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Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| Well, the random numbers have hit on another article about Europe, but this time, a different country and a different ethnic group. From the very American Smithsonian: Jewish Food Is Making a Comeback in Poland  Bagels, knishes, bialys and more are popping up in bakeries as the country reckons with historical trauma I have, of course, written about bagels before, but that was in the context of New York City. Jewish food, and especially Ashkenazic Jewish food, is slowly but steadily returning to the country, where many of the dishes actually originated. The comeback is driven by a growing interest from Polish people in finally facing their country’s past. I don't know how widespread this knowledge is, so I'll just mention that there were two main branches of Judaism in Europe: Ashkenazic in the east, and Sephardic in the west. The Ashkenazi were the ones who spoke Yiddish and popularized bagels, bringing them to the US through immigration to NYC. This is certainly the case with the bagel, with bakeries all over Poland serving them. But other foods are reappearing as well, such as the knish, or knysz in Polish—a bun filled with kasha, potatoes or cheese. Dammit, now I'm getting hungry. Jewish communities in Poland originated foods like the bagel, knish and bialy. When they fled from pogroms during the late 19th century, they brought their recipes with them, says Maria Zalewska, executive director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation and co-editor of the book Honey Cake & Latkes, a compilation of recipes written down by survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Okay, that's a little dark. Between 1881 and 1914, more than two million Jews immigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States. A large majority, about 1.6 million, came from the Russian Empire (which included parts of Poland at the time). Their exodus was driven by social, economic and technological change combined with antisemitic persecution in their countries of origins. Pretty sure my great-grandparents were part of this migration, but I'm still not entirely clear on what year they immigrated, and probably never will be. I do remember my grandmother spoke Polish and Yiddish, though her English was excellent. “You can follow the history of the Jewish community through food and understand why these foods have disappeared [in Poland] but survived in New York,” says Magdalena Maślak, culinary program curator at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Another place a bunch of Ashkenazi landed in the Americas was Montreal, not mentioned in the article. I say this because Montreal is also known for having excellent bagels. Dill pickles have long been considered a Jewish food in America, because Jewish immigrants brought pickles to this country and popularized them at Jewish delis. “But they’re not necessarily Jewish, and that tells you something. That’s the story of food,” says Liz Alpern, a chef and co-founder of the Gefilteria, a New York-based venture that offers Ashkenazic food with a modern twist. And I'm going to clarify something here, because the article doesn't and I feel it's important: one of the most popular varieties of dill pickles is called the kosher pickle, or kosher dill. There's nothing inherently unkosher about pickles, made up as they are of cucumbers in brine with various herbs and spices including dill and garlic. The reason Kosher is a pickle style is because they use the coarse-grain kosher salt for the brine. Kosher salt itself is misnamed; it's the kind that was used to make meat certifiably kosher. I just typed all that from memory, and my memory might be faulty, so, as usual, don't just take my word for it. With time, foods such as the pastrami sandwich or the bagel became staples of an evolving Jewish American food culture, different from those of their parents and grandparents, that gave rise to new traditions. We have a very good (though not up to some NYC standards) bagel place here where I live, and one of their offerings is a pastrami bagel. It is very good. It is even better with Swiss cheese on top, which makes it very much not kosher. Pastrami itself is interesting and, if I had more time today, I'd delve into its history. Likewise, it was Hersz Lender, a Jewish baker from Lublin, Poland, who was credited with bringing the bagel to New York—and turning it into the morning staple known today. I'm sure you recognize the name; a very common frozen bagel still bears his name. But the current version of them bears little resemblance to the Platonic ideal of bagel; they're just cheap and mass-producible and have the toroidal shape. Last I heard, it's currently produced by the same company that does Thomas' English Muffins. Jewish American foods mixed with other cuisines and influences, and the bagel is no exception. “The lox itself is Scandinavian. The cream cheese is from New York. The capers on it are Italian. But it’s putting it all together that made it Jewish,” says Jeffrey Yoskowitz, a New York City-based food writer and co-founder of the Gefilteria. And yes, the cream cheese is a New York thing. Never mind that the most widespread (pun absolutely intended) brand in the US says "Philadelphia." It's got nothing to do with Philly, any more than Land O' Lakes butter is from some idyllic lake-strewn countryside that used to have Native Americans on it. So anyway, the rest of the article is kind of depressing, as anything involving Eastern Europe and Jews tends to be. But the important thing is: bagels have come full circle. And that pun was also absolutely intended. |
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Anyone who has dealt with the courts wonders, "What crazy person designed this?" Unfortunately, my daughter is currently enmeshed in the system and some of the hoops she has to jump through just don't make any sense at all.
