Korean food is really good; I ordered some the other night. Yet for years we have read tales of scarcity and even famine in the North. Now the Dear Leader, with his legendary sense of humor (like executing his uncle), chooses to drop nearly a thousand poop-and-trash filled balloons on his neighbors to the South, causing world-wide scorn and laughter. There must be plenty of digested food to stock those shit bags so now we can stop worrying about starvation in the DPRK.
What’s really at stake here is a new mode of diplomacy. Kim is still provoking the world with his missile tests and bluster, repression and power purges, forced labor, and who knows what else. Besides outraging the West with his nuclear posturing, Kim is also a big jokester. Thus the poop bags, designed to bolster his endless campaign against the South, were a masterstroke of diplomatic insult.
The South weakly responded with its own balloons containing thumb drives of K-pop music and propaganda leaflets. It also suspended an agreement with the North to cease tensions and hostilities. Their back-and-forth has been going on for years; the poop balloons brought this to a new, almost frivolous, height.
You may think of the balloon as an object of lightness, freedom, celebration, anti-gravity perhaps. It can convey all kinds of meanings: politics, ads, frivolity and sport are all part of the balloon gestalt. The wonderfully loose gloss we put on balloons makes them great expressive vehicles, something Donald Barthelme explored in his bizarre tale of “The Balloon.”
In that story an enormous balloon moves over and covers Manhattan. People project their own fantasies and interpretations onto it as it shifts its shape and meaning, finally mystifying all but the narrator who somehow controls it. It ultimately means (“excessive discussion was pointless”) whatever we want it to mean. Ann Beattie contrasts it to the Chinese spy balloon shot down a while back. But Barthelme’s balloon is mystical and involving―and the poop balloons are anything but. Still, they are better than bullets and bombs.
Well, they get drunk, of course. After the caviar is served and a few cocktails consumed, the party sits down to fancy entrées, then main courses like Kobe Steak, and a lot of wine. What they talk about is so banal that it encourages drinking. Something like this scenario apparently did in poor Angela Chao who got loaded, befuddled and, on leaving the party, backed her Tesla into a Texas pond where it sank in the mud and killed her.
You can’t blame Tesla for this, though we’d like to. She couldn’t get herself out of the car. The cops said that Angela’s blood alcohol level was about three times over the legal limit. “Chao was the CEO of Foremost Group, the wife of venture capitalist Jim Breyer and the sister of former cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, who is the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.” The Foremost Group is an American shipping company.
Would we care about any of this if not for the McConnell connection? Probably not. Billionaires and the British Royals keep quiet about their private doings for good reason. Their privacy is their PR, and the public’s unsatisfied curiosity is their stock in trade. It puts them on a media pedestal. VIP parties are especially ridiculous and indulgent.
So what do they talk about? According to one Quora contributor: “Vacations, travel, skiing, boats. Cars, houses, architects, contractors, parties, caterers, charity events, lawyers, their financial planners, investments, stocks, crypto, medical professionals who do cosmetic surgery, nannies, the help, private schools, sleep away camps, etc.”
My friends and I sit down to dinner and talk about none of these things—except maybe travel, on which I had my say here. Our similarly boring discussions focus on the latest political outrage, problems getting city water, health concerns, pets, and food. We could be talking about art, literature, music, philosophy and science. But we don’t.
Because the purpose of entertaining people is not to make them think.
Eating can be a joy, a repeatable pleasure, or a necessary fuel stop. How you feel about it will be the product of many innumerable factors. Here I offer an overview of my thoughts, at least on the day I wrote them. Some of these comments come from past postings which you may recognize.
Those of us lucky enough to be brought up in a genuine gastronomic culture can be either snooty or appalled by American food—or at least the diet that most Americans eat. Authorities keep warning us that such food is not only unhealthy but dangerous.
I grew up in a foodie family devoted to great food and lots of it. Our guru was Grandma Elsie who ran the food fest with skill and laughter. I said the following about her in my memoir. When we ate weekly at her house,
the food was invariably superb. I would describe it as Continental-American-Jewish. Feather-light matzoh ball soup was a favorite. Latkes, extra-thin and crisp, were called German potato pancakes. A rare specialty of the house was Dobosch Torte, a rich sponge cake with twenty-one very thin layers interspersed with frosting of Maillard’s chocolate (ordered special from New York). This left everyone groaning. Elsie ran the show with humor and love. “Eat up,” she would say, “there’s another one (turkey, roast, etc.) out in the kitchen.”
Elsie’s pickles were famous and inimitable. She made them in big crock pots and passed the recipe on to my mother and sister who unfortunately could never quite duplicate her results. Food and its preparation is often the source of some mystery.
We all seem to be captive to our childhood preferences in food. For many years I had a thing for French toast and bacon in the morning. Those associations with breakfast die hard. You know about Proust and the madeleine dipped in tea? Taste, memory and associations together make us into creatures of the past. So sometimes, as I said here, we simply have to give way to our built-in historic preferences. The alternative is food guilt, and who needs that?
The wizards of the food industry are constantly bombarded by the food police and the advocates of organic food. I think the only thing wrong with organic food is the folks who promote it and their high-handed convictions in the cause. They feed on many platitudes and attitudes about food.
Poor people do eat more junk food. It fuels obesity, but it’s cheaper and provides instant gratification. Do the hordes of MAGA supporters eat anything but junk food? Look at the way Trump eats here.
Researchers claim that fat (but not obese) people live longer. So, how much weight is too much, guys? Another elaborate study on fruit flies tells us that human taste buds operate like those in the flies to make up for diet deficiencies.
You want science like this to control your diet and your life? I mean, what’s wrong with sandwiches? Stuff ‘em with lettuce if you want your greens. Did you know that pizza is the best-liked food in the world? How frightening is that? I live around the corner from a great farmers market so I’m fortunate not to be subject to the onslaught of the packaged, processed, fatty foods that outrage the food police.
Recent gastronomic traditions in American cooking can compete with the best in Europe and Asia. And the fact that we have incorporated the traditions of French, Italian and Asian cookery in our food provides variety and nourishment of a different and welcome sort. The best food in Mexico, as in the U.S., is the freshest and most nutritious. Beans, vegetables, fruits and corn tortillas are everywhere. The better restaurants here serve up endless variations on these staples, often with great flair.
But not everybody everywhere gets to eat. The horror stories in Gaza keep on coming: attacks on the food truck convoys, Israeli soldiers killing the attackers, near-famine conditions, air drops of insufficient food falling into the sea, photos of kids starving. I read a report that people resorted to eating animal feed.
Using food as a weapon is one of the most barbarous things countries can do, and we see it happening over and over again. Our politicians seem powerless to do anything, but they all enjoy a good breakfast.
The only bad thing about hamburgers is that Trump eats them. I love them even though they are America’s favorite food. My father, a big red-meat eater, cooked them over charcoal, crispy on the outside, red to pink inside. That to me is still the standard.
The recent fuss about not eating red meat is entirely overdone. Health foodies all say cut down on red meat; my Anemia problems call for more of it. One can never please the health Nazis who, like the other kind, are taking over the world.
You start with first-class red meat, coarse-ground steak is best, no chopped onions or other crap added in to adulterate the flavor. Salt and pepper only, a very hot fire on pan or grill, and of course a decent bun. The additions or toppings we will discuss below. Ketchup for Americans is pretty standard and so is cheese.
To my taste, fast food burgers are mostly bad, especially the McDonald’s offerings. The Big Mac is a joke of a hamburger: two thin badly cooked patties, lettuce, 100-island sauce and three pieces of bun. More bread than meat. Mi compañera and I were discussing why a club sandwich has a seemingly unnecessary third slice of bread. I said it was to hold things together. But the Big Mac has no such excuse. McD’s new offering, the Double Big Mac, has four beef patties.
The regular Big Mac in the U.S. has 590 calories 34 grams of carbs, and 1050 milligrams of sodium. If the Double Big Mac turns out to be the same in the U.S. as the Canadian version, it will have about 740 calories, 48 grams of carbohydrates, and 1020 milligrams of sodium.
Americans will now get even fatter. The best of the junk food offerings, I think, is Burger King’s Whopper: the meat is flame broiled, and you get a “4 oz (110 g) beef patty, sesame seed bun, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup, and sliced onion. Beats the Big Mac every time.
Mexicans put everything or anything in their hamburguesas, always served with fries: “beef patty, american cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onions, pickles, avocado, jalapenos, mayo, mustard and ketchup on toasted buns. Optional to add fried egg or ham.” The meat is invariably overcooked and tasteless.
I had a pretty good hamburguesa on the beach last week. It featured real meat, lettuce, tomato, mayo, avocado and a bit of red onion. Sometimes all the added stuff works, especially if it’s fresh.
In 1954 Ray Kroc bought into the McDonald’s franchise and established the first of the McDonald’s chain in Des Plaines, a suburb of Chicago. My wife and I used to stop there en route to Madison where I was then in grad school. In 1958 we had never eaten anything like it, a novelty food. Note the price; we were hungry and it was cheap.
I read on Google that lemons are the world’s healthiest food. Imagine that! Go suck on a lemon if you’re hungry. Mexican food can be dreadful or delicious, as most expats here know. And all foods are a constant source of pleasure and controversy.
I grew up in a foodie family devoted to German, American and Continental cookery. Our guru was Grandma Elsie who ran the food fest with skill and laughter. I said the following about her in my memoir. When we ate weekly at her house,
the food was invariably superb. I would describe it as Continental-American-Jewish. Feather-light matzoh ball soup was a favorite. Latkes, extra-thin and crisp, were called German potato pancakes. A rare specialty of the house was Dobosch Torte, a rich sponge cake with twenty-one very thin layers interspersed with frosting of Maillard’s chocolate (ordered special from New York). This left everyone groaning. Elsie ran the show with humor and love. “Eat up,” she would say, “there’s another one (turkey, roast, etc.) out in the kitchen.”
Elsie’s pickles were famous and inimitable. She made them in big crock pots and passed the recipe on to my mother and sister who unfortunately could never quite duplicate her results. Food and its preparation is often the source of some mystery.
When you’re retired and looking for things to engage yourself, cooking is a welcome creative activity that gets your mind off everything else. In fact, cooking is therapy. A good friend brought me some nutless pesto that she had made. (I have a serious allergy to nuts.) I put some in a spaghetti sauce I was making, and it was a revelation.
At the supermarket the plastic-wrapped hamburger meat looked awful—pulpy and full of fat. I found some beef chunks and ground my own, so much better. The other night some folks came over for white chicken chili—beans, broth, chicken, corn, lime, onion, poblanos and spices. It was the first time I had made it, and fortunately it evoked compliments.
Over the last year or so I lost some weight, mostly because I was cooking better and eating better. The joy of cooking is more than the name of a famous old cookbook. It’s the essence of gastronomy.
Martha Stewart at age 81 poses in scrupulous déshabillé for Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and her legions of fans applaud.
“Crafting, gardening, cooking, modeling, restaurant owner.…What can’t Martha do? Unstoppable,” one fan wrote on Instagram. “An icon,” another said.”
Yes, her ego is unstoppable and really tiresome. For years now she has set herself to rule over American middle-class lifestyle choices—in fashion, furnishing, gardening, cookware, accessories, recipes and gourmet food. She sells not just items but her taste as an arbiter of style for the good life.
After a slight interruption to serve a short jail term (for securities fraud and insider trading), Martha took on business ventures (see below) and a social media presence. Now she takes off her clothes to prove, I guess, that you’re as young as you feel. She took posing as a challenge, she says, which she met and found it “kind of fun . . . a testament to good living.” It seems, rather, to be a testament to making more money.
Sure, she looks good for an 81-year-old. I look pretty good too for my age yet would never display myself as some kind of physical paragon triumphing over the trials of aging. And how many older women would do that? On aging she says, “I think all of us should think about good living, successfully living, and not aging. The whole aging thing is so boring. You know what I mean?”
For me, entering the world of aging was like entering a new life. For her, it must be an unwelcome continuation of the old, fighting off the degeneration of body and mind. She wants to show how she can beat the devil.
The best story on Martha happened in her new Paris-in-Las Vegas restaurant, as reported here. She is involved in a licensing partnership with Caesars Entertainment “where Ms. Stewart helms the restaurant’s concept from design and décor to food and beverage recipes.” In this Martha-themed restaurant called Bedford, a roast chicken served lukewarm costs $89.95 and lukewarm baked potatoes cost $15.95 each.
“If you order a baked potato, one will be presented by a server, raised high in the air and brought down with a resounding thud on the surface of a tableside potato cart.” So the food is presented with phony showmanship at an exorbitant price. The writer wonders whether Martha serves potatoes this way at her house.
The Bedford seems like another attempt to sell good taste to the yahoos, and yet it turns out to be a venture in kitsch. Her media company at one point was worth over $1 billion but the Bedford cooks “work, not for her, but for Caesars Entertainment.” That arrangement puts a rather big dent in Martha’s reputation for competence.
And she’s never going to compete with the sexy young women who used to populate the Swimsuit Edition.
Holiday promotions are part of the food and beverage industry too. Miller Lite knows how much you love to drink beer under the Christmas tree, and their Keg Stand will cost you $50, beer not included. They tell us supplies won’t last long.
The apparatus holds the tree on top with “room for a quarter-barrel keg (which holds the equivalent of about 83 bottled beers) and ice bucket underneath. Finally, a hole in the top of the box allows the tap’s spout to fit through so revelers can pour a beer right next to the tree.” Miller also sells beer-infused ice cream bars. Well, who knew?
The wizards of the food industry are constantly bombarded by the food police and the advocates of organic food. I think the only thing wrong with organic food is the folks who promote it and their high-handed convictions in the cause. They feed on many platitudes and attitudes about food.
I’ve maintained that people with some degree of education generally know what foods to eat and what’s good for them. (Is that true, I wonder?) Still, food science marches on. Researchers claim that fat (not obese) people live longer. So, how much weight is too much, guys? Another elaborate study on fruit flies tells us that human taste buds operate like those in the bugs to make up for diet deficiencies.
You want science like this to control your diet and your life? I mean, what’s wrong with sandwiches? Stuff ‘em with lettuce if you want your greens. Did you know that pizza is the best-liked food in the world? How frightening is that? I live around the corner from a great farmers market so I’m fortunate not to be subject to the onslaught of the packaged, processed, fatty foods that outrage the food police.
We all seem to be captive to our childhood preferences in food. For many years I had a thing for French toast and bacon in the morning. Those associations with breakfast die hard. You know about Proust and the madeleine dipped in tea? Taste, memory and associations together make us into creatures of the past.
So sometimes, as I said here, we simply have to give way to our built-in historic preferences. The alternative is food guilt, and who needs that?
Those of us lucky enough to be brought up in a genuine gastronomic culture can be either snooty or appalled by American food—or at least the diet that most Americans eat. Authorities keep warning us that such food is not only unhealthy but dangerous.
This diet typically is high in sodium, refined sugars, omega-6 fatty acids, trans fats, and excess calories. It’s also low in the vitally important long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. People who maintain a diet loaded with simple carbohydrates (such as bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juices, and sugar) have an increased risk for problems with their digestive system, liver, pancreas, heart, circulation, and overall brain health.
Not to mention the American addiction to junk food like hamburgers and French fries, Twinkies and Coke. Full disclosure: last night I cooked myself a really good hamburger and ate a salad with that to temper my misbehavior, finishing off with a little Haagen-Dazs and a cookie. I say OK to such indulgence once in a while. Harkening to dieticians and the food police can make you feel guilty, not to say hungry.
Poor people eat more junk food. It fuels obesity, but it’s cheaper and provides instant gratification. Do the hordes of MAGA supporters eat anything but junk food? Look at the way Trump eats.
Food manufacturers spend billions of dollars on research and development to create flavor profiles that trigger the human affinity for sugar, salt, and fat. Consumption results in pleasurable, likely addictive, effects on the brain. At the same time, massive marketing efforts are deployed, creating powerful brand loyalties that studies have shown can trump taste.
The best thing about American food has always been its simplicity and freshness. A good steak, fresh fish, corn on the cob, non-processed cheese, fresh greens and fruits—this is the stuff I grew up on. Hopefully you did too.
The latest gastronomic traditions in American cooking can compete with the best in Europe and Asia. And the fact that we have incorporated the traditions of French, Italian and Asian cookery in our food provides variety and nourishment of a different and welcome sort.
However, living in Mexico really tests your ability to avoid junk food. Snacks and soft drink consumption is off the charts. The government puts labels warning of excessive fat, sugar, etc. on packaged food. Their impact has been negligible. Recently the state of Oaxaca passed a law forbidding the sale of high-calorie and sugary drinks to minors. Permit me to be skeptical, since here obesity even in the young is out of control.
The best food in Mexico, as in the U.S., is the freshest and most nutritious. Beans, vegetables, fruits and even corn tortillas are everywhere. The better restaurants serve up endless variations on these staples, often with great flair. For lunch I just finished a large taco of chicken, mushrooms and refried beans, all dipped in a bit of Heinz Ketchup to show biculturalism. Beats McDonald’s every time.
this Jell-O apricot salad.
You may think of the balloon as an object of lightness, freedom, celebration, anti-gravity perhaps. It can convey all kinds of meanings: politics, ads, frivolity and sport are all part of the balloon gestalt. The wonderfully loose gloss we put on balloons makes them great expressive vehicles, something Donald Barthelme explored in his bizarre tale of “
