avocado. But lately, I've settled on a pretty good, cheap, and easy basic breakfast formula. It is as follows:
Coffee
For the past four years, I've been making my morning cup of joe in one of these babies:
The technical term is "cezve" (pronounced "jez-vuh") and in the former Soviet Union, this is still how most people make their coffee. You dump in a few tablespoons of grounds, cold water, and maybe some sugar, put it right over the flame of a gas stove (electric works, too), and let it go till it boils (my little one-cup cezve takes exactly two and a half minutes). Take it off the stove, throw a tablespoon of cold water over the top to bring the grounds down, let it sit for a few minutes, and presto -- Turkish coffee. I'm no coffee snob, but I have no idea why this hasn't caught on yet in the States over the stupid, wasteful dripper thing. I've had French press coffee, so beloved of the hipster coffee-teriate these days, and it doesn't really taste any better. If it's the presence of grounds in your cup (horrors!) that bothers you, you can always strain it through a tea sieve before serving. Plus, cleaning a French press looks complicated. To clean a cezve takes ten seconds at the most: all you do is dump out the sedimentary grounds and rinse it under the tap. You don't even need to scrub. Hot new elite coffee thing in five...
Oatmeal with Parmesan
I got the idea for this somewhat unorthodox creation from cheese grits, which are among my favorite Southern foods, as well as cheesy polenta, a staple of the nouveau highbrow Southern cooking trend. If you can put cheese in other grains with such overwhelming success, I reasoned, then why not put it in oatmeal, that homely healthy breakfast staple? Don't get me wrong; I love oatmeal in all its forms. It's another one of those things I grew up with in the former USSR (hrm, pattern...): every morning, my dad would fix me a big bowl of oatmeal and butter, and every morning I'd burn my mouth because I couldn't wait till it cooled to dig in (hrm, another pattern...). Then, when we moved to the States, we discovered the relative benefits of Quaker Instant Microwaveable Oatmeal packets. Pros: It takes only a few minutes and one dish to make, and it's got a ton of sugar and weird freeze-dried fruit -- the cornerstone of any American teen diet. Cons: By ten o'clock, you're starving again. Having returned to the more wholesome "old fashioned" Quaker Oats in college, I could still never quite satisfy some inherent craving for a more rib-sticking bowl... until one day, midway through 3-minute microwave spin cycle, I threw in a heaping spoonful of ground Parmesan, stirred, and popped it back in the oven. The result was better than buttered oatmeal, or oatmeal cooked in milk or cream. It was creamy, cheesy, savory, and absolutely delicious. To this day, it's my go-to breakfast. I've experimented with various cheeses -- everything from lowfat cheddar (gross) to crumbled feta (doesn't melt right), but Parmesan is far and away the best. This dish will run you about 200 calories with two tablespoons of parm and your regular half-cup oatmeal serving size. You'll also get some protein, calcium, and possible weird looks from your significant other. Ignore. Enjoy.
Apple
Quite simply the single greatest fruit on the planet. Cheap, portable, filling, delicious. Living in places like Seattle, Ithaca, and Boston, I've been continually spoiled by excellent seasonal apple variety. I tend to go for Cortlands, Empires, Macs, and Honeycrips. Braeburns and Galas are okay, too. I get into Granny Smith moods sometimes, but I have terrible teeth and cringe when I sense the acidity eating away at my already paper-thin enamel. I have to be pretty desperate to eat a Red Delicious, but I'll still do it over no apple at all. Unless I'm in a very public place, I eat them whole -- skin, core, seeds, and all -- which means that anyone I've ever loved has had to put up with finding lone, disembodied apple stems strewn about their floors, desks, beds. Apples! The best!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my baseline breakfast.* Simple, filling, nutritious, and just a touch decadent. That's how I roll.
Tune in next time for Lunch and Dinner!
*I say baseline because it's rarely just that for the entire morning. I'm partial to crack-of-dawn five-mile runs, which means that around 9 or 10 o'clock, I need a caloric supplement to make it to noon -- some yogurt or cottage cheese right out of the tub, a spoonful of peanut butter, a (cough) blueberry cake donut from Dunkin Donuts (my favorite!). I am a hundred and twenty pounds of lean, mean eating machine.
That's why I was equal parts titillated and chagrined to read this, a week-long food diary by the New York Times' new food critic, Sam Sifton. Titillated, because the eye-popping calorie counts and daily drink totals redeem my own tendency toward hedonistic overconsumption. Three beers and a tumbler of bourbon? In the SSB household, we call that a Tuesday! Chagrined, because the people who commented on the entry were irascibly self-righteous. How can you eat like this? How can you drink so much? Don't you know that if you don't eat more vegetables/eat less bread/cut out alcohol and coffee and dairy and sugar... you'll DIE?!? Of all the myopic idiocy that happens online, it's incredible to find such a stupefying sense of moral outrage applied to the fucking food diary of a fucking food critic.
Since I'm not a professional eater, I won't bore all two of my readers with a similar project, a week's worth of food, calorie, and exercise totals (let's just say that, calorie-wise, I'm probably not all that far below Sam, scaled to relative size and gender). But I will bore you with the highlights of my typical daily meals, starting with my favorite and most important meal of the day: breakfast!
I love breakfast. If left to my own devices, I tend to wake up ridiculously early, and, generally, the thought of breakfast is what does it -- both because I have a fairly humming metabolism and tend to wake up starving, and because I have a hopeless caffeine addiction and always wake up NEEDING coffee. I love breakfasts out -- decadent eggy dishes, bagels and smoked fish, sides of sausage, bacon, homefries, and biscuits. I also love unconventional breakfast choices, like toast smeared with hummus, or goat cheese, or mashed avocado. But lately, I've settled on a pretty good, cheap, and easy basic breakfast formula. It is as follows:
Coffee
For the past four years, I've been making my morning cup of joe in one of these babies:
The technical term is "cezve" (pronounced "jez-vuh") and in the former Soviet Union, this is still how most people make their coffee. You dump in a few tablespoons of grounds, cold water, and maybe some sugar, put it right over the flame of a gas stove (electric works, too), and let it go till it boils (my little one-cup cezve takes exactly two and a half minutes). Take it off the stove, throw a tablespoon of cold water over the top to bring the grounds down, let it sit for a few minutes, and presto -- Turkish coffee. I'm no coffee snob, but I have no idea why this hasn't caught on yet in the States over the stupid, wasteful dripper thing. I've had French press coffee, so beloved of the hipster coffee-teriate these days, and it doesn't really taste any better. If it's the presence of grounds in your cup (horrors!) that bothers you, you can always strain it through a tea sieve before serving. Plus, cleaning a French press looks complicated. To clean a cezve takes ten seconds at the most: all you do is dump out the sedimentary grounds and rinse it under the tap. You don't even need to scrub. Hot new elite coffee thing in five...
Oatmeal with Parmesan
I got the idea for this somewhat unorthodox creation from cheese grits, which are among my favorite Southern foods, as well as cheesy polenta, a staple of the nouveau highbrow Southern cooking trend. If you can put cheese in other grains with such overwhelming success, I reasoned, then why not put it in oatmeal, that homely healthy breakfast staple? Don't get me wrong; I love oatmeal in all its forms. It's another one of those things I grew up with in the former USSR (hrm, pattern...): every morning, my dad would fix me a big bowl of oatmeal and butter, and every morning I'd burn my mouth because I couldn't wait till it cooled to dig in (hrm, another pattern...). Then, when we moved to the States, we discovered the relative benefits of Quaker Instant Microwaveable Oatmeal packets. Pros: It takes only a few minutes and one dish to make, and it's got a ton of sugar and weird freeze-dried fruit -- the cornerstone of any American teen diet. Cons: By ten o'clock, you're starving again. Having returned to the more wholesome "old fashioned" Quaker Oats in college, I could still never quite satisfy some inherent craving for a more rib-sticking bowl... until one day, midway through 3-minute microwave spin cycle, I threw in a heaping spoonful of ground Parmesan, stirred, and popped it back in the oven. The result was better than buttered oatmeal, or oatmeal cooked in milk or cream. It was creamy, cheesy, savory, and absolutely delicious. To this day, it's my go-to breakfast. I've experimented with various cheeses -- everything from lowfat cheddar (gross) to crumbled feta (doesn't melt right), but Parmesan is far and away the best. This dish will run you about 200 calories with two tablespoons of parm and your regular half-cup oatmeal serving size. You'll also get some protein, calcium, and possible weird looks from your significant other. Ignore. Enjoy.
Apple
Quite simply the single greatest fruit on the planet. Cheap, portable, filling, delicious. Living in places like Seattle, Ithaca, and Boston, I've been continually spoiled by excellent seasonal apple variety. I tend to go for Cortlands, Empires, Macs, and Honeycrips. Braeburns and Galas are okay, too. I get into Granny Smith moods sometimes, but I have terrible teeth and cringe when I sense the acidity eating away at my already paper-thin enamel. I have to be pretty desperate to eat a Red Delicious, but I'll still do it over no apple at all. Unless I'm in a very public place, I eat them whole -- skin, core, seeds, and all -- which means that anyone I've ever loved has had to put up with finding lone, disembodied apple stems strewn about their floors, desks, beds. Apples! The best!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my baseline breakfast.* Simple, filling, nutritious, and just a touch decadent. That's how I roll.
Tune in next time for Lunch and Dinner!
*I say baseline because it's rarely just that for the entire morning. I'm partial to crack-of-dawn five-mile runs, which means that around 9 or 10 o'clock, I need a caloric supplement to make it to noon -- some yogurt or cottage cheese right out of the tub, a spoonful of peanut butter, a (cough) blueberry cake donut from Dunkin Donuts (my favorite!). I am a hundred and twenty pounds of lean, mean eating machine.
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