Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

260 Pages·2006·3.37 MB·English

by  Doris Friedensohn

EATING AS I GO
D
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EATING AS I GO
D
SCENES FROM
AMERICA AND ABROAD
Doris Friedensohn
Photographs by Carol Kitman
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by
a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2006 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
10 09 08 07 06 1 2 3 4 5
Maps by Alex Thor at the University of Kentucky Cartography Lab.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedensohn, Doris.
Eating as I go : scenes from America and abroad / Doris Friedensohn ;
photographs by Carol Kitman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-2402-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8131-2402-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9164-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8131-9164-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Food—Anecdotes. 2. Travel—Anecdotes. 3. Cookery, International.
4. Friedensohn, Doris. I. Title.
TX357.F75 2006
641.3—dc22 2006012095
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
For Eli
Elias Friedensohn, 1924 –1991
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
Part 1. Delicious Acts of Defiance
Yom Kippurs at Yum Luk 11
A Kitchen of One’s Own 13
Marriage Mexican Style 18
Dinner Party Protocols 23
The Penultimate Passover 28
Buddhist Delights 32
Thanksgiving in the Garden of Eden 37
Part 2. Crazy Salad
Eat (Ethnic)! Eat (American)! 43
Opakapaka and Poke, Too 78
Kitsch Ethnic 90
Kimchi Pride 96
Part 3. A Global Appetite
The Real Senegal 117
The Politics of Couscous 119
The Best Cheese in the World 130
A View from the Fortress Polana 136
Dal Bhat at Pharping 147
Schloss Leopoldskron 150
Chapulines, Mole, and Four Pozoles 158
Georgia on My Mind 171
Cheesecake 182
Part 4. Cooking for a Change
Graduation 191
Industry Rules and Ethnographic Angst 193
The Lord Is His Shepherd 196
Burned 200
Perfectionist 202
The Way to a Woman’s Heart 204
Volunteer Chef 207
Intern 209
Training and Changing 211
Part 5. Eating Alone
How Do You Eat? 217
My Own Muertos 219
When Chopsticks Are Not the Problem 224
Sundays at Whole Foods 228
The Moon in My Dining Room 231
Salad Days and Nights 237
Happy Market 242
Epilogue: My Book of Maps 247
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“More vinegar, please,” my husband, Eli, scrawled on the pages of some early
sketches for this book. Be real, he meant. Show the underside of adventurous eating
along with the thrills. If only he had lived to see where his advice and love have pro-
pelled me.
This project dates back twenty years and encompasses a wide and varied ter-
rain. It’s a pleasure to acknowledge many debts I have incurred along the way. My
agent, Cecelia Cancellaro, believed in this project and found the right home for
it. Joyce Harrison, editor in chief of the University Press of Kentucky, has enthu-
siastically supported the book I wanted to write; she has been a source of good
cheer at every stage of the process. Jena Kim brought sweet order to my files and
much-needed technological savvy. Donna Bouvier, my discerning copyeditor,
turned the final round of editing into a very smooth ride.
In the mid-1980s, grants from the New Jersey Department of Higher Educa-
tion to the Garden State Immigration History Consortium and to Jersey City
State College (now New Jersey City University) supported my first efforts to ex-
amine how Americans eat. The result was an exhibit, Eat! Eat! Food as Family and
Cultural History, produced in collaboration with photographer Carol Kitman. I
thank Carol for a year of indefatigable eating-and-working and for many years of
food-enlivened friendship. Carol’s photos from the 1987 exhibit add luster and
connecting links to the stories recounted here.
Several pieces, revised for this volume, have been published elsewhere. Earlier
versions of “Yom Kippurs at Yum Luk,” “The Politics of Couscous,” “Buddhist
Delights,” and “The Penultimate Passover” appeared in People of the Book, edited
by Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1996). A version of “A Kitchen of One’s Own” appeared in Through
the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cooking,
edited by Arlene Voski Avakian (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). And a version of
“Chapulines, Mole, and Four Pozoles” appeared in Pilaf, Pozole and Pad Thai:
American Women and Ethnic Food, edited by Sherrie Inness (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 2001). In addition, shorter versions of “A View from the
Fortress Polana” and “Georgia on My Mind” appeared in Women on Campus
(Jersey City State College, Spring 1995 and Fall 2004 respectively). Ideas for
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Opakapaka and Poke, Too” were tried out in “As Good as It Gets: Working in a
Liberated Zone,” The Academic Forum 8, no. 1 (1999), published by New Jersey
City University. Parts of “The Real Senegal” and “The Politics of Couscous” first
appeared in “L’étrangers: Two (Food) Tales from the 1970s,” Radcliffe Culinary
Times 8 (Spring 1998).
Fulbright lectureships to Tunisia (1978–79) and Portugal (1987) gave me
the leisure to explore two vibrant cuisines; they also provoked a heightened self-
consciousness about eating as an American abroad. Sabbatical leaves from Jersey
City State College during 1990 and 1996 provided time for writing and lecturing
abroad. Casa Don Miguel, an artists’ retreat in Patzcuaro, Mexico, offered me a
tranquil month (November 2000), which I devoted mostly to practicing my
Spanish and savoring the Casa’s cooked-to-order Mexican meals. On three sepa-
rate occasions, I had the good fortune to spend time at the Salzburg Seminar’s
Center for the Study of the United States. I am grateful to Ronald Clifton, who
directed the center, and his wife, Gwili, for extraordinary hospitality over the years
and for making those visits so rich and companionable.
In the early 1990s, Joy Oh and Christine Lordi began introducing me to
their favorite Korean food markets and restaurants. I thank them for this ongoing
education and especially for their appetite for friendship.
Chefs James Bulger and Robert Brown at the Community FoodBank of
New Jersey’s Food Service Training Academy opened their program to me and
opened themselves as well. I am grateful to them, to other staff members, and to
the many students (some identified by their first names, others by pseudonyms)
who cheerfully tolerated a nosy visitor in their kitchen.
I have a large, food-loving family, and many of its members appear in these
pages. My parents, Bess and Joe Platzker, would not have followed where my ap-
petites led. But they would have appreciated these reports from near and far as my
way of doing American studies and being an American in the world. Shola Frie-
densohn and Adam Friedensohn are sources of joy, wisdom, and excitement in
my life. I relish sharing meals and swapping food tales with them and with Hal
and Debbie Platzkere, Lin Lerner, Laura Baum, Sapana Shakya, Marsha and Cy
Worby and their splendid clan, and the youngest generation of eager Friedensohn
eaters: Tara, Emily, Sonam, and Rahula.
Although writing is a solitary activity, eating is an endlessly sociable subject.
Everybody has an opinion about my eclectic palate and the connections between
eating, travel, and self-knowledge. Readers of these sketches question my food
passions and fears, my political correctness as an eater, and the particular stories
ix