Comfortable soup.

 

Were you expecting "potato flakes" — AKA "instant mashed potatoes"? I loved that. 

I'm posting this video because Jacques Pépin making this soup is comfort food for your mind... but I will tell you that you can get some nice "potato flakes" at Amazon, and I'll earn a commission if you use that leek... I mean link. But commission-earning is not why I'm posting this video.

I bet this soup is actually really good. It's obviously simple to make. And I don't know about you but I didn't know exactly how to clean and cut up a leek. Please try to avoid using the phrase "take a leek" in the comments. Pépin refers to it as a "lick," so there's another path to childish humor.

"Her husband, whom she met when she was 21 and he was 81, dictated precisely what shade of nail polish she should wear (pink, pale and sheer, never matte)..."

"... and gently tapped her on the head when her roots were showing. When he was in residence, he issued a 6pm curfew ensuring his young wife was home to share his dinner (always chicken soup with cream cheese and crackers) and watch his favourite movies. Then, after dark, she was expected to participate in the group sex for which Hefner was famous. 'It was embarrassing. I don't know the most people there'd been in our bedroom at one time but – a lot. Pretty bad. We were like, "Oh, now it's your turn." Nobody really wanted to be there but I think in Hef's mind, he still thought he was in his 40s, and those nights, the people, the mansion, solidified that idea. He felt, "I've still got it."' There were also the famous 'Sunday Fundays' when 200 young women would descend on the Playboy mansion. Its octogenarian owner took so much Viagra that it made him lose his hearing on one side (a recognised side effect of the drug). 'Hef always said he'd rather be deaf and still able to have sex. Weird,' says Crystal...."

From "The hell of being married to Hugh Hefner by his Playboy Bunny third wife: Crystal Hefner, 37, describes how he took so much Viagra it made him deaf and imposed a 6pm curfew so she'd stay home and share his chicken soup" (Daily Mail).

Always chicken soup with cream cheese and crackers?

Trying to come to terms with my switching off of the movie "Days of Heaven" when Richard Gere throws soup at a guy....

 

... I start a conversation with ChatGPT:

Me: 

What are some movies where someone throws food at somebody?

 ChatGPT:

Here are some movies where someone throws food at somebody:

Just 4 TikToks tonight. Enjoy!

1. The newcomer to Wisconsin finds it so wholesome.

2. What does Broadway Barbara eat in a day?

3. When AI talks to AI — the 2011 version and the 2021 version.

4. In the quest to bike from the top of Alaska to the bottom of Argentina, how far do you get in one year?

"Could the Soup Nazi have secretly been a member of the gazpacho police? We asked Larry Thomas, who played the character, for his take..."

"... on the moment as soups and Nazis march back into the headlines.... 'How in the world can a grown person, who grew up in the 20th century, not know what the word Gestapo is?' he asks. 'They say "You can’t write this shit." It’s beyond you can’t write this shit.... If she got the word wrong with a nonsensical word, it would be one thing, but I knew as soon as she actually used the name of a soup that I was in trouble... And then she turns around and makes an actual Soup Nazi reference [on Twitter], you know, the "no soup for you, and you’re gonna end up in the goulash." I’m sure somebody wrote that for her. She can’t possibly be that funny.'"

From "The Soup Nazi on Marjorie Taylor Green’s gazpacho police: ‘I knew I was in trouble’/Larry Thomas, the actor behind the Seinfeld character, gives his take on the viral gaffe: ‘You can’t write this shit.’"

In case you missed it:

Just to clear things up, @RepMTG

Gazpacho: a vegetable-based Spanish cold soup
Gestapo: Nazi Germany's secret police pic.twitter.com/T9q76r706G

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) February 9, 2022

"[W]hen 'Nothing Compares 2 U' made her a star, O’Connor said the song’s writer, Prince, terrorized her...."

"She writes that Prince summoned her to his macabre Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews, harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it, and sweetly suggested a pillow fight, only to thump her with something hard he’d slipped into his pillowcase. When she escaped on foot in the middle of the night, she writes, he stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway. Prince is the type of artist who is hailed as crazy-in-a-good-way, as in, 'You’ve got to be crazy to be a musician,' O’Connor said, 'but there’s a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.' Still, the fact that her best-known song was written by this person does not faze her at all. 'As far as I’m concerned,' she said, 'it’s my song.'... O’Connor converted to Islam several years ago and started going by the name Shuhada Sadaqat.... 'I haven’t been terribly successful at being a girlfriend or wife,' she said. 'I’m a bit of a handful, let’s face it.' But a few months ago, when she moved into her blissfully remote cottage, she found that several other single women lived alone nearby. Soon a couple of them had come by offering bread and scones, and she found herself with a crew of girlfriends for the first time since she was a teenager.... 'Down the mountain, as I call it, nobody can forget about Sinead O’Connor,' she said. But up in the village, nobody cares, 'which is beautiful for me,' she said. 'It’s lovely having friends.'

From "Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently/The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on 'Saturday Night Live' and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?" by Amanda Hess (NYT).

Prince harangued his butler to serve her soup! He weaponized his pillow in their pillow fight! He stalked her in his car and chased her around the highway! And he — he and not she — got to be considered crazy in the good way. She was crazy in the bad way, it seemed, but she's owning her brand of "crazy." 

She said she considered herself a "punk" and when "Nothing Compares 2 U" became a big hit, things felt out of whack, and tearing up the photo of the Pope restored her idea of order to her life.

She wears a hijab now (over a head that's still shaved). And if you read the comments section over there, you'll see, she comes in and answers people:  

"A perpetual stew, also known as hunter's pot or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way..."

"... and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary. The concept is often a common element in descriptions of medieval inns. Foods prepared in a perpetual stew have been described as being flavorful due to the manner in which the ingredients blend together, in which the flavor may improve with age.... Wattana Panich restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, has continued to maintain the broth from the same perpetual stew for over 47 years.... William Gibson references a perpetual stew served on the Bridge in his novel Idoru.... Danny Devito, as the character Frank Reynolds, references a perpetual stew served to and from his Vietnamese sweatshop workers in the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." 

From the Wikipedia article "Perpetual stew," which I'm thinking about this morning... after the Senate voted to allow witnesses at the Trump trial and I think I overheard from the TV that I am not watching that the trial could go on for months. Months? Why not years? Why should it ever end? Keep it seething and quietly simmering forever! Why end it and only create the need to start anew with a third impeachment, a fourth impeachment, a fifth impeachment? Just keep this impeachment going, now and forever, one and inseparable...

I'm curious enough about the William Gibson reference that I bought the Kindle version so I could search for it. Alas! There's only one "soup" in the book and that's not it. No "stew," no "potage," no "chowder"... Yes, I can read the book, I know.... and, of course, that's a better use of my time than watching the pot.

UPDATE: "House managers drop call for witnesses after Trump lawyers agree to admit Herrera Beutler’s claims" (NYT). Read that headline carefully. It doesn't mean that the lawyers admit HB's claims are true, just that they agree that her statement can be admitted as evidence. The statement is that Kevin McCarthy said that — while the riot was ongoing — Trump said over the telephone that the rioters were "more upset" about the election than McCarthy was. 

Remember when the village people — the Village People?! — drank vegetable soup from your cupped hands?

Tala Schlossberg remembers. 

Schlossberg is the daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and yet I am not making fun of her. This video is actually really good! The story and the animation are credited to Scholossberg, and it's a funny journey into nostalgia and what we're really missing from pre-COVID times:

"Sheltering in place forces roommates together and raises the stakes on everyday squabbles... You’re only as safe as your least-careful roommate."

"One friend of mine repeatedly scolded a roommate who refused to stop going to parties or to wash his hands, until the guy moved out in a huff. Another friend became ill with what seemed like covid-19 while subletting in Brooklyn; whenever she went into the common area to eat soup, her roommate would slam the bedroom door and send a nasty text. 'To be inside of all this, like we all are, with not only zero love around me but actual hate, as I’m sick, is a loneliness that is a new deep for me,' my friend wrote me. (She has since recovered.)..."

From "The Bushwick House Share Was a Haven—Then COVID-19 Struck" in The New Yorker.

At about exactly the point when I saw that, I saw "How a 16-Person Poly Pod Is Isolating in Bushwick" in New York Magazine. Different cast of characters. "A polyamorous lifestyle is undoubtedly ill-suited to our germophobic moment. Yet, the Villa’s residents seem to have an edge when it comes to thorny conversations about health and risk. 'We’re all about responsible humanism, so we’re used to talking about how our behavior affects other people,' Kenneth Play, a sex educator and co-founder of Hacienda Villa, said.... Play... has had hundreds of lovers over the years (he usually has an assistant book his liaisons), but he always wears a condom unless he is with his fiancée. She, in turn, has unprotected sex with only one other person, her other fiancé, who wears a condom with everyone else. 'I think the sex-positive community has something to teach in a time like this, because we all know how to follow strict protocols to make sure everyone is safe,' Play said."

"... we all know how to follow strict protocols to make sure everyone is safe...." I hate to inform the seemingly savvy Play but "make sure" is so last year. Here's my post on the subject from July 2019: "I've been noticing the phrase 'We need to make sure' in political speech lately. [Bernie] Sanders says 'We need to make sure that kids go to community schools, which are integrated and that means we have to focus on fair housing legislation and enforcement.' I see 'We need to make sure' as a sort of lie. It really only means we ought to try to get to a place out there that would be really nice to get to...."

No soup for you.

"My Democratic friends are mad at me. So what? No gumbo for them."

(Donna Brazil, L.A. Times.)

The NYT columnist Frank Bruni — in an attack on Trump — attacks manliness.

Would anyone in the NYT attack femininity — in general — the way Bruni attacks masculinity in "Manhood in the Age of Trump"? It would be outright misogyny, and Bruni deserves to be called out for the misandry here.

Much of the column is about his personal struggle as a gay man to deal with his own anxieties about whether he is masculine enough.

That's personal to him, and not about Trump at all and not about all the other men who are free to experience, express, and enjoy whatever level or version of manliness they want.

Bruni begins with a personal memory from the 1970s — the Campbell's soup commercial with the macho cowboy voice singing “How do you handle a hungry man? The Manhandlers!” (Despite straining to portray the commercial as hypermasculine, Bruni chooses the verb "croon," which denotes soft, sentimental singing.)

Bruni agonizes over the image of men that bombarded him when he was an impressionable teenager: "The message was that a man worked up a sweat and then ate up a storm.... He was a force of nature with untamable appetites."

Maybe I read the tea leaves too closely and pessimistically, but then I’m a gay man whose teen years were in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when homosexuality alone was considered antithetical to true manhood and someone like me was left in a limbo, wondering what claims on masculinity he really had.

But to be a bit more objective: Campbell's was addressing women, who, you can tell, had the opinion that Campbell's soup wasn't enough of a meal to serve to an adult male. In fact, the familiar white and red cans had long been marketed as a meal for children. And by the way, the children — the "Campbell kids" — were remarkably androgynous:



Those old Manhandlers commercials were aimed at emboldening women to go ahead and open up one can, heat it up, and call it dinner. If that Frankie Laine wannabe in the commercial wasn't complaining, maybe your guy will be okay with it. Maybe he'll even laugh, sing the commercial, and add a lewd meaning to the name of the product.

Come on, Frank, we laughed at these commercials at the time, and Campbell's was in on the joke. Did you really feel these commercials were bullying you to be more manly? In the culture of the 70s, masculinity was examined, questioned, and mocked. Meathead continually critiqued Archie Bunker's blustering macho on "All in the Family" — the #1 show on TV from 1971 to 1976. Lou Reed's "Transformer" came out in 1972. David Bowie was in his prime. I know a lot of your readers were not around in the 70s, but I was, and it was no barrage of unmediated messaging that men must be sterotypically masculine.

Bruni says that as a gay teenager, he was "wondering what claims on masculinity he really had." Why did you feel you needed "claim" anything at all? It was a rich culture, and everyone made fun of commercials, especially children's soup begging to be taken seriously.

I was a competitive swimmer, and while I hated it, I didn’t dare quit, as it felt like a retort to, and inoculation against, anyone questioning my maleness. Just before college I completed an Outward Bound course in the Oregon mountains, and my outsize pride was about how classically manly the adventure had been: no showers, no toilets, harsh weather, bland food.

Bland food? "Bland" is the "crooned" of this paragraph. Since when is bland food considered "classically manly"? And also, why shouldn't young Bruni have felt proud and strong about his athletic and survivalist accomplishments? Why is that boy in the past exploited as weak and confused for the purposes of assailing a politician in the present? And why are all of the men of the present getting caught in the crossfire of an attack on the President?

Bruni proceeds to talk about how 2 of his friends say they "feel most manly" when engaging in some physical feat of strength. One remembered playing football. The other spoke of moving heavy tree limbs that had fallen on a hiking trail (which reminded me of the George W. Bush pastime, "clearing brush"). Bruni then purports to know — it's obvious — when Trump is feeling manly:

When does Trump feel the most manly? That’s pretty obvious: when he’s salivating over women and styling himself some conquistador of the flesh, as he did repeatedly with Howard Stern and on one infamous occasion with Billy Bush. When he’s belittling and emasculating rivals (“Liddle Marco,” “low-energy Jeb”), as he did throughout his campaign. When he’s vowing vengeance against the House Freedom Caucus, as he did last week. When he’s surrounding himself with generals. When he’s pledging huge increases in military spending while moving to starve wonky research and the arts.

Whatever you think about these aspects of Trump's behavior (and how Bruni puts them into words), we don't know if he really feels manly doing these things. Even Bruni seems to be implying that Trump — like Bruni's remembered version of teenage Bruni — is confused and afraid that the world might see that he is not what he thinks of a truly manly. And Bruni even takes that shot at him. Bruni bullies Trump as not masculine enough:

I think Trump protests too much, distracting us from other traits. He abhors handshakes: all those icky germs! He gilds and swirls his hair. Those white crescent moons under his eyes suggest time spent wearing goggles during artificial tanning sessions. The Marlboro Man got his sun on the range, not in the salon.

There are plenty more things about Trump that read as stereotypically feminine. Many of his hand gestures and vocal inflections and gushing descriptions of people and places feel feminine to me.

But like all of us, Trump is a mixture of traits, including traits formed within a culture that is presented and imperfectly understood in terms of masculine and feminine. What's important, I think, is for individuals to find a way to live a good and satisfying life. There are infinite possibilities, and the expression of sexuality and gender are probably going to be a part of it. I don't see how impugning masculinity is any more ethical and helpful than impugning femininity.

You may hate Trump, but don't use him as a weapon to attack masculinity. Masculinity doesn't deserve hatred. Find your own mix of masculinity and femininity and respect your own individuality and the individuality of others.

"... limp, dispiriting yam dumplings... [in] a lukewarm matsutake mushroom bouillon as murky and appealing as bong water."

Insulting the chef, big time, it's Pete Wells in the NYT, knocking the fancy-ass restaurant Per Se off its 4-stars.

Don't miss the slide show. Keep in mind that the restaurant folk posed for these NYT photographs with no idea what was going to be in the text. It lends an intriguing subtlety to their smarmy smiles. The buttery softness, served cold, is rubbery and and hilariously flavorless.

Making Belgian Booyah the Wisconsin state soup."

"This bill will designate Belgian Booyah the state soup as a way to honor Wisconsin's Belgian heritage and celebrate Booyah's ability to bring Wisconsin communities together."

I have never heard of Belgian Booyah, but apparently it's a northeast Wisconsin thing (and sold at Lambeau Field restaurants). It's fine with me if a state has a soup, and even if the soup is associated with a subsection of the state that's not mine, especially since it's a part of the state that really needs soup.

Here's some background on Belgian Booyah, with photos and a recipe that looks good, replete with short ribs and chicken thighs.

ADDED: Does any other state have a soup? Is there any other soup that might be considered the Wisconsin soup? I've seen beer cheese soup.

"Bone Broth, 2015’s First Official Food Trend..."

"... Mapped."

"When did the spiritual life become just another trapping of 'lifestyle' — an urgency not at the heart of the good life but of la dolce vita?"

"As one telling example, the protagonist of Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Eat, Pray, Love' — Julia Roberts in the 2010 movie — seeks fulfillment and happiness though prayer, yes, but amplified by world travel, pizza and a hot romance with a Brazilian businessman. It's spiritual quest as spa treatment for the soul."

The opening of a book review for "My Bright Abyss," by Christian Wiman, who, we're told, "does not fall for the sops he sometimes finds in contemporary Christianity, which too often promotes 'a grinning, self-aggrandizing, ironclad kind of happiness that has no truth in it.'"

So, okay, he doesn't "fall for the sops" he sees in people he insults, but does he fall for any sops?

What is a "sop" anyway? The OED tells us "sop" begins as "A piece of bread or the like dipped or steeped in water, wine, etc., before being eaten or cooked." Later, it becomes, as used above, "Something given to appease or pacify the recipient; a bribe." The etymology of the word connects it to "soup."

A "sop" can also be a person: "A dull or foolish fellow; a milksop" or "A person or thing thoroughly soaked or steeped in some way." The OED offers this quote from Shakespeare's "Richard III" : "Chop him into the malmsey But in the next roome... Oh excellent deuice, and make a sop of him."

Malmsey?

A rich and sweet wine brought to England from Greece in the 16th century, Malmsey is now produced on the island of Madeira. Shakespeare writes about Malmsey in Love’s Labour’s Lost (5.2.240) and 2 Henry IV (2.1.36), but the most famous reference to Malmsey in all of literature can be found in Richard III, when Richard orders the execution of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. Richard’s hired assassins decide to drown Clarence in a large cask (butt) of the brew. When they arrive at the Tower of London to carry out the task, the unsuspecting Clarence asks for a cup of wine. The Second Murderer offers this ghastly retort: “You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon” (1.4.153).

So here's some wine to go with your pizza and hot romance, you inferior, grinning, self-aggrandizing, ironcladdedly happy religionists.

This dog whistle whistles both ways.

"New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd set the Jewish political community on fire [Sunday] with a column about the Republican ticket's foreign policy proposals that, according to her critics, peddled anti-Semitic imagery," reports Politico.

You know all the racist things Republicans are always saying, as seen by Democrats? It's like that.

"Maureen may not know this, but she is peddling an old stereotype, that gentile leaders are dolts unable to resist the machinations and manipulations of clever and snake-like Jews," Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic columnist and leading journalist on Israeli issues, wrote.

Snake-like... because the title of the article is "Neocons Slither Back." Dowd may not write the headline, and though she does use the word "slither" in her text, she's quoting Paul Wolfowitz, and he was saying that Obama shouldn't be allowed to "slither through" without having to take — Dowd's words here — "a clear position on liberals."

Dowd proceeds to say "Republicans are bananas on this one." Of course, if a Republican said Obama was bananas, that Republican would probably be accused of racism, because bananas remind us of monkeys, and the monkey is an animal that is associated with some racist iconography, and it's assumed that anything you say about the President is said while thinking about his race — which makes it conveniently/absurdly dangerous to criticize the President.

"I'd rather see a movie that helps me be a nicer person, not a sharper arguer."

Writes Chip Ahoy (in the comments to the thread about the "Obama's America" movie). I thought this was a nice topic, this topic of niceness.

Is there some movie that could help Chip Ahoy be a nicer person? The answers don't need to be Chip Ahoy specific. I'm wracking my brain trying to come up with a movie that oriented me toward greater niceness. I can think of movies that might help you become a better person, but it's usually in the sense of becoming bolder, more independent, more resolutely opposed to evil and oppression. But nicer? Can you think of a movie in which the central character, someone you identify with, is especially polite and the politeness isn't basically something he must overcome in order to succeed.

A-ha! The answer: Every Shirley Temple movie.

At the Hot Soup Café...

... you can hang out all night.

At the Cream-of-Mushroom Café...

... I'm sorry, we're closed.

(Enlarge for the soup, etc.)

At the Soup & Frites Café...

... it's all about comfort.