Cornucopia

Whatever you made for Thanksgiving, you probably spent the rest of the weekend finishing. Even though the last thing anyone wants to think of today is holiday food, the Times published an article last Wednesday that deserves another look. After interviewing the keepers of various recipe sites, the author provided a snapshot of the most searched-for holiday recipes by region, and the results are interesting.

Growing up, our Thanksgiving menu never varied, and because it never varied I assumed that the entire country ate what we ate: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green been casserole, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. My mother always started things off with fruit salad, which I figured was her idiosyncrasy, since she believed fruit salad to be a "fancy" start to a meal. I therefore had no idea that, had I grown up in the Midwest, Thanksgiving would have been incomplete without a cheese ball.

Most of the recipe searches in the article are for items one would expect, although it's interesting to note that most of the searches for green bean casserole came from the West coast, as if San Francisco liberals have never heard of such a thing, and that most of the candied sweet potato searches came from the South, as if sweet potatoes and marshmallows are somehow ingredients foreign to the Southern diet. I had no idea, however, that deviled eggs were part of anyone's holiday menu, but they are in the top 25 most searched-for list, and would appear to be a staple of the mid-Western holiday diet.

What do Tennessee and Idaho have in common? Residents of both states apparently enjoy cheesecake as their holiday dessert. If you live in the South, you are apt to serve macaroni and cheese alongside the sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving day. If you happen to live smack dab in the middle of the country, your turkey was accompanied by corn casserole, based on this data. Those who live in the northern plains and the Northwest appear much more likely to brine their turkeys. In the South, green bean casserole was not searched for, while this was the only region of the country where cooks clamored for recipes for broccoli casserole, whatever that may be.

Looking for stuffed mushrooms on your holiday plate? Get invited to dinner in New England or Alaska. It turns out fruit salad is a Thanksgiving staple, just not on either coast, and that in this one instance my mother was a red-stater. Butternut squash is something I can imagine as a holiday regular, but either only New Englanders needed a recipe for this dish, or it's only served in New England.

I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this data, but I did learn that we are a large and diverse country. I mean, deviled eggs? Cheese balls?

Turkey Sucks

Yeah, it's been a while. After 20 months I just needed a break, but now I'm back, refreshed, renewed, reborn, rejuvenated, re...you get the picture. I got my hair cut again yesterday, which I do every six weeks, and realized that my last post was after my last haircut, which meant that six weeks had gone by. So, my break is over, and it's time to get back to it.

So much happens and yet nothing happens. The seasons change, daylight disappears in the evening, when you want light, and appears way too early in the morning, when you want dark. Leaves are raked and blown and are migrated from tree to sidewalk. A season of Mad Men comes to a satisfying end, while yet another season of Real Housewives comes to a satisfying start. Books are read, trips are taken. I will get to all of it, eventually, but on this morning, as I begin preparations for another Thanksgiving, I want to talk about turkey.

I'll start by admitting that I hate turkey. Yes, it smells good while it's roasting, but at the end of all that effort you're left with exactly two pieces of OK-tasting poultry - the meat from the inner thigh - and about 10 pounds of dessicated tastelessness. Stuff it or don't, brine it or don't, the end result is still a lot of meat that you then spend a week disguising in mayonnaise-laden sandwiches or cheese-ridden casseroles. In the end, there's absolutely no reason that we make turkey for Thanksgiving other than the fact that we think it's traditional.

Did the Indians and Pilgrims eat turkey at that originary meal? Perhaps, we don't really know. Oysters were plentiful in the Bay, and the natives would have brought corn, root vegetables, that kind of thing. Venison was just as likely as turkey on that 17th-century groaning board. No, we eat turkey at the holidays because our parents served it, and our parents served it because they like to think they grew up in a Normal Rockwell painting but really probably were served turkey by our grandparents simply because it was a cheap way to feed a lot of people.

No matter the origins, turkey is a bad idea. If turkey was actually so delicious, wouldn't it be served in fine restaurants everywhere? Have you ever once said, "I want to go out for a really good piece of turkey?" When planning a nice dinner party for your friends or loved ones other than Thanksgiving or Christmas, do you buy a huge frozen bird? If turkey were so good, wouldn't there be a McTurkey sandwich? Wouldn't Julie and Julia have featured Julia Child in her French kitchen mastering the art of brining?

Thanksgiving is, at heart, a dinner party. It took me years to realize this, but it is the truth. I've let go of all the holiday cliches, and treat it as what it is. If I want to serve roast beef or rack of lamb, that's what I serve. If I want creamed corn instead of sweet potatoes that's what I make. This year I'm considering fondue. You don't need turkey. You probably don't even want it, if you think about it.

Free yourselves this holiday season. Make whatever you want!

Goodbye, Taste Buds

I understand that I'm getting older every day, but so far aging hasn't really been anything I've noticed. Sure, I've got some more gray in my hair and my metabolism has definitely changed, but my health has been good and I don't generally feel differently than I did, say, 20 years ago. With one small exception.

It started with sour mix. One day I was enjoying margaritas with impunity and the next two sips gave me heartburn. There's plenty of other alcoholic beverages in the world, though, so I simply stopped ordering margaritas. Then one day the heartburn after two sips started to apply to those "malt beverages" as well. Goodbye, Smirnoff Ice, farewell, Mike's Hard Lemonade. Not the biggest loss, but a loss nonetheless.

And now, suddenly, I can't eat garlic without being kept up all night chugging water, tasting it on my lips, feeling generally uncomfortable. Garlic powder is still fine, but I just can no longer do fresh garlic. This is a loss, but more important this is an event that makes me fear that I've taken the first step in a descent down the slippery slope that leads to an entirely bland diet. I'm now afraid that I'll wake up one day and will have turned into my grandmother, subsisting on a diet of boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy. Or that I'll wake up one day and after eating boiled chicken and dessicated hard candy will look through my pockets and discover them filled with emery boards, rain bonnets, and travel packs of tissues.

I don't like having to admit that I'm slowly aging, but who does? Yes, I'm still a long way from being restricted to soft food, but still. Garlic-free pesto? Tragic.

Cooking Project Update

A brief update on my "eat only what you cook" project:

If you're going to attempt this kind of thing, this is the time of year to do it. It's easy to stop at a farm stand, make a bunch of corn or buy some cucumbers, turn it into a salad and eat it for a few days. Plus, I prefer most vegetables raw, which means there's no work involved preparing part of my meals, so it's just been a matter of, say, grilling some chicken, eating some of it that night, and then using the rest in salads or sandwiches. I've learned there are a few things I won't be able to eat as long as I do this, though.

Pizza, for example. I can make something that resembles a pizza. I can make a flatbread dough, put toppings on it and grill it, and it tastes fine. It's not real pizza, though, not like the pizza from my favorite place. You clearly need a pizza oven to make real pizza, so I'm just going to stop experimenting and put that in the column of things I can only eat if I'm eating out.

I think I'm going to have to say that beverages are not part of this experiment. I love Diet Pepsi too much. I've been making mint tea, but really there's no replacing the chemical fizziness of Diet Pepsi. So I bought some yesterday, and I also bought some pretzels. I was having some friends over for drinks, and pretzels are time-consuming to make, and I didn't want to offer them green beans with their beer (which I also didn't make).

In fact, the healthiest thing about this is going to be the absence of snack food. I didn't think I ate a lot of such food, but I was fooling myself. The hardest thing has been wanting just a few bites of something and finding only fruit and vegetables in my kitchen - no Sun Chips, no wasabi peas, no Twizzlers. And no, I am not going to attempt to make Sun Chips. I'm certain that I lack the requisite chemicals.

In short, it hasn't been a particularly hard week and a half, but it's only been a week and a half. I'll keep going, and update as things progress.

Feeding

We have the story of two women, both adrift. One arrives in postwar Paris the wife of a mid-level embassy official, unable to bear children, with nothing to do. One works as a mid-level bureaucrat in post-9/11 Manhattan and has awakened to find her life somehow less than she had imagined, back in college, it would be. Both women aspire to control events, but both feel instead that events are controlling them. How does such a woman save her soul, save herself?

On the surface, the answer Julie and Julia serves up would appear to be cooking. Julia Child studies at Le Cordon Bleu and reinvents herself by learning to cook; Julie Powell decides to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and invents a life for herself far away from the cubicle she inhabits eight hours each day. Ephron's film is in many ways a celebration of the preparation and consumption of food, of excess. Julie and Julia are both perpetually hungry, and both set about sating that hunger. Be sure to eat before you see the movie, because it's filled with food porn. Julie and Julia's hunger is also carnal, and both enjoy sex as much as lobster thermidor. It's easy to leave the theater believing that satisfaction of one's primal, physical needs leads to spiritual fulfillment.

It wasn't cooking or eating or even sex that gave definition and direction to either life, though. Julia Child became Julia Child not because she learned how to cook but because she learned how to write about it, and Julie Powell became the subject of a movie not because she spent a year cooking her way through Child but because she wrote about it. Neither of these women became chefs; both became writers.

The act of writing is a very literal way to control events. To author something is to be its god, its originator. Think of the etymology of "author" and this becomes evident: authority, authoritarian, authoritative. Child didn't write just any text but a book of recipes, of instructions. A cookbook is, very simply, a way of controlling and shaping experience; a recipe is a set of specific instructions that tames the chaos of the kitchen, that turns alchemy into procedure. A cookbook is a structure. Deciding to cook every recipe in a book in 365 days is also a structure, and by taking on that project and writing about it Powell was, powerfully, authoring her own life. This was Child's penultimate recipe: words will set you free, wield words and you can invent yourself.

Writing is a large part of the movie, but of course it's much less visual than food, and because it's not a communal activity but is instead solitary it's not the stuff of either comedy or drama. But if you see the film look carefully and you'll see the way writing is central. Child is continually at her typewriter, composing letters and then her book; Powell is continually either at her computer or reading from Child's letters. In the end, words are more powerful than even aspic, and in the end this is not a story about some people who like to eat but instead a story of two women who hunger for so much more than a properly prepared meal.

Eat What You Make

Well, it's not Friday, but I'm back. I can't really be blamed for pretending my vacation lasted a bit longer than three days, can I? The most thought-provoking event of the past week was reading Michael Pollen's article in Sunday's Times Magazine on the way that, as we cook less and less, we watch cooking shows more and more. What interested me the most was not this phenomenon per se, but instead the history of how cooking turned into "cooking," to the point where microwaving something or pouring dressing on top of lettuce counts as having "made" a meal.

During WWII food scientists invented MREs and all sorts of ways to preserve food for soldiers overseas. The trick was finding ways to sell prepared and packaged food to consumers during peacetime. It took a while: a sexual revolution, the need for a two-person income, and women staying in the workforce rather than staying home with children needed to be factored into the mix, but food scientists ultimately prevailed. Pollen notes that as early as the 1940s manufacturers had the ability to produce just-add-water cake mixes, but women wouldn't buy them. They would, however, buy mixes where one needed to break and mix in an egg, the addition of that egg being some kind of line in the sand that defined what could be classified as "home-made." Today, the baking aisle is filled with just-add-water mixes; "home-made" now means anything one moves from package to bowl to pan. Actually, anything that gets heated up passes for home-made these days.

Naturally, a discussion of the lack of cooking leads to a discussion of obesity. The less we cook the fatter we get, and not just because we're sitting on the sofa watching cooking shows but because we're eating more calories, larger portions, less healthy food. Which leads to the "ah ha" moment of the piece, when Pollen gets a food scientist to admit what we all suspect: want to lose weight and be healthy? Just eat only what you cook yourself.

It makes sense. Honestly, if you could only eat potato chips if you sliced potatoes and deep fried them, how many would you eat? If you had to make mayonnaise before slathering it onto a sandwich, wouldn't you just as often skip it? So I've spent the past few days thinking about trying this as an experiment. Is it possible to eat only what one can cook? Can I do it? And what would the rules be? What would I do about, say, teryiaki, or vodka, or beer? Could I eat in a restaruant, ever?

I decided the following. For as long as I can take it, I will not purchase manufactured food, with the exception of condiments and alcohol. I know I can make my own ketchup and beer, but that feels insane. The point here is to try to be healthy, not insane. I don't tend to eat out a lot anyway, so if I find myself wanting or needing to eat in a restaurant I will, but only socially, not as an alternative to grilling my own burger or frying my own eggs. How hard can this be? I have no idea. I'll post an update once enough time has gone by for me to have an idea, and in the meantime I'll be thankful that it's August, when so much is in season it will be easy to fill up on fruit and vegetables and throw things on the grill. If anyone else wants to give it a try, let me know and we can commiserate. And if anyone knows how to make their own Doritos, let me know that as well. I do love Doritos.

Meet Me at the Fair

I had never gone to a farmers' fair until my mid-20s, and even then I only attended the first time out of sheer boredom. I was writing my dissertation and would do nearly anything to avoid all those blank pages that I needed to fill with Gertrude Stein's reception history. I'd polish my shoes, rearrange my records in alphabetical order, reorder my bookshelves by subject, clean the house, wash my car, anything to avoid sitting in front of my word processor and do the work at hand. That ultimately involved deciding to go to the Albermarle County Farmers' Fair one night, and I've never looked back.

I'm just glad that we still have enough farms to fill a farmers' fair, that 4-H Clubs still exist. This wasn't surprising in Central Virginia in the late '80s, but in suburban Pennsylvania in 2009 it feels like the simple existence of cucumber-growing must be celebrated. What makes a farmers' fair is not the carnival rides, nor the funnel cake, nor the rigged games of chance. What makes such a fair is the agricultural tents, the rows and rows of testimony to our agricultural heritage and the proof that we may yet have an agricultural future.

What can top the sight of a blue-ribbon zucchini, looking just like any other zucchini but for some reason crowned for some sort of waxy excellence? That can only be topped by a tent full of baby goats, goats of every variety running up to be petted, or a tent full of piglets squealing. Is anything more interesting than a display of winning ears of corn, each looking just like an ear of corn, its excellence a secret knowledge, or at least secret to someone who has always just grabbed corn, paid for it, and eaten it? Farmers' fairs are full of such secrets: what makes a great carrot, why one chicken is better than another. And they celebrate kids who grow these carrots well, kids who know how to raise a chicken. Our schools don't do that. Our culture doesn't do that. Our economy doesn't do that. Thank god for 4-H.

It's also not every day that you can watch a tractor pull. Or a 16 year-old from the middle of nowhere crowned Corn Queen. It's not every day that you can wander into a place where people still enter tractor pulls or fair queen contests. It's not every day that you can find a place where pie baking is a death match. Or where men in suspenders recline against picnic tables, listening to a weird but pleasant hybrid of country and polka. It's not every day that you are offered a glimpse of our vanishing rural culture, so for that one week a year when that glimpse is offered it's best to take it before it's too late.

The arrival of the cicadas signifies the slowing down of summer, the beginnings of the harvest, and the opening of county fairs everywhere. Locally, the Plainfield Farmer's Fair runs this week; the Warren County Fair begins next week. Even if you don't live in eastern PA, there's surely some sort of farmers' fair near you; support them while you can.

The Lost World of Beaten Biscuits

Our recent cultural obsession with fresh, local foods might naturally lead to an interest in the ways Americans used to cook and eat, before the supremacy of frozen and fast foods, before the reign of agribusiness was complete. Mark Kurlansky's recently published Food of a Younger Land, a collection of food writings produced by the WPA Writer's Project, provides some insight into the simpler days, when neighbors would gather to let maple sap run into the snow and then eat it, when clam bakes involved digging a fire pit on the beach, when squirrel was a viable ingredient in the dinner menu.

Because I have a tendency to buy old cookbooks at thrift stores and flea markets I found this collection more interesting for what it said about American culture during the 1930s than for what it said about our foodways. I already knew, for example, that any recipes to be found aren't standardized in terms of measurements, or even ingredients; before WWII, recipes were comprised more of guides and suggestions than instructions. I also knew that most recipes would begin with something along the lines of "Kill a chicken and bleed it good, then cut it up." Like vintage cookbooks, Kurlansky's tome is more useful as a glimpse into a mindset and way of life than as a tool for the modern kitchen.

Here's one example. Most pre-war cookbooks contain a section on "invalid cooking," to help produce not inedible meals or food that is not valid but to produce meals for the sick or elderly. This was needed for a culture before vaccines and antibiotics and over-the-counter medicines, where children were often sick, and for a culture before geriatric medicine and assisted living and nursing homes, where the generations lived together. I've also found several cookbooks that contain sections on "trailer cooking," with hints about how to prepare meals in the field, on the road, in the outdoors. This wasn't aimed at jolly seniors crossing the Sun Belt in RVs, but instead at those who lived itinerantly. A mass produced cookbook indicates a good number of Americans living this way.

The WPA food project was written by hundreds of writers in every state. Some participants were published professional authors, some were just people who needed a job, and the resulting prose is uneven. Kurlansky reproduces selections exactly as written, giving the text an authentic feel, and giving us a glimpse regional idiom and vernacular. The most notable thing about this book, though, the thing that ties together all the selections and resonates most in the contemporary world, is the nostalgia, the mourning for a world already lost. Again and again the anonymous WPA authors describe the way gatherings "used to be," the food mothers "once made," lament the customs that are "all but lost."

In the late 30s the interstate highway system had not been built. Packaged food was available, but not ubiquitous. Most people lived without a refrigerator, although a good number had an ice box. Frozen food was virtually unheard of. But already, the golden past was but a dream. Already lost were the meals of childhood. Begun in 1939, abandoned the week after Pearl Harbor, the WPA food project unltimately depicts a culture on the cusp of rapid change, and a culture that felt the tremblings of that change. Kurlansky's book is in a sense the last document of a world about to disappear. Read it: it's fascinating.

Cookbooks Without Cooks

In these tough times the nation turns its lonely eyes to cooking shows. Anyone who has ever wielded a chef's knife publishes a cookbook and gets at least a half hour on the Food Network, and suburbanites drive miles to wander through farmers' markets in order to purchase some artisan bread and call themselves locavores. The interest in local food and local growers is wonderful, as is the interest in cooking and eating well. The problem is, even as interest in these things proliferates, the number of people who actually cook continues to shrink.

While showing off the White House garden, Michelle Obama admits that she's happy to have someone cook for her, that she doesn't like to cook. The press reflects on the refreshing honesty of this statement, but what about the mixed message being sent? Access to fresh, healthy, local ingredients means nothing if you're incapable or unwilling to, you know, prepare those ingredients. You can buy all the produce in the world at farm stands, but if you don't then cook, or at least wash and dress the produce, all you've done is waste money and resources.

My local chain grocery stores have added "grown local" sections for those wanting to purchase the bounty of local farms rather than the bounty of South America. In every case, that section of the store is a mere speck compared to the prepared food aisles. In some ways, the grocery stores are really take-out joints. Sure, one can still purchase cheese and eggs and vegetables, but more popular is the salad bar, the pizza counter, the sandwich counter, the seafood counter where the fish has already been seasoned and comes with heating directions. Why buy a pound of pasta when there's a pasta bar two feet away? When did it become too difficult to make our own salad, to cut cheese into cubes ourselves? Why are we buying premade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? When did a sandwich become too difficult for us to make ourselves?

Cooking food yourself saves money and is always better for you. Food you prepare yourself isn't full of preservatives, fat, sodium. But we are lazy. We watch cooking shows but don't know how to turn on our stoves. We go to the farmers' market and buy cookies. It's time to get off the couch and prepare our own food.

A Ham in Every Pot

For the past week, one of my local grocery chains has been running advertisements claiming that they are THE source for Easter ham because they stock no less than 16 types of the stuff. My main response to their barrage of ads was to think, "Are there really 16 types of ham? And if so, why?" I shopped yesterday at that particular chain and am compelled to report that yes, the entire meat department was filled with ham and, although I didn't count, it certainly felt like 16 varieties filled the aisle. I've never seen so much ham in one place in my life.

I never knew ham had varieties. My mother never made baked ham so I'm new to it. How could I have imagined that ham can be purchased whole, half, bone-in, bone-out, shoulder, shoulder butt, picnic, smoked, honey glazed, spiral sliced, country style, or made out of turkey? How could I have imagined that some ham could be had for $0.49 a pound, while some would set one back $3.49/lb.?

Although the Easter bunny filled our baskets, this was not a holiday that we celebrated. What does one eat for Easter if one doesn't like ham? Or is there simply no other choice? And what is the grocery store going to do with all of its unsold ham? What, if anything, does ham have to do with Easter, anyway? The Last Supper was the Passover meal, a feast that was resolutely ham-free. I'm at a loss. I did buy a ham, though, a nice shoulder butt (whatever that is) for the ridiculously low price of $3.34 for almost six pounds. That's a lot of ham sandwiches.

I Want Candy

When I was a kid jelly beans were my least favorite part of the Easter basket, probably because my mother would buy the cheap crappy grocery store brand. They'd sink to the bottom, to be eaten only once the malted milk eggs, peanut butter eggs, hollow foil-covered bunnies, and even the slowly-hardening Peeps were consumed. But what do kids know? Now that I'm grown and exceedingly saavy, the weeks before Easter are my favorite time of the year simply because that's when the jelly beans come out.

Putting politics aside, we all have Ronald Reagan to thank for the proliferation of Jelly Belly. Unfortunately, I don't think these are particularly good candy; for me, they are too sweet. Around here they also come in packages filled with either 30 or 40 flavors, half of which are gross. Cotton candy? Say what you will about me, but I'm not a two year-old.

No, the best, the supreme, jelly bean is produced by Just Born. They're the good folks who also bring you Peeps and Mike and Ikes, and as gross as those two candies are, the jelly beans are as great. They are medium sized, of medium firmness, slightly but not too sweet, and well enough flavored that you can actually taste the difference between them. The yellow actually has a taste reminiscent of lemon, the orange of oranges, the green of...something green. Better yet are the spice variety, particularly the clove, which actually tastes like clove, and the wintergreen, which can double as a breath mint.

Just as you're thinking I'm ridiculous and obsessive for writing an entire post about jelly beans, let me lead you to this site, or this one. I am not alone. Just Born is located near me in Bethlehem, and I happen to know someone who works there manufacturing Peeps (in particular, she puts the eyes on them, which is a job deserving of a blog post all its own). I have inside information that the jelly beans aren't made year-round, so if you see them in a store near you, pick some up while they're available. It's what Reagan would have done.

On Holiday Parties

Seriously, what's the deal with cookie parties? I managed to go through almost 40 years of life without being subjected to a single cookie party but now, with each passing year, I get invited to more and more of them. It's a phenomena I just don't understand.

First of all, "party" implies two things: evenings and alcohol. "Party" does not imply 10 AM and flour. "Party" does not imply hot ovens and greased cookie sheets. I don't like to bake. I like to cook, but I don't bake. Why would I want to go somewhere first thing in the morning and make a bunch of rum balls? Even though they take place during daylight hours, cookie parties inevitably include wine. This poses a dilemma because I really can't drink during the day, particularly not wine. It makes me sleepy and, well, drunk, and I don't want to be drunk before Oprah. Not that I watch Oprah, but you never know, stranger things have happened. So not only does attending a cookie party entail participating in an activity I don't particularly enjoy, it entails participating in it while sober.

While I'm on the subject, drinking and baking just don't mix. Just as one shouldn't drink and drive, one should not drink and then attempt to take things in and out of ovens heated to 425 degrees. One should not drink and sprinkle. One should not drink and break eggs. One should not drink and attempt to balance warm things on cooling racks. Baking should be done while stone cold sober in the privacy of one's home. It's not a communal drunken activity, folks. Stop trying to make it such.

The second and absolutely most horrific thing about cookie parties is that they are the one place where Christmas sweaters are mandatory. Because at heart all I really want to do is fit in, I set out several years ago in search of a Christmas sweater to wear to cookie parties. It turns out I don't shop at stores that stock sweaters that feature snowmen, snowflakes, glitter, and Santas. Where do these women even get their Christmas sweaters? And were cookie parties invented because people needed a place to wear their sweaters, or were the sweaters invented so that people would have something appropriate to wear to cookie parties? This deep theological mystery distracts me from the cookie-making task at hand as I stand in a corner wearing my black sweater, watching almond crescents emerge from the oven.

Finally, cookie parties are completely redundant. This is the one time of year when everyone bakes or purchases baked goods and candy. This is the one time of year when you can rely on a co-worker or secret Santa giving you a highly caloric gift that cost $10 or less. No one wants or needs the cookies produced at cookie parties. I'm not a Scrooge; I honestly enjoy holiday parties. That take place after dark. That feature copious amounts of alcohol. That allow the wearing of black.

End of rant.

Would You Like a Side of Acorns with that Seal?

We know that sometime after the harvest of 1621 the Plymouth colonists shared a feast with their native neighbors. Although we don't know what they did eat, we have a good idea of what was not included on the menu. Surprisingly, some foods that we consider Thanksgiving staples did not appear on the original groaning board.

Ham, for example. Although the colonists had brought pigs with them from England, there's no evidence that they had butchered a hog at this point. They probably did eat wild turkey, goose, venison, or grouse; it's just as likely that the first Thanksgiving included some fatty and nutritious seal, which at the time was plentiful in the waters surrounding Cape Cod.

Although cranberries might have appeared on the table, the colonists lacked sugar, so their wild turkey was not adorned with cranberry sauce. There's little doubt corn was part of the meal, but it would have been dried corn at this time of the year. The season for fresh corn had ended before the harvest.

Neither sweet potatoes or potatoes were common in New England at this point in time, so if you're planning a historically accurate Thanksgiving you can leave these off the menu. The residents of Plymouth Plantation certainly had no notion of the marshmallow and, remember, no sugar, so candied sweet potatoes would have been as foreign a concept to them as General Foods International Coffee.

It goes without saying that not even Squanto possessed a ready supply of french cut green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and Durkee dried onion rings, doesn't it?

Finally, historians have uncovered no evidence of a Puritan recipe for pumpkin pie. In fact, the colonists not only lacked sugar, they lacked milk; no cows made the crossing on the Mayflower. Pumpkin would have made an appearance at the feast, maybe even stewed pumpkin, but no pumpkin pie.

Enjoy whatever you've decided to cook tomorrow. Rejoice in the fact that you're not huddled around a fire pit eating seal and are instead quaffing quantities of beer glued to the illuminated box of football. Plus ca change...

Fine Dining

Today's Times includes a review of a restaurant in Brooklyn that has only two items on the menu: dumplings and Hawaiian shave ice. There's no reasoning behind this other than the fact that the owner likes dumplings, and spent his Hawaiian honeymoon eating shave ice. Once he returned to Brooklyn he missed shave ice, so he decided to serve it at his restaurant.

Most restaurants have a theme, or focus on a particular type of cooking. But it really doesn't have to be that way, does it? A menu can be developed any way at all. If you're going to own a restaurant, why not own one that serves only the food you want to eat? With that in mind, I decided to create a menu comprised of my favorite foods. I'd name the restaurant "Like," because it would be a place I'd like. I wouldn't have any tables. Instead, I'd have a bunch of couches and TVs; diners could eat off the coffee table while watching Big Brother, just like I do at home. Here's the menu; there are no appetizers, salads, entrees, etc., because everything comes in a dinner-sized portion just like at home, where I'm too lazy to cook more than one item for dinner:

Garlic bread
Cantonese noodle soup with wontons
Asparagus
Lobster tail
Spare ribs
Grits
Raw fresh peas
Bagels and lox
Salad greens with goat cheese and candied walnuts
Roasted capon
Twizzlers (strawberry)
Hunks of cheese with one small piece of bread
Wild rice
Ribeye steak
Dark chocolate Klondike bars
Pigs in a blanket

I feel certain this would be the most popular restaurant ever. On the other hand, maybe there's a good reason why I'm not a restauranteur.

Fun Haus

In distance, the Funnel Cake Haus was about 150 yards from our parking spot in Parkingplatz Haus. Measured by time, funnel cake could have been mine within two minutes of disembarkation. I'll be fair and point out that we happened to be parked by the entrance to the Kutztown Folk Festival that led right to a village of fried food hauses; some visitors might have a slightly longer trek in search of funnel cake.

I really wanted to eat at the Hinkle Haus just because I liked the name, but that was one of the hauses selling complete all-you-can-eat Pennsylvania Dutch meals for twelve bucks, and I couldn't do that to myself at lunch on an 85-degree day. I settled for a deep-fried hot dog at one of the Weiner Hauses, while my friend enjoyed a brat from a Bratwurst Haus. I also had some birch beer from the Bier Haus, as well as one of those lemon drinks from the Limon Haus.

The highlight of the day way probably the Petting Zoo Haus, where I communed with some cute baby goats. I've always wanted some goats just because I think it would be fun to watch my dog cavort with them, but Goat Hauses aren't allowed in my city. Petting Zoo Haus also featured some ducklings, and a couple of pigs young enough to still be cute. And also a bunch of terrified children whose mothers insisted they attempt to feed the baby animals; petting zoos and the terror they inspire seem to be something that each generation must inflict on their young.

Otherwise I'd have to say I spent ten bucks to enter a huge Gift Haus. The Festival does have several entertainment tents, and I did watch a folk band playing some cool bluegrass/polka mash-up (and said band featured a nine year-old playing a mean fiddle), a glass blowing demonstration, and found out where I can learn to speak Pennsylvania Dutch, but in the main this was essentially a large Haus of Crafts.

So, I walked by Haus after Haus selling hex signs, straw hats, canned preserves, and woodwork. I helped to stimulate the PA Dutch economy by buying a piece of jewelery at the large Craft Haus (the one located right next to Farmer's Market Haus). In the end, I was happy get back into the car and return to my own haus.

I have only one regret: the Festival features a daily re-enactment of a PA Dutch execution. No, I'm not kidding. There at the edge of the fairgrounds was a gallows and a hearse, and a sign that, to my disappointment, didn't say "Death Haus" but instead said, "The Hanging of Suzanna Cox." They hang her three times a day, but we missed it. Now I'll never know if the execution becomes PA Dutch because they put an apple in her mouth.

Ingesting Some More with Tunsie

Due to popular demand, our culinary expert is back to ruminate upon all things ingestible. This week, he focuses on items not found on most menus; you can find his musings in the comments section for this post. I'm certain these will dishes made with ingredients not found in my pantry. My pantry contains dry pasta, creamed corn, and fifty different condiments. Make a recipe out of that, Rachael Ray.