Author: Mara L.

Yesterday, I saw the documentary “Food Inc.,” a take on ‘the way we eat’ in the US. An organic farmer discussed the pig-ness of the pig. Oh well. But his pigs certainly were rather lovely.

One point in the film made me quite nostalgic: the lack of seasons in today’s way of life. I used to have a seasonal mind-set. In my former life in Europe, the year would unfold: you move from oranges in the winter to the first strawberries in March, then you look forward to asparagus in April, to apricots in June, blueberries in July, grapes in September, minestrone in October, and walnuts in November. In the winter you eat game; but not in the summer. Salads divide up into winter salads, the hard and resilient kinds, like radicchio, and summer salads, the softer variants. And so on.

I once spent part of a winter in Venice, and practically lived on ‘winter salads’: in soups, in risotto, in pasta sauces, in the fillings of ravioli – they work everywhere, and they have the loveliest colors. The movie reminded me of this, for personal reasons, rather sad winter. I first spent time in Padua, where one can buy the most delicious game-poultry at that time of the year, and then I moved on to Venice, trying to finish a project and eating my way through the offerings of the cold city. All of this is now, that I’m pretty much here in Manhattan, a way of life of the past. That life comes with a kind of heavy-set traditional trot through the year, not unlike traditional holidays, and large family celebrations. But it’s also charming, and hard not to miss. Anyway, I continue to debate my whereabouts in terms of what to eat where.

As an architect, I find myself in a field almost free of theory. But many of my dear artist friends love theorizing. This has, in turn, made me think, and come up with a hypothesis: postmodernism has some kind of touristic appeal here in the United States.

Americans don’t really live in a culture of literati who – Gauloise in hand – happily explain everything (imperialism, gender, the world soccer championship) in a series of ‘-isms’. They haven’t grown up reading the 19th century novels where a student in Paris lives in a chambre de bonne, reads Marx and Nietzsche and so on (today, Foucault would have to be added), loses his parent’s money, and drifts aimlessly into nothingness. Most European students face a moment of truth, when they recognize themselves as this cliché, around the age of 21 or so. And then they move on. But US students, fewer of whom seem to have a chance to adopt this mode of life in early youth, perhaps haven’t had enough of a chance to get sick of it. Anyway, that’s my psychological speculation. Some of them seem to be hit – much later – by a longing for the romanticisms of this kind of life. A dose of postmodernism is like a brief trip to Paris. The colors of the Jardin de Luxembourg, the street cafés, the wideness of the boulevards – wouldn’t it be nice to get away from it all and be another person there?

My artist friends would certainly hate the bluntness of it, but I hit on something that is, in its own way, just as refreshing: an ingenious web page that generates a new postmodernist essay on the fly every time you visit it, here.

The last couple of weeks involved a great discovery. America is the country of prunes and plums. I am stunned by the variety and quality – it feels as if every farmer here grows another kind. Each and every one I tried was fabulous. Of course, I’m a rather critical buyer. I know what to look for in plums. But since I started my baking-with-yeast project (here), I’ve discovered that there couldn’t be a better place for it. Every kind of plum and prune that I bought made a perfect filling for my little Alpine dumplings! And since they have such beautiful colors, I’ve started to also make little cakes with the plums on top.

This is a matter that goes right to my heart. It’s about my earliest experiences in the kitchen. My grandfather had a fruit orchard, where we all helped out in the summer picking the fruit. He had an almost professional kitchen (the amateur-chef personality runs in the family), and was continually cooking preserves while we kids brought in more supplies from the garden. My personal speciality were Reine Claudes, Green Gage Plum. I don’t really eat preserves, and accordingly don’t bother with it, though I guess I could make preserves while half asleep. Everyone in my family spends their summers throwing fruit and sugar into large pots and competing for the most beautiful colors and aromas (think: a little bit of Obstler can’t hurt). For preserves that look just right, see chez Pim’s webpage. What I liked most about the Reine Claudes is that you have to climb deep into the trees to harvest them, and that they have the most amazing green. Who would have thought that you can buy them in Manhattan!