Mona Lisa in my Kitchen

Mona Lisa in my kitchen and in my life is a work in progress. I've been collecting all sorts of Mona Lisa materials for many years, and I have posted quite a lot about this collection here on my blog. You may recall my Mona Lisa winkie from last mont's post (right) -- she's still winking!

Despite my interest in Mona Lisa, I've never presented much about her to my friends at the once-a-month blog event called "In My Kitchen," which this month is hosted by Sherry, a blogger in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. To learn about her and about this event see THIS POST.

Now for more Mona Lisa imagery .....

Here's my pantry shelf (a high one) with Mona Lisa mugs. And one candle.

Among my refrigerator magnets now: just one Mona.
At some point I had many, but from time to time, I restart my magnet array.

And now for some kitchen and food Monas from past blog posts:

How one mug works: first you see the mustache -- add coffee and there's no mustache.

Mona Lisa lunchbox (I don't have it because it's crazy expensive).

From one of my condo kitchens in Hawaii: Kona Lisa Coffee
and Kona Lisa mug -- from the farm that we visited.

Mona Lisa olive oil -- which I haven't seen in a long time.

Mona Lisa Chocolate (one of many).

Mona Lisa wine, Mona Lisa cocktail napkins, Mona Lisa mugs (again).

And one of my favorite ever Mona Lisa advertisements, collected in the 1980s.

Spring Pleasures

Chocolate chip cookies... one of the most perfect foods, no?

I made them from the recipe on the Toll House Chocolate Chips package.

The eagles at Magee Marsh on Lake Erie east of Toledo are raising eaglets again this year. Warblers are just returning.
We enjoyed a beautiful day with friends, birdwatching, fleeing a downpour, eating in Toledo, and going to the museum.
I brought some of my chocolate chip cookies to share with the friends (not with the birds).

... the eaglet's head popped up now and then as I watched the nest.

Spring flowers at West Lake Preserve near Chelsea, MI.

That's what I've been doing this week!

Wordy Wednesday: How long have we called them "Caramelized Onions"?

Recently, the topic of caramelized onions came up in a conversation which led me to wonder when that phrase came into common use in restaurant reviews and menus, recipes, and cooking literature. You probably know that in current cooking vocabulary, especially online recipes, the term "caramelized onions" is now very commonly used for several methods of slowly cooking onions until they melt into a very small quantity and turn a color from deep gold to deep brown. But I was sure that the term was not always used for those methods -- I felt that it had appeared some time after I started cooking. In fact, I have learned, the usage originated some time in the 1980s. Here's how I found out.

Caramelized onions from a google image search.

To begin my efforts, I tried google search and google book search to find references to caramelized onions at specified dates, going earlier and earlier. I also searched my own memory. For example: Julia Child's onion soup recipe in the original Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- first published in 1961 -- describes a process of cooking onions slowly with salt and sugar. However, the book does not use the term "caramelized onions." Under "caramelized," the index has only "caramelized almonds." *

When I ran out of ideas for online searching, I recalled that in the book Word by Word, lexicographer Kory Stamper mentioned that you could write to Merriam-Webster and get answers to questions about words. So I did. Filling in a form on the Merriam-Webster website, I submitted the following query:

Question: When did the term "caramelized" first apply to cooking onions?  I can find it in New York Magazine articles by Gael Greene in the late 1980s, but online searches (google, google book search) don't seem to turn up instances prior to that -- maybe one reference. I don't think Julia Child, for example, used the term in her early books when cooking onions that way.

I'm gratified to report that I received a very interesting answer from Emily, Associate Editor, Merriam-Webster Inc. (Her full name was included, but I don't know if it would be ok to post it here.) She emailed me:

Hi. Your message was forwarded to me, and I am happy to reply. You have asked an interesting and complex question. We are never able to identify exactly when a word was first used, especially because words are often used first in spoken language before they are written. It can be even harder to pin down a new or shifting sense of an existing word. We trace the earliest known use of "caramelize" in general back to 1842, but, as you have observed, the use relating to browning onions developed much more recently. In our own extensive citational database I found instances of this use dating back to 1980. 

That said, we do have one earlier citation that may reveal a shift towards this new use. (Note the British spelling.)

                 "The sugar helps caramelise the onion, but do not allow it to catch and turn black."
                 "A Sweet Breath of Garlic"
                 by Jane Grigson
                 OBSERVER MAGAZINE
                 London                 
                 May 12, 1974 

 I hope that this information is helpful.

I found it rather exciting to get email directly from the Dictionary, at least from one of the writers of the dictionary! What a great service. And I was relieved to find out that my impression was correct: the term "caramelized onions" did come into use in my lifetime. This was not my imagination and not an example of the "recency illusion."

* Mastering the Art of French Cooking: onion soup, p. 43; caramelized almonds, p. 583

If today had been Wordless Wednesday, I would have just posted this image of an azalea about to bloom in my garden.
But it's Wordy Wednesday here at my blog, so I also talked about words.

Gaiman's Norse Mythology

I am a great lover of the books of Neil Gaiman, and I found his newest, Norse Mythology, very enjoyable. Most of what I know about the Norse gods comes from Gaiman's book American Gods anyway, so I constantly thought about the personalities that this inventive author had given them in that book. In the new book, Gaiman doesn't invent any new traits or exploits for the gods, but in simple prose retells the stories that he found in ancient Norse literature -- or so he says. I think his own style and interests come through anyway in these retellings. He's a master of storytelling.

I especially liked passages about the foods of the gods. They liked large quantities of meat and mead: no Olympian detachment or any of that ambrosia nonsense! Thor, especially, was a master of eating huge amounts and drinking even more impressive quantities -- for example the time a trickster dared him to empty a drinking horn that was connected to the seas, and Thor almost emptied the entire ocean.

Here's a fun passage from a story featuring Thor's great appetite. The background: beautiful goddess Freya had been promised to a giant named Thrym against her will. Instead of Freya, Thor dresses as a bride and goes to the wedding at the giant's home. Thor is heavily veiled and very uncomfortable; he is accompanied by Loki, a shape-shifter who has transformed himself into a young woman, and who has to do all the talking to avoid tipping off the giants. Thor and Loki were seated at the bridal table:

Thrym clapped his hands and giant serving men came in. They carried five whole roast oxen, enough to feed the giants; they brought in twenty whole baked salmon, each fish the size of a ten-year-old boy; also they carried in dozens of trays of little pastries and fancies intended for the women. They were followed by five more serving men, each one carrying a whole cask of mead, a barrel huge enough that each giant struggled beneath the weight of it. 

“This meal is for the beautiful Freya!” said Thrym, and he might have said something else, but Thor had already started to eat and to drink, and it would have been rude for Thrym to have talked while the bride-to-be was eating. 

A tray of pastries for the womenfolk was placed in front of Loki and Thor. Loki carefully picked out the smallest pastry. Thor just as carefully swept the rest of the pastries up, and they vanished, to the sound of munching, under the veil. The other women, who had been looking at the pastries hungrily, glared, disappointed, at the beautiful Freya. But the beautiful Freya had not even begun to eat. 

Thor ate a whole ox, all by himself. He ate seven entire salmon, leaving nothing but the bones. Each time a tray of pastries was brought to him, he devoured all the fancies and pastries on it, leaving all the other women hungry. Sometimes Loki would kick him under the table, but Thor ignored every kick and just kept eating. Thrym tapped Loki on the shoulder.“Excuse me,” he said. “But the lovely Freya has just polished off her third cask of mead.” 

“I’m sure she has,” said the maiden who was Loki.  “Amazing. I’ve never seen any woman eat so ravenously. Never seen any woman eat so much, or drink so much mead.” 

“There is,” said Loki, “an obvious explanation.” He took a deep breath and watched Thor inhale another whole salmon and pull a salmon skeleton out from under his veil. It was like watching a magic trick. He wondered what the obvious explanation was. 

“That makes eight salmon she’s eaten,” said Thrym. 

“Eight days and eight nights!” said Loki suddenly. “She hasn’t eaten for eight days and eight nights, she was so keen to come to the land of the giants and make love to her new husband. Now she is in your presence, she is finally eating again.” (Kindle Locations 922-940)

Norse Mythology is highly entertaining and very readable. And by the way, Thor kills all the ogres and giants at the banquet with his infallible hammer.

Ann Arbor March for Science, Earthday, 2017

A few minutes before the Ann Arbor March for Science, April 22, thousands of people gathered on the University of
Michigan Diag to hear an hour of speeches. I found the speeches quite good. Most of them were given by scientists and
researchers in bio-medical and neuroscience fields. Physics, chemistry, mathematics, and other areas of biology were
not represented, which I found strange.

Signs were many and varied.

After the speeches, the participants marched from the campus to downtown. It took them almost half an hour to
march past this point.

Some of the participants were wearing pink hats from the women's march, but I was especially amused by
several "brainy" hats that people evidently made for this event.

"In Morocco" by Pierre Loti: Good things to eat in Morocco in the 1880s

A current French edition of Loti's book.
I read an old translation into English
in a Kindle Edition.

Riding a horse through the deserts and wild places of Morocco, French author Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was accompanied by a large number of men to serve and protect him. Loti, an emissary from the French government to the Sultan of Morocco, described the trip in vivid detail in his book In Morocco, published in 1890.

Camels carried the baggage on the twelve-day trip from his entry point across from Spain to Fez, and on a later trip continuing through the country. As they stopped each evening, their food came from local villages, courtesy of a custom called the mouna. He explained:

“The appearance of the mouna is always the most important event of the close of a day's march. It comes usually in the twilight, in long procession, to be deposited finally on the ground before the tent of our Minister. I ask pardon for this Arab word, but our language does not possess its equivalent : mouna is the tithe, the ransom, which our quality of embassy gives us the right to levy upon the tribes through whose territories we pass. Without this mouna, commanded long in advance and brought sometimes from a great distance, we should risk dying of hunger in this country without inns, without markets, with scarce a village, almost a desert.” (Pierre Loti, In Morocco, Kindle Locations 326-331).

Illustration from the English edition of In Morocco. Obviously Loti's attitudes
do not necessarily follow current norms for describing other ethnic groups, 
but there's quite a lot of fascinating material in the book.

Loti described several of these evening meals. Sometimes the tribal villagers would bring cooked food in large containers, almost always including couscous. Often they brought live sheep, chickens, and other animals to be slaughtered and cooked by the members of Loti's entourage. He also described in interesting terms the way that his attendants would put up the tents for camp each night, and quickly take them down in the morning.

Here are some of the descriptions of the meals that were brought by the tribal villagers:

"The first ten men carry large earthen amphorae full of butter; then come jars of milk, baskets of eggs, round wicker cages filled with fowls tied by the legs; four mules laden with loaves of bread, lemons, oranges ; and, finally, twelve sheep, led by the horns—which enter reluctantly, poor beasts, into this foreign camp, as if already their fears misgave them." (Kindle Locations 334-337). 

"Under these esparto roofings are large earthenware tubs, filled with viands heaped up in pyramids; a sweet couscous; a savoury couscous, crowned with an edifice of chickens; a roasted sheep ; and a pile of those highly spiced tarts known in Morocco as 'gazelles' hoofs.'" (Kindle Locations 627-629).  

"After we have supped, a new procession appears in the moonlight, bringing this time sixteen sheep, a respectable number of fowls, of loaves and jars of butter." (Kindle Locations 496-497). 

"It is our mouna coming to us, slow and grave as ever: a milk couscous, a sugar couscous; a live sheep and a number of chickens in cages. Willingly would we send back the poor beasts, were such a course permissible to us; but they must needs be delivered up to the knife and the voracity of the men of our escort." (Kindle Locations 2888-2890).

For a recipe for "gazelle's horns" see this post by
food writer Christine Benlafquih.

In a town called Czar-el-Kebir, Loti was entertained by two local dignitaries. Inside their houses he found "interior courts, colonnaded, and paved and panelled with mosaics." The refreshments began with a type of pastry that had already been mentioned, "gazelle's hoofs," which are a type of sweet, horn-shaped sweet, still made and in current English called "gazelle's horns" --

"... we are offered 'gazelles' hoofs,' in large dishes, and tea in microscopic cups, as in China—tea which is brewed on the ground in silver samovars, and is very sweet, and strongly flavoured with mint, anise and cinnamon. Coffee is scarcely ever taken in Morocco—tea always and everywhere. And it comes from England, as do also the samovars in which it is made and the gilded cups from which it is drunk." (Kindle Locations 688-691).

Food descriptions throughout In Morocco are fascinating, especially when they show the character of the people Loti encountered; for example:

"The luncheon, too, with this old chief, is savage, like his territory, like his tribe. On the ground, on the carpet of yellow flowers, at a chance spot in the midst of the boundless plain, he offers us a black couscous, with sheep roasted whole, served on large wooden platters. And while we are tearing, with our fingers, fragments of flesh from these huge joints, come suppliants again to sacrifice before our Minister a ram, which ensanguines the grass around us." (Kindle Locations 1006-1010).

When Loti reached Fez, he was given native clothing and assigned to live in a seemingly modest house with terraces on the roof from which he sees the women of the town. He looks although he knows it's not really allowed. The neighbor who lives in another part of the house is a rich man, and he hears and sometimes sees his neighbor’s family:

“The noise I hear so regularly every morning and every evening—it aroused my curiosity not a little— I find is the pounding of sugar and cinnamon bark to make sweets for his children, who are very numerous.” (Kindle Locations 1955-1956).

In his official capacity, Loti is invited to various court functions in Fez; he writes:

“The state dinners will not commence till next week ; so far there are only luncheons, but luncheons worthy of Pantagruel, such as were those of our ancestors in the Middle Ages. On tables, or on the ground, are set large tubs of European or Japanese porcelain, heaped with fruits, shelled nuts, almonds, ‘gazelles' hoofs,’ preserves, dates, saffroned sweetmeats.” (Kindle Locations 1762-1764).

In Morocco describes Loti's impressions in great detail. The colors of the landscape with its carpets of spring flowers, the distant mountains, the many people he met were fascinating to read about. I especially appreciated his descriptions of aromas and odors, and I'll leave you with this description of a smell: Camels, wrote Loti, “have an indefinable odour, sweet and musty, midway between a stench and a perfume; and they leave a trail of it behind them, even long after they have passed.” (Kindle Locations 2763-2764).

NOTE: I downloaded this book in Kindle format from the Internet Archive. Link:
https://archive.org/details/moroccom00lotirich