Accidental Hedonist

There has been some discussion on the Internet of late of the infinite sorrow surrounding those of us who eat alone. Or, more specifically, those of us who eat out alone, because rarely is there a dialog that speaks that “Loneliness is the most terrible poverty” when a solitary person makes themselves a sandwich, plops themselves in front of a television to watch the latest episode of Two and a half Men, and then tucks in. No, these discussions only come up when a solo diner dares go out alone in public.

As a person who has enjoyed the ambiance of a bistro in Paris, drank a bitter in a pub in London, and enjoyed a top notch lunch of a braunschweiger sandwich and a glass of golden ale in Amsterdam, each accomplished by my lonesome, let me offer the following bit of advice to those of you who, upon seeing a solo diner, think some variation of “There before the Grace of God”:

Piss off.

Oh, and also? You don’t know what you are missing.

There’s a certain romanticism to eating alone. And as with most romantic activities, some rituals need to be observed. For one, some reading material is often required (and it appears as if I’m not the only one who believes this), but this is not always the case. I’ve been lost in thought enough to go through a meal without one page read.

Second, the host and server have to play their role well, in that, once seated and our food ordered, for the most part solo eaters want to be left alone. Checking in on us once or twice over the course of the meal is welcome, but this is part of the ritual. Solo eaters are mostly low maintenance, quite intentionally so. This works in favor of the restaurant staff, who can then focus their attentions to other priorities.

Once these rules have been implemented, the ritual is then in full swing, and the true purpose of solo dining comes into being. The solo diner can now remove themselves from the responsibilities of the day.

Think of this as a vacation that lasts between thirty minutes to an hour, for now we solo diners have no actions required of us by anyone. We don’t have to cook or clean, we don’t have anyone to report to, and, most importantly, we don’t have to talk. We get to sit there and enjoy our own company. Through the entirety of the meal, we are playing in the paradox of being removed from society while participating within it.

This is wonderful.

Sure, the better the book, the better the moment. But the purpose here is to disassociate oneself from the rigor of the day. For these brief moments, I am no one but my self.

This being a food blog, some of you may have noted the complete and utter lack of discussion of food. There is a reason for this – it is secondary. Don’t get me wrong, the food should NOT be bad, as that will draw unwanted attention to itself, thus breaking the ritual. An average meal will suffice, and great meal is a bonus.

Alas, once the final bite is taken, and the leftover bag is brought forth and the check is paid, the ritual has been completed. We solo diners return to society at large and participate within it as everyone else does.

I have no idea if other solo diners experience the same things I do, or even if they approach it in the same manner. But for me, eating alone isn’t an exercise in loneliness. It’s quite the opposite. It’s an exercise in being with my self.

I believer I’ve mentioned it before, but it is worth repeating – given my druthers, I prefer marzipan and nougat to most tradition candies out there. The question I have is “Why?”

As I’ve already talked about nougat, let’s venture a bit into the marzipan side of the equation.

Marzipan is one of those treats that have likely been around for quite some time, but under different names. It has been called pasta reale in Sicily, a concoction of nothing more than a paste of sugar, almonds, and egg whites. The name itself? No one really knows for sure. There are several theories out there, some more likely than others, but none of them definitive. The one that strikes me as most likely comes from from the Arabic “maŝsipan”. Karen Hess, in describing Marzipan in her book Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats explains the evidence as follows:

…Amado Alonso in Revisto Fillgia Hisoanica…cites the appearance of an Arab word massipan, designating the confecion, in a twelfth-century manuscript of Cordoba by Ben Quzman. (The Arab ŝ sound is an explosive one rather like ch, that would account for the marchpane and marzipan forms.)

The thing here is that if we tie the history of marzipan to the Arabs (and I believe we should), then the time and place when marzipan actually first appears in history becomes that much more difficult to place. It does make it easier to place when it appears in Europe though; this would likely be along with the Muslim expansion into the Mediterranean in the eighth and ninth centuries.

I’m okay with this lack of evidence, as it lends to the air of mystery surrounding the confection. It’s one of those treats that at home equally by itself, especially when it’s sculpted by the Sicilians into fantastically real shapes such as pears, apples, and prickly pears, or if it’s coated with chocolate, or used as a cake topping as the Germans tend to do.

Perhaps this is the reason why I like the treat as much as I do. It’s partly because of the exotic nature of the confection. We here in the States are aware of marzipan, but it’s hardly a confection we long for. But in Europe? In Europe, it not only has a place upon the shelves today, but it has historical significance throughout the continent.

I have a bit of an admission. I love the hokey parlance of diners from long ago, who ordered food with colorful plays on words. No less than H.L. Mencken discussed the linguistic flourishes of the diner back in 1948, and even then he considered it past its time, relegated to “waitresses and countermen who glorify third-rate eating-houses.” According to John Mariani, it his book The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, notes that these turning of the phrases go back as far as the 1850′s, and have left us with a slew of terms we still use today, such as “BLT”, “Stack”, and even “Shit on a Shingle.”

I can remember sitting at a diner with friends and making up nonsensical phrases akin to this practice. We’d sit and shout out phrases like “Sleeping Baby Chicken and Drown it!” (eggs benedict) or “a glass of raw butter!” (Milk). Good times. We surely annoyed the staff, but hey, we were twenty and likely a bit less than sober.

Anyway, here’s a list of some of the terms as documented by Mariani.

• Adam and Eve on a Raft – Two poached or fried eggs on toast.
• Adam’s Ale – water
• Alive – raw
• All the Way – A sandwich made with lettuce, mayo, onion, and butter.
• All the Way – Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ice Cream.
• Angel Food Cake and Wine – Bread and Water
• A-pie – Apple Pie
• Axel grease – butter
• Baby – Milk
• Belch Water – Seltzer or soda Water
• Birdseed – Cereal
• Bossy in a Bowl – Beef Stew
• Bottom – Ice Cream added to a drink
• Bowl of Red – Chile con carne
• Bow-wow – Hot Dog
• Break it and Shake it – Add an egg to a drink, typical for milkshakes, creams, and seltzers.
• Breath – Onion
• Bucket of Hail – Glass of Ice
• Bullets – Baked Beans
• Bun Pup – Hot Dog
• Burn it – Well Done
• Burn it and let it swim – An ice cream float with chocolate syrup drizzled on the ice cream.
• Burn one – Put a Hamburger on the grill.
• Burn one – Add Chocolate.
• Burn the British – Toasted English Muffin
• Busfare – Tip/gratuity
• Canary Island Special – Vanilla Soda with Chocolate Ice Cream.
• Carfare – Tip/gratuity
• Cat’s Eyes – Tapioca
• CB – Cheeseburger
• China – Rice Pudding
• City Juice – Water
• Clean up the Kitchen – Hash or Hamburger
• Coke pie – Coconut Cream Pie
• Cold Spot – Iced Tea
• Coney Island – Hot Dog
• Coney Island Chicken – Hot Dog
• Cowboy – Western Omelet
• Cow Feed – Salad
• Cow Juice – Milk
• Creep – Draft Beer
• Deadeye – Poached Egg
• Dog Biscuits – Crackers
• Dogs and Maggots – Crackers and Cheese
• Dough Well Done with Cow to Cover – Buttered Toast
• Draw One – Coffee
• Echo – Repeat the Order
• Eighty-One – Glass of Water
• Eighty-Six – A customer who is no longer to be served at the restaurant.
• Eighty-Six – A menu item which is no longer available.
• Eve with a lid on – Apple Pie
• Fifty-Five – Root Beer
• Fifty-One – Hot Chocolate
• Filet – Serve with Ice Cream
• First Lady – Spare Ribs
• Five – Glass of Milk
• Fly Cake – Raisin Cake
• Forty-One – Lemonade
• Frenchman’s Delight – Pea Soup
• GAC – Grilled Cheese Sandwich (Grilled American Cheese)
• Gentlemen will take a Chance – Hash
• Go for a Walk – To Go
• Gravel Train – Sugar Bowl (The sugar was more likely to be cubed than not)
• Graveyard Stew – Milk Toast
• GroundHog – Hot Dog
• Hamlette – Ham Omelet
• Harlem Soda – Chocolate Soda
• Hemorrhage – ketchup
• High and Dry – Plain Sandwich with no condiments
• Hold the Hail – No ice
• Hops – Malted Milk Powder
• Hot Cha – Hot Chocolate
• Hot Spot – Hot Tea
• Houseboat – Banana Split
• Ice the Rice – Add Ice Cream to the Rice Pudding
• In the Alley – Order as a side dish
• Irish Turkey – Corned Beef and Cabbage
• Jack – Grilled Chese Sandwich
• Jack Benny – Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Bacon
• Java – Coffee
• Jerk – Ice Cream Soda
• Joe – Coffee
• Looseners – Prunes
• Lord’s Supper – Bread and Water
• Lumber – toothpicks
• Maiden’s Delight – Cherries
• Make it Virtue – Add Cherry syrup to a cola soda
• Mama – Marmalade
• M.D. – Dr. Pepper
• Mike and Ike – Salt and Pepper
• Moo Juice – Milk
• Mud – Chocolate Ice Cream
• Mud – Coffee
• Murphy – Potatoes
• Natural – 7up. Based on the craps dice roll of 5 and 2, a “natural”
• Noah’s Boy – Ham
• No Cow – No milk
• On the Hoof – Meat cooked Rare
• On Wheels – To go
• Pair of Drawers – Two cups of Coffee
• Pittsburgh – Toast.
• Pittsburgh – Meat cooked black on the outside and nearly rare on the inside
• Put out the lights and Cry – Liver and Onions
• Radio – Tuna-fish-salad Sandwich on Toast
• Roach Cake – Raisin Cake
• Sand – Sugar
• Saturday Nights – Baked Beans
• Sea Dust – Salt
• Shoot it Yellow – Add lemon Syrup to a soda
• Shoot one from the South – An additional shot of Cola Syrup.
• Sinkers and Suds – Coffee and Doughnuts
• Squeeze One – Orange Juice
• Stretch One – Cola Soda
• Sweet Alice – Milk
• Through Georgia – Add Chocolate Syrup
• To the Left – Lemon Syrup, customarily set to the left of the cola syrup.
• To the Right – Cherry Syrup, customarily set to the right of the cola syrup.
• Twenty-One – Limeade
• Vermont – Maple Syrup
• Warts – olives
• Whistleberries – Baked Beans
• Wreath – Cabbage
• Yum-yum – Sugar
• Zeppelins in a fog – Sausage in Mashed Potatoes

I’m still trying to determine if Rachel Laudan’s article “In Praise of Fast Food” is rooted in any reality of which I am aware. Her introduction threw me for a loop right off of the bat:

My culinary style, like so many people’s, was created by those who scorned industrialized food; culinary Luddites, we could call them, after the 19th-century English workers who abhorred the machines that were destroying their way of life. I learned to cook from the books of Elizabeth David, who urged us to sweep our cupboards “clean for ever of the cluttering debris of commercial sauce bottles and all synthetic aids to flavoring.”
I rush to the newsstand to pick up Saveur with its promise to teach me to “savor a world of authentic cuisine.”

Culinary Luddism has come to involve more than just taste, however; it has also presented itself as a moral and political crusade—and it is here that I begin to back off. The reason is not far to seek: because I am a historian.

The first sentence takes a huge leap of logic, one which leaves my head strained from the sudden shift from “the rejection of Industrial Food ethics” and equating that to “the rejection of technology”. Dear Ms. Laudan, it is perfectly acceptable to respect the scythe yet loathe the one who wields it. In fact, in looking at the major food movements of the past generation, this is primarily what is going on. From the natural food movements of the seventies, to the Slow Food movement today, the underlying philosophy of these endeavors is the belief that we had put the faith of feeding our nation in the hands of corporations, and the best that they could come up with was food that was over-salted, over-sugared, and over-oiled. All of which was done by sacrificing regional diversity, flavors that many of us hold dear, and even basic nutrition. Wonder Bread, an industrial product, is far less nutritious than a loaf of whole-grain bread.

While some may have rejected the technology that brought us red dye 40 and mass-produced Twinkies, this doesn’t mean that they have rejected technology outright. The better explanation is people taking a step back to a point in history to where we went left when we should have went right, and then resume our progress from there.

Take a look at one of Ms. Laudan’s first points – that natural food has always been brutish, nasty, and had a short shelf life:

For our ancestors, natural was something quite nasty. Natural often tasted bad. Fresh meat was rank and tough, fresh fruits inedibly sour, fresh vegetables bitter. Natural was unreliable. Fresh milk soured; eggs went rotten. Everywhere seasons of plenty were followed by seasons of hunger. Natural was also usually indigestible. Grains, which supplied 50 to 90 percent of the calories in most societies, have to be threshed, ground, and cooked to make them edible.

Let’s talk about fresh meat, soured milk, and rotten eggs. We’ve solved that problem – via refrigeration, a technology that was luxurious a mere century ago, yet now considered a required appliance in even the most basic of homes, and certainly a part of the equipment of even the most rudimentary of food producers. I don’t see anyone arguing or advocating for less usage of refrigeration in industrial foods.

As for the “Natural was also usually indigestible” phrase? It’s an over-simplification of the agrarian technological history that has occurred over the past three-thousand years. Yes, grains were (and still are) at the foundation of providing nutrition to the people, but different areas of the world produced different types of crops, and some areas were more efficient at producing edible grains than others. Yet I hear of no one romantically lusting after the era of inefficient crop yields.

What about the idea that the best food was country food, handmade by artisans? That food came from the country goes without saying. The presumed corollary—that country people ate better than city dwellers—does not. Few who worked the land were independent peasants baking their own bread and salting down their own pig. Most were burdened with heavy taxes and rents paid in kind (that is, food); or worse, they were indentured, serfs, or slaves. They subsisted on what was left over, getting by on thin gruels and gritty flatbreads.

The part about cities is true. Eating well, whether one defines well as quality or healthy, depends upon diversity, and diversity is the benefit of an open market. As cities and towns were the center of market activity in any given area, they generally had the better options for food. But as far as the life of a serf is concerned, the statement is an over-simplification. Serfs were treated as well as the Landlord decided to treat them, and as Terry Jones pointed out in his book Medieval Lives, the lord/serf relationship was very much a symbiotic one – a lord was only as good as the wealth his serfs created. If he treated his serfs poorly, then poor results would occur. Yes, life was harsh for them, and for the lowest castes of serfs, it was akin to slavery, but Ms. Laudan’s description of the Feudal system is without nuance.

And again, let me remind you that no one is advocating for a return to feudal times. The food movements of today are primarily a response to the corporate processes and practices that affect the nutrition and culture of our nation. To describe the organic movement as a desire to go back to indentured servitude is a ludicrous argument on its face.

The questions these movements ask are fairly simple – How do we feed ourselves regularly? And how do we do this safely, while maintaining proper nutrition, and with enough variation that we satisfy all palates and maintain regional identities? While corporations have somewhat answered the first question, and have, for the most part, been doing well on safety, they’ve had problems with nutrition and have nearly ignored the rest.

These movements aren’t a call to ancient food production techniques. They are a predictable response to the fact that the corporate marketplace isn’t meeting their needs. As a historian, Ms. Laudan should have known this, because all food movements have this at their root.

It’s a Pennsylvanian treat!

I have a hate/hate relationship with Monsanto, for reasons all over the place. Whether its their monopolistic practices within their seed division, to their excessive use and marketing of Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), to their campaign to sue private farmers for the most ludicrous of issues, Monsanto just screams “evil” to me. If Monsanto were ever to be personified, they would be the old man who dogs instinctively growl at, and children shy away from in tears.

If you were looking for another reason to hate them, apparently now they are hiring subsidiaries of the mercenary firm Blackwater to spy on animal rights and environmental activists. Jeremy Scahill at The Nation explains:

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations…

…Blackwater also did business with a range of multinational corporations. According to internal Total Intelligence communications, biotech giant Monsanto—the world’s largest supplier of genetically modified seeds—hired the firm in 2008–09. The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January 2008 when Total Intelligence chair Cofer Black traveled to Zurich to meet with Kevin Wilson, Monsanto’s security manager for global issues.

After the meeting in Zurich, Black sent an e-mail to other Blackwater executives, including to Prince and Prado at their Blackwater e-mail addresses. Black wrote that Wilson “understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name…. Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for.” Black added that Total Intelligence “would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto.” Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater “could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally.” Black wrote that initial payments to Total Intelligence would be paid out of Monsanto’s “generous protection budget” but would eventually become a line item in the company’s annual budget. He estimated the potential payments to Total Intelligence at between $100,000 and $500,000. According to documents, Monsanto paid Total Intelligence $127,000 in 2008 and $105,000 in 2009..

Oh Monsanto. It’s good to see you subvert the First Amendment for your own “protection”. I have several hypothetical questions, however. Does this mean your Blackwater ops will visit any of the farmers your legally bully due to trumped up ” seed patent violations” claims? Will your Blackwater ops be responsible for covering up your “bribes” when you attempted to introduce Bovine Growth Hormone into Canada? Will your operatives be making trips to dairies who advertise on their milk cartons that that do not inject their cows with artificial bovine growth hormone?

Hmm… While you hire Blackwater to protect you from every day folk, my real question is this – Who is going to protect us from you?

Before going to far, A brief explanation what you are looking at. Clearly it’s a map, but one used for avionics, specifically in regard to Area Navigation (RNAV). RNAV uses waypoints as a method of navigation. They are everywhere, and there are many of them. And in order to keep them in straight from pilot to pilot, each gets a five-letter name that distinguish them from one another. These names are universal.

Below is a RNAV map showing the airport in Bardstown, Kentucky. Check out the waypoints and see if you can tell the favorite whiskey of the person who created the waypoint names for this region. (Click on the map for a larger view).

What this map says is that every pilot who wishes to land at the Bardstown airport has to go through MAKRZ, MAARK, and BARRL, and use MAASH and DSTIL if needed.

Other waypoints in the area include BRBON and JBEAM.

Alas, poor Evan Williams and Four Roses. Apparently no RNAV cartographer is a fan.

(Map ganked from the fine folks at www.terminalprocedures.com)