those who were seen dancing

Richmonders! And other people who don't know Chicago or Italians!

I need to tell you about giardiniera.* It is, I truly believe, Chicago's greatest contribution to the world. If you haven't tried it, that's okay. I will make you some or bring you some or... something. It's particularly fantastic on pizzas and sammiches. In fact, my longstanding problems with tomato-sauce pizza are all pretty much about the fact that most of it does not contain giardiniera.

Seriously. You want some.

* Someone needs to add some citations to that Wikipedia article!

Now and then, something will remind me that I'm a poor excuse for a Southerner. For instance! I did not know what pimento cheese was. Is. My not-knowing is in the past, but the cheese is in both the past and the present.

It's made out of mayonnaise, shredded cheese (usually sharp cheddar) and those tasty little peppers people stuff in green olives.

I tried to find out something about its history, in part because I'd love to have my theory confirmed. My theory being: someone wanted to make ham salad, but had no ham. And it was snowing. But! They had a block of cheddar cheese. I think the stuff tastes just like ham salad would if it were made of cheese and not ham.

There isn't much of a history on the internet, but it is definitely an Official Southern Thing. They serve it at the Master's Tournament. They also serve it, handmade by my very own roommate & Richmond's finest cheesemonger, at the local organic grocery.

If I'm not crazystressedoutOMG, I tend to be a pretty intuitive eater [There are exceptions. My dad buys this cheesy jalapeno dip that I'll eat in massive quantities though it has no redeeming nutritional value & really doesn't help my mental health, either.]. It manifests as insistent demands from some inarticulate part of my mind - not my stomach, really.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with that bit (let's call it the central nervous system for lack of a better phrase) an hour or so after my wholesome vegan lunch. It went like this:

CNS: BRING ME CHEESE. AND BREAD.
Me: We just had lunch! I mean, yes, I feel vaguely grumpy and de-energized. But...
CNS: CHEESE. BREAD.
Me: These pumpkin seeds are kinda the same thing.
CNS: NO.
Me: Look, we're working. This is irritating. Do you want cafeteria cheese?
CNS: EW. YUCK.
Me: What???
CNS: WHOLE FOODS. ONE OF THOSE LITTLE SAMPLE-SIZED CHEESE PIECES.
Me: Are you kidding? You want some wine with that?
CNS: NO. IT'S AFTERNOON.
CNS: BUT A POMEGRANATE TEA MIGHT BE NICE...

I did in fact feel quite good after that; the pomegranate tea was nice, too. But it's strange to be having such a specific conversation with one's hindbrain.

I think I just ate magic Indian soup. It's just tomato soup, but took like an hour to make.

However.

So, yesterday I was sick enough to merit working from home, though I made it to dance practice just fine. This morning I woke up with no voice & decided against the working & in favor of the home bits of that sentence. Even the process of cooking and smelling this soup made me start to feel less cruddy, and the soup itself opened my sinuses without being even as spicy as my dad's chili. I feel almost normal!

Magic soup! ( Make your own! )

I just made the second best pancit I've eaten in my life. And I grew up on Norfolk naval base, so I have eaten a lot of pancit. The best pancit evah? Made by a place in the food court at Waterside. No, really.

Anyhow. Pancit always makes me think about this. About half of my friends until they booted me out of public school in 3rd grade were half-Asian. Half-Filipino, half-Korean, half-Samoan, half-pretty-much-anywhere-there-was-a-US-naval-presence. It wasn't until like college that I realized that was one seriously complicated racial situation, naval housing. Military housing is where the blue-collar folk live. All these boys who join the Navy in their teens, travel around the world, meet exoticised Asian women, bring them home and have cutting-edge (given that you couldn't take a non-white warbride home until the sixties or seventies or something) multi-racial families while retaining pretty conservative working class views on the world.

The military is interesting like that. I wonder how much of my own perspective is colored by growing up with normal being... you know, that.

Of course, at the time, I was FIVE. So what I knew was that all my friends' moms, unlike mine, could cook. They made pancit and lumpia for kids' school things - white people dig pancit. Even my non-cooking midwestern mom picked up a few Filipino recipes.

( recipe for second best pancit, in case you're interested )

This is intriguing: [don't read if lists of people's food are painful reading for you] incendiaryfood. I'm torn. The idea is that one logs one's food for a handful of days. Particularly if one is fat. Without changing habits or anything, just reporting.

I have this salmon w[W?]ellington at home that I bought on impulse at the Crap Ukrops that turns out to have an Awesome Seafood Counter Guy (and argggghh, lobsters). And I'd like to write about that, or about the fabulous Greek yogurt, croissant and cherries [in winter!] I had at breakfast. Then I'd also have to report my new thing as of today, where I bring really really good quality junk food (you know, organic chocolate, dried cow that was treated nicely before someone offed it, smooshed fruit) to the office so that I can still eat constantly in an office filled with sugar but not eat crap that makes me feel blechky and uncooperative later.

It's pretty easy to grasp a theme there, the massive class privilege of everything I eat. Even the meatball sub I had at lunch was at the posh Arby's behind Wilderness Office Park. The classism of my food is nothing new, though. Nor is it something I fail to remember on a daily basis; I know I eat privilege. I keep hot women around to make fun of my pink lady apples for just that purpose.

I like the this is what I eat. so? aspect of food logging for no diagnostic or dietary change purpose. If nothing else, just experiencing it exposes you to all the self-flagellation that's right on the tip of practically anyone's tongue when food comes up.

But. Isn't that like my food privilege? Or my weird thing with potatoes? I mean, don't we already know that? I think I'm trying to put it in a context of radical activism, and while there's some of that, it's probably more about analysis and introspection.

Still, I present the project for your reflection. Does it make you think?