I figure that if Ann can write about poetry in today’s blog, so can I. Indeed, my inspiration for today’s Andy’s Corner is from a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye entitled Lying While Birding
Lying While Birding
Yes Yes I see it so they won’t keep telling you where it is
Despite having a birding excursion or two under my belt, it was the lying bit in the poem that caught my attention. I love the poem’s simple and nonchalant untruth (“Yes Yes I see it”) followed by a succinct, no-nonsense justification (“so they won’t keep telling you where it is”). What excites me about this is that it illustrates a basic sociological fact – to be well-adjusted socially we need to know how (and when) to lie.
“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—unless you ask me how I am, in which case I will say, ‘I’m fine,’ even though I’m not fine.”
Unfortunately, lying has been getting a lot of negative press lately. In our current political climate of “fake news” and politically spun facts, antisocial lies (which are untruths told strictly for one’s own personal gain) are making headlines. As a case in point, the Washington Post recently reported that a certain president (who will remain unnamed) “had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.”
Although that’s an impressive accomplishment by any standard, there’s another kind of lying that gets very little press despite being essential for our everyday social lives. I’m referring to what researchers label “prosocial lying.” These are falsehoods told for someone else’s benefit and are what keep social relationships humming along smoothly.
I’m fine, thank you. It’s so good to see you. What a cute baby! I just adore how you decorated your house. Your lasagna is yummy – you’ll have to give me the recipe.
Why do we engage in such deception? Research suggests that there are a number of reasons:
People may lie to others for various prosocial purposes, ranging from being polite, protecting someone’s feelings, avoiding interpersonal conflicts, to increasing group cohesion.
…children develop the ability to lie at about age three. … From ages seven to eleven, they begin to reliably lie to protect other people or to make them feel better—and they’ll start to consider prosocial lies to be justified … The research to date suggests that they are motivated by strong feelings of empathy and compassion.
[Editor’s Note: Is this reason to be optimistic about the future? Today’s world could sure use these strong feelings of empathy and compassion!]
I can’t end this blog without considering prosocial lying at the dinner table (this is a food blog after all). I was delighted to find on the National Institute of Health website some serious research regarding this very topic. Researchers asked 445 participants to choose between “telling the blatant truth or lying prosocially” regarding a food dish that was poorly made by a stranger:
The results showed that participants were most eager to pass on overly positive feedback when the stranger cared about cooking and was very sensitive to negative feedback.
At the risk of being obvious, I would like to remind you that I like to cook, am quite sensitive to negative feedback, and will accept any and all prosocial lies in this regard; no questions asked. In addition, I would like to remind you that at the bottom of this page you will find a form where you can leave comments about today’s Andy’s Corner.
I’m been thinking a lot about Anne Hathaway recently. And not the American actress, Anne Hathaway, who was born in 1982; rather I’m thinking about Anne Hathaway, wife to William Shakespeare, born in 1556. Anne married Shakespeare in 1582 when she was 26 – and pregnant. Shakespeare was 18 – and needed his father to okay his marriage. They were married 34 years – and were still married when Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616 – at the age of 52 (Anne lived another 7 years).
The 19th-century German print-maker, George Edward Perine, did this rendition of Shakespeare with his family. Anne is on the right, sewing.
Was theirs a happy marriage? Well, if you remember Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, you’d think he was quite a romantic and surely must have known true love:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken.…
Turns out that Shakespeare left his wife and children in Stratford-upon Avon around 1585 (their children, Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet, were about 3 and 1 at the time) to go to London with a troupe of actors. He returned home infrequently after that. Did he love Anne dearly – and his being gone was just a necessity of that day and time? Who knows.
Since it’s been 400 years since Anne’s death, a group of poets have put together an “Anne-thology” of poems about her which you might want to consider. And there’s a play, focused on Anne, being performed in Stratford-upon-Avon now – and this fall in London; it’s based on the 2020 novel which I loved, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. Since almost nothing is actually known about the real Anne Hathaway, the book is clearly fiction.
Of course, you can’t think about Anne without also thinking more about William. He was born on the same day he died – April 23 – which is the same day Andy was born. Fortunately, Andy did not leave me in Fort Collins, Colorado, with our young children while he pursued his love of sociology at LSU in Baton Rouge. I got to go along (Anne Hathaway never went to London). And – VERY fortunately – Andy did not die at the age of 52. 🙂 Happily, Andy just celebrated his 80th birthday! And we celebrated the occasion with our family in New York City, seeing the just-opened Broadway play Fat Ham, which is a modern – and raucous – re-creation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
A scene from Fat Ham
And – before we offer up a delicious recipe that actually has some connections to Elizabethan England, let me remind you of this wonderful line from The Merchant of Venice. What could be a better wish for one’s 80th?
As for food, we know that in the theater pit of Shakespeare’s time, walnuts, hazelnuts, plums, cherries, peaches, raisins, mussels, periwinkles and crabs were often eaten. And we also know that the Elizabethan English loved “marchpane” – which we now call marzipan.
The Virtues of the “Compleate” Woman. Read it over…you’ll be glad you weren’t a woman back in 1615.
An excerpt from The English Huswife:
“To make the best Marchpane take the bset Jordan Almonds and blanch them in warm water, then put them into a stone mortar, and with a wooden pestel beat them to pap, then take of the finest refined Sugar well searst, and with it Damask-Rose-water beat it to a good stiff paste, allowing almost to every Jordan Almond, three spoonfulls of sugar, then when it is brought thus to a paste, ….”
The brand Odense is often recommended.
Our recipe for today uses almond paste, not marzipan. Both have similar ingredients – mainly sugar and almonds – but in different proportions. Almond paste is less sweet and has more almonds, so do not substitute marzipan in this recipe. I gave up frosting cakes a long time ago, so Andy is used to simplified birthday cakes.
If you’re wondering where Andy’s Corner is today, it isn’t. He’s too busy celebrating his birthday week with mirth and laughter. He “hath-a-way” of doing that!
When I found out that Ann planned to blog today about small things that have big impacts, I knew I had to find my own small thing to write about for Andy’s Corner. But first I needed to know how to define a “thing.” So I did the natural thing – look it up on Dictionary.com.
The thing is, I would never have guessed that the word “thing” could be used in so many ways. Dictionary.com lists twenty-one different uses. The first thing on the list, which I assume is the most widely accepted use, defines a thing as “a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.” This is the sort of (small) thing that Ann refers to in her blog. However, as a (retired) sociologist inanimate objects are not my thing.
Garfield comic strip by Jim Davis (3/3/1995).
It wasn’t until I got to the sixth definition on the list,“an action, deed, event, or performance,” that I thought of a suitable subject for a small thing – talking. Not only does the act of talking with others meet the definitional threshold of thingness, talk can be small (as in small talk) and have big consequences. You may recall that in an Andy’s Corner posted just about a year ago I argued that “weather-speak” is a form of small talk that’s a big deal in our everyday lives.
But there’s another kind of small talk that is just as much, if not more, big deal-ish. I’m referring to greetings – those words of acknowledgement we exchange when we encounter others. “Hi,” “Howdy,” “Good morning,” “How are you?,” “How’s it going?” – you know the drill.
These folks must know a thing or two about verbal greetings.
Such small words of greeting (and the responses to them) may seem trite and forgettable, but they’re essential ingredients for the taken-for-granted rituals that connect us to others and help maintain relationships. This is what The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition has to say (with an impressive title like that I have to assume they know what they’re talking about!):
Greetings play an essential role in everyday conversational routines and are commonly used as a ritual form of politeness. As such, they serve an important function in building and maintaining social relationships…
Oftentimes greetings are considered the first part of an interactional exchange between two or more people. Through a verbal or non-verbal greeting, the conversation partners can acknowledge each other’s presence and begin a conversational exchange.
If you think I’m over-emoting about the importance of these “little ceremonies of greeting” (as sociologist Erving Goffman calls them), I challenge you to do a simple exercise that in my former life I would assign to my students. The next time you come face to face with someone you know (or don’t know for that matter) don’t greet the person nor return a greeting if offered by the other. It’s harder than you think.
How to be annoying without opening your mouth – get the t-shirt.
Of course, what might be appropriate greetings for some may not be for others. Take for example SUP?, the annoying greeting that’s creeping into our daily lexicon. It’s supposedly short for “What’s up? And what is even more annoying is the embellished version, SUP dude? Just hearing that makes me cringe. I have even come across web sites, like Beezly.com and Quara.com, that lay out in detail the proper “etiquette” of how to respond to SUP. What is our world coming to?
Fortunately, the term “SUP” was not around in 1959 when Vonnegut published his novel.
Speaking of what-our-world-is-coming-to and staying on topic, I can’t help but mention one of my favorite sci-fi novels, Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (1959). For those who have not read it, Wikipedia provides a nice synopsis of the book. Essentially it is about an alien from “Tralfamadore” named Salo who is on a mission to deliver a message to the end of the universe. A small piece of his spacecraft breaks as he comes through our solar system, stranding him here until he can get the part. He requests help from Tralfamadore, “and his fellow Tralfamadorians respond by manipulating human history so that primitive humans evolve and create a civilization in order to produce the replacement part” so he can complete his journey and deliver the message. The message, which in Tralfamadorian language was a single dot, translates to “GREETINGS!“
I wonder If Vonnegut had written his novel today whether he would have used “SUP dude” instead of “Greetings.” My guess would be that – if he did – it would get the goat of those aliens at the far end of the universe as much as it gets mine.
I’m not sure how many people suffer from an overactive and somewhat warped imagination like mine. More often than I care to admit, when I’m listening to someone talk, certain words involuntarily trigger unexpected meanings and connections. Often this mental diversion yields a pun or other humorous observation that I should know better than to utter aloud. [Editor’s Note: regardless what you may hear from Ann or our kids, I do come up with some pretty good zingers now and then.]
Then there are times when a word will trigger thoughts that take me down a path of random connections which have little if anything to do with what the speaker is actually talking about. The interpersonal trick is to feign interest while my mind is away on such side trips.
Today’s Andy’s Corner illustrates this kind of mental wandering. It started when Ann was telling me about her inspiration for today’s blog – beans. While she was extolling the culinary and dietary virtues of beans, my brain was headed down an alternate path of childhood memories that included a sea serpent and a gremlin.
The Hoffman Easy Vision television with its yellow screen made from war surplus yellow plexiglas used in aircraft. Hoffman advertised that the yellow-green tinted screen reduced eye strain. (right!)
I’m not talking about just any serpent or gremlin. I’m talking about special creatures brought to life through the “miracle” of television. Although the technology and animation may not be considered “miraculous” by today’s standards, when our family got our first TV in the early 1950s (a Hoffman Easy Vision with a yellow screen – and a 3 minute warm-up time) I became mesmerized with this electronic marvel and the amazing characters that came to life in our living room.
Cast (left to right): Beany, Captain Horatio Huffenpuff, Dishonest John, Hopalong Wong, Honey Bear, and (every kid’s favorite) Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent.
This brings me back to answering the question of why Ann mentioning beans triggered memories of a sea serpent and a gremlin. To begin, one of the first TV programs I watched was Time for Beany (hence the “bean” connection) and my favorite character on the show was a sea serpent. His stage name was Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent. Wikipedia reports that Cecil was “brave but dimwitted” and described himself as “300 years old and 35 feet 3 inches tall.” I loved Cecil.
Andy Devine and Froggy the Gremlin circa 1955. (Photo from IMDb.com)
And as for the gremlin? I can’t think about Time for Beany without recalling another program I watched on that yellow screen: The Buster Brown Show (aka “Andy’s Gang”). The show originated as a radio broadcast in 1943 (the year I was born) hosted by Smilin’ Ed McConnell and sponsored by the Buster Brown Shoe Company. It came to TV in the early 1950s and Andy Devine took over in 1955.
What I enjoyed most about the show was the magical appearance of Froggy the Gremlin. Froggy would always materialize in a puff of smoke when Andy would say, “Plunk your Magic Twanger, Froggy.” The first thing out of Froggy’s mouth was always “Hi Ya, Kids, Hiya, Hiya, Hiya!” [Editor’s note: I was amused to learn from PrintMag.com that the expression “plunk your magic twanger” was later used by male teenage baby-boomers to suggest “carnal engagement.”]
While writing this blog I chanced upon some YouTube videos from these shows. If nothing else, my romanticized recollection of these early TV shows was shaken by what I found. The cast of of characters from the Time for Beany show are primitive, hand-held puppets and the plots ridiculous. Froggy the Gremlin is nothing more than a static rubber frog bouncing around on a podium.
Yet despite this YouTube assault on my memories, I still feel a twinge of nostalgia for that magical time when I would sit in front of a yellow screen and laugh at a goofy sea serpent. I even occasionally think about that old Hoffman TV while watching something on our HD Samsung TV with a 43 inch screen, 3840×2160 resolution, and 125 channels. I actually miss Cecil and Froggy.
If you were not fortunate enough to have experienced a 1950s era sea serpent (or gremlin), I have created a short video to get you up to speed. Imagine that you are watching it with a yellowish hue in your living room. Sit back and enjoy.
Highlights from Time for Beany and Andy’s Gang(a BigLittleMeals production)
Robert Burns could/should have added “women” to his line from the 1785 poem To a Mouse…”the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men an’women gang aft agley” And surely anyone who cooks – or just lives – would agree with his remark. Our schemes and plans and work often go awry. Andy wrote about things that go awry on an earlier blog – and he’s back on the topic again today in Andy’s Corner. But this time he’s blaming Fortuna.
You could follow Burns’ message up with another oldie but goodie: “Pick yourself up; dust yourself off, and start all over again.”
Why am I thinking about all of this? Well here are two teeny hints: consider this number: 15. Then consider this photo:
Ha!
My baking plans definitely went awry the other day. Case in point: the German Apfel Marzipan Kuchen I made for a New Year’s Day dinner party at a friend’s home. I was hesitant to use that particular recipe since I’d never made it before, but after hours of studying recipes and picking what seemed a fool-proof one (thanks to my confidence in the recipes from David Lebovitz and Luisa Weiss’s Classic German Baking), I made it. The result was gorgeous in appearance. Yes, I pondered a bit when the center seemed slightly soft when it was ready to remove from the oven, but it had pulled away from the sides, the edges were golden brown (in fact, one edge was approaching burned), and I even got out our new, pricey Thermapen to check the internal temperature – and the temperature seemed a tad on the low side, but I attributed that to the fact that it had been out of the oven for a few minutes before I tested it.
My German Apfel Marzipan Kuchen with an apricot glaze
Normally, after it had cooled, I would have cut into the cake to be sure it was fully baked, but it was so lovely I decided to have faith and bring it to the dinner party whole and beautiful and perfect-looking.
What followed is a food blogger’s possibly-worst nightmare. After we’d consumed our delicious German-themed dinner of pork and sauerkraut and a vegetable mixed salad and yeast rolls, I was asked to serve the Apfel Kuchen – my contribution. And – you guessed it – the center was a doughy mess.
My failed cake
I put on my best fake smile, cheerfully cut pieces from the outside of the cake, and served it up, pretending I hadn’t totally screwed up. Did the dinner guests guess? Who knows.
Ginger Rogers has the perfect song for such an occasion; be sure to watch the whole thing. Did she convince Fred Astaire that he could dance after his failure?
“No one could teach you to dance in a million years.”
It’s kind of amazing how many poems and songs deal with this subject. We all know “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Did you know if came from a Teacher’s Manual, published in 1840?
Will I be trying that recipe again, determined to make a perfect Apfel Kuchen? Nope. But I’ll keep on baking apple cakes; I’m returning to my old stand-by recipe, originally published in the NY Times in 1973 – Teddie’s Apple Cake. It may not be as lovely to look at, but I’ve never had it fail.
And what is the lesson about failure to be learned here? Take it from Kevin McCarthy’s approach (whether you dislike him or admire him):
‘Taint no use to sit an’ whine,
When the fish ain’t on yer line;
Bait yer hook an’ keep a-tryin’—
Keep a-goin’!
(even if it’s 1 a.m. in the morning)
Teddie’s Apple Cake recipe first appeared in 1973 – in the NY Times
…
[Editor’s Note: For an unprecedented second time in a row, Andy is carrying the burden for today’s main blog while Ann is the guest MC for Andy’s Corner (which, by the way is full of ideas for special culinary holiday gifts). Also, for reasons that will become obvious, if you have young children you may want to direct their attention elsewhere while you read this].
Nylon stockings’ debut at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York (source: GlamourDaze.com)
Each year around Christmas time I can’t help but think about nylon hose. I’m not referring to the garden hose variety, I’m talking about women’s nylon stockings. Remember those? It wasn’t that long ago when they were considered a fashion must. Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that they came into existence. It turns out that the history of nylon stockings, as short as it may be, is fascinating. Before filling you in on why nylon stockings come to mind at Christmas time, let me tell you something about their colorful (and somewhat violent) history.
“Nylon stockings made their grand debut in a splashy display at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. By the time the stockings were released for sale to the public on May 15, 1940 demand was so high that women flocked to stores by the thousands. Four million pairs sold out in four days.
But the nylon stocking boom was short circuited by World War II when the sole manufacturer of nylon, Dupont, had to devote its production of nylon to the war effort. Nylon, which was dubbed “the fiber that won the war,” was used for parachutes, glider tow ropes, and numerous other military necessities.
Leg painting became a business when nylon stockings were not available during WWII (Photo credit: Library of Congress)
Suddenly, the only stockings available were those sold before the war or bought on the black market. Women took to wearing “leg make-up” and painting seams down the backs of their legs to give the appearance of wearing proper stockings.
Women would have to wait until the end of the war for nylons to return to the market. And it wasn’t long after the war that Dupont resumed production of nylon stockings and promised to meet the demand.
American Airline flight attendants try on nylons that were flown in by American Airlines for Holeproof Hosiery Co. and distributed to flight attendants, Dec. 10, 1945 Chicago Tribune
In August 1945, eight days after Japan’s surrender, DuPont announced that it would resume producing stockings and newspaper headlines cheered “Peace, It’s Here! Nylons on Sale!” DuPont’s announcement indicated that nylons would be available in September and the motto “Nylons by Christmas” was sung everywhere. (Wikipedia)
The first nylon sale in San Francisco following the war drew a massive 10,000 into Market Street. They had to close the sale early when one of the display windows caved in from the force of the crowds (source: GlamourDaze.com)
Unfortunately, Dupont was unable to produce the 360 million pairs per year that it promised, creating mad rushes when the stock hit the store racks. These incidences, which occurred in big cities across the country in 1945 and 1946, were called the “nylon riots.” There were at times mile-long lines of women “hoping to snag a single pair.”
In her book Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution, Susannah Handley writes about one of these “riots” when more than 40,000 Pittsburgh women lined up outside a hosiery store, determined to buy some of the store’s 13,000 pairs of nylon stockings. According to newspaper accounts, “a good old fashioned hair-pulling, face scratching fight broke out in the line.”
The “riots” abated once Dupont got up to production levels to satisfy the booming market. In 1959 pantyhose came onto the fashion scene and quickly dominated the nylon hosiery market. But it didn’t take long before pantyhose also became passé. As the Smithsonion article puts it, “by the 1980s the glam (for pantyhose) was wearing off. By the 90s, women looking for comfort and freedom began to go au-natural, leaving their legs bare as often as not. In 2006, the New York Times referred to the hosiery industry as An Industry that Lost its Footing.”
Now let’s get to why Christmas conjures in me images of nylon stockings. As we all know, hanging stockings is one of our culture’s cherished traditions practiced at Christmas and immortalized (at least for a large chunk of us) in Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From Saint Nicholas:”
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
...He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
Hanging Christmas stockings, 1954. Photo from the Smithsonian Magazine “The Legend of the Christmas Stocking”published December 14, 2012.
The above photo from the Smithsonian Magazine was taken in 1954 when I would have been 11 years old (and probably still clinging to the fading hope that there really might be a Santa Claus). However, two things about that picture do not apply to my childhood experience with this tradition. First, we had no fireplace and hence could not hang stockings by the proverbial chimney. Second, and more to my point in this blog, the stockings in that photo look nothing like what we hung.
While I was growing up our family “tradition” was to put up nylon stockings on Christmas eve, along with the obligatory cookies and milk for Santa. Much to the bemusement of Ann, I convinced her to continue that tradition when our own children were young (although by then we had to resort to cutting off nylon pantyhose legs because nylon stockings were no longer easily available). Unfortunately, I can find no photographs of our filled stockings.
My parents (or was it Santa?) always stuffed the nylon stockings with an orange, assorted nuts (in the shell), Christmas candies, and small wrapped gifts. Ann and I pretty much followed that pattern with our kids. You would be amazed at how much stuff can fit into a nylon stocking. As a kid I always felt a bit sorry for my friends who only had traditional (and, in my opinion, absurdly small) stockings to hang and at the same time I felt a little guilty for having such Christmas morning abundance.
To my knowledge, our family nylon tradition is unique. I tried to find pictures of filled Christmas nylons on the Internet and came up with none (other than those filled with women’s legs). I’m not sure if I should feel some sense of satisfaction that we created a truly creative tradition or a bit of regret that we were spoiling our children.
After our kids grew up Ann made these stockings for our “adult” Christmas stocking tradition. They’re prettier, but not nearly as much fun as nylons.
So, those of you with young kids and who happen to have an old pair of nylons (or pantyhose) in a drawer somewhere you might think about starting your own family nylon holiday tradition. The stockings may look a little sad and un-Christmasy on Christmas Eve when “hung by the chimney with care” but when your kids see them in the morning brimming with goodies and gifts, nothing can be more Christmassy (at least in my mind).
Happy Holidays, whether or not you celebrate Christmas and the stocking tradition.
[Editor’s note: Ann is the guest author of today’s Andy’s Corner]
If you Google “Give the gift of…”, the most interesting answers appear. You could choose from the following online sites which complete the sentence for you:
The one thing that didn’t come up is one I want to recommend: give the gift of….FOOD. Being a food blogger, I’d love if you’d make a batch of ….whatever…to gift this holiday season – or anytime someone needs a “lifter upper.” But, if you’re short on time (and long on cash), you have Goldbelly.com to help you out. Consider these possibilities (all with free shipping)
Key Lime Pie From Cootie Brown’s in Johnson City, Tennessee $59.95
OR...
ONE loaf of Stollen Bread from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in Napa $84.95
OR…
Wild Shrimp & Cognac w/Creole Cream Cheese Grits from Commander’s Palace, New Orleans $89.95
In looking over the Goldbelly offerings I can’t help but think that many of their food gifts would be relatively easy to make. Maybe they wouldn’t be quite as gorgeous, but I’ll bet they would be just as delicious, if not more so. You could make and gift a recipe from BigLittleMeals…
This year I’m gifting these easy-to-make biscotti. The recipe comes by way of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and friends there with Italian heritage. For years we were fortunate enough to receive a box of them each holiday season, and this year – after some emailing back and forth – we got the recipe to share with you. The gift that keeps on giving.
Thanks to Theresa and Joe in Hattiesburg, MS for helping me get this recipe, which Theresa’s family made and sold at farmers’ markets for years.
2 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp Diamond kosher salt
4 T (1/4 c) butter, softened
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 c whole almonds, roasted and chopped coarse (or substitute roasted hazelnuts)
2 T zest from an orange or 2 tsp lemon zest
1 1/2 tsp anise seed (optional)
Preheat to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or simply grease the pan with butter.
Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl.
Cream butter and sugar together until smooth, about 2 mins with mixer at medium speed or in a food processor. Beat in eggs one at a time, then vanilla and almond. Stir in toasted and chopped almonds and zest (and anise seeds if you’re using them). Add flour mixture and stir until just incorporated.
Turn dough out onto a very lightly floured surface and form into a ball (flouring your hands helps prevent sticking). Halve dough and turn each portion onto the cookie sheet. Using floured hands, shape each portion of dough into a 13″ long x 2″ wide log, placing the two logs about 3 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
Bake until loaves are golden and just beginning to crack on top, about 30-35 mins.
Cool the loaves for 10 mins; lower oven to 325°. Cut each loaf diagonally into about 1/2″ inch slices with a serrated knife. Lay the slices flat, about 2/3 inch apart, on the cookie sheet and return them to oven. Bake until crisp and golden brown – about 15 -20 mins. Transfer biscotti to wire rack and cool completely.
Recipe brought to you by BigLittleMeals.com and Andy and Ann.
Ann includes in our blog today a video that depicts our 1-year-old Cardigan Corgi as a sage teacher who instructs Oakley, our 12-year-old Aussie, on the proper technique for chewing Bully Sticks. While Wynn is a clever little thing, it’s unfortunate that Oakley did not get any screen time to demonstrate her own prowess as a master teacher of canine folkways. To remedy this slight, I am presenting in today’s Andy’s Corner a dogumentary showcasing Oakley’s pedagogical skills.
I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs that half of the fun of making these videos is finding background music. I can’t tell you how many enjoyable hours I’ve spent searching for song titles and sounds that go with my videos (at least in my opinion). The Internet has become a special get-away while I root around among the seemingly infinite number of pieces available to sample.
One of my favorite albums from the 1960’s which includes Rambunctious
The background music I chose for the video included in Ann’s part of the blog (produced by yours truly) was particularly meaningful to me. I selected jazz trombonist Harold Better’s Rambunctious which was released in 1963, my junior year at UCSB. I loved it and played it repeatedly on my 33 rpm record player (remember those things?). It brought back fond memories of my college days which, keeping in the spirit of Ann’s blog today, made me happy.
ABIA’s Dog Run provides the background music for the below video
For my Andy’s Corner video today I’ve selected the appropriately titled “Dog Run” by ABIA, a Japanese musician I’d not heard of before. His bio says that he is currently focusing on writing background music and that his creative motto is Just Have fun! What could be more appropriate.
Now it’s time to see Oakley in action. Enjoy.
Old Dog, New Dog, Old Trick – A BigLittleMeals Media Production
So that’s it. As you see, an old dog can teach a new dog old tricks. May none of us be fearful of trying out new tricks – nor get tired of our old tricks.
Beach Blanket Bingo starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicellowas playing in theaters in 1965. Although I’ve never seen the film, this trailer seemed appropriate for introducing today’s Andy’s Corner.
It seems that photos have become a flashpoint of inspiration for my Andy’s Corner pieces. In my previous post I wrote about how a photo from the 1950’s brought back memories of my Boy Scout past. Ann’s photo of our grandson and his girlfriend at the beach that she posted in today’s blog stirred up memories of a beach date from my U C Santa Barbara days when I was about our grandson’s age (and Beach Blanket Bingo was a big hit). It also brought to mind a well known Robert Burns poem and kindled an urge to sociologize a bit (yes, sociologize is a real word).
I’ll begin with the poem. If any poetry speaks to the experience that I am about to disclose none does better than Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785.” I’m sure you’ll recognize the well-known part of the poem that I find so apropos.
The original is on the left and the translation on the right. Burns’ entire poem is linked here.
As you may already suspect (and as I will reveal a little later), my “best-laid scheme” for an ideal beach date managed to go “awry.” But awry or not, it provides me with an excuse to introduce you to some key principles from one of my favorite sociological perspectives, Dramaturgical Sociology. In fact, I’ve shared my beach-date story from the lectern many times with my captive student audiences over the years. Even now as I contemplate telling you this story I have to resist the urge to tell you to turn off your smart phones and to at least act like you’re interested.
This tattered copy the book that made dramaturgical sociology popular (at least amongst sociologists) still sits on my shelf.Erving Goffman
Dramaturgical Sociology was introduced in 1959 by Erving Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.” He used a theatrical performance metaphor to explain much of the behavior we find in everyday life. He argued that when interacting with others we try to project an “idealized” image of ourselves that we want to be taken seriously- much like an actor on stage tries to portray a character that the audience can find believable. And, also like theater actors, before the curtain is raised we prepare for our performances back stage (or in the “back region”) out of sight of our targeted audience.
Editor’s note: Obviously the above overview only scratches the surface. For greater detail, I recommend Goffman’s book which I included on my required reading list throughout my 39 years of teaching. The only complaint I ever got was from a female student at Sonoma State who marched into my office and announced that she “would rather face a firing squad than read another word of Goffman.” She was offended by his “sexist” prose. I tried to explain that like many scholarly writers of that era (1950s) Goffman was not sensitive to the issue of using gender-neutral language but nevertheless had given us many useful insights. She dropped my course.
San Miguel Hall, an all male dorm where I lived for a year at UCSB.Santa Rosa Hall, an all female dorm where Lana was a resident.
So now let’s turn to my beach-date. It took place during my second semester at UC Santa Barbara. I had transferred there as a junior from a JC and was living in San Miguel Hall, an all-male dorm. Mixed-gender dorms weren’t an option until a few years later. Not only were males not allowed to visit residents in the women’s dorms, the women were bound by a strict curfew, which was 10:30 pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends.
I don’t recall in which of my courses I got to know Lana (I think that was her name) but I do remember that I found her to be attractive and friendly and that she lived in Santa Rosa Hall, a female dorm not far from San Miguel Hall. It took me some time to work up enough nerve, but I finally asked her if she would like to go out to dinner with me. To my surprise she said yes.
UCSB campus (the arrow points to my dorm, San Miguel Hall).
I was stoked that she agreed to go out with me, but it put me in a bit of a bind. I had no car at the time and the fine-dining options within walking distance of campus were slim. Keep in mind that this was way before Uber and the likes. Plus, I had assumed that no young woman worth her salt would want to go out with a loser who had no car. So I had to come up with something creative to compensate for that tactical disadvantage.
Then it hit me – why not have a “spontaneous” and romantic picnic on the beach? One of the bennies of being at UCSB was its location on a beautiful stretch of the Pacific Ocean with what was then the equivalent of a private beach for the students. What could be more perfect?
Back Region Preparations.
The first thing I did to prepare for a “spontaneous” picnic was catch a bus to downtown Santa Barbara (which was about 12 miles away) to do some shopping. At a deli I bought an assortment of cheeses and cold cuts, two different bottles of wine (a chianti in a very cool straw basket and another kind that I don’t recall), and a French baguette. Next, in a kitchen shop I found a red-checkered table cloth (a proxy for a beach blanket!), a couple of inexpensive wine glasses, and a cheap cork screw.
Chianti in a bottle with a straw basket (aka “fiasco“) was very trendy in the 1960’s (and the empty bottles made hip candle holders).
I lugged my “picnic” ingredients back to the dorm, being sure that our RA didn’t see the wine – no alcohol in dorms in those days. Then, on the morning before the date I went on a reconnoitering hike down the beach in search of a good picnic site. When I found what looked like a promising location I foraged for driftwood that could be used to build a cozy fire and stashed it behind a sand dune. I was ready for curtain time.
Front Stage: The Performance
I arrived at Lana’s dorm at 6:00 pm and asked the RA at the reception desk to let Lana know her date was in the lobby. I had a Berkeley book bag stuffed with the picnic goods slung over my shoulder with the baguette peeking out suggestively.
This was the best image I could find on the web of the then popular “Berkeley book bag.” Try to imagine it slung over my shoulder with a French baguette peeking out.
When Lana came into the lobby I told her that it was such a nice evening that rather than going to some stuffy restaurant I thought it would be fun to have a picnic on the beach. She seemed ok with that (thank goodness!), so I suggested that we walk down the beach to find a good spot for a picnic.
It turned out to be a lovely evening with nobody in sight and a hint of an upcoming beautiful sunset. As we arrived at the site that I had previously scouted out I said that this looks like the ideal place and I whipped out the checkered table cloth, spread it on the sand, and laid out the food, pulling out the bottles of wine last. Then I uncorked both bottles asking her to taste each, suggesting that we would share the one she preferred (knowing that I could later claim that once a bottle was opened it had to be consumed).
Watching from the beach as the sun slowly sinks into the Pacific Ocean.
By now the sunset was in full bloom and it was cooling off. I told her that it would be nice to have a fire with our picnic and that I would see if I could find any wood. I walked behind the sand dune where I had my stash, waited a minute or two, and came back with an armful of wood exclaiming “we’re in luck!”
So far everything was dramaturgically on script. What was left of the sunset was slowly fading, we had a crackling fire, and were sitting side by side sipping wine and watching the waves roll in. It was about then that she started telling me about the problems she was having with her boyfriend who had transferred to another university. Before long, she was in tears explaining how much she missed him and how guilty she felt for not being more supportive of him. I don’t recall much about the specifics of her boyfriend-relationship issues, but I do recall watching the fire going down along with the prospects for a romantic evening.
This looks like the “woody” that got us back to the dorm.
Lana was still going on about her boyfriend and we had just finishing the second bottle of wine when I realized that it was perilously close to curfew time and it was a long hike back to the dorm. We threw the remainder of the picnic stuff in my bag and started running up the beach. Fortunately, we came across a surfer who offered to give us a lift back to campus in his “woody” (my first and last time in one of those). With his help we managed to get to the front door of her dorm with about 3 minutes to spare.
I didn’t see Lana after that night but I heard through a friend that at the end of the semester she had transferred to the university her boyfriend attended. I always wondered if, over a glass of wine with her boyfriend, she ever told him the story about our beach picnic date. And if she did tell that story, whether she portrayed me as a sympathetic listener or as a loser who had no car (or maybe both). I guess I’ll never know, which is just as well.
In today’s blog Ann argues that we can make our planet more environmentally sound by eliminating specified ingredients from our diets. This certainly has merit, especially when it comes to things like corn, wheat, or beef. But there may be a flip side of that argument. Rather than cleansing our pantries and fridges of planet-unfriendly items, it may be just as responsible to stock our pantries and fridges with planet-unfriendly foods and ingredients. Let me explain.
A YouTube video shared by my cycling friend, Larry, got me thinking about this. He follows our blog and assumed the video would be of culinary interest. It shows in excruciating detail how to prep and deep fry rats (with mango sauce of course). While gawking at the food preferences of other cultures may be entertaining, which I’m sure explains its nearly 4 million views, I was more interested in the question of whether cultural acceptance of rats as human food may help control their population (I’m referring to the population of rats, not humans).
The practice of eating planet-unfriendly organisms (such as rats) as a population control strategy is not restricted to other cultures. Take what’s happening in Louisiana as a case in point. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I was introduced to the marshes and backwaters of Louisiana by Al, a senior colleague at LSU and a native Louisianan and avid fisherman. On my first foray into the waterways with Al I spotted what looked like a huge rat on the bank of one of the canals. When I asked what it was he said that it was a nutria and that they are bad news.
A Nutria: Louisiana’s 20 pound bad news rodent(and, yes, that’s really the color of their teeth).
They are “bad news” indeed. According to a 2020 USDA Wildlife Services factsheet, nutria are considered an “invasive species” and are quite nasty.
The nutria (Myocastor coypus), a large, semi-aquatic rodent native to South America, was originally brought to the United States in 1889 for its fur. When the nutria fur market collapsed in the 1940s, thousands of nutria escaped or were released into the wild by ranchers who could no longer afford to feed and house them. While nutria devour weeds and overabundant vegetation, they also destroy native aquatic vegetation, crops, and wetland areas.
…[their] burrows can also damage flood-control levees that protect low-lying areas; weaken the foundations of reservoir dams, buildings, and roadbeds; and erode the banks of streams, lakes, and ditches.
And, on top of that, nutria are a public health and safety menace.
The rodents can serve as hosts for several pathogens, including tuberculosis and septicemia, which can infect people, pets, and livestock. In addition, nutria can carry parasites, such as blood flukes, tapeworms, and liver flukes and a nematode known to cause a rash called “nutria itch.”
Al’s comment that these huge rodents are “bad news” was definitely an understatement, especially when we consider that there are an estimated 6,000 nutria per square mile in Southeast Louisiana and that adult females not only produce two litters of up to 13 babies per year, they can breed within a day of having a litter. Where are they finding all of that the time to cause so much havoc? And, who wants to get nutria itch?
It is no longer cool (or PC) to sport fur apparel, even if from an invasive species such as nutria.
So what has been done to control these huge rats? True to our country’s capitalistic impulses, government sponsored programs have tried to turn nutria (dead ones, that is) into something of economic value. Initially, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) introduced programs to promote nutria for the the global fur market, but for a variety of reasons that market has tanked, weakening the incentive for trappers to harvest nutria.
Louisiana nutria hunter
In another effort to control nutria LDWF is offering a bounty of $6 per nutria tail. In 2020 around 240 people participated in the nutria harvest, collecting about 223,000 tails worth more than $1.1 million in incentive payouts. One hunter bagged just under 11,000 nutria tails — worth $55,000. Even with that program in place the nutria population has kept growing.
[Editor’s note: I have to include this tidbit from a NY Times article regarding a possible problem with offering bounties for tails: “In 1902, the French colonial government in Hanoi, Vietnam, hellbent on slaughtering the city’s rats, offered a bounty for each rodent tail delivered as proof of execution; cunning entrepreneurs simply chopped off the tails and released the rats, leaving them free to breed and produce more rats, hence more tails and more bounties.”]
Perhaps the most interesting potential for controlling the nutria population is summarized by the slogan If you can’t beat them, eat them. Efforts have been made to elevate nutria meat to be comparable to pork or turkey on our dinner tables. Famous chef’s have been recruited to develop nutria recipes and extensive advertising campaigns have been funded by the LDWF.
Even man’s best friend became part of the nutria abatement effort. Unfortunately, Marsh Dog went out of business in 2021.
Louisiana is not alone in its efforts to control destructive species. According to Ligaya Mishan in a NY Times article entitled When Invasive Species Become the Meal, local campaigns such as found in Louisiana are part of a broader movement which is
aiming to reduce, if not eradicate, invasive species — Burmese pythons up to 20 feet long swallowing bobcats whole in the Florida Everglades; sea lampreys sucking the blood out of fish in the Great Lakes; wild boars uprooting crops and wreaking havoc in city streets from Berlin to Hong Kong — by cooking them for dinner.
The goal of this broader movement is to encourage people to become invasivores (those who eat invasive species). Rather than excluding certain foods from their tables, invasivores aggressively tackle the issue head on by facing the enemy eye to eye on their dinner plates. This means, as Ligaya Mishan aptly states, that what otherwise might be merely an epicurean decision, choosing what to have for dinner becomes “a civic duty, a heroic act, even a declaration of war“.
Just a few recommendationsto complete your invasivore cookbook library
But before being too quick to declare all out war on invasive species, we need to look over our shoulders. Despite the impressive list of despicable and destructive species taken on by the invasivore movement, there is one species that never seems to be on the menu. This brings to mind Walt Kelly’s cartoon character Pogo who in 1970 uttered this famous line: ‘We have met the enemy and he is us‘ [editors note: this does not necessarily mean that “she” couldn’t be “us” too].
Walt Kelly – “We Have Met the Enemy…” 1980 reprint of 1970 poster – Toni Mendez Collection.
Fittingly, Ligaya Mishan concludes her NY Times piece quoting British ecologist Ken Thompson who considers the most dangerous invasive species to be humans:
We, too, have brought devastation to new lands, plundering natural resources, stealing from and killing those who lived there first, even spreading our own lethal diseases. We are the meddlers, the apex predators, the survivors at all costs who have taken over every corner of the planet, its seas and skies, its icy and desert wastes, and dared reshape it in our image. We are the invaders. Who will come for us?
Invasive species are not always what you may think they are.
With that I will close and wish you happy eating, invasive species or not. But do be looking over your shoulder.
