And the lima beans laugh and laugh… – Atlas Obscura
The very first dinner party menu in what eventually became the Second Sunday Supper Circle
I grew up, like most of us thirty-somethings, believing that soup came in little red-and-white cans. Then it started coming in little red-and-white foil envelopes in little red-and-white boxes. We were red-and-white with wonder. Both versions said to mix with water, heat, and serve. Wow! Food even a college freshman could cook.
By the time I was 18 or so, I must have tried chicken with or without vegetables, rice, noodles, or matzo balls, beef with vegetables or barley, split pea with ham, and French onion with cheese and croutons. I hated cream of tomato.
I’m not 18 anymore (sorry, guys) and I’ve tried soup that comes out of a real pot. I realize it’s not as simple as opening a can or box, but the little bit of inconvenience is worth it. It’s not hard. Put solid things in liquid things. Cook or not. Soup.
Okay, so there are a few things that might not qualify. You won’t find me simmering pebbles (the stone kind, not the fruity) and chocolate chips in basil vinegar. Really. I’m not even sure we could get anyone to agree that it’s soup, even if it fits the technical definition. I’m also not putting it on the lunch menu. Trust me.
Soup fills the world of literature, from the Mock Turtle’s tribute in verse to “Beautiful Soup” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Robert Browning’s Hamelin rats lapping it up left and right. Whether it is the creation of a culinary genius like Fritz Brenner in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, or the production of the entire village in Marcia Brown’s Stone Soup, soup is a mainstay of the dining table.
To the best of my knowledge, every human culture on this planet and two others makes soup. There are simple ones, like Italian Stracciatella, with its flakes of egg and cheese sprinkled through chicken broth, or Kaeng Tom Yam Kung, from Thailand, with beautiful shrimp and lemongrass simmered in hot spices. There are thick soups – New England Clam Chowder, Vermont Cheddar Cheese, English Mulligatawny, and Algerian Cherbah. Even life itself started in a primordial soup.
In the professional world, a chef’s soups are considered a mark of his or her abilities. The French chef must have perfectly seasoned broths, crystal-clear consommés, and rich, unctuous flavors. The Japanese kokku is noted for stunning presentations of sea life in clear dashi, with simple, clean flavors. And Aunt Edna is noted for bowls of fresh chicken broth, each with a matzo ball you could knock down tenpins with.
There is an old Spanish proverb, “Of soup and love, the first is best.” (Well, actually, it’s “De sopa y amor, el primero es mejor.”) Whomever first said it was obviously experienced in such matters. It is spring, and it’s clear to me that if spring is a time for love, it is, even more, a time for soup.
Gazpacho Soup
Gazpacho is the perfect spring or summer soup, served cold, with crisp, clean vegetable flavors. Not only that, but it’s easy to make. This version serves six.
3 ripe tomatoes
1 cucumber
1 yellow onion
1 green pepper
1 carrot
2-3 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons really, really good olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
¼ cup good sherry
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ cup fresh herbs, like mint, marjoram, or parsley
1 cup ice water
Finely chop the tomatoes, carrot, garlic and herbs. Peel and seed the cucumber. Dice the cucumber, onion and pepper. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl, and keep cold until ready to serve. Adjust seasoning to taste; add additional ice water if needed to thin the soup.
Leek Soup
Okay, you have to cook this one, but it’s worth it.
2 large leeks, coarsely chopped
3 cups chicken stock
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
¼ teaspoon mace (the spice, not the spray…)
4 teaspoons butter
thick sliced whole-wheat bread
brick cheese, grated
parmesan cheese, grated
Sauté leeks in butter until limp but not browned. Add milk, stock, and seasonings. Simmer 30 minutes. Put slices of bread in individual oven-proof soup crocks. Fill with soup, top with grated cheeses. Broil until brown and bubbly. Serves four.
Genre is a gay “lifestyle” and travel magazine. It was launched in 1992 by three entrepreneurs, two of whom shortly thereafter left to found QSF magazine. I went with them…
“listen, there’s a hell of a good universe next door; lets go.” – e.e. cummings
I was going to claim that I now completely understand the theories of general and special relativity, quantum mechanics and superstrings and am now ready to formulate The Theory of Everything. It isn’t, however, quite true. On the other hand, after reading and thoroughly enjoying Michio Kaku’s book Hyperspace, I can at least claim to have a better understanding than what my college physics professors left me with. (To be fair, nobody was really talking about superstrings then, so I can’t really blame them for that part.)
The book is subtitled “A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension.”With all the news stories about black holes, wormholes, and holes in the fabric of space-time, I thought it was about time to find out just what the (w)hole hype was about. Kaku, who is a professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of City University of New York, manages to take this intriguing and complex set of subjects and somehow make it all seem quite reasonable, really.
The book is clearly written for lay folk. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist, figuratively or literally, in order to follow him through fields of wavering quarks. Kaku has a warped sense of humor that he brings not only to his descriptions and demonstrations, but also swings around point-blank on the history, egos, secretiveness and pomposity that surrounds much of the work of theoretical physics.
Using a medium that is, for all practical purposes, two-dimensional, a sheet of paper and ink, he unfolds first one and then another dimension of space-time and lays it out for our inspection. By the time I finished the first section, “Entering the Fifth Dimension,” I not only felt I had a clear grasp, for the first time in my life, on the theories of relativity, but I was also using terms like “blue-shift,” “hyperdougnut” and “scalar particle”in polite conversation.
The one negative I found in the book was in the second section, “Unification in Ten Dimensions,”where Kaku slipped a bit on the layperson approach. For some of the quantum brambles that he wanders through, he seems to assume that the reader has a basic working knowledge of leptons, mu-neutrinos and just exactly what SU(N) symmetry is. I found myself a bit bogged down in flipping back and forth to short explanations in the endnotes (an anathema to any reader – footnotes are so much easier to refer to), and having to reread passages. If one were psychologically inclined, one might assume that Kaku doesn’t really like a lot of quantum theory….
Luckily, he jumps back in with both feet, a smile and a “how-de-do” when he gets to superstrings, black holes and the possibility of other universes in “Wormholes: Gateway to Another Universe?” Whether he’s talking time travel, the existence of God, wrinkles in space, or wave functions of creation, he’s back on solid ground, and so is the reader – which, given the subject matter, is a pretty impressive feat.
In the final section of the book, “Masters of Hyperspace,” Kaku looks at what our future might be. He takes us through Type 0 through Type II civilizations, and pegs us squarely in mid-0 position. He also takes the opportunity to philosophize and climb onto a well-reasoned soapbox about where we’re going to get if we stay on our current heading.
It’s hard to say that the book ends on a positive note, especially given that basically, he leaves us drifting within the boundaries of the universe, with only minimal theoretical hope for some sort of existence as it either expands and cools to absolute zero or collapses as one big multi-billion year flash-in-the-pan. Kaku leaves us a faint glimmer at the end of the hyperspace tunnel, that maybe, perhaps, we might just find our escape into another dimension. Rod Serling would like this guy.
Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku, published by Oxford University Press, 1994, $25.00, ISBN# 0-19-508514-0.
Well, my first issue is behind me, or so I thought. Imagine my surprise at the controversy stirred up by our page 6 article by Jim Melloan. I cant say that I have a representative sampling of the membership’s response, but I did hear from four of you on your views. Linda DeLaurentis, our president, who givers her response in her President’s Message following, found the article intriguing, though felt that Jim could have delved a bit deeper into what SFS has already done in the business world. Two members who wish to remain anonymous congratulated Jim for proposing something they thing would make an interesting project for the organization – now whenever the two of you wish to stop remaining anonymous, perhaps you’d like to, dare I say it, volunteer, to work on the idea? The most extensive response came from Greg Zsidisin, who felt that Jim needs to do some far broader research into the area of private enterprise and space exploration, as well as SFS’s involvement in the area, in order to understand just what it would take to really do what he proposes. He further comments:
“NSS and SFS are grassroots advocacy groups, in which members from all walks of life promote their cause, just like PETA or Sierra Club or NRA members do. It’s a niche we’ve choen, and something we’ve done damn well with – the Blueprint for Space seminar and our nationally covered pro-space rallies are just a few of our more recent successes….
Melloan urges us to abandon America’s $30 billion public space effort for such blazing new space ventures as LunaCorp – which, for all its novelty, is hardly guaranteed the $120 million it needs to set a rover down on the moon for the entertainment industry….
I’m sorry, but a fully private space enterprise is still a ways off. One SFS member who attended a recent space financing conference said the audience’s eyes glazed over during the American Rocket Company’s pitch on hybrid rockets. Next to Delta Clippers and SSTOs, hybrid rocketry is tremendously conservative stuff. The funding Amroc needs to finish its modest research work is in the tens of millions of dollars – hundreds of times less investment than even the lowest Clipper estimates. Yet they’ve been at it for years now – and it’s reusable Clipperships, not expendable hybrids, that everyone now looks to for opening the frontier.
For all the current turmoil, the space technology that will get you and me into space on vacation is far more likely to come out of the government than private industry. That fact alone leaves a big role for grassroots activists and groups like SFS and NSS.”
Greg himself takes another look at LunaCorp and International Space Enterprises ventures in this issue of SFN, along with our cover piece on ISDC ’94, and his usual valued contributions of space news. Linda DeLaurentis discusses the upcoming board elections and Carolyn Josephs catches up on the doings of the Education Committee. Sam Liebowitz proposes an interesting project for a couple of, here we go again, volunteers. Personally, I felt compelled to pen a review of Michio Kaku’s new book, Hyperspace.
Again, your contributions and input are not only welcome, but requested. I’d like to see the author base of this newsletter expand rapidly, not only for the variation in talent, but also to make sure we include a wide range of interests for all members.
Hopefully, as you read this, spring will have finally arrived. With this issue we bid farewell to the editing talents of John Sirabella, who has moved on to other venues – like keeping his business on track. From what I’ve seen, John did a great job of putting this newsletter together, and I’m glad to have a firm foundation to build upon. I’d like to take a moment and introduce myself as your new editor. Somehow, a résumé doesn’t seem appropriate at this juncture, and everyone seemed so relieved that someone would take on the task of putting Space Frontier News together, that nobody asked for one. Regardless, so that you will at least be under the illusion that its regular production is in good hands, I hasten to assure you that I have a modicum of experience and knowledge in the arena.
My involvement with the “space community” began many moons ago in the midwestern burg of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I conveniently grew up mere blocks from ERIM, Bendix (the kids in my neighborhood saw the lunar rover on test track long before anyone saw it on the moon…) and the University of Michigan’s Aerospace Engineering Building. I flew model rockets with my friends, wrote to astronauts, heck, I’ve still got a pennant on my wall from the day White & McDivitt dropped into town to visit their old campus. I helped found RP Industries, a little company that provided computers for use in those little teeny Shuttle payload spaces that universities leased for experiments (the company continues to flourish to date, though I’m no longer involved).
I headed off to do things in the world of writing and editing, with numerous sidetracks along the way. Over time I’ve managed to be everything from reporter to editor at a high school paper, an underground paper, and society newsletters; I’ve freelanced newspaper and magazine assignments (mostly in the food & wine category, a passion of mine – did I mention being a trained chef and sommelier?); and even tried my hand at technical writing. Somewhere along the line I managed to have one short, reasonably humorous ghost story published.
When Linda mentioned that she was looking for a new editor for SFN, I thought, why not? So, here I am, here you are, and I’m looking forward to working with all of you. It may sound cliché, but I know that there’s some hidden and/or budding talent out there just dying to see the light of day. Together I think we can make this one of the best regional newsletters in the National Space Society!
Valentine’s Day 1969, I was 11. The Vatican dropped Lupercalia from the festival calendar. We were writing cards. I carefully lettered across its face, “Dear Irene… Would you be my valentine?” Irene wasn’t “my type,” but Mouseketeer Cubby was beyond my reach. A casual affair with my best friend Mike was still four years away and he was carefully lettering a card to his future wife.
Perusing several conflicting encyclopedias, I determined that Valentine’s Day as we know it has nothing to do with either of the St. Valentines. Unless it does. It is fairly certain that the St. Valentines did not know each other, unless of course, they were the same person, which they might have been. They certainly didn’t know Pope Valentine, the three Emperors Valentinus, the duke or duchess of Valentinois, or Rudolph Valentino, none of whom showed up in Rome until quite sometime after the Valentines were dearly departed. It is, however, entirely possible that Valentine’s Day has something to do with Lupercalia.
You see, after the martyrdom of the Valentines in the 3rd Century, like other saints, they got their own feast day. On February 14th. On the following day, February 15th, was Lupercalia. In this highly amusing festival in honor of Faunus, the Roman god of flocks and fertility and the inventor of the oboe, young men sacrificed a couple of goats and a dog, and then chased young women around, hitting them with goatskin whips. This was intended to make childbirth less unpleasant for the women. By comparison, no doubt.
In a dazzling display of logic and complete disregard for calendars, feast days and the sanctity of wife beating, folks in the mid-14th century turned Valentine’s Day into a celebration of love and courtship. Makes perfect sense. This brings us to my life, Valentine’s Day 1969, and goatskin whips. Which, using virtually the same logical pathways, leads me to chocolate.
I’m not talking about the wimpy, waxy, washed-out chocolate of your average candy bar from the corner grocery. How about something silky, smooth and sexy that is completely addictive and an aphrodisiac to boot?
From Theobroma Cacao, the cocoa plant, to that rich, gooey, melted mess in front of you – how does it get there? Pods. Each pod is filled with seeds. The seeds are removed and left on banana leaves to ferment in the sun. Then the seeds are roasted and hulled.
The seeds are crushed, turning into a paste called chocolate liquor. This is pressed to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids. The cocoa butter is either blended right back into the solids to make unsweetened chocolate or sent to Coppertone. (So, drizzling chocolate on your body is not as kinky as you thought.) Sugar, in varying amounts, is added to make dark extra bitter, bitter, and semi-sweet chocolates. For milk chocolate, milk solids are added. You don’t even want to know from white chocolate…
The more cocoa butter, the richer the chocolate. Any good brand should say what percentage it contains. Trust me, you want at least 50%, no matter what your diet plan. Valrhona and Calebaut are considered just about the best makes out there. They’re worth the extra bucks.
More than you ever wanted to know about chocolate? Okay, I’ll make it up to you. How about a treat for someone special? Or perhaps they’d like a goatskin whip?
COGNAC TRUFFLES
8 ounces of heavy cream
1 pound bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
1 ounce butter, room temperature
1 ounce cognac
cocoa powder
Chop the chocolate finely on a dry cutting board and put in the mixing bowl of an electric mixer. Bring the cream to a boil and pour over the chocolate. Let it stand for two minutes and stir until smooth. Beat in the softened butter and let the mixture cool. On medium speed, beat in the cognac. If you have a pastry bag, pipe out balls of the mixture about ¾” in diameter on wax paper. If you don’t have a pastry bag, use a tablespoon. Place in the refrigerator to set. When firm, roll the balls lightly between your hands to smooth and soften the surface and then roll in cocoa powder.
Will you be my valentine?
Genre is a gay “lifestyle” and travel magazine. It was launched in 1992 by three entrepreneurs, two of whom shortly thereafter left to found QSF magazine. I went with them…
It’s three o’clock (where do we get the expression “o’clock” from, anyway?) in the morning, and we have to have pierogi. Not just any pierogi, but a fresh, hot fried dumpling with tender onions and butter on the side. A nutritional nightmare, without a doubt, but at three o’clock in the morning, who cares? Besides, we just want one apiece… We bundle ourselves in defiance of the elements and trudge our way up Second Avenue to Veselka.
We enter the brightly lit (perhaps too brightly lit…) coffee shop atmosphere and quickly wend our way past the lunch counter, past the kitchen where Polish and Ukranian specialties are sizzling and bubbling away, past the wait-station, and plunge into the back room. At times in the past, this haven of quiet was kept dimly lit, now it glows with the rainbow of colors from the neon “24-hours” sign on the window. We settle into our favorite corner and prepare to argue over the selection of meat, cheese, potato and cabbage-stuffed delicacies that are the object of our quest. Shortly, finding ourselves deadlocked, we agree to order a plate of each.
We barely glance at the menu, but of course, the potato pancakes catch our eyes. Mentally, we halve our order of pierogies and throw in some plump, crisp, golden brown latkes. A moment later, still not really looking, we remember how we all enjoy the soups. Besides, it’s cold outside – a bowl of vegetable, split pea, or mushroom barley wouldn’t hurt any of us. Our waitress has yet to arrive, so we decide to peruse the rest of the well-memorized menu. Just in case, you understand.
One of our number remembers fondly a recent devouring of the combination platter, laden with kielbasa, stuffed cabbage, a bit of this, a bit of that. Our vegetarian comrade counters with the vegetarian combination, a platter of much the same, though, somehow, meatless. Bigos, a rich hunter’s stew, is a special of the day and suddenly becomes tempting. My personal favorites, the stuffed cabbages, both meatless and meatful(?) are ordered on a mixed plate, much to our waitperson’s consternation. These are, you understand, just side dishes to our pierogi.
She returns soon, laden with plates bearing enough food to feed the populus of both Poland and the Ukraine for a week. Piling them atop our table, she announces she will return with our main courses shortly… We dig in, remembering, of course, to save room for dessert. As always, Veselka provides homestyle cooking at reasonable rates.
Midway through this orgy of degustation, we know that dessert is not a possibility. This is a shame, since we could have sampled a scrumptious carrot cake, chocolate pie, fruit pies and ice cream. Well, perhaps next time. We waddle our way back down Second Avenue, our pierogi urge completely satisfied.
Veselka, 144 Second Avenue (at 10th Street), 228-9682. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Cash only. Anywhere from $5 on up, depending on just exactly how may pierogi and “side dishes” you think you can eat.
CaB magazine was one of the first publications I ever wrote for. Published by my dear friend Andrew Martin, it covered the Cabaret, Theater, Music and Dining scene in New York City, long before slick publications like Time Out NY and Where NY became popular. We had great fun writing it, and some wonderful writers contributed to its pages. When the magazine folded in the mid-90s, Andrew disappeared from the scene, and rumors had it that he departed from this existence not long after. I was thrilled to find out in mid-October 2005, a decade later, that the rumors were just that. Andrew contacted me after finding my site via that omnipresent force, Google. He’s alive and well and a member of a comedy troupe called Meet the Mistake. Somehow quite fitting!
The big question is, of course, are you going to have to eat a kangaroo? The answer is – maybe. Sizing a ‘roo up for dinner while at the petting zoo is considered bad form. But if thin slices of smoked emu and kangaroo show up on your plate, give them a try, they’re delicious! Modern Australian cooking is as varied as the populous: containing elements of native foods and the cuisine of early British settlers, French, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and yes, even American – especially Californian.
Fish, low fat, and low alcohol are all the rage. Yet, Australians consume massive amounts of ice cream and a whopping 100 pounds of sugar per year, each. The “national” dessert of Australia, Pavlova, is a sugary meringue basket filled with fruit and whipped cream.
So what is modern Australian cooking? First, you should remember that Australia is as big as the continental United States. Regional tastes are as different as a Maryland Crab Bash is from Cajun Jambalaya or an avocado salad in downtown L.A. While mainstay of daily life may still be very basic British foods like sausages, eggs, and overcooked vegetables, some great cutting-edge restaurants await in Australia. You might find a perfectly grilled barramundi steak with tomato salsa, Victorian salmon with charred peppers, crispy prosciutto and caramelized figs, broiled yabbies with spinach gnocchi in garlic butter, lamb with field mushrooms and garlic potatoes, a date and pastry cream tart or a chocolate and riberry torte.
Australian wines have also come up in the world. The style is unlike those from anywhere else in the world, and a lot of what we get over here is barely representative. Most wineries are open to the public for touring and tasting, but even if you don’t make it out to one of the wine regions, the average Australian restaurant has a great selection. For the beer drinkers among you, not all Australian beer comes in a blue and gold can. Check out some of the local brews.
One last note, “grilled” means what we call broiled, while what we call grilled, they call barecued, as in, “slip another shrimp on the…”, only Australians are more likely to slip a sausage on and have a “sausage sizzle”.
So Hungry I Could Eat a Kangaroo
The climate and isolation of this former penal colony have given rise to a spectacular array of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, meats, and seafood – many species found nowhere else on earth. The influx of cultures from around the world has led to a bewildering array of dishes and ingredients. Here’s just a sample of what you’ll find.
Barramundi – a tasty whitefish.
Bug – a bay-water relative of lobsters and crayfish, anmed for the bay they come from, e.g., Moreton Bay Bugs, Balmain Bugs.
Capsicums – what we call bell peppers, green or red.
Damper – a traditional campfire flat bread, now prevalent in commercial imitations.
Lamingtons – chocolate and coconut covered spongecake.
Meat Pies – imagine that Hostess filled its snack pies with overcooked, greasy meat; perfect for the football (in this case rugby or soccer) stadium.
Pavlova – the national dessert, a fruit and whipped cream-filled meringue shell.
Riberries – small, conical berries tasting something like cloves.
Vegemite – the famed Vegemite, trust us, you don’t want to know what it is. Try it on toast one morning, it’s definitely an acquired taste.
Warrigal – a native green, somewhat like spinach.
Yabbies – a common and absolutely delicious crayfish.
Out & About was a bimonthly newsletter focusing on travel for the gay and lesbian community and travel agents. I’m fairly sure I wrote a few articles for them over time, but this is the only one I’ve been able to find a copy of.