FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

I recently read that ¼ of Americans have a food aversion at any given time. Of course, those with health problems or allergies need to avoid certain foods such as sugar, salt or peanuts, but why is it that people just don’t like certain foods?

Until I was a guest at a Chinese Dim sum breakfast, I thought I could eat anything, as I helped myself to small portions of steamed any things off of the rolling cart. However, when the “White Cloud Phoenix Chicken Claws” rolled by, I gasped, and not so graciously said, “Oh, My God, it’s chicken feet!” I don’t like toothpicks after my breakfast---let alone as a part of it.

Some fascinating research has been conducted concerning food preferences. The entertainers, Penn and Teller went to a restaurant in Southern California that features not only an extensive water menu, but also a water Sommelier. They filled the $7.00 water bottles with water from the hose behind the restaurant, but people preferred what they thought was the fancy water. Similar experiments have been conducted with wine. Given a choice, wine tasters preferred the wine from what was labeled a  $100.00 bottle of wine--- not realizing the wine had been switched with a cheap brand and the other bottle labeled $6.00 contained the expensive wine.

Food labeling matters. No one wanted to even taste “Smoked Salmon Ice Cream,” but a few people said that the “Frozen Savory Mousse” tasted good.

Also, for me it’s location, location, location! I personally don’t enjoy eating a hamburger at the zoo or a fish taco at an aquarium, but that’s a matter of respect. My father-in-law insisted he didn’t like anything cooked with onions. My mother-in-law told him it was celery, and he loved it.  George H.W. Bush uttered one of the most famous food rejections, “I’m President, so no more broccoli!” I don’t know why he didn't like broccoli, but it is a fact that some people just don’t like green food. My mother disliked the smell of peanut butter, so I never had peanut butter sandwiches.

Food preparation also makes a difference.  On the East Coast, people like their vegetables crisp. In the South, they prefer their veggies almost mushy. Sweet tea is served in Southern restaurants, but when I asked for iced coffee, I was told,” I don’t know how to make that.” A friend traveled to Helen, Georgia and asked for sourdough toast. The waitress said, “Where do you think you are boy, San Francisco? You got a choice of white or brown bread.” In all fairness, when I was in San Francisco, I asked, “What kind of tea do you have?” And the waiter said, “I don’t know. I don’t read Chinese.”

I read that tamales are now a popular substitute to turkey on Thanksgiving. Somehow, I can’t envision a Presidential Tamale Pardon. Oh, well, to each his own.

Esther Blumenfeld (“Food is an important part of a balanced diet.” Fran Liebowitz)

WITH QUILL IN HAND

I like receiving mail. I don’t mean turn-on-your-computer mail. I mean handwritten-stamp-on-an-envelope mail. The other day, I received a lovely card from a woman I have never met, but I am going to keep it, and re-read it, because it gives me pleasure.

In a recent interview for Time Magazine the historian, David McCullough was asked, “We don’t write letters on paper anymore. How will this affect the study of history?” He replied, “The loss of people writing a letter is not just the loss for the record. It’s the loss of the process of working your thoughts out on paper, of having an idea that you would never have had if you weren’t writing. And, that’s a handicap. People I research were writing letters everyday. That was calisthenics for the brain.”

Life long pen pals, John and Abigail Adams exchanged more than 1,100 handwritten letters, and these letters provided a window into history.  Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were also prolific letter writers. Roosevelt wrote to Churchill, ”It is fun being in the same decade as you.” Love was never sweeter than when Napoleon Bonaparte penned to Josephine, “Sweet incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect on have on my heart.”

However, it’s the funny letters that I hold dear. No texting for Chopin who wrote to his friend, Julien Fontana about how miserable he felt after catching a bad cold:
“Three doctors examined me. The first says I’m going to die. The second claims that I am actually dying, and the third told me that I am already dead.”

Sorry, but an e-mail wouldn’t have had the same impact as Groucho Marx’s penned note, when he wrote to S.J. Perelman, “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday, I intend on reading it.”

I am a keeper of letters. The handwriting of my parents and grandparents is an intimate glimpse into the past. My Father’s handwriting looks like chicken scratches, but I always got the gist of what he wrote. My husband’s misspelled, printed words added to the humorous thoughts that came from a nimble mind. I have a friend who only writes in brown ink—a distinctive and endearing quality.

During my career, I was privileged to receive several letters from famous people. When Lynne Alpern and I co-authored, Mama’s Cooking: Celebrities Remember Mama’s Best Recipe, we requested recipes, photos and gems of advice that celebrities remembered from their mothers. I didn’t receive a recipe, but will always cherish this terse note:
    “Dear Authors, I have no memory of any gems from anybody.
            Most Sincerely, Lillian Hellman.
In her inimitable style, she had told us to, Stuff it you turkeys! You’ve got to love it.

Esther Blumenfeld (“I’m going to sit right down and write myself a letter---“)

WHO ARE YOU?

In the poem, The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot wrote, “There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet.” I read the poem when I was in college, and throughout my life, that particular line stuck with me.

It takes awhile to really get to know people, and even today, when I meet someone, I often wonder if I am meeting the person behind the mask. For 25 years, I observed a business associate who dramatically changed his persona depending upon the situation and with whom he was interacting. To this day, I don’t know if I ever really knew the man behind the faces he presented. I often wonder if somehow, somewhere, he lost his essence along the way.

I recently heard a lecture where the speaker emphasized the importance to, “Be yourself.” That, of course, can get a person into a lot of trouble. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Know thyself? If I knew myself, I would run away.”

Children are experts at being themselves. A friend’s granddaughter recently learned the ditty, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Being 6 years old, she didn’t know just how long ago that was, so she asked her grandparents, ”Were you guys alive back then?” Dr. Seuss would have approved when he advised, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

Being myself was never a terrible problem for me, but like everyone else there were times I had to present a different face to deal with difficult situations or difficult people. I’d have to tell myself, “Suck it up, and put on a nice face.” However, I never played the Let’s Pretend game so often that I lost myself in the process.

The famous actor, Gregory Peck was attending a party with his wife, when John Wayne approached them. After exchanging a few words, Wayne ambled away, and Gregory Peck turned to his wife and said, “He really believes he’s John Wayne.”

The Canadian essayist, Andre Berthiaume wrote, “We all wear masks, and the time comes, when we can’t remove them without removing some of our skin.”  

I guess each of us needs to decide how much skin we can afford to lose.

Esther Blumenfeld (“ Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be”) Fanny Brice.

OUTRAGEOUS

When Alabama Senator, Tommy Tuberville says that, “white nationalists are not racists.They are Americans.” That is like saying, rattle snakes aren’t poisonous.They just like to greet people with a friendly wave of their behinds.

Former Vice President, Mike Pence, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, said, about the attack of the United States Capitol, “I never said the word, insurrection. I called it a riot.” Of course when the rioters were shouting, “Hang Pence,” he didn’t call it a “Laugh Riot.”

When a group of men was lost and trapped in a snowstorm in the mountains at Donnor Pass in the 1800’s, it was discovered that their leader, Alferd Packer had survived, because he had killed and eaten some of this fellow travelers. He did not admit that he had succumbed to cannibalism, although he did not suffer from malnutrition.  He could have said that what he had eaten to stay alive was —“finger licking good!”

Some teachers in our schools are now ordered not to teach anything but happy history to their students. Perhaps they could teach that people from Africa were not brought to our shores on slave ships, but they had just taken relaxing cruises on the Queen Mary, and decided to work for masters on plantations for free. After all, it would teach pride in ownership, and   “not make children feel guilty”.

History can be so much fun— even when we declare war on another  country, because now war can be called, “A police action.”  Or even better—“a counter-insurgency.”

Also, women in the United States should be proud that they are no longer legally considered “property of their husbands.” After all, they aren’t forced to wear head scarves like women are in backward countries.  Now women can even own AR15 guns which are protected by the U.S.
Constitution even though women’s  bodies now belong to State Legislatures and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Covid Masks are frowned upon unless they are now used to cover the eyes. After all those nasty Pulitzer Prize Winning Books must be banned so our children will not be exposed to them. Why would anyone want a young person to read such books as:
TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD,Harper Lee, MAUS, Art Spiegelman, GONE WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell, THE COLOR PURPLE, Alice Walker, OF MICE AND MEN, John Steinbeck, BELOVED, Toni Morrison, SOPHIES CHOICE, William Styron, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, Ernest Hemingway, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, John Steinbeck, THE SUN ALSO RISES, Ernest Hemingway, or  AS I LAY DYING William Faulkner…(only to name a few).

And of course one of the books we should protect our children from is CHARLOTTE’S WEB, by E. B. White.  Cover your eyes kids!  This is a dangerous book, because— “Only humans should have the ability to speak.”

So it goes.

Esther Blumenfeld

FOOTPRINTS

It rained very hard last night, so there were big puddles on the path where I walk. Most grown-ups step around small bodies of water, but the temptation was too much for me. So, there I stood in the middle of the puddle, watching my feet sink into the wet sand. A man strolled by and said,” Are you trying to walk on water?” and I replied, “No, I am just leaving temporary footprints on the earth.”

The puddle will dry up and my footprints will disappear. However some footprints are not so benign. I swear that there are days when I look into the mirror, after dealing with difficult people or situations, and I feel as if someone has tap danced on my forehead. Sometimes we all feel as if we have been walked on, and on a particularly bad day those shoes have cleats.

Kids know what to do with a puddle---jump in with both feet and make a big splash. It might be messy, but it’s a whole lot of fun. Maybe we should take a cue from these youngsters when dealing with the vicissitudes of life. Someone once said to me, “Children don’t have problems.” I replied, “Hog Wash!” Isn’t a smashed favorite toy more of a problem than being stuck in a traffic jam? The jam will eventually unplug. The toy is forever lost. Consequently, here are some children’s recommended solutions for a bad day:

Band-Aids: Lots of band-aids can cure almost any boo-boo. It would certainly work if you could apply a box of them to some peoples’ mouths.
Ice cream:  It cools you off and always makes you feel better.
Naps: A nap is an excellent way to deal with crankiness.
Bubble gum: If you blow a bubble and it pops, you will spend the rest of the day getting it out of your hair. That’s where the expression “stick-to-itiveness” comes from.
Hide and Seek: Always make the mean person “It”. You don’t have to seek or ever find him.
Mud Pies: They taste better than Brussels sprouts, but you quickly find out that sometimes what you enjoy can make you sick.
The solution for world peace: It’s simple. Say, “I am sorry.” Kiss and make-up, run through a puddle together, and then try to do better.

Too bad kids aren’t running the world.

Esther Blumenfeld (Who made me the grown-up?)