When a blog announces proudly that it finally “has a twitter” – as if they accomplished some sort of feat – I usually become extremely cynical of said blog. It’s expected these days – which is probably why we didn’t even bother thinking about it a year ago.
But that was then and this is now. Like making your first pot of ramen on a hotplate in your freshman dorm, we proudly serve you the new @FoodCrypt.
Picture grabbed from here.
Tonight is burrito night the annual Latke vs. Hamantash Debate at the University of Chicago.
It’s free. At 7:30 p.m. in Mandel Hall, 1137 E. 57th St.
It’s a tradition where the hyper-educated make fun of Jews and Jewish food — but it’s ok cause some of them are Jews too. The set up is: which is better, the placki kartoflane latke, or the kolache hamantash? Professors then commence using their expertise to win the point and some laughs. It’s been going on for a long time and is enormously popular, if anticlimactic — the potato pancake-like latke always wins.
But it’s humorous, in an extremely high brow way.
Psychologists tell us that our states of soul make the world, not the world our states of soul; that, in Plato’s formula, latkes and hamantashen are good because we are Jewish, not that we are Jewish because they are good. You see the relativistic consequences of all that. If you think that economists attribute nasty motives to human beings, wait ’til you find out what psychologists believe.
In truth they all follow their false messiah, Freud, who was secretly in the pay of, yes, the Manischewitz people, who out of economic motives wanted to spread the appeal of their products beyond the Jews and turned to the psychologist for help. So Freud, for popularity’s sake, interpreted the latke, the male, Maccabean food, as in its circular forms symbolic of the male goal—I need not elaborate on this lascivious suggestion; and the hamantash—the joyous token of Esther’s success, the female triumph—he explained by means of its angularity, its pointiness.
Propriety forbids my going further.
— Professor in Social Thought Allan D. Bloom, “Restoring the Jewish Canon” (1981).
The most successful are the profs who jab at academia with the vigor of someone who carries serious doubts about the usefulness of pure scholarship. Austan Goolsbee, the now staff director and chief economist of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, was hilarious two years ago.
Recipes excerpted from “The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate” follow.
Do you like drinking? How about WINNING???
If you answered yes to both of those questions, we have THE contest for you. The first annual Foodcrypt holiday drink contest, to be exact!
The holiday season is nigh. Please share your glög, toddy, ‘nog and other “seasonal” drinks with us. Send them to submissions [at] foodcrypt.com by December 1.
Pending you don’t spec a 1926 Macallan in your hot toddy, we’ll do our best to try each drink and duly document the ‘contest’.
We have not thought of an award, but you’re welcome to come drink with us when we do this thing.
GOOD LUCK.
Quick plug for friends at InCUBATE who use a soup brunch to raise money for an artist grant. Diners choose from a list of applicants who should get the day’s proceeds. Food funds arts.
San Francisco chef Leif Hedendal cooks Sunday, Sept. 20. He’s got a website that makes his cooking look confusing and delicious. It should be interesting — he lists Lucky Dragons as a collaborator.
Sunday: eat at noon, lecture at 1 p.m. $10
An introduction to our newest Sunday Soup organizer, Jennifer Breckner
Cooking or baking can be a romantic gesture, a tool for seduction. It may encourage conversation, acting as a mediator between strangers. It is comfort and sustenance and history. My interest in cooking and baking was first influenced by my paternal grandmother Julia Ryznar Breckner’s ability to make the most humble and inedible ingredients appetizing–iceberg lettuce, for example. Her understanding that cooked and baked goods could be vessels to deliver one’s abundance of love and caring to others was also an inspiration.
Previously, my work as a cultural producer has included positions in Ohio as a gallery director, an assistant for the Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, and an independent curator, amongst others. In Chicago since 2002, I have expanded my interest in both non-object art that moves beyond the traditional gallery and concurrently in food, as a cook as well as in larger terms of its production and consumption. Currently, my research, and a potential future project, is focused on artists’ projects that utilize the meal. I am excited to work with the tireless, intelligent, enjoyable folks at InCUBATE on their innovative Sunday Soup Brunch program where my interests in food and art may come together in meaningful ways. Grants will be awarded the first week of each month.
InCUBATE’s worth supporting.
Hi everyone!
Today we’re starting this thing “we” named “foodcrypt”. We’ve sat around talking about making some sort of home for everything food related for just shy of two years now. We’ve gone through a ton of different names, discussed some weirdo concepts, and contemplated tumblrs, bloggers and other boring stuff.
So here we are, just saying WHAT THE HECK, let’s make a food blog already. Hope you stick around.
