In which I speak largely, but not entirely, about food*

[philena]

It's hot here in Berkeley, by which I mean that Daniel and I put on sunscreen and sunhats, and I briefly debate wearing a skirt to bare my legs, before deciding it might get drafty, and instead wear jeans, and we eat outside on the street when we have lunch at cafes and in the shade it's a toss-up as to whether I want a hot or a cold drink. That's what hot in Berkeley means, and I like it! I also like that it's iced tea weather, (unless the door is open and the breeze is enough to warrant warm tea, which we do at least one a day,) and Daniel is fighting the demon that is caffeine addiction, which means that once a week or so he'll stop drinking tea, fight off the caffeine headache, and the next day decide that he's cured and start drinking tea again. I have no such qualms and allow myself to be addicted continuously, which requires so much less thinking about how many cups I've had in the last day and when my last headache was. Therefore I am now drinking a concoction that is brewed iced tea, leftover fruit tea, and the dregs of our frozen berries, all stewing in the refrigerator for a few days and now poured over ice with a spoonful of sugar and half a wedge of lemon. It is fabulous.

In other news, Daniel and I have got a chunk o' salmon in the freezer and don't really know how to cook it, because our broiler doesn't work very well. Suggestions, anyone? We also went to the grocery store today, and in our choices of cauliflower colors we saw white, green, and yellow, but not purple. Normally there is purple, so we were quite distraught at having to choose a different hue. Rombauer says that there is no real difference in flavor, and we have found that to be the case, but it's so much more fun to look at if it's pretty!

And now, on the cushion of our everyday life, I will mention the book I am reading now that I have finished Foucault's Pendulum, (by far Umberto Eco's most disappointing work yet): Alexander Solzhenitzen's The Gulag Archipelago, which is not only chilling, but possesses some pages of masterful prose**, in particular a short essay-ish section of the chapter on arrests, describing why no one resisted, screamed for help, tried to escape. Those who did could succeed: one man jumped out the back window and ran away to a different province, where he lived comfortably and unmolested under his own name and identity; another woman, in the early days of the arrests, was taken on a busy street, where she held onto a lamp-post and screamed, and such a huge crowd gathered that the agents ran off. She then unfortunately did not take advantage of her freedom and flee, but went home again where she was captured in the middle of the night. But, says Solzhenitzen, this here is evidence that those forces were not unstoppable. If people had banded together, barricaded their corridors and fought off the arresting officers with broomsticks and chair legs, if they had ripped the tires or stolen the Black Marias, the cars that prowled the streets and carried people off to detention centers, the programs would have collapsed and failed. The success of the arrests sprang not from any innate quality of the government organization, but from the innate quality of the people, whose only response to "You're under arrest," was "Who, me? What for?" and the following assured belief that this was a mistake, that as long as you didn't make trouble everything would be sorted out.

I'm past that section now, and have just finished the chapter on the interrogations, where the prose becomes less eloquent and more brutal, and it's a horrible combination of too terrible to read and too terrible not to read. Solzhenitzen understands this, of course, and every so often mentions how people change the conversation when the talk veers in the direction of this subject. "Oh, let's not talk about the canal digging," "Let's not talk about Kolyma," "let's not talk about this/that/anything so horrible." But then there's nothing left to talk about. He quotes a proverb, something like, "Those who look at the past lose an eye; those who do not look at the past lose two eyes," and it certainly seems almost obscene to be reading about what happened then in the comfort of a sidewalk cafe in Berkeley, with the sun shining and food at my fingertips, well-dressed, content people everywhere around, stores selling unnecessary luxuries, and gardens bursting with flowers off every side street.

My reaction to this is, I am sure, nothing new, and my description of it is nothing original, and normally my attitude towards such over-worn essays is one of disdain: "Oh, please, we've heard it before, don't bother us with your attempt at eloquence." The fact that I am descending to such an attempt myself perhaps conveys the impact of this book, and I feel that I am about to enter a very disturbing phase in my reading. Next to come are One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Kolyma Tales before I'm done. I might even throw in Anne Applebaum's history of the Gulag as well.

On the couch, Daniel chuckles loud and often next to me as he reads Chekhov's comic works.

*Or thought I would when I started writing this

**Daniel and I looked it up in the OED, and as far as we can tell there is no appreciable difference between masterful and masterly. Both, in meaning 1, mean imperious and domineering, while in meaning 2, masterful means possessing the skill to command and masterly means possessing a skill at some craft. In meaning 3, however, masterful also means possessing a skill at some craft, and masterly means the main lode in a mining shaft. Therefore, I reject all false distinctions in meaning and use whichever one euphony requires.

Comments

[hythlae.livejournal.com]

there are little jars of garlic sauce in the stores. salmon tastes wonderful when cooked with that. all you do is smear the sauce on the non-skin side of the salmon and cook it on both sides over medium flame in a saucepan greased with olive oil. An alternative to the sauce is just plain garlic and butter and maybe some lemon. really, you can't go wrong with salmon. when the flesh gets flaky, it's done.

[philena.livejournal.com]

Ahhh--in a saucepan! That was something we had not considered. Thankies.

[annabananaface.livejournal.com]

I would do whatever The New Basics told me to with the Salmon. I shall be happy to look tomorrow and tell you what is says at some more reasonable hour.