Commonplace book, 1+2

12Sep11

(Yes, I know that posting quotations is why God invented Tumblr. But I’m still miffed at how Tumblr defaults to requiring readers to have a proprietary login in order to comment. And yes, I know you can change that default but almost no one does.)

But first, housekeeping in three parts. I’m giving a reading next month in Cambridge, and you should come; the fantastic youth writing org. 826 Boston is raising $15,000 so inner-city kids can learn to express themselves, and you should help; my karate dojo has started yoga classes on Tuesdays (vigorous) and Sundays (yin), and you should join me there.

1. Virginia Woolf, diary, Nov. 10, 1917, after a party:

“The usual people were there, the usual sensation of being in a familiar but stimulating atmosphere, in which all the people one’s in the habit of thinking of, were there in the body.”

2. My CSA last week gave us onions, green peppers, and celery, no carrots. So I thought of New Orleans cuisine(s) and turned to the great John Thorne, who has what seems the right mindset for regional cooking: After a discussion of why a menu designed for the original Creole cookbook to be economical costs a fortune today, he writes, “If we wish to understand their inherent economy, we must reimagine what a good Creole cook would do when confronted with our larder… and our appetite… today.”

Serious Pig, p. 232 in the pbk.:

“The Creoles, of course, are not the only French in Louisiana; the Acadians—the Cajuns—are there, too. Creole and Cajun cooking have much in common, which is not surprising. What is interesting is the subtle but distinct manner in which they stand part. The common explanation for this difference is that the Creoles were wealthier than the Cajuns, more cultured, more attuned to culinary finesse.

“This is so and also not so. The Creoles, many of them, struggled to keep up an appearance of gentility that their means were increasingly unable to support, while the Cajuns, though long poor in coin, had the advantage of the naturally abundant culinary resources of the Louisiana bayous. If you discount the cooking of the true Creole elite and the elaborate preparations of Creole restaurants and consider only la cuisine Créole à l’usage des petits ménages, you’ll find the Cajun cook as artful in the kitchen as any of her Creole sisters.

“What, then, is the difference? Well, there is more to a cuisine than the taste of its dishes: the imagination has its hunger, too. People who eat the same food may still conceive it in very disparate contexts and taste it accordingly…. while the Cajuns eat and smack their lips and think themselves fine fellows for making a feast out of what the servants of the plantation house up the road toss to the pigs, Creoles taste and then sigh for a past when such meals were an act of virtue as much as of necessity. The Creole cook must create the illusion that while things change, nothing has changed; for the Cajun, it is enough that today is today, and today is good.

“In short, the Cajun culinary world is one drenched in bright Louisiana sunlight, boisterous, noisy, and, despite its French accent, extraordinarily American; Creole culture, while it lasted, was self-consciously crepuscular—eternally waning, nostalgically clinging to an image of itself as not only forever French but remaining, in some mystical if vestigial way, part of France itself.”

xx
djd
p.s. Matt-L informed me that if I say my jambalaya is good but it isn’t, then I’m a… jambaliar.