Raven Jake Dawes

Charles Perry on Tiki Cuisine April 21

Folks, summer's coming up and I must say I have an inordinate fondness for retro tiki-ness. So FYI - this looks like a fun one. Mahalo, y'all

Oh and since I'm feelin' so aloha, following is Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole's rendition of "Over The Rainbow." Another Hawai'an brother whose life was cut short by poi addiction. Alright, there was probably some fried chicken in there too. RIP, IZ. The world lost a great talent when your rainbow faded.

Charles Perry on Tiki Cuisine

The Rise and Fall of Tiki

When: Saturday, April 21st, 2012 at 2:00 PM
What: Free Lecture at Pacific Palisades Library
Where: 861 Alma Real Drive, Pacific Palisades
Who: The public is invited to this event.

In the 1930s, two California restaurateurs created the Polynesian restaurant phenomenon that would sweep the country in the 1950s. Tiki restaurants, remembered fondly (and maybe a little ruefully), were over-the-top intoxicating environments, smelling of tropical fruits and flowers, their ceilings hung with puffer-fish lamps and outrigger canoes. You ate luscious sweet-and-sour dishes while being entertained by graceful hula dancing and sweet, dreamlike Hawaiian music. It was overwhelming – lyrical, jovial, romantic and sensuous, though certainly naive and mannered.

And yet the phenomenon collapsed practically overnight in the 1970s. Charles Perry tells the story of the rise and fall of Tiki. Mr. Perry has written for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and other publications, as well as translated cookbooks from medieval Baghdad, Central Asia, and other cultures.

 

 

The Loretto Chapel 2004

Folks, I've been trying to get a little more organized, gather some of those digital files that have gotten all over the place these past years, and I can assure you that it's been a rich voyage of discovery. For example, I just came upon some pics that we took at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe in 2004. Here's the legend:

In 1872, Jean-Baptiste Lamy the Bishop of the Santa Fe Archdiocese, commissioned the building of a convent chapel to be named Our Lady of Light Chapel, which would be in the care of the Sisters of Loretto. The chapel was designed by a French architect, Antoine Mouly, in the Gothic Revival style. Although it was built on a much smaller scale, the chapel bears an obvious resemblance to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

Two mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder and the physics of its construction.

When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.

Legend says that to find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later, the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers.

The stairway's carpenter, whoever he was, built a magnificent structure. The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.

The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Questions also surround the number of stair risers relative to the height of the choir loft and about the types of wood and other materials used in the stairway's construction.

Over the years many have flocked to the Loretto Chapel to see the Miraculous Staircase. The staircase has been the subject of many articles, TV specials, and movies including "Unsolved Mysteries" and the television movie titled "The Staircase."

And here's a possible id on the builder:

The subject of rumor and legend for over a hundred years, the riddle of the carpenter's identity was claimed to have been solved in the late 1990s by Mary Jean Straw Cook, author of Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel (2002: Museum of New Mexico Press). The author claims the builder's name was Francois-Jean "Frenchy" Rochas, an expert woodworker who emigrated from France and arrived in Santa Fe around the time the staircase was built, and who may have known or at least met another French contractor who worked on the Chapel. However, at only 43 years of age, Rochas met with a violent death in December 1894. Unidentified attackers had shot him and left him to die alone in his small cottage and he was found dead in 1895. Cook found a January 5, 1895, death notice in The New Mexican which named Rochas as the builder of "the handsome staircase in the Loretto chapel". Frenchman Quintus Monier that told of Francois-Jean Rochas's death at Dog Canyon, near today's Alamogordo.

Now I don't know if Frenchy Rochas was the builder of the staircase or not, maybe it was St. Joseph - but whoever did it was a visionary. I've sure never seen anything like it. It must've looked even better in the days when it was assumed that God would keep the choir safe, negating the need for a handrail. See how one miscreant can ruin it for everybody? Anyway, that last picture is an interpretation of what it might have looked like pre-rail. I just thought those UFOs or Angels or whatever they are made the photo a little more fun.

The Loretto Chapel
207 Old Santa Fe Trail
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 982-0092

LA Heritage Day April 29

Just a reminder y'all - come out to LA Heritage Day on Olvera Street on April 29.  I'll be there with the Friends of the Michael White Adobe and with the Old Spanish Trail Association.

Over here at the left, I'm surveying the wreckage from the San Francisquito Dam disaster, and if you don't know what that was, you'd better come to Heritage Day and see if one of the 200 member organizations can help you out.

http://laheritage.blogspot.com/

Food Obsessionals: New Orleans and the French Connection

Well alright folks - I'm plugging another Culinary Historians of Southern California event 'cause I like 'em so much. This one I'll be missing, since I'm going to be playing an astronaut who's been abandoned on a space station for 20 years in a short film. Talk about typecasting! Jane'll probably show up for it, though.  Hard to say "no" to New Orleans cuisine.

Saturday, March 10, 2012, at 10:30 AM at the Los Angeles Public Library

Mark Taper Auditorium, Downtown Central Library, 630 W. 5th St.

Free and open to the public

Albert Sonnenfeld speaking on…

“Food Obsessionals: New Orleans and the French Connection”

The Louisiana Purchase was as good a deal as the purchase of Manhattan, especially for the culture of food. Mark Twain wrote of New Orleans that to understand its culture one needs to imagine what French society would be like in a genial climate and in the freedom of a new country; Sherwood Anderson apostrophized New Orleans as “dear city of Latins and hot nights.” The “Big Easy” is above all a “Catholic city” in its view of the pleasures of the bedroom, table and kitchen, a refuge from Cromwellian austerity, that curse brought upon our land by a Puritan heritage.” I call this “the French Connection.” Though the architecture of the Carre or Quarter is Spanish; the food culture is FRENCH Catholic.

As Marcelle Bienvenue asked (without answering): “Who’s your Mama, Are you Catholic and can you make a Roux?”

The talk is a small unsweetened beignet of cultural history…

Albert Sonnenfeld calls himself a cultural historian. He is a free-lance journalist, restaurant consultant and reviewer, and for many years literature professor at Princeton (1959-1986) and USC (Chevalier Professorship, 1986-2004).

Sonnenfeld’s edition of Food: A Culinary History (Columbia University Press, November 1999) attracted media attention. Since 1999, he has directed the series, Arts of the Table: Studies in Culinary History for Columbia University Press, where he has published Culture of the Fork (2001). His edition and translation from the Italian of Il Cibo come cultura (Food as culture) appeared in 2006.

Four times decorated by the French Republic, most recently as Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1997), and as Chevalier dans l’ordre du mérite agricole (2003). He served four terms on the National Board of Directors of The American Institute of Wine and Food, whose L.A. chapter he co-chaired. In 2002 he was named editor of The FCI Review by The French Culinary Institute of New York. He was food columnist and restaurant reviewer for Westside News Publications and Brentwood Media Group and he is syndicated by “Critique Guides Series.”

Upcoming Events

Folks, I'm off to visit Tecopa Tom for a couple o' days while attending the Sierra Club conference and the Old Spanish Trail Rendezvous. Here are the Facebook event pages: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/187301418036211/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/330052833706236/

Should be a pretty great weekend, since everything in Tecopa / Shoshone is pretty great. (As you can see I'm waiting for Jane to finish her business, as usual. Time makes a man patient.) So if y'all are in Death Valley, come see me at the potluck on Saturday night. If you want to make a weekend of it, drive to Baker, get yourself some alien jerky, then go up that alley behind the Mad Greek for about an hour or so and you'll be in Shoshone.

Next up -  LA Heritage Day 2012 is on Sunday, April 29th from 10am to 4pm.

This year's event will take place at El Pueblo Historic Monument along
the historic Plaza in partnership with them. This is great because it
is near Olvera Street and Union Station, so it has many public transit
& parking options. It also allows for a number of museums & LAHA
members  to see increased patronage and exposure. (See the site here:
http://elpueblo.lacity.org)

I don't know if we'll be representing the Old Spanish Trail Association or the Michael White Adobe or both, but the LA Heritage Alliance has about 250 member organization from folks who are preserving buildings, to the culinary historians and the citrus industry historians to different museums, so there really is something for everyone. 

More lundehunds than you can shake a puffin at

Arright, disbelievers. I don't know why you persist in the belief that the Xoloitzcuintli is an actual dog and the puffin hound is something I made up, so I turned to the Viking Answer Lady for guidence. This is what she said: 

The Norwegian Lundehund is the most ancient of the Nordic dog breeds. The name Lundehund means "puffin-dog" after the dog's talent for hunting seabirds. The Lundehund originates from the Lofoten Islands, specifically from the fishing village Måstad on Værøy Island. The date of origin for the breed is unknown, however scientific research indicates that the breed has been in existence since before the last Ice Age. The Lundehund survived through the glacial period in the ice-free zones, surviving by eating fish and seabirds. It is thought that the Lundehund is actually a descendant of the primeval dog, Canis forus, rather than the domesticated dog breeds, Canis familiaris.    The Lundehund was valued for its ability to hunt and catch puffins and other seabirds. Lundehunds have several special anatomical adaptations that make them particularly adept at hunting seabirds. Lundehunds are a zoological rarity by having at least six fully developed toes on each foot. They can close their ear canals at will and are able to bend their head 180 degrees backwards over their shoulders. Their legs that are extremely flexible and can be stretched straight out to the side, for greater ease in swimming or in maneuvering in the narrow crevices in Norwegian sea-side cliffs where their avian prey lives.  The Lundehund was a valuable working animal. The export of [feather] down to Schleswig in Germany was a major commercial enterprise from the Viking Age through the 16th and 17th centuries. In addition, puffins were considerted a delicacy during the Viking Age. Households on Værøy would have anywhere from two dogs to a pack of a dozen, and at one point the Lundehund's value was as great as a good milk cow. One Lundehund could capture up to 30 puffins in one night, bringing them back alive to its master. The popularity of the Lundehund waned after the introduction of nets into the local bird-hunting practices.

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vik_pets.shtml#Dogs

Now some of you were able to accept that the dog was real, but balked at the idea that there is a cuter bird than a penguin. You will see from the photo evidence, that puffins are, in fact, the cutest birds.

Here's another one of a puffin in flight. Case closed.

 

 

Now some of you, and I don't blame you, believed that the dog is real, and that puffins are real, but couldn't wrap your heads around the notion of someone chowin' down on one.  And to paraphrase Sam Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction, 'sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy thing.' In this case substitute "puffin" for "sewer rat" and "adorable" for "filthy" and you've got my feelings on it, but again, the photo evidence bears it out. Here's a pic of puffin hunter Örn Hilmisson scaling a cliff for dinner, a task that would go so much easier if he had a lundehund, but I may be missin' the point.

 Now here's 20 reasons not to eat a puffin, in case you wanted to try it out:

 

1) Puffins are excellent swimmers.

 

2) The female incubates only one egg during the mating season.

 

3) The diet consists of sand eels, herring, hake, and capelin.

 

4) They drink sea water

 

5) Puffins are not in any way related to the penguin, even though they have similar characteristics.

 

6) Puffins can live up to 20 years in the wild.

 

7) Their main predators are the great black-backed gull and man.

 

8) Puffins are faithful lovers – they stay together and mate for life.

 

9) The puffin’s beak, or bill, is dull in winter and brightly coloured in spring. After the breeding season is over, they shed part of it.

 

10) Puffins often ‘kiss’ or what is known as ‘billing’ their partners.

 

11) Their black and white feathers are waterproof.

 

12) They can dive as deep 60 metres (200 feet).

 

13) Baby puffins use an outside toilet so as to not soil their feathers or bed.

 

14) Puffins live in burrows in the ground or cliff faces.

 

15) A baby puffin is called a "puffling."

 

16) Puffins stand about 25cm (10 inches) tall.

 

17) Among the best places to watch Puffins are the Scottish Highlands – John O’Groats, Durness, and Sutherland all have puffin populations.

 

18) There are three species of puffin. Two species, the Tufted Puffin and Horned Puffin, are found in the North Pacific Ocean, while the Atlantic Puffin is found in the North Atlantic Ocean.

 

19) They can fly up to 70mph (approx 110kph) and beat their wings 400 times per minute.

 

20) Puffins are not an endangered species but millions die due to oil spillages, (they get sick from ingesting it when they clean it off), trash in the sea, and over-fishing. Over-fishing is very threatening when there aren't enough fish for the adult Puffin to feed its chicks.

Check out Marie Milton’s list at: http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/facts-about-puffins/

 

Andrew Plotsky and Butchering Pork

Left to my own devices, folks, I'd probably go vegetarian; well mostly. I just like animals too much to go around whacking them. But, if you're not butchering your own meat, that means someone else has to. Sayin' "I didn't do it" while you stuff a pastrami-on-rye in your mug ain't exactly the moral high ground. Now maybe I'm doomed to a life of ambivalence about my place on the food chain (well, under me on the food chain - anything trying to eat me, and that includes mosquitoes, is going to meet its maker, no ambivalence there) but this young man, Andrew Plotsky, is making a good case for the role of meat in community supported agriculture.

Now for my vegan, Muslim and Jewish readers, pork butcherin' might not be your cup of tea. (stick with it for about 5 minutes to see how centralized meat packing destroyed independent farmers/quality meat/the butchering profession) For everyone else who doesn't know what part of a pig the "picnic" comes from, you'd better watch and learn. 

On The Anatomy Of Thrift: Side Butchery from farmrun on Vimeo.

Old Spanish Trail Meeting on Saturday

Folks I'm a great believer in alternative energy, but I'm not a believer in giving huge tracts of pristine desert to power companies so they can ruin public land for a profit. This is becoming a huge problem all over the California desert and we're going to have to band together to do something about it.

Now some of the land that's supposed to get windmills and solar panels all over it is part of the Old Spanish Trail, specifically the Tecopa part of the trail, so I'm going to be at this meeting, and if you're going too, please RSVP with Paul McClure.

Here's the forwarded message:

Please join us on Saturday, January 21, 2012, for a very important meeting!

An OSTA Alert

Old Spanish Trail Faces New Threats in the Mojave. What Can OSTA Do? Help Us Find the Answers… Proposed solar energy and wind farm projects endanger the Old Spanish Trail corridor in some of the most sensitive and unspoiled areas of the Mojave. The Hidden Hills solar plant and the Silurian Valley wind farm would both require massive grading and erect huge structures (twin 750-foot high towers at Hidden Hills; more than 120 windmills from 250-400 feet high along Highway 127 in the scenic Silurian Valley near Death Valley). Both projects would impinge on the Trail and destroy unspoiled desert vistas.

Join with Tecopa chapter leaders and OSTA members from California and Nevada on January 21, 2012, to plan an effective response that makes sure the Trail is protected now that the U.S. is locating renewable energy in the desert. The Tecopa chapter is established with regulatory agencies as an “Intervener” and is actively engaged on these two projects, as well as ongoing research on the Trail. This is your chance to become involved. 

When: Sat., Jan. 21, 12:00 noon to 3:00 PM

Where: Gallery auditorium of the Workman-Temple Homestead Museum 
15415 East Don Julian RoadCity of Industry, California 91745 
Phone: (626) 968-8492 
Web: www.homesteadmuseum.org
Who: All OSTA members in CA and NV

Refreshments: 
Sandwiches and drinks will be available
Cost: Free to OSTA members and guests with advance registration 

The Program

OSTA’s Jan. 21 Strategy and Action Planning session will:

Review proposed projects and evaluate possible mitigation measures 

Consider proposing efficient alternatives, such as placing power generation where the population is. This can be achieved by installing rooftop on industrial and large government buildings, warehouses, and parking lots in our cities. 

Plan and organize OSTA monitoring and participation in the regulatory and environmental proceedings for each project, contacting elected officials, and coordinating with other historical and environmental organizations 

Offer you the chance to get involved with ongoing OSTA projects, including: 

Field location and recording of the 1829-1848 mule trace being conducted by the Tecopa chapter 

Archival research to document the OST in CA and NV 
Preparation of OSTA field and archival data for Geographical Information Systems (GIS) presentations. 

Register for this free event by return e-mail to Paul McClure ([email protected]) or by telephone at 909-305-0505. Please include names of all in your party who plan to attend. This is so that we can prepare an attendance list and order the right amount of food and drinks.

Culinary Historians of SoCal on Saturday

Folks, y'all know I've been promoting the Culinary Historians of Southern California. We aren't actually members (yet) but the talks are just so darned interestin.' So here's my hit pick for Saturday - Charles Perry talking about the food of the 1001 Nights.

A Thousand and One Fritters

Saturday, January 14, 2012, at 10:30 AM
at the Los Angeles Public Library

Mark Taper Auditorium, Downtown Central Library, 630 W. 5th St.

Free and open to the public

Charles Perry speaking on…

“A Thousand and One Fritters: Food in the Arabian Nights”

Who knew that that famous collection of marvelous tales from our childhood opens a window on the cuisine of the Middle Ages? In fact, The Thousand and One Nights mentions quite a few dishes of red meat, poultry and fish, not to mention lots of pastries, even wine.

The book’s translators, alas, have little idea of what these dishes were. But now that several medieval Arab cookbooks are available to us, we can at last know what “The Lad Who Ate Zirbaja” actually ate, why the cook shop owner in “The Tale of the Two Wazirs” was threatened with crucifixion for leaving out the pepper in the dish of pomegranate seeds, and what on earth all those fritters were that the translators keep mentioning.

Charles Perry is the president and co-founder of the Culinary Historians of Southern California. He was a major contributor to the Oxford Companion to Food, has served as a trustee of the annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery and was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times Food Section from 1990 to 2008. He has translated four medieval Arabic recipe collections and is currently establishing the text of a fourth, based on eight manuscripts.

http://chscsite.org/a-thousand-and-one-fritters/

One City, One Book: the Sherlockian

One day perhaps I'll pull an Oprah and start (or maybe even join) a book club. That day ain't today. Mostly, I don't read novels. But on Thursay, Jane and I were off at the Crowell Public Library in San Marino doin' our thing with the Friends of the Michael White Adobe board and well, one thing led to another.

Before I could even say "mysteries are lame," Jane had checked out San Marino's "One City, One Book" for 2012, which is "The Sherlockian" by Graham Moore, and we'll be reading it over the next couple o' weeks.

The concept of "One City, One Book" was started in Seattle in 1998, and since then about 400 different cities across the country have joined in. The idea is that everyone in a community is encouraged to read the same book, attend discussions or maybe meet the author. Sometimes the book chosen is written by a local, or the story is set in that town. Sometimes they just go for a classic like "Grapes of Wrath" or "To Kill a Mockingbird." Anyway, it's supposed to encourage the community to read more, support the local library (or community center or city hall or whoever's promoting the event) and get people talkin' about books. The Library of Congress keeps a list of who's participating and what they're reading, but it's pretty badly out-of-date.

So we don't really read a lot of novels, or who-done-its, but that's not really the point of being in a book club, is it? You can read what you want to read any old time, this is about getting out of your rut and reading something different. Apparently young Graham Moore, over there on the left, is an LA guy, so maybe we'll be running into him one of these days.  So here's one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012: Join the City of San Marino in reading "The Sherlockian." Can't hurt, might help. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

__________________________________________

Sherlockian update: I like the idea of a community book better than I like the execution, however, at least in this instance, I was surprised. I'd planned to give it the benefit of a 50-page pity read and just see if I wanted to keep going. The whole concept of a socially awkward Sherlock Holmes nut just wasn't doin' it for me, quite frankly. Then after about the fourth chapter we were totally hooked. Spent all of Sunday reading the entire book cover-to-cover out loud in bed. Got done a little after midnight. It's a page-turner, I assure you. The Crowell Library in San Marino has a bunch of Arthur Conan Doyle / Sherlock / mystery events planned culminating in the arrival of author Graham Moore in mid April. Hate to say it, but I can't wait for his next book!