Fuschia Dunlop on Chinese artisanal food. (Speaking of camillia oil, I have been using same on my face and hands this winter. Oshima tsubaki. Not the same subspecies as the stuff in the article, but lovely just the same.) I was just thinking how sometimes the American and European rhetoric of local food can begin to sound a bit xenophobic. Not so much the official organizations who work to provide foreign markets for traditional delicacies while their own markets develop, but there’s a weird libertarian edge to some of the conversation around local-sustainable-etcetera that starts to lean more toward survivalist fuckyouism at times. Fine then, you people go live your pallid, miserable, chocolateless lives while the rest of us dip into aguaymanto jam, algarrobina syrup, argan oil… Hmm, Fuschia Dunlop has a blog. Good. I have been meaning to read her book.01 I will take it with me when I travel this month… Huh, a discussion on how common it is of people to demand Chinese food be dirt cheap. You hear the same arrogant crap about Mexican food all the time. I think it ties pretty directly to what people suppose the cost of living in the country of origin is. Whenever I research in advance of our trips to Costa Rica I notice a similar sort of entitlement on travel boards and blogs. In one place, I read a comment that actually started off, “Costa Rica used to be a nice third world country” and went on to complain at length about how it is way too expensive “for what it is.” Read: “Everyone used to live in a poverty that was awfully comfy for me, but when people make a living wage, they get awfully uppity. I’m going to Thailand next time, where people still know their place.” Yikes, maybe it’s time for you to stay home, mister! Anyhow, back to the discussion at hand– I had an idea the other day about how one might adventure to new places to eat in Chinatown. A while ago I bought a chicken from Bo Bo Chicken. (Chicken for immigrants, the sales lady told me– it comes with parts. Mine was technically defined as an old hen, which a Peruvian woman I know once explained is what really should be used for aji de gallina in place of American chickens, which she described as floppy and not having any flavor. The proprietor of one of the Mexican places nearby told me to be careful with chicken. She knows I cannot eat the gluten in most bullion/sazon mixes and cautions that American chickens are so putrid and smelly that lots of people who’d never use sazon back home have to douse chickens here to get them to stop stinking. Apparently it’s unanimous. American chickens are gross.) It was really damn good. The bones and feet and the tragical little face02 cooked up into a really rich gelatinous stock and were reincarnated as a very good risotto. Anyhow, I noticed that their website includes a list of restaurants who use their birds. Probably a good place to start… And one more thing, here’s a place to start for people who don’t know how to identify American food.
Kapow! Evolution! Literature! Theory! So many favorite things in one place. Michael Bérubé’s review of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction is brilliant (he even soothingly pats my hand and reassures me there won’t be any evolutionary psychology) but somehow I still can’t decide whether to read it. It sounds like the sort of thing I’d alternately clasp to my bosom and hurl across the room.
Gwen John at the Tate and a bit of tardy gossip on Gwen, Augustus, Dorelia et al.
Oh and, I keep forgetting—that Boldtype post on electronic writing. There are a lot of places to go from there and I still haven’t made it everywhere. I will note that it’s pretty hard for text to continue to work as text while it’s busy being art.
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We are very lucky to have a library just down the street. It’s a small branch, but since it’s the NYPL, I can order pretty much anything under the sun. The downstairs is pretty crowded with computer terminals and lots of Books for Dummies, but they always have a surprising number of new releases and the little literature section seems curated by a kindred spirit. I found multiple copies of every Roberto Bolano book in English. The children’s room upstairs is magical. It’s a lofty mellow space with gracious arched windows and round steam heaters in the center that click and gurgle cozily in the thin winter daylight. There are tons of books in both English and Spanish and a little row of computer terminals at tiny tables where the babies can sit and type. The librarians keep a bucket of crayons and scrap paper behind the desk in the center of the room. Sometimes the activities room is open and one of the librarians reads stories and plays music for the children. The babies dance and wave colored scarves around and make things out of glitter glue. Even on the coldest, wettest days, it’s never crowded. On a particularly cold day recently a woman was sitting out front selling steaming patties of plantain and meat. We bought one on the way home and Aure proudly carried it across the park himself. He clasped it to his tummy as he stood on the front stoop and watched the city workers plant an oak tree in front of our house.
