Holly Rice – Page 7 – The Inquisitive Eater

Poetry August 29, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘There Is Not One Line of Poetry That Can Do What They Do in Movies,’ by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

No one buys tickets to a poem, or picks the choice seat on row F,
No one takes a date to a poem, no one aims to rest
An arm on a plush chair to share with a choice arm;
There are no advertisements in a poem, except when it’s meant
To be ironic. There are no cheese shots in a poem
Where a drawn slice of pizza drips with the hot lava
Of a grocery mozzarella. There are no Coca-cola shots in a poem,
Or beads of cold dripping down the tin like thawed ice.
When the lights go down, desire as no desire in a poem begins:
There’s music. And what you’re meant to do is take it
For an emotional cue. There are no emotional cues in a poem;
When you love in a poem there isn’t a single note that swells.
In movies, the hero reaches for a cigarette by a gusty window
And you know he is sad. I brought the bottle up here
to make you feel cheap, he is told, it didn’t work, now I feel cheap.
He calls her Slim and she calls him Steve,
And you know there is something French between them.
And no one does reviews of a poem—oh wait. They do,
But it’s always too little, too late. They already know
There isn’t one line of poetry that can do what they do in movies.
Except, sometimes, you’ll take a girl to a show,
And there’s a lusty part you’ve memorized
So you can time, to a second, when to cover her eyes.
And when you do, the poem onscreen meets the poem in you.
And without that poem, there would be no movies.
When the credits roll, the movies do what they were
Meant to, and you are crying. You step outside,
And the slow eye of a dying sun looks a little bit like god.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of three poetry collections: The Proxy Eros (2008), Burning Houses (2013) and Tropicalia (2016). She obtained an MFA from the New School University in 2002, and has since taught in major universities in Manila. Lacuesta has also edited and co-edited various literary anthologies including Metro Serye, a fold-out zine featuring new fiction, poetry and graphic art; and the forthcoming The Achieve of, The Mastery, with Dr. Gemino Abad. Widely-awarded in the Philippines, she was the Filipino delegate to the 2012 Medellín Poetry Festival and the 2016 Macau Literary Festival. In 2015, she completed a writing residency for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

featured image via Last One On The Bus.

Columns August 26, 2016

August Market Report, by Stacey Hardwood-Lehman

Surely this has happened to you: One day you have a knotty research question. You begin with, say, Wikipedia. You click on a footnote link, one click leads to another and before you know it, it’s tomorrow! How you landed where you are is a mystery.

It was by just such a series of virtual leaps that I discovered the rich but relatively brief history of Jewish egg and poultry farmers of the early-to-mid twentieth century, most of which were located in New Jersey.

A few more clicks and I happened upon The Land Was Theirs: Jewish Farmers in the Garden State by Gertrude Wishnick Dubrovsky (1992, University of Alabama Press). The book captured my attention not only because of the subject matter but also because my mother’s maiden name is Dubrov, and her ancestors were indentured farmers to a wealthy estate owner in Russia. Perhaps my own interest in farmers and farming is bred in the bone.

I had always assumed that all Jewish immigrants to America went to cities, found work, and stayed there. If we eventually moved out to the suburbs, our work was still city-based. I didn’t imagine Jews settling in rural communities and making their living in agriculture. Yet there has been a continuous, if small, Jewish farming presence in the U.S. for more than 100 years.

Jewish immigrants began settling on farms in the late 19th century with the help of well-meaning Jewish institutions and individuals. While these early attempts to establish farms mostly failed, some survived and eventually prospered and went on to make important contributions to American agricultural life.
Gertrude Dubrovsky came from one such family. She grew up on a poultry farm in Farmingdale, NJ, the exit to which I pass when I drive south on the Garden State Parkway to visit my mother. The farmers, many of whom had arrived in this country to escape persecution, had relocated out of New York City where life was a struggle and they couldn’t find work.

During their prosperous years (and prosperous is relative when talking about a family farm), the farmers created thriving communities, with schools, synagogues, and community centers. They created social, cultural, religious, and economic organizations. Many of the farmers were highly educated with professional degrees in law, medicine, psychology, economics. They put their degrees aside and left New York City to become farmers.

While farming is hard work, these new farmers managed to cultivate their intellectual lives. Discussion groups were forums to exchange—and debate— ideas in a civil and mutually respectful ways. They invited scholars to lecture and lead some of these discussions. According to Dubrovsky, the guest speakers included Irving Howe, John Berryman, Langston Hughes, and Paul Fussell. Albert Einstein was among those invited. Though he declined, he expressed great enthusiasm for the “Jewish farmers! Real farmers!”

These days, whenever I visit my mother, I think about taking a detour to Farmingdale even though I know that none of the Jewish egg and poultry farms survived the post WWII changes in agriculture. Small farms were bought out by “agribusinesses,” large farms that had the financial capacity to buy lots of land and to modernize and mechanize many aspects of agricultural work. Poultry farming moved west. At the same time, the government withdrew price supports for egg farms. Did Anti-Semitism play a part in this decision, which hastened the end for the New Jersey farms? The case has been made. In any event, the farms are gone, and along with them a fascinating piece of our agricultural history.

Poetry August 15, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘As Blue Is To Distance,’ by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

The world is blue at its edges and in its depths.
This blue is the light that got lost.
– Rebecca Solnit

… As blue is to distance.
– Rebecca Solnit

Of all the things to lose to air: blue.
Entrapment of clouds before it finds

Its way to you. Silhouette of mountains far:
Blue. And should I cross the looming

Far: the farther blue. No cure for the hard,
Hurt stain. No remedy for the ghost.

Even as I know to keep good house:
Know each till for its measured cure:

Salt for wine. Wince of lemon on the linen.
White fluoride on a dirty towel

Where a knife cuts my hand.
They come off easy; I loved you hard.

As obsidian in the slippery dark. As the long
view, and as the mountain. As blue.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of three poetry collections: The Proxy Eros (2008), Burning Houses (2013) and Tropicalia (2016). She obtained an MFA from the New School University in 2002, and has since taught in major universities in Manila. Lacuesta has also edited and co-edited various literary anthologies including Metro Serye, a fold-out zine featuring new fiction, poetry and graphic art; and the forthcoming The Achieve of, The Mastery, with Dr. Gemino Abad. Widely-awarded in the Philippines, she was the Filipino delegate to the 2012 Medellín Poetry Festival and the 2016 Macau Literary Festival. In 2015, she completed a writing residency for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

featured image via Tim Robison on Flickr.

Poetry August 3, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘Crust of Bread, And Such–,’ by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

Neither the risen dough, or the plush
Square with its savory load, drip
Of marmalade or butter—I want the morsel,
The plate peppered with crumbs, the crust
Of bread. I want the edges, jagged where the knife
Kneads its urgent imprecisions, the scrawny
Bit on precious China. I want a small heart,
The color of old quartz and burnt rust.
Let stars do their work on an opposite sky,
Constellate the impossible shape
Of a far boy. Which is to say, I’m through
With want, as a cleaver to his crust.
I’m done the way rain is done
With its tinny shudder crossing glass;
The way the heart is done doing time
In a hard place— a clear shimmer of sky
Begging the same question, What,
What do you want?

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of three poetry collections: The Proxy Eros (2008), Burning Houses (2013) and Tropicalia (2016). She obtained an MFA from the New School University in 2002, and has since taught in major universities in Manila. Lacuesta has also edited and co-edited various literary anthologies including Metro Serye, a fold-out zine featuring new fiction, poetry and graphic art; and the forthcoming The Achieve of, The Mastery, with Dr. Gemino Abad. Widely-awarded in the Philippines, she was the Filipino delegate to the 2012 Medellín Poetry Festival and the 2016 Macau Literary Festival. In 2015, she completed a writing residency for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

featured image via Pastry Affair.

Non-Fiction August 1, 2016

‘The Tummy Tickler and Other Futurist Snacks’ by Elaine Equi

Although I’m a voracious consumer of food writing – endlessly pouring over the musings and advice of famous critics, chefs, gourmands, and diet-gurus – I must confess, I rarely cook. Why then, I often wonder, do I derive so much pleasure from looking at recipes I have no intention of trying, and of reading them almost as if they were poems? Simple list poems, but poems nevertheless. All I can tell you is that they satisfy the certain hunger I have to imagine food and to play with this imaginary food. This fantasy space where food and art, cooking and poetry, can intersect is admirably explored by the Italian art theorist and provocateur, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in La Cucina Futurista — The Futurist Cookbook first published in 1932. It is a deliciously absurd program for revolutionizing and aestheticizing the way we eat.

As one of the founding members of Futurism, an early 20th century art and social movement, Marinetti is best known for his manifestoes and performances praising the virtues of speed, embracing technology, and celebrating war. In The Futurist Cookbook, he brings the full force of his radical and irreverent sensibility not just to the streets, but to the sacred (especially for Italians) ancestral table and kitchen.

As usual, he sets out immediately to shock as many as possible. One diatribe calls for the banning of pasta on the grounds that “it makes people heavy, brutish – deludes them into thinking it is nutritious, makes them skeptical, slow, pessimistic.” In another lecture, he claims: “Pastaciutta … ties today’s Italians with its tangled threads to Penelope’s slow loom and to somnolent old sailing ships in search of wind.” Being of Italian descent myself, I can easily imagine how provocative his words — his whole stance — must have been. Italy is a country that likes to wear its antiquity on its sleeve. Its capital, Rome, is after all nicknamed the Eternal City. With his constant desire to move things forward and away from the past, Marinetti must have seemed quite the contrarian. And to suggest abolishing pasta? Well, I’m not surprised he’s also the author of an essay titled, “The Pleasure of Being Booed.” Of course, Marinetti lost the war on pasta. In our time, aside from a brief moment led by the carb-phobic Dr. Atkins, pasta seems more globally popular than ever.

In another section entitled “The Great Futurist Banquets,” Marinetti tackles the experience of eating out. He describes how he, along with two artist and architect friends, transformed a restaurant in Turin into The Holy Palate, the first ever futurist dining spot. It featured walls covered floor to ceiling with aluminum foil (long before Andy Warhol’s factory) and provided no knives or forks to interfere with customers enjoying the tactile sensation of their food.

There’s always an element of theater in the restaurant business, and Marinetti and his cohorts only amplified it. In fact, as ridiculous as some of the ideas sound, many turned out to be oddly prescient of contemporary trends. The insistence on small portions, exotic ingredients, startling juxtapositions of unlikely flavors, and an emphasis on artistic presentation are all par for the course at many chic eateries. I read recently about a theme restaurant where diners eat in pitch-black total darkness to heighten the taste of their food. Marinetti would have loved it.

The final section of The Futurist Cookbook is fittingly devoted to formulas, a.k.a. recipes, for food and cocktails contributed by various luminaries of the movement. It is worth reading for the hilarious and poetic names alone – dishes like “Sculpted Meat,” Elasticake,” and “Immortal Trout,” to list but a few. I have never tried to prepare any of these, but some sound like they would be perfectly edible, while others seem better left to the imagination. I will let three of them speak for themselves.

The Tummy Tickler

(formula by the Futurist Aeropainter Ciuffo)

A slice of pineapple on which sardines are laid out in rays. The center of the pineapple slice is covered with a layer of tuna on which sits half a nut.

The Excited Pig

(formula by the Futurist Aeropainter Fillia)

A whole salami, skinned, is served upright on a dish containing some very hot black coffee mixed with a good deal of eau de Cologne.

Simultaneous Ice-Cream

(formula by the Futurist word-in-liberty poet, Giuseppe Steiner)

Dairy cream and little squares of raw onion frozen together.

*

I have enjoyed this book for many years, and its sublime goofiness never fails to fill me with wonder. I keep it among my favorite poetry books, right next to the cubist apples, eggs, and milk of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons.

Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of Marinetti’s work. His hyper-masculine posturing, bombastic style, and fascist politics are a turn-off. But credit where credit is due, the man has written a helluva good cookbook!

Elaine Equi is the author of many collections of poetry including, Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and on the short list for The Griffin Poetry Prize; Click and Clone; and most recently, Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and several editions of The Best American Poetry. In addition to The New School, she teaches at New York University.

feature image by Feasting Never Stops.

Columns July 25, 2016

July Market Report, by Stacey Harwood-Lehman

My husband’s recent diagnosis of celiac disease came as a complete shock to both of us. He had been experiencing many months of debilitating symptoms that had been attributed variously to chemotherapy, post-surgery recovery, and an intractable infection. Doctors told us that his symptoms would wax and wane and that he might just have to live with them.

Finally, and almost as an afterthought, his oncologist Dr. Dean Bajorin ordered the simple blood test for celiac (“highly unlikely, but we may as well be sure.”). Within a week we had a preliminary diagnosis, within two, it was confirmed by a biopsy.

The treatment: eliminate all gluten from his diet. Forever.

"Gluten-free" by Deanna Dorangrichia — “Gluten-free” by Deanna Dorangrichia

At first, I was reeling. Ever since his surgery in 2015, I had been feeding him precisely the wrong things to feed a celiac sufferer: lots of pasta, bread (especially bagels), simple stir-fries doused with soy sauce, the occasional breaded and sautéed veal cutlet as a treat. I had assumed that these meals would be easy for him to digest when, in fact, they were destroying his insides.

I also assumed that going gluten-free would present a major sacrifice. Turned out that I was wrong. Yes, restaurants are a challenge: There’s a big difference between ordering a gluten-free entrée and one that is “celiac-safe.” The danger of cross-contamination is real in a restaurant that doesn’t have a dedicated space for preparing its gluten-free offerings. My friend Sloane Miller, psychotherapist and specialist in food allergy and celiac management, advises those on restrictive diets to plan ahead and speak with a chef during a restaurant’s slow period. It’s quite likely that you will be happily accommodated in many establishments. During our recent stay in Ithaca, NY, we visited the Heights Restaurant in late afternoon when the restaurant was closed but while the chef was prepping for dinner. We told him of my husband’s plan to meet a colleague for lunch. “Don’t worry,” said the chef, “you’ll have an enjoyable meal” and my husband did. The staff at the fashionable Nix, on University place, was so well versed in the needs of a celiac customer that we knew we could relax and enjoy. Sloane was right, you do have to be careful, but your dining-out life needn’t be over with a diagnosis of a food allergy or celiac.

Cooking at home was less of a challenge. In fact, other than purging our kitchen of all products with gluten, there was very little we had to change. For most of my adult life I’ve avoided processed food and this is where gluten is likely to hide. But there’s no gluten in fresh vegetables and fruits, fish and meat and poultry, potatoes, rice and other grains, like quinoa, that I’ve been preparing for decades. Giving up beer was easy and our occasional martini or Manhattan or Champagne cocktail is just fine, thank you.

Grocery stores now have devoted prime real estate to gluten-free items, proof, as my husband says, that he’s “on the most fashionable diet.” Alas, many of them are disappointing and filled with ingredients with unpronounceable names and too much sugar. A gluten-free bagel tastes more like cotton batting than the real thing. “Just because they’re gluten free,” says Sloane, “doesn’t mean they’re healthy.”

I seek out the small local producer: 1 2 3 Gluten-Free in Ithaca, NY, sells delicious baked goods (along with heritage fruits and vegetables) at a local farmers market. The ceramicist and baker extraordinaire Deanna Dorangrichia surprised me with a delivery of outstanding and healthy snacks along with their recipes, so I can make them myself.

Going gluten-free certainly isn’t for everyone and I’ve read that doing so can even be harmful. Still, for my husband it’s an absolute necessity. The silver lining is that the treatment doesn’t involve nasty medications with side-effects that are treated with even more medications, and on and on.

We simply do what we’ve done for a long time: eat fresh, simply prepared meals made with locally raised and grown ingredients. Delicious.

Poetry July 21, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘Flavor of the Month,’ by Elaine Equi

I’m having a fling –

a summer romance
with rhubarb.

That day in June
when I first glimpsed it
reclining on a bed of kale,

my mouth watered,
my taste buds
did a double take.

How is it possible
to have gone all these years
without its sweet tartness
and tangy, peculiar wit?

A bit of an eccentric –

it is, to my knowledge,
the only fruit or vegetable
capable of irony.

If rhubarb were a movie,
it would star someone like a young
Katherine Hepburn, Maggie Smith,
or an auburn-haired Claudette Colbert.

One day, I’ll write that screenplay.

But for now, all I want to do
is order another rhubarb soda

while I wait for a slice
of strawberry rhubarb pie.

Elaine Equi is the author of many collections of poetry including, Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and on the short list for The Griffin Poetry Prize; Click and Clone; and most recently, Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and several editions of The Best American Poetry. In addition to The New School, she teaches at New York University.

feature image by Sugarcrafter on Flickr.

Poetry July 13, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘How To Eat A Radish,’ by Elaine Equi

Let the cold
red planet

slowly orbit
the olive oil lake

in the center
of the plate

ringed
with sea salt.

Elaine Equi is the author of many collections of poetry including, Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and on the short list for The Griffin Poetry Prize; Click and Clone; and most recently, Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and several editions of The Best American Poetry. In addition to The New School, she teaches at New York University.

feature image by Heather Christo.

Poetry July 6, 2016

TIE Poet of the Month: ‘Food Narratives,’ by Elaine Equi

for Stacey Harwood

We are not used to
thinking food has a past.

Of its picaresque travels –

its days of being manhandled,

its nights spent snuggling
across borders in a burlap sack –

we prefer not to know.

All we ask
when we are hungry
is that it appear,

miraculous as a breast
descending upon us
from a floral sky.

How it came to be there,

hovering like a word
above our lips,

is none of our concern.

Elaine Equi is the author of many collections of poetry including, Voice-Over, which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and on the short list for The Griffin Poetry Prize; Click and Clone; and most recently, Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and several editions of The Best American Poetry. In addition to The New School, she teaches at New York University.

feature image by World Travel Market London.

Non-Fiction June 30, 2016

‘Ritual and Improvisation’ by Mộng-Lan

What is more important than food, other than shelter? On the whole grand scheme of things, sex isn’t even important. Traveling, now at the Pacific Ocean, in Montara in Northern California, I’m considering what I want to eat tonight. At the ocean in the San Francisco Bay Area was where I first found clarity all those years ago, clarity of mind and body. So, today, I go to the ocean, walk on the sand, listen to the tides, for clarity.

Should I invite a friend and go to a restaurant down the street, or cook a hearty meal that will heal me and finish the writing? Heal my body and soul. Whatever I eat should correct my nutritional deficiencies, if any; alleviate pains, make me, for the moment, as happy as possible. All this, food should do, nourish the body and soul. I buy mushrooms, two types, maitake and crimini, thinking of making a mushroom soup with rice, onions and garlic. One of those rice soups that mother makes that would heal anything. If shitake were available, I would’ve bought it, shitake being of the most potent mushrooms with a stellar reputation for healing and boosting the immune system.

Before eating or making a meal, I try to think, how do I want to heal myself? If I’m at a restaurant and have little control, what foods will do the least amount of damage in terms of free radicals? If you are your own chef, it’s always easier. You know your body, know what you can and cannot eat. You spend your life learning about the healing foods, and staying away from the harmful ones.

I’ve cooked all my life, from about the age of ten or younger, first helping my mother cook. Cooking for me is like improvisation. Like making music, composing, like jazz. Putting ingredients together to make something healthy and whole, and medicinally healing. Like painting—you know what you want, you have a vision, and you go for the flavors.

Being transplanted first as a refugee from the war, and then moving so many times in my lifetime, from one continent to the next, I’ve had to learn by trial and error all the pitfalls, getting sick or staying healthy, and I’ve had to do lots of research and reading about what I can or cannot eat. For instance, Asians typically don’t have the enzymes to digest, for example, alcohol or glutinous foods, or we face the consequences.

Living in Buenos Aires, I started to invent my own recipes for bread, as I couldn’t find what I wanted in the grocery stores. For instance, there, I make my own banana bread: using a whole banana, with ground brown rice flour, ground whole wheat, ground sunflower seeds, ground flax seeds, fennel seeds, sesame seeds, with sunflower oil, a bit of water, a bit of baking soda, a bit of lemon juice. Mix, and let it all rise on an oiled skillet . . . I also make other types of breads that are a mix of ground brown rice flour and whole wheat . . . such as onion bread, garlic bread, leek garlic bread, etc. The list is endless.

Sometimes, living in other faraway lands, I dream of the wonderful cuisine I ate while living and traveling in Asia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, etc., and try to recreate from memory the dishes, the flavors, the succulent tastes that will always exist in my mind’s eye, my tongue’s memory.

Internationally known multi-artist, poet, writer, painter, photographer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer, dancer and teacher of the Argentine tango, Mộng-Lan left her native Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards for Poetry, she is the author of eight books and chapbooks, the most recent of which is One Thousand Minds Brimming. Other books include Song of the Cicadas; Why is the Edge Always Windy?, Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art; Tango, Tangueando: Poemas & Dibujos (the bilingual Spanish-English edition); Love Poem to Tofu & Other Poems (poetry & calligraphic art, chapbook); Love Poem to Ginger & Other Poems: poetry & paintings (chapbook); and Force of the Heart: Tango, Art. Mong-Lan’s poetry has been nationally and internationally anthologized to include being in Best American Poetry; The Pushcart Book of Poetry: Best Poems from 30 Years of the Pushcart Prize; Asian American Poetry: the Next Generation; Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (Norton); and has appeared in leading American literary journals. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholar in Vietnam, she received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. Her most recent poetry & jazz piano album, Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz Piano was just released. Visit: http://www.monglan.com.

featured image via Scary Mommy.