Samplers were not only for decoration; they were used to teach children reading, writing and arithmetic.  Sewing was no hobby in those early days but a necessity. All the clothes had to be made at home. Mothers and grandmothers made quilts and rugs to keep themselves warm with no inkling they were creating art.

Men and women have always been artisans, using whatever materials they had at hand; metal and wood, tin and pewter, rags and bones, clay and scraps of cloth.  Neither fancy nor frivolous, their work is filled with the exuberance of experimentation. It may be described as naive, but its very innocence is the essence of its charm.  Small wonder, then, that these many objects, these heirlooms, have endured and become part of our heritage.

This tradition continues today. A new handmade gift is cherished every bit as much as an heirloom. Like the work of those who came before us, we can get by with little or no formal training.

Courtesy of theheritagecook.com

The important thing is to continue to create our own unique gifts to share with those who will appreciate them.

To express your love for a friend, you could give a basket of heirloom tomatoes or a collection of your favorite recipes tied with a bow (or a bottle of nicely crafted bottle of gin!).

ICDT! (I Can Do That!)

Santa's 2011 Chocolate Sleigh Contents Courtesy of CIA Student Clara Krueger

Clara Krueger, a charming young CIA (Culinary Institute of America) baking and pastry arts student, arrived fresh from her baking class. She brought with her this enchanting chocolate sleigh filled with festive fondant packages. I was delighted and astonished and greatly admired her accomplishment.

I was happy indeed when she gave it to me.

Clara’s gift reminded me of the time when we lived in a small suburban community in Long Island. It was an interesting neighborhood, a dormitory town for New York set around a bay.

It appealed to a wonderfully diverse group of people.

Some had lived there for ages and others were more recent arrivals. Many were from other countries, mostly European. The family living on one side of us was Austrian and neighbors on the other side were from Israel. There were French, Swedish and Irish families, and a lot of lovely mixtures. I, being British, formed one of these with my American husband.

Our first year, a quite spontaneous thing happened.

I remember that we, our children and two dogs, went next door carrying a lighted ship’s lantern that I had given my husband for his birthday a year or so before. We knocked on the door and sang a carol while we were waiting for our neighbors to answer it. I can’t sing at all, so this must have been a daring thing to do. I don’t remember now who even thought of it.

I do remember though, the delight in our friends’ faces and how we all decided to go to the next house together and sing another carol.  And so we did. The snowball snowballed until there were perhaps 60 or more of us.

We still talk about those times, with memories of little kids happy to be up late, dogs let off the leash, and flickering candles and lanterns and pockets full of warm gingerbread cookies one of the families had just baked.

The following year we organized things a little — though not too much — and when we got cold and had had enough, everyone came back to our house. We had a big pot of French onion soup and some Beaujolais Nouveau — it was the “in” drink at that time — and everyone brought the traditional treats of their own country.

I remember one of the older kids had made a lute, and she sat on the floor in front of the fire and the younger children sang with her.

Last evening, we had another little party to invite our neighbors to meet each other, many for the first time for our very own “tree lighting”. It was a simple affair — just hot chocolate (with the offer of a spike of bourbon or other spirit of the season) and, gingerbread cookies, mincemeat tarts and cider doughnuts. While the Christmas carols were ready for the singing, we decided to leave that tradition for next year.

What is old is new again: a tradition has begun. Onion soup next time!

“What we eat and why we choose the foods that make up our daily diet; the ceremonies that surround food; how it underscores our sameness and differences; its mythic and symbolic importance; the joy of plenty; the fear of famine and deprivation — all are occasions for reflections on the human condition.

Why do we tolerate the prevalence of widespread hunger in a world of abundance? What roles do culturally determined food preferences or the power of science, politics, or global trade play in determining who will be well fed and who will starve?”

There is an unending trove of material available, if you want to enliven your cooking classes with some food stories, or enrich your copy if you write about food, or even develop a syllabus for a new  high school or college level course.  For example, this is how I approached a unique series of gastronomy lessons.  I developed some menus and used the prism of food to talk about several areas that I personally found interesting.  Happily the students did too. This is one of my menus:

Oysters Garnished with Sevruga Caviar

Roast Beef

Or

Spiced Crispy Chilean Sea Bass in Ginger-Cardamom Broth

Locally Grown, Organic Mixed Green Salad Seasoned with Salt & Pepper

Lemon Juice and Virgin Olive Oil Dressing

Red Wine and Imported Sparking Water

Cheese Platter and  French Bread

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Tea  or Coffee

This menu provides the framework for discussing the following:

The history of oysters: trade issues involved in banning of imported caviar

The carnivore and the vegetarian diet

Role of chefs in boycotting endangered fish i.e. bass and politics of foie gras

The discovery of fire and its role in the evolution of the human race

Organic farming and genetically engineered crops

The impact of citrus fruit on the global economy

The symbolism of olive oil

The history of the spice trade

The physiology of taste and smell

An examination of issues related to appetite and hunger

The changing face of wine and the influence of advertising and packaging

Water: the most vital issue facing the world

The reasons behind the recent interest in artisanal cheeses and slow foods

The history of bread

Flourless chocolate cake as it relates to fads and trends

The impact of tea and coffee on the health of the consumer

The inevitability of change and present and future impact of technology on upscale dining.

What fun!

Filet of Sole Mountbattan

Perdreau en casserole

Haricots Verts

Pommes Noisettes

Salad Royale

Bombe Glacee Elizabeth

Friandises

Dessert

Café

The wedding cake was 2.5 metres tall and topped with a silver sculpture of  St. George and the Dragon.

A Google search for the wedding breakfast for Prince Charles and Di reveals a “1981 a traditional royal wedding breakfast, where guests dined on gold plates filled with brill in lobster sauce, chicken breasts garnished with lamb mousse, and strawberries with Cornish cream washed down with claret and port before the groom brandished his ceremonial sword to cut the first slice of a five-tiered wedding cake adorned with emblems from his Naval days, sugar doves, and topped with a garden of confectionary roses, lilies of the valley, fuchsias and orchids accenting an ornamental “C” and “D.”

Naturally, this led me to ponder the declaration made by Prince William and his bride that they wanted none of all this pomp and circumstance and instead plan to wash their own dishes and do their own vacuuming.

Further research leads to the startling discovery that American chefs are coming up with their own ideas of what would appropriate wedding breakfast fare. I think Marcus Samuelsson is on the ball with Fish and Chips. Poor Rocco DiSpirito misses the point (again) suggesting White Truffle Risotto. Nonchef Paula Dean bizarrely proposes Banana Pudding which exhibits no knowledge of culinary history whatso…

I, however think, as always, I have the answer. I echo the words of W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) who wisely noted “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.” This means, for a thoroughly modern couple there should be roaming trucks offering the roaring crowds what we Brits love most: egg and chips, egg, bacon and chips, egg, bacon, sausage and chips, sausage, bacon, egg and chips and cold toast. Tea. And rhubarb.

And for dessert, we must honor our very own British culinary wizard: Heston Blumenthal, whose bacon and egg ice cream will surely beat the band and prove to be a welcome ending for the royal wedding feast.

There you have it.

Long may they reign.

Japanese Sushi Chef Ken Kawasumi with his Sushi Obama creation

The mid-term elections are fast approaching. I’ve been wondering why candidates running for high political office seem to feel it is necessary to eat what the locals eat. I suppose it’s a way of establishing solidarity with the voters.

When politicians fly to Buffalo they make a big deal about eating a wing. They become “ein Buffalo-er,” which is the next best thing to being ein Berliner or a Philadelphian — when they gather together together to scarf down a cheesesteak.

It’s the same deal when we declare our brotherhood by eating a hot pastrami sandwich.

Toss down a couple of belts of hard liquor and the world applauds. There’s nothing like beer to solidify a candidate’s credentials. Wine is another thing altogether.

JFK and Jackie O. received high marks for their elegant state dinners. That was then, though.

Eat French food today and the other side will make a mockery of you. Admitting to enjoying chardonnay and arugula has become shorthand for a lack of patriotism.

French food is only O.K. only when it comes to fries. Fried is probably the best bet for almost everything, especially chicken.  KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is wildly popular throughout the world, or many parts of the world. Forget about quiche.

Throw a barbecue on your million acre ranch and what are you?  Why, you are a man: A REAL MAN!  A red-bloodied American man.

Declare your favorite food to be caribou stew or moose burger and you pass muster in certain necks of certain woods. Right on!

You are pretty safe if you can eat whatever is offered to eat with your hands, or if worst comes to worst, a plastic fork is sometimes allowed (or forgiven).

Mention you are a vegetarian and you’ll be confessing to ‘wimpitude’. (Hitler was a vegetarian.)

Pastor Rick Warren recently pondered whether an atheist, even a non-practicing atheist, could become the Commander in Chief. He didn’t reflect about whether a vegetarian had a prayer.

If I was a campaign adviser I’d suggest that my client stay clear of all cheese except Velveeta or when campaigning in Wisconsin.

It’s odd that desserts don’t carry any weight in this public display of togetherness chomping.

While some foods are considered cool, others pose a problem. For instance, sushi would have been taboo in years past. Now sushi is sold at Wal-Mart, in supermarkets and food courts everywhere.

Sushi is the new pizza. It’s become a kind of upscale fish finger.

The galloping popularity of sushi opens up splendid new career opportunities for chefs. Sushi culinary schools have opened in California, and we can confidently expect to see more MASA restaurant derivatives. MASA in New York occupies a place in the restaurant stratosphere where dinner for two can cost as much as $1,000 before tax and gratuities.

Fish is gold.

Fish ‘n rice clearly occupy a far more exalted status than fish ‘n chips, so this seems like a fine time to sashay into sushi and sashimi.

Blueprint of the first dishwasher, approximately 1850

The unforeseen consequences of the introduction of the dishwasher at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair is the loss of intimacy between mothers and daughters.

It was a time to talk: when Mom washed the dishes, one daughter dried them,  the other put them away — and the son went to the bathroom.

Ron Ben-Israel Cake, photo by Monica Stevenson

The Chicago Sun Times tells us about the sensitive guy who announces to his beloved that before they go any further he needs to tell her something. That something turns out to be his revelation that he plans to serve pie on his/their? wedding day.

“So?,” as former Vice President Cheney, another sensitive charmer, is said to have asked. “So!” “Why Knot?” seems to be the reaction of the affianced…

Weddings are very sexy occasions — not only for the bride and groom, whose passion is on display for all to see, but also for those who are invited witness the joining of two into one. The occasion of the marriage ceremony gives us all a lot of great ideas as once again we turn our attention to matters of food and drink in general, and wedding cakes in general, and now — pies in particular.

Fashions change. Today’s wedding cake master designers like Sylvia Weinstock, Ron Ben-Israel, and the Ace of Cakes, no longer, (or mostly no longer), look with favor on those old-time tacky plastic bride and groom figures standing stiffly on the top cake layer.

Pedestals and pillars have been jettisoned and cascades of fresh flowers have gained favor among the eco-friendlies. Now five or even six cake layers are placed one on top of another, each one composed of a different symphony of flavors.

So if pie it is to be, what’s the big deal?  If pies and cup cakes don’t quite jell with the glamour of the occasion, there’s yet another alternative. Krispy Kreme tells us, doughnuts can be created into a  stunning make-believe wedding cake when festooned with cascading ribbons and real, or almost real, certainly life-like, flowers. Thoughtful brides are handing out boxes containing two-for-the-road-doughnuts to their departing-but still-hungry-after-the-reception-guests. The doughnut favors are $2 a box plus $50 to have them passed out by a Krispy Kreme representative.

The best edible wedding day advice yet comes from a couple who, having lived together for a few years, decided to march down the aisle holding a dozen hard boiled eggs that they decided to put all in one basket.

If you want a career in wedding cake designing and decorating or pie making or cake art, you can read more in  FOOD JOBS.

For a special treat, Mother produced her only specialty: baked beans on buttered toast topped with a poached egg, smothered with a cheese sauce and crowned with a thick slice of tomato. The entire thing was assembled on a saucer and broiled until the sauce was bubbling and the tomato was burnt.

I loved the way the runny yolk seeped onto and into and all around the baked beans and how you had to be quick about sopping  up the entire mess before it overflowed the sides of the saucer and dripped onto the kitchen table. I remember how colorful it was and how hot it was and how careful you had to be not to scorch your tongue on the tomato.

Other culinary delights of my childhood include Toad in the Hole (pork sausages baked in curdled custard topped with ketchup) and Bubble ‘n Squeak (lumpy mashed potatoes and leftover cabbage cooked in bacon grease until the cabbage bubbled and squeaked in the frying pan) and Spotted Dick (steamed pudding with “spots” of raisins with treacle syrup) served once a week in every boarding school alternating with tadpole eggs (tapioca).

I mention these things because people tend to make fun of British cooking, ignoring the fact we have made huge gastronomic strides. Mediterranean countries eat many vegetables and we do too. We English have three vegetables: two of them are Brussels sprouts.

“They” say France is a country that has 300 kinds of cheese but only one religion. England has 300 religions but only one cheese. This isn’t true at all. We have Stilton and Cheddar.

And now, we have Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal and The Naked Chef, so it looks as if the tables are turning.

We just have to pray that we don’t run out of baked beans.

Grasshopper

Four years ago I met Doris Friedensohn at a conference that was jointly organized by The Culinary Institute of America and New York University. Several faculty members from both colleges presented papers ranging from intensely boring to soaring brilliance.  For me, Doris was the shining star of the entire shindig.

Doris is a specialist in American culture with an interest in food and foodways in the US and elsewhere. She is a woman of enormous grace, charm and scholarship who has a unique role in the food world and who is leading a life filled with doing exactly what she wants to do. She told me how she does it.

“Irena, I talk about eating bugs and other cultural matters; what I like to call the satisfaction of an unpaid food job.”

“In the U.S. we don’t eat bugs,” I say. “We spray them. We swat them. We stomp on them. And we spray ourselves to stay bug-free. We also don’t eat horses, as the French have done, or dogs, as the Koreans still do. Eating is cultural. That is, we eat what we have been taught to eat and what powerful food industries pressure us to eat.”

“In Mexico – - and especially in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca – - fried grasshoppers, chapulines in Spanish, are a favorite snack. For many Oaxacans, they are an addiction, like peanuts or Fritos.” Chapulines (pron: chap-u-leen-ace) are eaten after the rains begin and through early autumn.

Forty food service students are still with me, still paying attention. I couldn’t be certain they would. After all, I’m not a chef. I’m a writer. I’ve asked them, “who’s interested in the impact of this free, fourteen-week program on their lives.”

Ever since I began visiting the Food Service Training Academy (FSTA) at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, more than five years ago, I’ve been worrying about the absence of cultural matters of the curriculum. Students are taught knife skills, weights and measurements, proper temperatures for cooking and chilling various foods, sanitary standards and a basic culinary vocabulary.

In the kitchen, they learn to fry, sauté, and grill; they make soup and pizza, vegetables, rice and potatoes; they bake cakes, cookies and fruit pies. They are asked to plan menus and act as sous chefs for a day. They are assigned a foreign cuisine and compete for prizes in an international food jamboree.

But at no point in their program are questions raised about the origins of their own foodways or the nature of eating in America. At no point are their own attachments to burgers, fries, grits, well done meat and rice pudding treated as anything but “normal.” Students know they can’t afford a diet of sirloin steak and lobster. But beyond the limitations of the pocketbook, neither they nor their teachers ask: why they eat as they do – - why do Americans generally eat as we do?

“Where’s the food in food services?” I remember asking the chefs at the end of an international food competition. How come no one mentions of cultures of rice and potatoes or cultures of butter and olive oil? How come students don’t wonder why hundreds of running feet of supermarket shelves are devoted to dried cereals that are almost indistinguishable from one another? How come no one asks why fresh vegetables in ghetto food shops look limp and packaged meats are often gray at the edges?

What could I do, I wondered? What could I contribute to the (liberal) education of food service students?  Selfishly, I wondered what I might do to enrich my connections with students – - and advance my own writing project. I imagined a series of “five-minute mini-lectures.” The abbreviated talks that I had in mind, illustrating the cultural contexts of eating or the politics and economics of foodways, would have to be carefully scripted – - for clarity, liveliness and pace. The talks would have to be entertaining: more like stories than lectures.

“After my opening comments on bugs, I describe how grasshoppers are netted in cornfields, killed in scalding water, deep fried in lard, and seasoned with garlic, chili pepper and lime juice.”

Woman Selling Chapulines Courtesy of http://mexkitchen.blogspot.com

“Chapulines, sold on the street by women wearing the traditional long skirts and blouses of their villages, are a deep bright red, salty, spicy and crunchy – - a little like crispy fried onions, with a bite. I confess to my audience that the first time I noticed the grasshoppers in Oaxaca, maybe 40 years ago, I couldn’t imagine putting a bug in my mouth – - not to mention a handful of bugs.”

“But, I’ve had a chance to rethink my squeamishness. What makes fried bugs so different from sautéed calves brains or stewed pigs’ feet or raw octopus — all delicacies that I love?”

“On a visit to Oaxaca in July 1995, I report, I sought out a local restaurant with chapulines on the menu. The owner served us beers, warm corn tortillas, guacamole – - and a platter of flimsy red objects that glowed in the afternoon light.  I grabbed a tortilla, covered it with a thick layer of guacamole and sprinkled a few chapulines on top. After folding the tortilla in half — with the bugs out of sight — I took my first cautious bite. The bland tortilla, the smooth guacamole and the spicy crunch of chapulines were like music in my mouth. Delicious! As good as a great BLT!”

“The story ends with a message. “Around the world,” I say, “millions of people regularly consume all kinds of bugs. Why? Because: they are local, easily trapped, cheap, simple to prepare, rich in protein, and tasty, too. Many Mexicans eat chapulines because their grandparents did and so do their neighbors. And because, they are passionately attached to the texture and flavors. Grasshoppers are a normal, seasonal and sustaining part of their diet.” ”

“Later, in the kitchen, several students ask me about other odd foods I’ve encountered, and whether I really liked them. I mention snake and wild boar; the snake rather dull, like chicken, and the boar unforgettably flavorful and rich. “I had snails,” one student says, “in a great garlic sauce.” “Everything depends on where you grow up,” another student says. “I wanna travel,” a third student comments, “and see how they eat in Asia.” “We can eat weird Asian foods right here in Newark,” a fourth student chimes in. “If we want to,” he adds.”

“I’ve given the chapulines talk – - and a half-dozen others – - to four classes now; and the chefs have integrated them into the FSTA program. They like the idea that I’m taking care of “culture” with my stories from Mexico, Tunisia, Nepal, Korea, Argentina, South Africa and the Obama election campaign.”

“With these presentations, I get closer to students whose lives are my subject and reason for being there. How fortunate I am to have stumbled upon this good, nonpaying food job!”

Traditional Christmas Pudding

Hear Irena in her own words (MP3 download: 3.15mb) from WAMC

The holidays are upon us. Santa is arriving in the nick of time so once again we can strengthen old links in the chain of memories and forge new ones. We all like to conjure up Currier and Ives, real or imagined remembrances of skating on the just frozen pond followed with hot chocolate, spiced cider or mulled wine.

‘Tis the season to be jolly. Songsters raise their voices with sounds of in Dulci Jubilo, Adeste Fidelis and Silent Night. Other merry makers are more likely to hum, All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

We all yearn for a nostalgic holiday in which we symbolically hold hands from one generation to the next.

Of course it is memories of childhood that determine whether the holiday feast includes Swedish gravlax or Norwegian baked cod, Mediterranean roast goat or stuffed whale skin (if you grew up in Greenland).

My own earliest memories of Christmas dinner recall England during the war years, when, in order to help our country, in some way that was never entirely clear to me, we were all supposed to raise chickens.We were the only family in the neighborhood who heeded this particular call to patriotism.

Our chickens were always escaping from the hen house and running into the neighbors’ gardens. It was my task to try to corner them, cower them into submission and carry them home, quivering in my arms. They needn’t have been afraid — we never ate any of them.

One chicken in particular became our family pet. Her name was Lucy. She was very tame. I used to wheel her around in my doll’s pram. She would lie there quietly, her head resting on the frilly pillow, one beady eye watching me. I covered her with a soft blanket to keep her feathers warm.

We always had roast goose, not chicken, for our Christmas dinner. My mother, a woman of tradition if ever there was one, followed the hallowed custom by English cooks from time immemorial.

No sooner was the goose committed to the oven than the Brussels sprouts were set to cooking. (In England, it is said, we have only three vegetables and two of them are Brussels sprouts.) How, now, I yearn for those lumpy mashed potatoes, greasy gravy and gooseberry relish…

Plum pudding is the symbol of an English Christmas. It represents the good and abundant earth. The attendant holly berries symbolize the blood of Christ, the flames of doused brandy are the flames of hell that are rapidly burned away as goodness triumphs over all. Or, at least that is what is supposed to happen.

Some families still make their own plum pudding, remembering to stir it clockwise, as the earth moves on its axis, for this will bring good luck and a wish may be granted. And even more good fortune will come to the diner, who finds in the pudding a coin of the realm or a ring or a silver charm. The notion is that a coin will bring a year of wealth, a ring forecasts a wedding in the future and a thimble predicts a happy life, though a solitary one as a spinster.

Queen Victoria was the monarch who introduced the idea of burying assorted trinkets in the pudding, (an early British version of the fortune cookie perhaps).

A new recipe for plum pudding was created to celebrate Queen’s Victoria’s 50th year on the throne. The recipe required:

• 50 sweet almonds, equal to the years of Her Majesty’s reign,
• 5 ounces of bread crumbs, representing Her daughters,
• 4 ounces of flour, numbering Her sons,
• 3 ounces of coconut, cut into 32 pieces, being the number of the Queen’s grandchildren,
• 2 ounces of sugar, being the number of Her great-grandchildren,
• 5 ounces of suet, chopped into as many pieces as Her Majesty has subjects in every town,
• 5 eggs, well beaten, representing England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and our Colonies—now, alas, our former Colonies.

All the ingredients were mixed together with ½ pint (4,980 drops) of milk representing the ages in months of Her Majesty and Her children. Boil 2 hours, 16 minutes or twice 86 minutes, the age of Her Majesty in her Golden Jubilee Year.

The current Queen’s Christmas pudding will be borne blue and blazing with brandy by Her Majesty’s principal page to the dining table at Windsor Castle. It will be made this year as is customary from a 17th century recipe. Ours will be bought online.

However you celebrate the holiday feast, may I wish you merry. As Charles Dickens’ Tiny Tim exclaimed, “God bless us every one”—especially those who are watching over the stock market!