Geeky Friday! 27 March 2009 11:48 pm
Posted by Tracy in : books,consumerism,eating,geekery,random,reading,school , trackbackThis morning I got up and breakfasted on a toasted pumpernickel bagel (half with butter, the other with cream cheese) and a slice of the banana bread I made last night (slight recipe modification: ran out of walnuts mid-measure, tried to make up the difference with hazelnuts, ran out of those too, and finally made it all the way to 1/2 cup by adding almonds), with Irish Breakfast tea.
(Slight digression: Y’know what’s really fun to sing to the tune of “C is for Cookie”?
Tea is for Tracy, that’s good enough for me
Tea is for Tracy, that’s good enough for me
Tea is for Tracy, that’s good enough for me
Oh, Tracy, Tracy, Tracy starts with tea!
Okay, back to my geeky day.)
After browsing the day’s New York Times and making a pretty good stab at the crossword puzzle (grrr lower left corner o’ references to diamonds, ever so not this girl’s best friend), I kicked things up an intellectual notch by finishing Arjun Apparurai’s “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks In Contemporary India” (Comparative Studies in Society and Society, January 1988).
I told you today was geeky.
Anyway, after finishing the the article I had barely enough time to grab my trusty copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking and hustle down to the food studies department to discuss it at our brown bag lunch discussion group. On my way to campus, I pondered the narrative Jaffrey constructs in her book, recognizing several of the elements described by Appadurai: diaspora (she writes about learning to cook after leaving India, from recipes sent by her mother from home), construction of authenticity in terms of various Indian ethnic group cuisines, and menu suggestions for home cooks, using both dishes in her book as well as possible non-Indian foods that might combine well with her recipes. I like her discussion of the cultural diversity of India, and resultant differences in Indian regional and ethnic cuisines — as in the references to different ethnic groups mentioned earlier. Not all of her recipes are labeled by their regional/ethnic origins, however, and I have yet to piece through the suggested menus to see if she groups those dishes geographically.
Menus are only two pages of the book, however, and for the rest Jaffrey organizes dishes into types based mostly but not entirely on their main ingredients, e.g. vegetables, meat, fish, poultry/eggs, pulses, rice, and breads. The latter category in particular is somewhat controversial to Appadurai, and he has a point: we’re talking everything from chappatis, pooris, and naan (wheat-based, yes, but very different in preparation), to aloo paratha (potatoes!), and Gujerati poore (split peas). That’s some serious range. Delicious, delicious range. Did I mention that we didn’t have to brown-bag it for this particular lunch talk, because the Ph.D. students organizing provided Indian takeout, and Christy even brought homemade potatolicious flatbread? So awesome, by which I mean: NOM NOM NOM. Anyway. We had a fun discussion, and I could go on and on about it, but I think I’ll save my ramblings about the cross-cultural significance of leftovers for another post. (Geek!) I made my way home, then decided to do the fieldwork for the nutrition assignment due Monday — food marketed to kids.
Funny thing is, for all my friendly local Fairway is, I swear, the Toys-R-Us of food (huge warehouse, concrete floors, shelves up to the ceiling, and I could play there all day), they actually aren’t all that slick about putting kid foods where rugrats can see it, let alone reach it for sneaking into an adult companion’s shopping cart. Still, holy monkey gods, have I ever been tuning out a lot of amazing/awful stuff. Cookie/candy straws for drinking milk through! Endless permutations of yogurt! Products not just in packages with cute cartoon mascots, or based on TV shows, but shows I’ve only barely heard of (High School Musical cereal? Really?) Finally, and I suppose this should not come as a surprise, I am a total sucker for anything with Sesame Street Muppets on it. I’m still amazed I made it home without buying all those Apple and Eve juice boxes… but I did somehow end up with Teddy Grahams (a Sensible Solution!) and Whole Grain Cheddar Goldfish (continuing my theme of trying the new-and-improved whole grain version of processed foods — here’s hoping the Goldfish are less cardboardy than the Stoned Wheat Thins I tried a few weeks back… I still blame Philip Morris — I mean, Altria Group — I mean, Kraft. Gah.)
Every time I go to the store with a school assignment in mind, it takes at least twice as long as I was expecting. This trip was no exception, but I did manage to make it home with my silly impulse purchases and a few things we actually needed (refills for all the nuts I used up in the banana bread, for instance). Also: organic, Fair Trade vanilla extract was actually cheaper than the mainstream brand. Win!
Back at home, I made cheddar-scallion drop biscuits for dinner, alongside a salad by Peter. We had homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert a few hours after that. And now, another hour or so later, my brain is finally mellow enough to write about all of it. It was a good, geeky day.
