Writes Ligaya Mishan in "Why Do American Diners Have Such a Limited Palate for Textures? Complex taste sensations play a crucial role in food around the world — but have long been shunned stateside" (NYT).
"Should we interpret a culture’s insistence on devouring every texture as another form of proclaiming dominion, reducing all nonhuman life — everything that is not us — to potential food? The more interesting question is why textures beloved by many cultures came to be shunned by Americans: the prolonged chewiness of tripe; the tendon turned to jelly in a bowl of pho; the thick slickness of okra, leaking its mineral-rich mucilage.... [P]rocessed food became the standard in many American homes — food stripped of both fuss and complexity, of anything to wrestle with, like a recalcitrant chicken heart or the stretchy, gluey splendor of natto (fermented soybeans). This was food that simply obliged. Gone were the textures of resistance, if you will; the messy ones that call to mind a body’s murky interior, that remind us where our food comes from."
My reaction? I felt a strong urge to look up what the Frenchman said about slime:
The For-Itself is suddenly compromised. I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy, and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me. Its mode of being is neither the reassuring inertia of the solid nor a dynamism like that in water which is exhausted in fleeing from me. It is a soft, yielding action, a moist and feminine sucking....
Feminine!
Slime is the revenge of the in-itself. A sickly-sweet, feminine revenge which will be symbolized on another level by the quality "sugary."...
Feminine!
A sugary-sliminess is the ideal of the slimy; it symbolizes the sugary death of the For-itself (like that of the wasp which sinks into the jam and drowns in it)...
But at the same time the slimy is myself, by the very fact that I outline an appropriation of the slimy substance. That sucking of the slimy which I feel on my hands outlines a kind of continuity of the slimy substance in myself. These long, soft strings of substance which fall from me to the slimy body (when, for example, I plunge my hand into it and then pull it out again) symbolize a rolling off of myself in the slime...
(Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness.)
The NYT writer spoke of "the dominance of crunchy and creamy." It's the masculine and the feminine, kept assuringly clear and apart from the "messy" textures that "call to mind a body’s murky interior."
Now, why can't I just eat my waffle cone?
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56 comments:
WTF?
When start cooking and eating foreign food, we get accused of cultural appropriation.
What is traditional Christmas food in Japan? KFC, no shit I am not making this up. How come the Japanese don't get attacked for cultural appropriation?
Once again the NYT uses up paper and ink (and electrons) for this?
I will say though that I once had the "thick slickness of okra, leaking its mineral-rich mucilage" into my mouth and that once was enough. Fried okra though is fine.
Which is she recommending for people of European ancestry: cultural appropriation, or starvation?
reducing all nonhuman life — everything that is not us — to potential food?
All non-human life is potential food, and the only thing that separates us from the other forms of life in this is the fact that most of the other forms of life aren't squeamish about cannibalism.
Damned Americans- barely civilized!
This self-pleasing moron's intellectual excretion is proof positive that the Latter Days are upon us.
Food is central to human creatures on earth. Feasts are central to their social life. From the last supper to, the marriage supper of the Lamb. Hunger is banned. So why does the World Government want to use famine starvation as their weapon of choice? Those guys are the essence of Evil.
"Gone were the textures of resistance..."
The textures of resistance... codswallop. For real authority on the subject, forget the spiritous legumes and face the reality of eating. Go hunt something large, dangerous, and nutritious -- moose, for example. Assuming you can stalk your prey sufficiently well to land a kill shot without getting disemboweled first, butcher the carcass yourself. Then you'll know what "textures of resistance" really mean, and you can wipe your ass with the Nooyawk Times food section for good measure.
This is another example of rationalistic armchair philosophy. It attributes general principles to culture.
Food texture is a function of water and the natural structure of food. Plants and animals need structure to live on the surface of the earth. See organic chemistry. If it's too slimy or watery it runs to lakes, rivers, and oceans. Algae lives in water as a formless mass. We did not evolve eating algae. We evolved eating nuts, seeds, fruits, roots, and meat. All of these are medium density. We ate milk and animal blood too -- liquids, gels, puddings, cheeses.
Natural slime: eggs -- but often cooked to firmness.
How do they invent these pretentious columns??
I need more texture in my diet??
Crunchy on the outside and a chewy center
Okra is ridiculously expensive near me. On the bright side, it's an easy grow and prolific producer. An essential taste; it's the difference between Gumbo and Good Gumbo. It also translates well in a lot of spicy stir-fry.
If it's good enough for peanut butter, it's good enough for me.
Please. No more pictures of Joe eating an ice cream cone. They make him look like an even bigger dork than he actually is.
Um..okay then.
Is this what NYT resorts to when they want to shield their reader's eyes from all the Biden scandals?
A plain, nutritious meal embraces family and earth, and shuns the the pretense of aristocracy, dictatorship, democracy, and other elitist regimes.
Apparently Althouse just discovered that Sarte was a misogynist? Just because Simone de Beauvoir never threw dishes at him doesn’t change what he was.
Americans equate palate discrimination with diversity, slavery, and redistributive change of the authoritarian orders of the progressive past where their ancestors were forced to take a knee and beg in a trickle-down economy (i.e. redistributive change at the minority's pleasure).
Objection. Lack of foundation.
The New York Times main function seems to be churning out Buzzfeed-caliber articles whose theme is "Here's how not to be a rube."
The term seems somewhat overused but this is nothing more than fancy clickbait. It's clickbait with proper grammar and the cache of the New York Times, and it makes the reader feel better about himself.
Every texture she mentions is in the American diet. Natto? Try nut butters or hummus. Gelatine? How about a fatty piece of smoked brisket. If tripe is not popular, calamari sure is.
Whatever. Bullshit artists gotta bullshit.
We red-blooded American married men like the texture of a well-made sandwich.
The foods she describes are poor people's food: hillbilly plants and low-nutrition parts of the animal. Americans abandoned such foods as a way of signifying prosperity.
That's kind of an ambiguous headline. When I first read it -- ""Why Do American Diners Have Such a Limited Palate for Textures?" -- I thought, "If you want complex food, why are you eating in a diner?"
Though there are a lot of textures in a tuna melt or a good piece of pie.
Isn’t it obvious that there’s an evolutionary aversion to slimy foods? Slime tends to indicate that food is rotting and likely unsafe to eat. Sometimes slimy food can be safe to eat. Sometimes stinky food can be safe to eat. But if you’re unsure of the provenance, you shouldn’t eat stinky food or slimy food. No need to moralize.
...und on ze other hand, you all should be enjoying ze bugz.
Bug eating again.
Lego's have texture. I know it when I step on them in the dark.
Richard said...
Crunchy on the outside and a chewy center
As opposed to the shark's preferred chewy on the outside, crunchy in the center which divers in wetsuits are considered al dente.
No mucilage in pickled okra. Crunchy and delish...depending on the pickling spices. Leave out the sugar for best results.
- Krumhorn
Oh! to again savour the layers of textures in Monty Python's Crunchy Frog!
Scott Adams calls this kind of logic "word thinking." I call it rhetoric, which is language that sounds like logic, but isn't.
Writes Ligaya Mishan in "I'm Sophisticated and Cosmopolitan, Why Are Other American Diners So Provincial?" (NYT).
Just move to France and get it over with, already.
Talk about over-generalization. The NYTs has no idea what the diverse population of America gets up to.
Wasted words, for sure.
Oh, &I had fiddleheads for the 1st time. I loved them, but I didn’t pick them. Foraging is an art form, I’m thinking.
I haven't read it, never read the NYT (other than excerpts from the distinguished Professor) but I would guess it would be de rigueur for the NYT would be to poke sarcastically at DJT in the same piece.
Perhaps she needs to add more spice, as that horse she’s eating has definitely “turned”.
I remember when putting potato chips inside a PB&J sandwich was as trend.
" "Why Do American Diners Have Such a Limited Palate for Textures? Complex taste sensations play a crucial role in food around the world — but have long been shunned stateside" (NYT)."
What a crock of anti-American shit. One would expect no less from the NYT. And has she never been to an Ethiopian restaurant? From a texture standpoint,dDiner food is haute cuisine by comparison.
BTW, shit has unlimited textures and ostensibly complex taste sensations. Perhaps she should sample some and get back to us.
Gotta hand it to the NYT.
Even the food writers are tediously psuedo-intellectual.
" "Why Do American Diners Have Such a Limited Palate for Textures? Complex taste sensations play a crucial role in food around the world — but have long been shunned stateside" (NYT)."
What a crock of anti-American shit. One would expect no less from the NYT. And has she never been to an Ethiopian restaurant? From a texture standpoint,dDiner food is haute cuisine by comparison.
BTW, shit has unlimited textures and ostensibly complex taste sensations. Perhaps she should sample some and get back to us.
"What is traditional Christmas food in Japan? KFC, no shit I am not making this up"
And Chinese for American Jews. I learned this from my gay neighbor. He grew up in Opelika, AL in the 50's. That must have been a fascinating childhood.
"Which is she recommending for people of European ancestry: cultural appropriation, or starvation?"
If Ireland hadn't appropriated the potato, America might have much better law enforcement today.
""We could go further and read the dominance of crunchy and creamy in American diners’ preferences as metaphor: a sly enactment of the dynamic of conquest and submission..."
I get it now. Cons are crunch; Dems are creamy. It all makes sense when you really think about it.
"Broccoli, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts look to me like Chinese food crawling around on a plate. Cauliflower almost makes me sick. I eat carrots reluctantly. I don't like sweet potatoes. I don't even want to be close to a rhubarb, it makes me retch. My idea of a vegetable is green beans, corn, and peas. I like spaghetti and grilled cheese sandwiches. I'll eat meat loaf but wouldn't order it in a restaurant.
"I follow a very simple rule when it comes to food. If a three-year-old doesn't eat it, I don't eat it."
Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Blogger Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...
The New York Times main function seems to be churning out Buzzfeed-caliber articles whose theme is "Here's how not to be a rube."
Bingo !
This is an extremely narrow perspective of the American population, who were conceived in populations and culinary arts that span the globe. Why does the fourth leg hold such a bigoted and xenophobic opinion of the people?
"I follow a very simple rule when it comes to food. If a three-year-old doesn't eat it, I don't eat it."
Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Good for him he figured out the value of carry and compound interest early on cause he's a bit of an idiot...
"The New York Times main function seems to be churning out Buzzfeed-caliber articles whose theme is "Here's how not to be a rube.""
Millionaires hire PR firms. Billionaires buy newspapers so articles with themes of how not to be a rube are not the main function. They're just the barker at the entrance.
Why Do American Diners Have Such a Limited Palate for Textures?
Some American diners ...
In 1926, Laura Scudder (who owned a potato chip factory in Monterey Park, California) invented a wax paper potato chip bag to keep the chips fresh and crunchy. With further technology, innovation, and a countless number of variations and flavors, potato chips have only grown in popularity over the years!
Jones’ Potato Chip Company History
View of the World from 9th Avenue (sometimes A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World, A New Yorker's View of the World or simply View of the World) is a 1976 illustration by Saul Steinberg that served as the cover of the March 29, 1976, edition of The New Yorker. The work presents the view from Manhattan of the rest of the world showing Manhattan as the center of the world.
Wikipedia
I think that New Yorker has just been hoisted by its own petard.
What is it with the French?
From Claude Levi-Strauss' "Le cru et le cuit" (The Raw and the Cooked):
". . . certain categorical opposites drawn from everyday experience with the most basic sorts of things—e.g. 'raw' and 'cooked,' 'fresh' and 'rotten,' 'moist' and 'parched,' and others—can serve a people as conceptual tools for the formation of abstract notions and for combining these into propositions."
Ignore this crap: if you want good food writing, read MFK Fisher.
Tyler Cowen in an Economist Gets Lunch says that American cuisine was blandified in part because of prohibition. Restaurants which were up until the 20s almost exclusively adults only lost a significant portion of their income when they were no longer able to sell alcohol. To make up for it they started catering to younger palates in order to draw in families. Personally textures are where I draw the line, slimy mucousy foods are a huge turn off for me. I like fried and pickled okra and okra as an ingredient in gumbo, but I'm never going to order a bowl of it to eat as a stand alone thing.
There's the chewy.
Something satisfying about chewing on a steak.
Some people have nothing else to eat except that which more prosperous folk find unpalatable. What is so hard to understand about this concept? We all can't afford Beluga caviar or foie gras as appetizers before a Wagyu filet mignon.
And what is so hard to grasp about the parallel concept, that some food developed and eaten by poor people is also damn delicious? Slaves brought the US gumbo and jambalaya. And BBQ brisket wasn't eaten by French kings at Versailles, to my knowledge. Their loss.
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