Cooking With Ideas

Food of the Gods

Despite its title, this is not really about religion. Nor is the book to which the title refers about religion. Not really. It is about science and progress and all sorts of things. It is about food and growth and all sorts of things. But not religion. Not really. Despite the title.

It is also not about ambrosia really -- whether you mean that weird marshmallow-y thing or the food of the gods.

What is it about?

Food of the Gods is a peculiar read I came across because I was wildly browsing the kindle store, and it popped up and was . . . well, cheap. Really, its title is The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth and it is a 1904 H.G. Wells novel in which scientists (portrayed in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways) get interested in -- and then discover -- what underlies growth. (Literal growth -- in various forms.) They then come up with a food that enhances growth which they both intentionally give to a few select babies (sometimes out of sympathy, sometimes out of paternal and/or parental desire, and sometimes out of a sort of distorted envy) and both intentionally and unintentionally disperse about the planet (which is more or less Great Britain).Turns out it was a movie in various forms and etc., but hey, who knew?

In part this is a novel about what comes to be called "Boomfood" which leads to giants (babies grow up to be huge) and giant weeds, wasps, bees, rats, earwigs -- vermin, children and farm animals. In some ways it is about racial difference - since the huge are so different that they come to be seen as a new race, obliterating those (short, dwarfish people of our size) who come before both unintentionally and perhaps intentionally. It is a book about fear of science, irresponsible science, politics gone weird and conservative and anti- or pro-science with little actual understanding of it, the distance of "pure" science and curiosity from "real world" implications, and more.

The book reads interestingly from the vantage point of 2011, given all that has intervened since then -- around food and science, and politics and war, and humanity's historic changes. Boomfood is both terrifying and attractive in the context of the novel -- as is much of the world in which we live. Boomfood is certainly not as horrifying in some ways as the pesticides that have similarly unleashed monstrous vermin (e.g., antibiotic resistant germs that . . . . ) and the factory farms that promise growth and health and deliver something much less utopic (and indeed very dystopic for workers, diners, and the animals themselves).

One thing that came to mind as I was musing about all this was: when were vitamins really discovered? Is this a book about vitamins I asked myself. Not so bad a guess in some ways, given this history of vitamins  which cites 1905 as a key year. Another who knew. . . .

I think of H.G Wells as about much much different things than this particular topic  -- like War of the Worlds, for example. But I confess -- while it was a slog to read -- I am glad I read this 1904 novel. It made me think of food differently. And somehow it reminded me that I think he supported women's rights. Hmmm. This site says he was one of the most effective early male voices for women's suffrage.Who knew? (I would not say that the Food of the Gods is particularly feminist in its representaton of women, as a side note.)

For Wikipedia on the novel, click here. Want the H.G. Wells Society? Click here. Or more on his biography? Click here. Or go out there and find a way to read this peculiar, odd, fun book about food. IT is most definitely not our salvation, whoever we are.

Kosher Nation

Kosher Nation is a great book by Sue Fishkoff that taught me a lot. A fascinating read, with just the right balance of forest and trees,the book's subtitle is "Why More and More of America's Food Answers to a Higher Authority." Basically, the book is about kashrut -- both its religious and its political dimensions, its everyday and its lofty practices. . . . and the changes that it has undergone as food has become increasingly industrialized. The industrialization of kosher certification includes, for example, certification in China of food additiives and products, requests to "kosher" items that require no such action because they are always already kosher (e.g., water), competition among local and global kosher certification agencies, and lengthy disquisitions on aspects of kosher eating that are less familiar to many non-Jewish Americans than, say "no BLT' or "no cheeseburger." These incldue, for example, the proscription on consuming insects that appears (according to Fishkoff) much more often than the proscription of pork in Torah. (This appears in a chapter entitled "Please Don't eat the Broccoli: Bug Infestation Takes Salad Off the Table." What I learned in this chapter a) nearly put me off vegetables entirely and b) explains the presence of light tables in some (very) observant homes. Among the other things I learned about were the history of Reform Judaism's rejection of kashrut (and more recent bending in the direction of accepting it) and the evolution of an ethics of Jewish eating that thinks consciously about the relation of kashrut to worker's rights, organic foods, environmental pollution, treatment of animals, etcetera. While not caused by incidents in Postville (which I wrote about here), they do get attention in the elaboration of that incident detailed by Fishkoff, who does a great job situating this particular within the larger environment of Jewish food politics/religion. Perhaps equally fascinating are the aspects of the history of the transmission of the skills needed to undertake kosher slaughtering, the creation of appropriate knives, and the relation of all this to the great variety of jewish communities extant nationally -- and globally. Yes, there is more to kosher wine than Manishevitz, yes, there were women leading food riots in New York repeatedly in the early twentieth century over prices for kosher meat, yes, the matzo available in some locales has occasionally been deemed NOT kosher, and humratization may be my new favorite word -- something I can export from this book and this context to cover a whole array of ways that the world becomes increasingly rule-bound and litiguious and . . . . What it "really" means is the application of more and more strict Jewish law. But, it could be lifted wildly out of context and applied elsewhere, right? What a great word. (For its relation to controversy about whether Hebrew National Hotdogs are or are not kosher -- and a reminder that standards change -- click here.)

The book, by the way, actually begins by asking why the kosher food market is increasing wildly more rapidly in the US than the population of Jewish people or, even more the case, the population of kosher-keepign/observant Jewish people. It answers this in part by focusing on marketing -- kosher becomes healthy, less factory farm like, etcetera. (Not so, once you read the book, but hey.) It becomes, as Hebrew National taught through an advertising campaign, "answering to a higher authority" than, say the FDA. Hmmm. It considers topics as wide ranging as eco-kosher and a famous (well, perhaps infamous) banquet in the history of reform Judaism where oysters and ham were served. And, it nods in the direction of the web, by mentioning The Jew and the Carrot. All in all one of the best reads I have encountered. Whether you've ever wondered about the relation of Chinese food to kashrut, want details on teh burgeoning presence of kosher facilities in baseball stadiums, or want to know the current status of raisins -- this is the book for you -- and you will still get the forest with the trees -- the notion that kosher remains a crucial way of both connecting -- and separating American Jews from each other, from non-Jewish Americans, and connecting religion to embodiment, God to the everyday, in crucial ways.

And yes, it takes up what American might "really" mean -- and what religion might "really" mean -- with out ever meaning to do so.

For a review of the book from a different perspective, click here. Or here. Or, for Fishkoff's own collection of reviews, here.

Fishkoff also writes for the Jewish Journal. Click here. . .

The Garden of Eden and More: A Cookbook

Food and the bible. They go together like -- oil and water? Or are they more entangled than that? Probably the latter - and if you are not convinced, just think of all those biblical verses and stories that include food. Jews, Christians and all influences by the texts associated with the two religions know many of these. But I never thought of cucumbers and the bible in one thought until. . . just now. (For the relevant citation, click here. Bread, yes. Wine, yes. Milk and honey, yes. Olive (branches) and fish. But there is more to all this than I knew -- and yes, the book I am reviewing here does point to cucumbers.

The Garden of Eden Cookbook by Devorah Wigoder, is subtitled "recipes in the biblical tradition." It was originally published in 1988. I received it as a gift in 2010 -- purchased in a lovely used bookstore in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. And it is swell. It includes recipes, yes. But it includes a lot more.

Perhaps, for me, the most startling thing is the author's relation to Judaism. It is not that she is a convert. Rather it is that she converted "in order to replace one of the Jews lost to the Holocaust." That's her reason and she sticks to it -- this former Irish Catholic who is now, I suppose, an Irish Jew, residing in Israel as a early proponent of Zionism and an early settler. Indeed, she moved to Israel shortly after WW II. And, in this somewhat unfamiliar to her land (at least at the time) she decided to garden, and to do it in biblical ways, raising biblical foods. These included pulses and herbs, leafy greens and grains, and lots more. So, she includes information about biblical mentions of the various foods, tales of her garden, and more. The pottage of Jacob and Esau. The olive branch of Noah. The spiced wines of the Song of Songs. The vineyards of the Lord. Lentils and more. Figs -- and fig leaves (a la Adam and Eve.) Date palms.

It is, indeed, a readable book. In many ways, the narrative is fascinating -- you get a sense of how she worked with and against the elements as she created the garden itself. The book is, thus, an intriguing balance between a sort of narrative voice that invites you in to the author's world of children and gardening and cooking, recipes, and of education/trivia.

For a review from booklist, click here.

For a piece by WIgoder called "The Biblical Spice Rack," click here.

Postville --

While not really meant to be about food, Postville by Stephen Bloom is. No really. Yep, the subtitle is all about clash of cultures. And yep, the book is about a small town in Iowa. (Bloom teaches at the University of Iowa where one of my favorite people [and bloggers] works as well. I did not know it when I bought the book because I had no idea of Bloom's affiliations; but hey, now I do and you should! And, to go on a bit of a whiffle, that same friend appears early on in Mark Doty's book on description -- a very swell little book -- that I read recently as well! Synchronicity? ) But really, it is a book about food.

Why? Well, yes, it is a tale about hasidic jews from Crown Heights going to a small town in Iowa and taking up residence. But -- really, this is all about a new kosher meat distributing plant (a business called Agriprocessors) opening in Postville, right there in what Bloom's title calls the "heartland of America," right there in the middle of a state that produces large quantities of . . . . pork. The town -- mainly Lutheran. The town -- definitely in decline in terms of population. Those who move in and boost the population? Lubavitcher. What they have in common may be that they are about religion, and that they start with L and that they are American. But. . . for Bloom, who is on a bit of a journey of self-discovery, having moved to Iowa from San Francisco, feeling a bit of an outsider and, as a Jew himself, thinking he'd learn from those in Postville, what turns out to be the case a bit of a spoiler} is that the tensions that occur are only in part about religion. In part, they are about exactly which Lubavitcher Jews end up in Postville. . . . which, of course, includes some nastiness by a few ostensibly Lubavitch men who, in what is a startling turn of events for this reader [spoiler alert] shoot some people. The plant was and is controversial and while some of that controversy is or may be rooted in anti-semitism, some m ay not be. (See this site for anti-Lubavitch sentiment that is probably both. And this is the Lubavitch site itself. As a side note, there's another stupid prejudice -- who knew that this particular version of Orthodox Judaism would have a website?) reading around post reading Postville, one learns for example, of a massive immigration raid on the slaughterhouse which employed a lot of illegal immigrants -- perhaps better known as undocumented aliens. (See this site, for example, which follows up with Bloom.) And, in June, a former Agriprocessors exec was sentenced to 27 years in prison on various aspects of fraud.

But yes, the book has to do with food -- as any slaughter house does. And the book, while more important for other reasons, is a reminder -- that even kosher food is in some ways a factory product. And the lives of both people and animals in slaughter houses are worth thinking of in making food-related choices. It is a fast and intriguing read. And from Bloom's look, one learns a lot about religion, America, and religion in America, whether we think Iowa the heartland or not. 

For more of interest, click here, where Bloom comments much more recently. For a whole series of articles from tne New York Times related to Agriprocessors, click here. Or, while out of date, gain the insight from Bloom's book -- and his perspective on clashing cultures in America

Eating God. . . . And/Or Gherkins and Tomatoes

For those of us interested in religion and food, check out one of my favorite site's (Gherkins and Tomatoes) bibliography in this area here.

Okay, this could keep me busy for a long, long time. And you too.

As if that's not enough, check out this bibliography on religion and vegetarianism, which I found through Gherkins and Tomatoes too. (And this place there too.) 

And this Sufi cookbook discovered similarly. 

Yes, I love Gherkins and Tomatoes.

Islam and Food on Prophet Muhammed's Birthday (April 6)

I have read about religion and food here and there. White Bread Protestants (by Daniel Sack) is, I think, the first book on religion and food I ever read. And, The Singular Beast is, perhaps, the most recent previous to this book. The Singular Beast, of course, is about pigs; or, perhaps more aptly, about Christianity and Judaism.

Today's book, though, is about Islam. Entitled Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World and subtitled A Concise History with 174 Recipes, the book is authored by Lilia Zaouali (a tunisian chef with a Ph.D., from the Sorbonne, I think) and translated by M.B. DeBevoise. It is beautiful, a paperback with a luscious (colored) picture of a pomegranate on a sort of sepia brownish cover and published by the University of California Press in their "California Studies in Food and Culture." For what it is worth, this is #18 in that series.

The book is filled with information, including the fact that there are more Islamic cookbooks (as it were) from early periods than is characteristic of any other culture. And, by tracing some of the information contained therein one can learn loads about the time and the religion. One of the odd things I learned is that there seems to be a worldwide love for weird fermented things -- form soy sauce to the Vietnamese nuoc nam to . . . an odd medieval Muslim rotted barley phenomenon called murri. Who knew? While it sounds awful, so does the way soy sauce is created -- and I love soy sauce. The relation between Roman foods, pre-Islamic Arab foods, and various other inputs into what becomes Medieval Islamic Cuisine are themselves a great reminder that all this talk of globalization is built (for some of us) on a mythic idea that there was no cultural change or contact before this century. Wrong.

Of the 174 recipes, I can say that I went immediately to read about couscous, for some personal reasons. There are 4 pages on this in the recipe section as well as discussions elsewhere in the book. Here's a dandy quotation:

    The origins of couscous are wrapped in mystery. Did it come from the Berbers? If so, from what region     of the vast Berber world? If its introduction in Andalusia was due to the last Berbers who came as             conquerors, they would have been people from the south of Morocco and, in the later stages,                 Mauritania. Ibn Battuta remarked that in the neighboring villages of Mali, couscous was made form         white fonio (the smallest of all species of millet). However this may be, it matters little to whom             credit for this brilliant invention is to be ascribed. . . (p. 121)

Perhaps my favorite part of the book is really telling about me: Part III is Contemporary North African Cuisine. Hmmm. Lamb stew with fresh apricots? Lamb couscous? Yes, I like lamb. Hmmm.

And yes, April 6 is Prophet Muhammed's Birthday. This book, though, has nothing to do with that -- it is a mere coincidence that I finished reading it today and. . . .

For another review of the book, click here. For more information on Islam and (medieval) food, try here or here or (more generally, perhaps) here.

Religion Dispatches on Sarah Miles

Check out this piece on Sara Miles. Cooking with Ideas readers will know Miles as author of Take this Bread (reviewed here on this very blog). Miles has a new book out -- and continues to be a leader in food-related public good.  Besides, readers interested in religion should know about Religion Dispatches!

The Singular Beast: Or, Pork By Any Other Name

Mostly, any book at all about food really sucks me in. I love them. I do. So, I was thrilled to find The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig by Claudine Fabre-Vassas and translated by Carol Volk. Food, religion, reading. Hurrah. Not to mention a used book (published in 1999) so reasonably priced.Well, I thought, if pigs could fly . . . (Actually, no I did not, I just happen to love this picture, for which I thank the site Millard Filmore's Bathtub. And I will spare you my wanderings, but do check this out on the phrase.)

Having said this, the book is an anthropological romp, of a sort, which ties together various ways that the pig features in village life -- and in the Christian year -- across centuries (and some entangled regions) in what is now, I think, France. Tracing all sorts of links (and I do not mean only sausage links), the book, alas, starts from places about which I am clueless and thus the effort to read it is huge. I get it -- the symbol (and the reality -- hence the sign, the signified and the whole darn semiotic tangle) known as "the pig" holds together a whole world of relations, social and otherwise, and when read thoroughly can help the anthropologist (for that is what the book's author is) understand the world more fully. I get that. I even get that the way this particular symbol -- and its links -- are maneuvered has a lot to do with religion, with Judaism and Christianity. In fact, I get even more. I even get that the pig may in some sense make Christian, Jew, and their (sometimes horrific) relations.

But, I have to admit, the book is sort of over my head. Well, either that or I just do not care about all the details as much as I feel I "should." If I were in charge of the book, I would open it with a little more background -- what happens is you are (well, at least I was) immediately clueless about the era, geographic location, and referents for much of what is being discussed. It is as though the author (or maybe the translator) thought her readers knew a whole lot more than I did. I loved the introduction, and then got totally stuck in the remainder of the book -- despite my having imbibed a few juicy (read silly) novels with Langue D'Oc settings and even consumed  some wine from the region). I may have to try again, but in the meantime, for those of you who love thick description a la Clifford Geetz, this one may actually be for you. (Yes, I still like, despite its lack of trendiness, his works on religion, art and common senses as cultural systems not to mention loving his work on color symbolism. Or was that latter bit Victor Turner?) Or, better yet, those who really like the kind of tracing of symbolic connections that is thorough and a combination of historical and contemporary, a sort of Annales school historical anthropology should read this.

For a review in the Journal of Social History try here. And don't do what I did and google "pig symbolism" -- your whole day will be shot.

Want the book? Tell me -- and maybe I will send it to you!

Don't Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami

Once in a while, you buy a book just for its title. And really, who could resist Don't Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami? Authored by Sharon Kahn, this is a send up of rabbi/rabbi's wife/synagogue life published in 2002. She's also the author of others in the series, including Hold the Cream Cheese, Kill the Lox. And they are both subtitled A Ruby, the Rabbi's Wife, Series. I assume they are all as silly and fun as this one -- which is set at sea on a very bargain cruise where everything is, to be blunt, cheap and thus awful. While cruising the seas, there is, of course, a murder, and Ruby (whose rabbi husband is gone before the book opens) finds both danger, romance, and eventually, the murderer. All in all, a romp filled with stock characters who, if one did not detect the gleam of love in the author's eye (well, at least her prose) you'd think was politically incorrect in the extreme. One might even call the book campy. Instead, the books are, one presumes, rooted in the 31 years Kahn spent as a rabbi's wife, according to her bio. 

The food in this book is uniformly awful. The titular pastramis are part of a raffle and obtained on the cheap by one of the Temple's big wigs. (In the end, they turn out to be exactly that.) And, the cruise on which the Temple group goes -- with Ruby along as a reluctant "winner" (yes a set up) of a raffle for cruise tickets -- is characterized by foods died in rainbow colors, inedible and unidentifiable dishes, and running out of edible items like corn flakes. The drinks are weak as well. (All in all this cruise sounds like a hotel I was in in San Diego not that long ago.) 

Despite the food, and the notion that the rabbi (the whole point of the cruise is apparently to set him up with Ruby on the one hand, and on the other, to help boost his poor ratings in the group) actually swipes all the information from a murdered professor, one does learn a bit about conversos in the book, including their presence in the Caribbean. Who knew? Apparently loads of people. See this January 2010 conference. Not to mention the book reviewed here on Jewish pirates of the Caribbean. Or this historical overview. One also learns a bit about synagogues in the Caribbean; for pictures, try here. And, for conversos and food, try here (for Tex-Mex and Judaism) or here for the many ways the Inquisition depended on foodways to track Jews.

Meanwhile, on a substantially less serious note, I shall try to find Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Choir next -- in which the Temple Rita group makes a trip to Banff and Lake Louise. How fun.

Wandering the Blogosphere -- Procrastinating and . . . . TWO!

(Thanks again to smbmarketingguide.com for this image.) Last time I focused on the links between murder mysteries and food in the blogosphere. Thought I would remind us we live in a land of politics, feminism, and queer (lesbian) topics as well. Here are a few sites to check out on each of these:

Politics and Food: Yep, still matters. Maybe even more after the results in Massachusetts and the ongoing health care debacle. (Yes, health care is about food.) Keep an eye out on Marion Nestle's blog, Food Politics to know what is what. Really, It's important. Not sure who she is? Click here. And for more, check out this "Top 10" list of food and politics sites. Both Nestle's blog and one of my humorous faves (which has a serious side to it), Obamafoodrama appear on the list, but there are 8 more we should all know about. 

Feminism and Food: Yes, all those political sites I just cited (watch that homonym attack) should attend to feminism. After all, even idiots know that women are now more than 50% of the work force in the US. But, still, given realities of life, it is crucial to keep this concern for women's lives out there when food and water access are crucial for women globally. Not sure the food crisis globally is about women? Try clicking here. Or try this article. Or this one. And if you think this is unrelated, say, to hiv./AIDS. try this pdf (though it is from 2006): programs.ifpri.org/renewal/pdf/icadtoronto.pdf.

One could go on. (Okay, just one more.) And are you interested in feminist food studies? Here's a list of relevant material and her follow up with more. . .

Not to mention a new fave: a site which thinks harpyness is good. Try it. Release your inner harpy.

Lesbian/Queer Matters (and Food?): For some silliness, check out this video of how to make a lesbian joy cocktail. And no, this is NOT a joke. (Might it refer to the island of Lesbos? NO clue.) And here is a great lgbtq manners commentary. What does it mean that all North American lesbians know about the potluck jokes?

More seriously, try here for lesbian politics or here for lgbtq politics. (NOT the same, as I hope you know.) And here for material on lesbians in the news. 

Less seriously, do NOT forget queerfoodforlove.  And check out the queer web project.

And a few more featuring (gasp) religion: Here's a feminist mormon blog where someone says the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts ushered in the apocalypse for exactly the right reasons. And this irreverent site which pokes fun at the food pyramid/gay conspiracy theme (here's the site's home page.) And yes, the site is Anglican. Hmmm. Am I on a religion kick here? Check out anotherqueerjewishbuddhist on food (and drink) and the home page.

Finally, truly finally, one truly irrelevant and silly site: here. It entertained me, even though I am not truly sophisticated enough to get (read like) Monty Python. Maybe it will entertain you.