Eating with Fanny

Being a foody, I recently checked out a copy of Fannie Farmer’s “Original 1896” Boston Cooking-School Cook Book from the library.   I wanted to find out what people ate at the turn of the nineteenth century.  It led to an interesting and surprising voyage in a culinary time-capsule.

Fanny Farmer was born in 1857.  An illness (perhaps polio) during high school rendered her lame, and in those days, unmarriageable.  She turned to cooking, and became a cooking teacher, eventually forming her own cooking school, and eventually wrote her cookbook. By the time she died in 1915, 360,000 copies of her book had been sold.   It has been revised continuously throughout the years, selling millions of copies.  I remember there was a well-used copy in my home growing up.

Looking at the 1896 edition, I found some surprises.

There is a chapter for recipes “especially prepared for the sick”.  The introduction asserts that “statistics prove that two-thirds of all disease is brought about by error in diet”.  Perhaps the incorrect proportions were used, Farmer maintains, or the food was improperly cooked.  So much for germs, airborne diseases, and bacteria, not to mention cancer, strokes and heart attacks.

She emphasizes food presentation in serving the sick – select the daintiest china, finest glass, and choicest silver, making changes as often as possible, she says.   I agree with her that aesthetics are important to sick people – why just slop the food on a plastic plate just because a person is very sick.  That’s just plain unfair. 

The good foods for the sick are all of the mealy type, what we used to term as porridge in the old days.  (Remember the Three Little Bears – wasn’t there some porridge in that story?)  Flour gruel is one of the suggested dishes for sick people, made of 1 tablespoon of flour, 2 cups of milk, and some salt.  Farina gruel (which I actually remember from my childhood along with the requisite enema my mother so lovingly administered) is made out of boiling water, farina, milk, egg and salt.   For the adventurous, using Indian meal instead of flour or farina results in “Indian Gruel”.    I wondered if the food Fanny was suggesting made people sicker. 

There are also many liquid foods to offer the sick.  Barley water is highly recommended. Toast water is made with toast.  (The toast is made, of course, in the oven, not the toaster – we learned how to do this the old way back in 1958 in cooking class. )  The toast is crumbled, soaked in water, strained through cheese cloth, and seasoned.  Seasoned with what, one might ask?  Fanny is mute on this topic.

Sick people’s food gets a little more exciting as you go down the list, which includes eggnog. There are several eggnog recipes, and they all include brandy.  

Boiled beef essence is also good for sick people, she maintains.  In those days beef essence didn’t come in a cube or a carton or a can.  It is rendered by cooking steak round for 3 minutes, cutting the “bleeding” piece into 1 inch and 1 ½ inch cubes, then “gashing” each piece two or three times on each side.  After that, you express the “juice” (blood, actually) with a lemon squeezer and put it into a cup.  Finally, you set this dish in hot water – but not too hot as to actually cook the meat or “coagulate” its juices.  Sounds pretty grim. 

Have you ever heard the expression “milquetoast”?  It is refers to a weak, ineffectual or bland person (male).  The word is derived from a character in a 1924 comic strip The Timid Soul.  It probably refers to the nature of milk toast, which was an important food in 1896, based on the number of Fanny Farmer’s recipes for it.

The basic milk toast recipe is to add water to flour to make a paste, add milk and cook, and salt and butter, then dip slices of toast in it.  Remove the toast to a serving dish.  Pour the remaining sauce over the toast, and serve.  Sounds fairly unhealthy?  Maybe it was the milk toast that made people sick in those times.   

There is a robust section on donuts, but that was before Dunkin’ Donuts took away peoples’ will to make donuts at home.   People had all the time in the world I the age before multi-tasking.   They make themselves sick frying in deep fat (animal?), and if needed, refer to Fanny’s recipes for the sick afterwards.

There is an interesting chapter on soup garnishings (egg balls, noodles, flour dropped into boiling grease, etc.) and force-meats.   I have not heard mention of force-meats in at least 50 years, and was interested in learning what it was.

A force-meat is a concoction that is made as follows:  cook stale bread crumbs and milk to a paste, add egg and fish (or chicken or clam or salmon, etc.) pounded and forced through a puree strainer.  It is then shaped into small balls and plopped into to the soup to cook in it.  

There are some very interesting recipes in the book that I would like to try.  One is champagne sauce, to use on fish or meat.  You start with Espagnole sauce, which is made with what we now call “Italian” seasonings, and brown stock, itself made with beef and seasoned copiously.  Reduce it, add two tablespoons of mushroom liquor (where am I going to get this?), a half cup of champagne, and one tablespoon of powdered sugar.   

Now I know where my mother got her prune whip recipe, one of my least favorites of my mother’s fine cooking.  It’s here in the Fanny Farmer cook-book.  You add the whites of 5 eggs to prunes that are “picked over” and washed.  (What did they find on them to have to pick them over?)  Remove the stones of the prune (those are the pits — very smart move), and rub them through a strainer, adding sugar.  Then  beat in the whites of the egg until stiff, bake twenty minutes, then feed to unsuspecting children who hate the dish.  I can still recall the taste 60 years later.  (I think my siblings actually liked prune whip, which I’m sure encouraged my mother to keep making it.)

When I wasn’t getting attacked in my childhood by the prune whip (or the enemas), I could take a rest and sample the various lovely “chafing dish” recipes Farmer suggests.  Welsh Rarebit was staple in our post-World War II suburban Jewish home.   It has nothing to do with rabbit.  My mother made it just the way Fanny said to, and we all loved it.  Mother may have put a little beer in it, as is required for Fanny’s Welsh Rarebit II recipe.   Welsh Rarebit could make boring American cheese into something exciting, but was probably not that healthy.  (Cream and butter are also in the recipe.  Maybe partly explains why my siblings and I have weight problems.)

So if Fanny Farmer didn’t kill you with her food recipes, she could nurse you back to health with the dainty silverware, the gruel and the raw beef.

I hope you have enjoyed this little jaunt through earlier times.  Bon Appetite to you.

Happy Life, Happy Wife

Did you ever hear the expression “Happy Wife, Happy Life”?  This overused adage seems to help some people (generally husbands) focus on their wife’s happiness in order to secure a peaceful, happy marriage.  It seems quite manipulative.  What about the man’s happiness?  It’s interesting that the opposite “Happy Husband, Happy Life” is not used.  Studies show that divorces are more often initiated by wives, so perhaps there tends to be an inequality in marital contentment, weighed towards the husbands’ side.

I originally thought the expression “Happy Wife, Happy Life” was of Oriental origin, because it seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in a fortune cookie.  However, my Google search on the term brought up no Oriental sources.

The search for “Happy Wife, Happy Life” did in fact bring up a website www.happywife.com, the work of Rabbi Aryeh Pamensky, who offers many marriage improvement resources (including his own books, tapes, seminars, etc.) on the site.   The term, however, does not seem to be derived from Rabbinic literature, and according to Pamensky, his courses and materials are used by people of difference faiths other than the Jewish, and also by secular couples.

The adage is confirmed by a 2009 German study of Australian divorces that notes where there is a disparity on satisfaction of the husband and the wife, divorce is much more likely, especially if the relative dissatisfaction is experienced by the wife.  http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/dont-become-happier-than-your-wife/

Then there’s www.yourhappywife.com.  This site seeks to assist husbands in making their wives happy by helping them choose presents for their wives, which can be conveniently ordered on the website.  Actually, the wares are quite attractive, including eco-soap and herbal teas. These might certainly pave the way for a clueless husband seeking to make his wife happy.  In addition, the husband needing further help can email the site and pose his marital question or problem. “Within 24 hours or sooner”, the person(s) operating the site will respond with the best advice they can give.  The site notes that all emails will be kept confidential and, in order to receive the best advice possible, that honesty is expected from the husband seeking advice.  (I’d like to be a fly on that wall!)

As Rabbi Pamensky says on his site, “A happy wife is a happy life.  It’s just that simple.”

But is it?

George Pransky, a psychologist in Washington State has another theory of marital dysfunction.

His theory is that a person’s own mental/emotional state is the biggest indicator of whether the marriage will work well.  If two people have a low mental or emotional state, Pransky says, marriage enrichment or marital therapy is like spraying for mildew in a damp basement. It never works as a long-term cure.  In his marital counseling, Pransky tries to elevate the couple from the damp basement into an environment of good mental health.  It is only then,  Pransky says, that people can truly work on their marriage to make it  thrive and survive.  Prasky’s book, “The Relationship Handbook”, is a great resource for those couples who want to elevate  their mental state and start working on their relationship.  You can order a copy through www.amazon.com.

So perhaps the more accurate stating of the adage is “Happy Life, Happy Wife.”  Or even “Happy Life, Happy Husband.”

Calibri and Me: A Romp Through a Typeface

Some time ago I received a draft of a legal document to review.  It was in a typeface I had never before noticed.  It was a san serif typeface, from “sans” without, and “serif”, a line.  The serifs are those little vestigial horizontal strokes at the bottom of the letters reminiscent of early writings with quill pens.  A sans serif typefaces has a more modern look than a serif typeface.  It is as if those the quill strokes of the earlier calligraphers have been removed.

I looked up at the font window and saw the word “Calibri”.   There was something very friendly about the typography – a nice rounded look, not mechanical, almost like a hand-drafted version of a san serif typeface.  It was personal and not geometric. The document I was working on, a separation agreement for someone’s divorce, was very serious.  A couple was getting divorced.  They were entering into an agreement about how to divide the property and the children.  It is not a very happy time in peoples’ lives, and is very stressful.

Calibri alphabet

I looked at that nice, warm typeface and thought how nice it was to present the very serious, difficult separation agreement in such a warm, friendly way. 

I started thinking of the famous quote by Marshall McLuhan, “the medium is the message”.  The fact that the “medium”, this lovely typeface, was presenting the “message”, an agreement that was the template for the end of the marriage, seemed a very good thing for the clients.  It is a subliminal message that in essence, all things are right in the world, the world is safe, and happiness is present, or at least around the corner.  A good message to present in a divorce.

Calibi was invented for Microsoft by a Dutch type designer,  Lucas de Groot [who calls himself Lu(cas) de Groot] in 2003. For Lu(cas)’ very fascinating website where you can see his other type designs, visit www.lucasfonts.com . You won’t find Calibri on Lu(cas)’ site, because it is a proprietary typeface, designed for Microsoft, but you will find other interesting typefaces and material on de Groot’s work.

On its website, Microsoft describes Calibri a member of the san serif typeface family with “subtle roundings on stems and corners”.  It has “many curves” and a “warm and soft” character. 

 Sans Serif typefaces are organized in several categories:

There are the “neo-grotesque” (also called “realist”) such as Helvetica and Arial. 

These are very common, and are relatively straight in appearance.  They have not much line width variation, have a very plain appearance, and are sometimes called “anonymous sans-serif” as a result. 

The second category of sans serif typefaces is the “humanist.  Calibri, Verdana and Tahoma fall into this category. They are the most calligraphic of the sans-serif typefaces, with some variation in line width and more legibility than other sans-serif fonts.

Geometric typefaces, such as Futura and Avant Garde are characterized simple letter constructions built on geometric shapes, as in the letter “O” which is optically circular in Futura. 

Grotesque typefaces, such as Franklin Gothic, are the early sans serif designs, developed around 1900. 

Calibri made the news in February, 2009 when Lucille Hester, sister of Dallas Cowboy football star Bob Hayes read a letter purportedly written by Hayes on national TV.  The letter was dated 1999, three years before Hayes’ death.  A close look at the typeface revealed that it was Calibri, which was invented in 2003, and wasn’t available to the public until 2007, when it was included in Microsoft Office 2007. 

Since discovering Calibri a few years ago, I have been increasingly using it in my work as a lawyer, especially for contracts and agreements between people.  (By the way, I recommend 12 point, nto 11 point.)

I am convinced that the warmth and friendliness of the typeface increases the chance of people being able to come to agreements in a more congenial way due to the subliminal message the design of the word letters forms impart.  Yes, Marshall McLuan, you were right.  The medium is the message, indeed.

Let there be Light: A Hannukah Miracle

by Laurie Israel 

They say miracles don’t happen anymore.  Miracles were in the Bible, like Judah Maccabeus, and the candle that burned for 8 days and nights, without oil.

Well, just yesterday, I experienced a miracle (actually two of them) with my iTouch. This is what happened.

A couple of months ago, I purchased an iTouch.  This is essentially an iPhone, without the phone service.  (That way, I don’t have to spend $70 a month for it.)  I bought it to get a certain art application (“application” now known in computer lingo as “app”).   An app is essentially a program which you can download onto the iTouch, which is, itself, essentially a computer.  The app I was interested in was “Brushes”, where you finger paint on the little iTouch computer screen.  If you are a really good artist like Jorge Colombo, you can make New Yorker covers. 

If you’re like me, you make little fun things you can enjoy, and sometimes put them in the kaleidoscope app program (Kooleido) to make them look every more funny and interesting. I was extremely pleased with my little iTouch, which in itself is a miracle.  No, I am not on the payroll of Apple Computers, its producer. 

Through the Looking Glass, 2009, Laurie Israel

After downloading Brushes, I got hooked, and began to download more apps onto it.  The apps generally range in cost from free to $3.99.  The most common price is 99 cents, followed by $1.99.   You can get a lot of amazing applications by searching.  For instance, music brought up a fabulous little ocarina, bringing back memories of a childhood where I was musically obsessed, a trip to Newark on the bus at age 10 with a friend, and the purchase of a wonderful little ocarina, which is a musical instrument made out of crockery for about $3, which was my life savings at the time.  (During that period, I somehow obtained and poured through catalogues of accordions, mesmerized at the different pearlite  finishes available.  As a little Jewish girl, accordions and pierced ears were verboten to me, although my almost-twin sister (11 months my elder) has become a Jewish liturgical accordionist, and I got my ears mis-pierced in a shopping mall in Chicago attended by my son and a niece and nephew when I was 40 years old and my parents already gone.)

Anyway, back to the iTouch.  The iTouch is also an iPod, so you can load from the (free) iTunes program on your computer CDs that you have purchased (otherwise, it’s a legal “no-no”, so don’t tell me about it).  By yesterday, I had accumulated 71 apps on my iTouch.  I just counted them, and to tell you the truth, I was shocked that I have so many!  Most of them were bought (through my iTunes account) during the weekends, when I have some spare time for total abandonment to extremes of geekiness.  I did what every self-respecting spouse does: I have been hiding the bills from my spouse which come through email, although I noticed one within her eyeshot recently.  The bills are usually under $10, so I guess she’s giving me a pass.  (Note for future marital happiness article:  ok to hide things sometimes to avoid conflict.)

Anyway, yesterday, I was downloading more music CDs onto the iPod part of my iTouch.  I must have done something wrong, because afterwards, although I could listen to the music (particularly enjoying Mark O’Connor playing simple American folk songs on his new method for teaching the violin), I could no longer access any of my apps. They were there, alright, but every time I pressed on one, it teasingly showed me its homepage for a microsecond, and then went back to my app screen, where 71 apps were beaconing but playing very hard to get.  Like Pavlov’s dogs gone awry, I must have tried pressing them 50 times before I realized that it would not work, and I could not get my apps to open. 

Quite frustrated by this time, I started pressing the app icons more strongly and for longer periods.  For this, the iTouch punished me severely, like God in the Bible.   All the apps now appeared with little x’s on the upper left of the icon, and started wriggling meanly at me.  It was like they were making fun of my problems!  I must have tried this move another 50 times only to have those wriggling icons reappear.

Deterred but not unbowed, I did what any self-respecting 20^th century (whoops—21^st century) computer novice would do.  I did a Google search which went something like this:  “iTouch apps won’t turn on.”   Generally this helps me with my computer problems, or at least find other frustrated computer compatriots dealing with the same issue.  I did find some things – depressing messages about the only way to fix this was to totally reboot the iTouch, which would result in losing all your apps.  Like someone hearing a bad medical report, I just wasn’t ready to hear this bad news – at least not yet.

So I kept looking. I turned the iTouch on and off.  This is no easy feat, and requires again a Google search to see how to do it.  (The Apple site is too busy because of the rush of sales of iTouches and iPhones.) 

Then I thought back to earlier that day when I downloaded the music to the iTouch.   Yes, that’s when the problem started.  I downloaded the CDs, asked the iTunes to synchronize (that’s “sync” in computer language) to the iTouch several times.  Maybe that had something to do with it.

After my limbic brain had time to think about this for a while, I realized what must have happened.  I must have synced my iTunes to my iTouch, and since the apps were not on iTunes the sync wiped out everything on my iTouch that was not “built in” to the iTouch, including the all the apps.  That’s why when I kept perusing them on my iTouch, they kept wriggling uncomfortably.  They had been dismissed, and now were invisible.  Or to put it another way, their little bodies were photographed for me to see, but their life force had been sucked out of them.  

By then I realized, that my 71 apps, or at least the ones I really wanted, would have to be replaced.  I started going through Elisabeth Kűbler-Ross’ five stages of grief.  In computer speed, I went through denial (“this can’t be happening to me”), anger (Why me?  This is not fair!) bargaining (just give my my iWallFlower app and I’ll be happy), depression (oh, my God, I’m going to lose all my apps!), and finally, acceptance (yes, I can deal with it.  I’ll just repurchase all the apps I really want.  So what if I don’t have 71 of them anymore!).

Lost in Cyberspace, Laurie Israel 2009

Although Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people who were suffering from  diagnoses of terminal illness, I think the stages are fully applicable to computer mishaps and struggles, especially when they threaten to wipe out computer programs or data.   When I analyzed the down side of all of this, I figured that I would have to spend another $30 to get the apps I really wanted.  This is not like a bad medical report.  I started putting all this in perspective.

 Then the miracles started to happen.  Maybe it was when I let go, and gave up the idea of preserving or finding my apps.  Whatever it was, that, or the Hannukah spirit, all of a sudden, the computer gods became aligned in my favor. 

So I decided to reload and repay for my apps, and started first with the one that I love the very best.  It’s called iWallFlower.  (By the way, my new name is iLaurie. Please use it in all future correspondence to me.)   iWallFlower lets you make art by doodling in colors on the little iTouch screen with your finger, and then you can share your doodles with people all over the world.  It’s a good program for extroverts like me.

I deleted my iWallFlower icon (to find out how to do this took another Google search), and started to download the app again.  Lo’ and behold, as I was beginning to pay for it  (probably the best 99 cents I’ve ever spent), it told me I had already paid for it, and they would download it for free!   That was the first Hannuka miracle. 

Then I looked at my iTouch, and, decided to once more try to start an app. I chose “ocarina”, a wonderful app that sounds just like an ocarina.  And it worked!  No more wriggling icons!  And every single other icon I had on my iTouch now worked!  Another Hannuka miracle had happened!

I have no idea what happened, and why I couldn’t find anyone else with this experience on the internet.  My blog has a search engine plug-in so that hopefully this blog post will make it to cyberspace and help other hapless iTouch and iPhone users who inadvertently wipe out their apps with an iTune update.  (I think a disclaimer of liability is now appropriate, and hereby make it :  I have no idea what happened and why, so please don’t construe anything I’ve said herein as computer advice.)

But for me, a non-religious person in the prime of life, it was truly a Hannukah miracle.  The gods of cyberspace did not want me to pay for something I had already paid for.  That was the first miracle – they knew I had already paid for it and were being fair to me.  And then, when the mercy given to me would have been enough (is Passover coming?) they (or it) lit up the lights of all my apps.  Was it my letting go and accepting my fate that did it?   

I do have some lingering reservations that it actually was a miracle, but I will wait for better minds than mine to explain the anomalies and phenomena I experienced yesterday.  Does all this  say something about life?  I’m not sure, but if it does say something, it must be very profound.

Happy holidays to all of you, and may all your apps shine brightly during the coming year.

  Happy Hannuka!