My Meatless Month

Those who have been visiting the Omphaloskeptic since its earliest days will know that I love food.  This includes meat of all descriptions. You’ll also know that, for some time, I’ve harboured some concerns about how the meat I consume is produced and what its environmental and social impacts are. I’ve held forth on each of these subjects at some length in earlier posts (see here, here and here).  As of this morning it has now been one full calendar month since I’ve eaten any meat.

I’ve never been enamoured with the concept of New Year’s resolutions; it’s always seemed to me that if you want to make some sort of change you should simply do it rather than waiting for a specific date.  Obviously this can be hard if that major change desired necessitates major surgery; such procedures are usually best booked in advance.  However, as 2010 began to draw to a close I recognised that, yet again, I had let a significant amount of time pass without making any real effort to cut down on my, by western standards, already minimal meat consumption.  Thinking about this I realised that I was simply too lazy to make any real effort, to see how long I could go without eating meat.  That’s when I decided, come 1 January 2011 I would see how long I could go without eating meat.

I didn’t mention this decision to anyone until dinner on New Years Eve a meal that consisted of smoked salmon and cheese fondue.  I’m not sure why, maybe I thought I’d change my mind, but I am happy to report that this first month has passed relatively hassle free.  There have been a few days where I’ve been obsessed by thoughts of a nice juicy steak or some  pepperoni pizza.  One Sunday, returning home from a 30 mile cycle ride in near freezing conditions, I was almost knocked out of the saddle by the wave of joy and hunger that hit me when I caught the smell of bacon frying at a roadside cafe but I kept going.  For the most part though dropping meat from my diet entirely hasn’t been a terribly difficult experiment to maintain.

I’m still eating fish and plenty of other meatless proteins.  Perhaps this is why I can’t say that I feel any different, better or worse, than when I was still a practising carnivore.  At the same time I’m not willing or ready to say I’ll never consume animal flesh again.  There are, to my mind, a lot of good reasons to give up meat, or at least eat as little as possible or necessary.  As far as I can tell it’s a responsible and simple thing to do in terms of protecting the environment and trying make a small effort to make sure that there is as much food available to as many people as possible.

At the same time I know that, in the past, I have tried and failed to become a complete vegetarian.  After each of those two failures I returned to my carnivorous habits with a vengeance as if I was trying to make up for lost time.  So for now, and because I’m eating fish, I’m not going to call myself a vegetarian.  I am going to see if I can’t make it through another month – rather convenient that February happens to be the shortest of them all – and if I do another after that.  However if, at some point in the coming year I break down and have that steak or that pepperoni pizza I’m hoping and planning that that decision will be a temporary blip and that I’ll return to my pesky ways at the next meal.

A Very Simple Pleasure

Last year my wife planted a plum tree in our back garden.  Over recent weeks the still small tree has borne a surprisingly large burden of fruit.  This morning I discovered, much to my delight, that 14 or so of the plums were ripe, ready to be picked and eaten.  I’ve picked them, I’ve washed them and doing so put me in mind of a certain poem by William Carlos Williams entitled This Is Just To Say. If you aren’t familiar with the poem you can find it here along with more information about the poet and his works.  Alternatively, as this page doesn’t always seem to be availible, the text can be found here.

Thinking about this poem made me realise I have never eaten a cold plum so I’ve put the fruit I picked  in my icebox.  I doubt I’ll be able to wait until breakfast to sample them, but I will be patient until I can share them with my wife.

I may not have the poetic talent of WCW but I do, on occasion, have better manners.

Brats on the Brain

image found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/aelam/2740209166/ Rights belong to the author, A Little Lam

That’s brats, short for bratwurst, with the “a” pronounced as in “fall” and not the snotty-nosed, ill-mannered little cretins spawned by people who assume you find their progeny as fascinatingly adorable as they do.  I don’t know why or how or when, in certain portions of the mid-Western United States, the term brats became shorthand for the sausages made by the descendents of German settlers and consumed by just about everyone.  I do know that in those places, particularly Wisconsin, it wouldn’t be summer without brats.

I was born in a state that shares a border with Wisconsin with the result that some of my earliest summer memories are not just of eating brats at home or at larger gatherings with the grandiose title of brat roasts, but of hearing people discuss the best ways to cook the things.  I can remember sitting under my great grandmother’s (Grandma Great) car port on a hot and humid day while distant relatives argued the merits of cooking the sausages over charcoal or gas.  Someone suggested they should simply be steamed for the best flavour a suggestion that, if I remember correctly, met with a rather scornful shock.  Another person argued that the best method of preparation was to soak the brats in beer the night before and then put them on the grill.  Yet another person qualified this and insisted the brats needed to be parboiled in the beer for two minutes after the overnight soak.  Soon the conversation turned to the discussion of condiments: sauerkraut or none, whole grain mustard versus yellow American mustard or Dijon, catsup or ketchup?  I moved on, bored, before that group of adults started talking about side dishes.  I could probably make a fairly accurate guess as to how that discussion unfolded.  I’m sure I went to stuff my little face with yet another brat; I know this because Grandma Great, a step ahead of everyone as usual, had done the same.

When I was 9 or 10 I was lucky enough to be taken to Madison, Wisconsin’s annual Bratfest.  There were soap box derbies, there was live music, street performers, fair ground rides, cotton candy, soda, beer (for the adults of course) and, at regular intervals along the streets, brats sizzling away releasing their mouth-watering aroma just waiting to be devoured.  It was a great day though even then I suspected that I’d like to go back when I was old enough to have a beer or 6 with my brats.  I haven’t made it yet.

I’ve managed to get my hands on some very nice German bratwurst here in the UK and, excitedly cook them up along with the appropriate sides and condiments.  None of my British guests were as thrilled as I was; they did seem to appreciate the food but to them, without my midwestern cultural baggage, they were just some tasty sausages, nothing more, nothing less.  They didn’t taste of childhood summers filled with sunburns, scraped knees and mosquito bites.  The brats in those British mouths didn’t savour of bicycles racing down tree-lined streets, early mornings fishing for blue gill on small lakes, swimming in the neighbours’ pool or go, go, going until just before the point of exhaustion knowing all the while that, at some point later in the day there would be brats, potato salad and soda and that everyone would be happy, full and talkative.  For a large group of Americans brats are just as evocative,  just as memory and value laden as Yorkshire puddings are for many Brits.  They can been disappointing but when they’re good everything seems perfect and those are the ones that are never forgotten.

I may have to see if I can hunt down some bratwurst, invite some people round and have a brat roast this weekend after all this thinking about the damn things.  What brought it on?  Well, I stumbled across the story of a 9-year old Wisconsin boy who invented a curved bun to cradle his beloved brats.  He’s officially one of my heroes and I’m in no doubt that for the rest of his life, in Wisconsin at least, he’ll be able to grab free brats and beer from grateful residents of that state every summer.

My lord, did I really just compose some sort of panegyric to brats?

Peanut Butter Breakfast Haiku

Peanut butter toast

for breakfast, but only with

lots of hot chilies.

Trust me.  It’s great, especially with a hot shot of sinfully black espresso.

Sandwiches

A truly good sandwich is a beautiful experience.    I’ve had a few in various parts of the world: French baguettes with fine ham, good cheese and a bit of mustard; monstrous creations of thinly sliced pastrami, corned beef and sauerkraut topped with just a half pound or so of chicken liver paté and a kosher pickle and cold beer on the side come to mind immediately.  The first time I visited New York City I arrived at dinner time then I woke up jet-lagged and hungry in a mid-town hotel in the disgustingly small hours of the morning.  The remnants of three sandwiches for four people were more than I could finish and I was able to drift back to sleep with my anachronous appetite sated along with the addition of an over-price mini-bar beer.  I’ve even made one or two sandwiches I’ve been quite proud of.  One was such a pleasure that it’s a good thing I was alone when I ate it.

There are also bad sandwiches.  The ones that taste of little, if anything.  They come in plastic containers, sit on bread made soggy by wilting lettuce and anaemic tomatoes.  Their cheese, if they contain it, tastes off.  Any animal protein they contain is tasteless at best, dry and fuzzy at worst.  Toasting exacerbates the problem but, apparently, is a means of distraction.  These sandwiches make you feel filthy and ashamed to be your mother’s child.  They are like a horrible defecation in reverse: unavoidable at the time but unspeakable and best forgotten.

I always figured that this kind of mass-produced calamity and betrayal of what can be a wonderful food due to its simplicity was the result of very recent developments in our world.  It seems I was wrong.  Back in 1953 Raymond Chandler’s The Long Good-bye was published.  McDonald’s had yet to take over the world.  There wasn’t a Subway on every corner and Quizno’s wasn’t even a mean glint in its degenerate daddy’s eye.  Late in the novel, with all the troubles and cares of the type you’d expect to be sitting heavily on the shoulders of one of the original hard-boiled detectives Philip Marlowe has something to eat:

I went down to the drugstore and ate a chicken salad sandwich and drank some coffee.  The coffee was over-strained and the sandwich was as full of rich flavour as a piece torn off an old shirt.  Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted.” (Chandler, The Long Good-bye, chapter 45)

I wish I could deny the truth of Marlowe’s statement about toasting and toothpicks.  I can’t.  All I can say is that it’s probably a good thing that Marlowe lived in LA rather than Chicago or Boston or, of course, New York.  In the the Big Apple especially he would have been assured of a regular supply of great food including truly wonderful sandwiches rather than having carefully to hunt them out.  There would have been no reason for this clear connoisseur of the sandwich not to stop and grab one en route to see a panicked client or a stakeout or to speak with some windbag of a cop.

Faced with that situation I suspect that, like most of us, Marlowe would have had a hard time maintaining his stony, cynical facade.  A happy, fat Marlowe just wouldn’t be able to face down the tough crooks, sneer at the rich men who feel they’re above the law or get the bombshell on the terms dictated by his secretly sensitive heart. Plus strings of roast beef in your front teeth and bits of kosher pickle on your shirt don’t tend to make you look tough or sexy, just sloppy.

So what’s my point in all this?  Well, it seems to me that despite its simple nature a truly great sandwich will always remain something of a beautiful mystery.  If not Marlowe, ham that he is, would have had a larger repertoire of cute observations on the subject.

Then again maybe we’ve both just had too much coffee chased by too much bourbon.

Whose Apples?

In September of 2007 I found myself in Avignon, France in good company at the end of a week-long visit to Provence.  My companions and I had spent most of our time in the region based in Châteauneuf-du-Pape but were closing off our visit with two nights in Avignon.  It had been a very good trip and one that I was much in need of.  I was a fortnight off the submission deadline for my PhD dissertation.  My supervisor had signed the forms allowing me to submit it and apart from adding a few commas here and there and some slight rephrasing it was in the form in which I would be examined on.  Had I been at home I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from tinkering with it in a way that would have been pointless, but that would have extended the stressful period of intense revision I’d been engaged in for nearly two months.  The southern French sun, the places we visited, the wine and food all helped me to breath again and actually relax.

We’d passed a very full day in Avignon strolling around soaking up the atmosphere, visiting the well known bridge and Le Palais des Papes.  I’d been particularly excited by the latter as I knew Dickens had visited the place.  He wrote about his tour of the former Papal palace in Pictures From Italy and the vivid imaginings it had inspired in him regarding the torturing of heretics when the place was still in use making some strong criticisms of the Catholic ‘brand’ of Christianity in the process.  I’d written about the technical aspects of these passages at some length and it was nice to feel that I was walking in a place where one of my favourite authors once stopped and reflected.  It also reminded me that there was some connection between the real world and the realm of intellectual analysis of texts that I’d isolated myself in to such a great extent of late.

After our peregrinations about town we were all ready for a fine supper.  We spent a good deal of time strolling side streets reading the menus of the smaller venues that were relatively full.  We almost ate at a Couscousery.  In the end we all agreed on a very intimate place serving traditional French cuisine.  It wasn’t haute cuisine nor was it entirely bistro food.  The place was very nicely decorated in a way that was tasteful even if the taste wasn’t ours.  It wasn’t.   There were small crystal chandeliers, plush carpet that looked like it was probably replaced rather than hoovered when dirty and a very efficient and friendly staff.  The table cloths, cut from a cream coloured fabric were heavy and fine.  Overseeing all of this with a mixture of pride and concern on her face was the proprietress who stood quietly in a corner and directed her staff with hand gestures and soft noises often anticipating her patrons desires before they themselves were conscious of them.  Her dress appeared to be cut from the same cloth as the table cloths.

My French is non-existent.  Growing up in California I took years of Spanish lessons.  Then I moved to England and I’ve spent more time in French-speaking places that in those where Spanish is spoken.  One of the few things I can manage to make some headway with are French menus.  Because I’m food obsessed I can remember what food terms I’ve seen elsewhere on other menus and get a decent idea of what’s on offer.  I was happily perusing the French menu I’d been provided with when She-of-the-table-cloth-dress appeared by my side and handed me an English translation of that day’s menu.  Clearly she was  proud of it and I thought one or two my companions might it want so I accepted the proffered paper.

For the most part the translation was fine.  It had clearly been done by someone with a working knowledge of English rather than a professional a fact that I found rather charming.  It did the job of explaining what the dishes were without pretending to some sort of grandiose usage of adjectives of the type I’ve seen on other translated menus.  This establishment was clearly happy to let the food, once served, speak for itself.  In the event the food spoke eloquently and could not have had a finer advocate than the marriage of flavours it provided.

That being said there was one little mistake, perhaps the result of some confusion over idiomatic expressions, that made me laugh out loud at the time.  I still chuckle when I think about it.  If the proud and proper woman who was running the fantastic restaurant I found myself in had known the error her translated menu contained I’m sure she would have been mortified.  She may have told me to grow up and get my juvenile mind out of the gutter.  One of the starters was a dish built around scallops removed from their shells.  It sounded fantastic and it didn’t disappoint.  Had I not known the French term for scallop meat, noix de Saint Jacques, I doubt I would have ordered it.  You see, the English menu didn’t translate noix de Saint Jacques, as scallops.  Instead it called them ‘Saint Jack’s Knob Apples.’

I’m a very adventurous diner, but even at a place serving delicious French food I think the images conjured by that phrase would have led me to conclude that poor Jack’s Apples were one delicacy I’d refrain from trying.