Halloween Spending Expected To Rise

Pumpkins are more expensive this year. What isn't?

Now here's a scary thought. Despite the sorry state of the economy, consumers are expected to spend $5.8 billion celebrating Halloween this year. Is everybody crazy?

For generations, children in a variety of homemade and store-bought costumes have criss-crossed the streets of their neighborhoods on the night of Octobert 31st, begging for treats, and making a generally pro forma promise of tricks if they are denied. When I was young, the treats included apples, home-baked cookies, and homemade popcorn balls, along with many a lollipop and package of chewing gum. In today's more dangerous and litigious times, no homeowner I can think of would offer a trick-or-treater anything not store made and properly sealed. Hundreds of so-called "fun size" Snickers bars and Reese's Peanutbutter Cups, Smarties, Gummi-Worms, and whatever candy may be in fashion, are passed out to eager children jostling each other at the door. The convention in my area is, if the porchlight is on, trick-or-treaters are welcome. If the light is off, pass on to the next lit-up house. For several hours on Halloween night I hear children rushing by on the sidewalks outside, giggling and conversing among themselves. By 8:30pm, those children have disappeared, and after 10pm teenagers in makeshift costumes are making the rounds and making more than their share of noise. By that time, most of the porch lights are off and no one is answering doors. If an unknown adult in costume came to the door on Halloween, most people would call 911.

However, for reasons I will never understand, Halloween has become a big business holiday in recent years. Adults have embraced Halloween with a vengeance. Some speculate that this is because people need to let off steam during the long period without celebrations between the Fourth of July and the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year holiday period. Whatever the reason, the rise in adult participation in Halloween has had a variety of effects. For one thing, there has been an increase in crime related to Halloween. While children compete to amass candy treats, adults reach for the alcohol. There has also been a marked increase in spending for adult Halloween parties, many in restaurants, nightclubs, and resorts. Adult Halloween costumes are expensive, and many of them are pretty sexy, although celebrity masks have retained their appeal, as well. In fact, celebrity Halloween parties are on the rise, too, many on television. The cost of all this is staggering, nearly $6 billion in spending on what used to be a low-tech kiddie event. Some retailers hope to recover at Halloween some of the profits they used to rake in at Christmas.

I would have expected the bad economy to depress Halloween spending, but the opposite seems to be true. People looking for an escape from stress, and the fact that Halloween falls on a Friday in 2008, has led to more adult interest in Halloween celebrations. Costumes, decorations, cards, candy, party supplies-- Halloween costs consumers a lot, and more consumers than ever are ready to pay the price. I suppose they'll charge it to their credit cards and worry about the consequences tomorrow. Spooky, isn't it?

Historical Mystery Fiction-- Accuracy and Enjoyment

Ellis Peters didn't always maintain strict historical accuracy in her Brother Cadfael series, but she kept close enough to the historical truth to satisfy a large segment of the mystery reading public.

I love historical mystery stories, from Marcus Didius Falco solving crimes in 1st century Rome to Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther chasing down murderers in Hitler's Berlin. Historical mystery fiction is bound to contain inaccuracies and anachronisms, but too many inaccuracies spoil the fun. At least they spoil my fun.

Some historical mystery fiction authors are known for their historical accuracy. If Peter Tremayne's clerical heroine Sister Fidelma lives in a coed convent in 7th century Ireland, you can be sure this is true to the period. If Bernard Knight says that in cold weather his hero, Sir John de Wolfe (Crowner John) sometimes wore a linen coif on his head with a hat on top of it, then that's what noblemen of his position at the end of the 12th century wore. If Margaret Frazer's Dame Frevisse eats pottage because the word soup was not common usage in the 15th century, that is factual.

On the other hand, Ellis Peters did not always observe historical accuracy in her celebrated Brother Cadfael novels, which can reasonably be said to have started the boom in historical mysteries. For example, she didn't concern herself with the average lifespan of people in the 12th century when she made many of her active and vigorous characters people in their 60's and 70's, nor was life in 12th century England and Wales quite as sanitary as she made it seem. But those were choices, not ignorance. If anybody could conjure up the spirit of the early middle ages, it was Ellis Peters, and you don't have to read her novels with a dictionary at your elbow in order to know what is being discussed. If one of her characters wears a cotte or rides by an assart, the context provides the required enlightenment. So, too, Ellis Peters never felt the need to lecture her readers. If she needed to provide information about the latest events in the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud, she wove it seamlessly into her story. A courier would arrive at the Abbey and report to the abbott, or the Sheriff of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar, would have a conversation with Brother Cadfael in which he commented on the latest news of the war to reach Shrewsbury. Ellis Peters was a master storyteller who never let her research take over her narrative.

I think the real issue with historical accuracy in mystery fiction is how much is enough. The more remote the time period in which the story is set, the less you may know about what is appropriate for that time period and the more inaccuracies may slip by. On the other hand, a glaring anachronism, such as a mechanical clock in ancient Rome, sticks out like a sore thumb. However, a story set in the middle of the 19th century in England should be more accurate because the reader may be expected to know more about what did and did not exist at that time. At the moment, I am reading a novel called A Beautiful Blue Death, by Charles Finch, which is set in London in 1865. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between a hansom cab and a brougham. His hero wears a dinner jacket instead of a black tail coat and white bow tie to a formal dinner and ball, and after the dinner everyone lights up cigarettes. If I can easily find out that men in the Victorian era generally smoked cigars and pipes, not cigarettes, and that upper class women didn't smoke in public at all, why doesn't the author know that? I find that sort of inaccuracy aggravating. I am not supposed to know more than the author does. If I watched the Forsyte Saga on TV (or VHS or DVD), why didn't he? In fact, I'm so annoyed that I don't even care who killed Prudence Smith, upstairs parlormaid. If the author is not willing to observe basic historical accuracy, why should I care about his story?

The Hierarchy of Needs

If you ever studied psychology, or most social science disciplines, for that matter, you had to read about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that people have a number of needs that are organized in a kind of pyramid, with the most basic needs at the bottom, and the so-called "higher order needs," such as the needs for self-esteem and respect from others, and the need for self-actualization, at the top. In Maslow's view, people could not pursue higher order needs until their basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and safety, were satisfied.

This seems like such a simple idea that it makes you wonder why it took a man with a Ph.D. to tell us about it. Actually, this view of human motivation, called a humanistic view, has always been disputed by some people, but that's not the point. The point is, as more people have difficulties fulfilling these basic needs, even those of us who make charitable contributions are having to readjust our priorities for giving. An article in today's New York Times reports that institutions that address our higher-order needs, such as operas and orchestras, are bracing for a bad time.

A couple of nights ago, I got a call from a fund-raiser at the SUNY at Buffalo Law School (one of my alma maters), and I made a pledge to contribute. After I did this, I found myself wondering if it was the right thing to do. For years, much of my charitable giving went to educational and arts institutions, but during the past few years I have seen my pattern of giving shift. The agency that gets the most of my charitable dollars these days is the Food Bank of Central New York. It's important to me that it's a local agency, and I like the fact that they don't send me 8 1/2 by 11 inch envelopes filled with glossy brochures. This is a poor area, and there are plenty of food pantries that get supplies from the Food Bank of CNY. I could never contribute to all of them, so it's good to know that an agency like this can buy food economically on a bigger scale and help people in several upstate New York counties survive.

I started giving to Habitat for Humanity a long time ago, when I first saw former President Jimmy Carter and his wife swinging hammers at a Habitat project in New York City. If it was good enough for Jimmy Carter, it was good enough for me. Since then, he was won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I am still giving to Habitat. They were very effective at building and rebuilding houses after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. I'm glad to think that my contributions may have helped to get a few people out of FEMA trailers and into a house of their own. I like the fact that people who are chosen to receive Habitat houses work on their own houses and on houses for other people, as well. And I also like the fact that they have to buy the house, even if it's by way of an interest-free mortgage.

Another one of my favorite charitable institutions is Doctors Without Borders. This international humanitarian organization (consisting of 18 European countries and the USA) provides urgent medical care to people in many countries where there are wars, epidemics, or natural disasters. One thing I especially like about this agency is that it doesn't confine itself to helping people in countries where there is oil or some other natural resource that is of interest to first-world countries. Doctors Without Borders has an international staff that partners with local medical personnel to treat people's injuries and illnesses and try to prevent disease and the health effects of poverty and malnutrition. In 2007, the USA branch of Doctors Without Borders raised over $150 million in contributions, and I'm glad to be a part of that effort.

What I am trying to get at is that I find myself making hard choices these days about where to donate money. Of course, I also have my eye of the list of charitable contributions I can present to the IRS, but, assuming I am going to donate a certain amount in 2008, who's going to get it? How do you choose between, for example, the Metropolitan Opera and Remote Area Medical, a group of volunteer physicians, nurses, and other medical experts who provide free care to a lot of uninsured or underinsured people right in the USA, as well as internationally? More and more, I have been giving to the people who minister to the needs that are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, but I feel bad about the other worthy institutions that I have eliminated from my list.

Two important donations that I still have to make before the end of the year are to the local libraries in Fulton and Oswego. I consider the Oswego Public Library to be my "home library." I borrow books from Oswego and also from other libraries in the North Country Library System via inter-library loan. I love the fact that the Oswego library has hours that make it easily accessible to many people in the community and that they provide services that people need and use, including a great children's room and many computers for public use. I give to the Fulton Public Library to honor my mother, who used it faithfully for more than 60 years. In later years, when Mom's sight had deteriorated, we used to look there for large-print books, and now I specify that my contributions be used for that purpose. To me, reading is a basic need, and I think that helping libraries is a humanitarian activity. I'm sure my mother would feel the same way.

Iron Chef America Halloween Challenge

On Iron Chef America's Halloween broadcast on the Food Network, the secret ingredient was offal, which hereabouts we delicately call variety meats. I thought it was pretty sophomoric, but I suppose there was enough of the yuck factor to make it appropriate for Halloween. Personally, I'm sufficiently okay with liver, hearts, gizzards, and kidneys to not be turned off by such foods. The pig's trotters looked wonderful, in fact, and I would have loved to try Iron Chef Michael Symon's sweetbreads dish. However, I could have done without the duck's tongues and testicles and the chicken cockscombs. Besides, I didn't think the Halloween secret ingredient was challenging enough for the chefs (Michael Symon and Chris Cosentino). If I had been the Chairman, the secret ingredient would have been candy corn.

Just think of the challenge of trying to make gourmet dishes with candy corn. That's much more of a trick than making chocolate truffles with duck liver mousse filling. And the point would be to cook with candy corn, not make candy corn. Yes, I know, Martha Stewart has made her own Fig Newtons and Marshmallow Peeps, but that's not the challenge being offered in Kitchen Stadium on this occasion. Herewith, I offer my menu for the Iron Chef candy corn challenge, using products from the picture above:

Roasted candy corn salad with fresh green Jalapeno peppers

Candy corn pumpkin risotto

Chicken and candy corn fritters

Dilled candy corn bread

Chocolate candy corn pudding

I think this would be a wonderful feast (if a bit hard on the teeth), and it would be fun to see what various chefs would do with it. For example, I'm sure Iron Chefs Bobby Flay and Mario Batali would take completely different approaches to this menu. And wouldn't it be fun to see what Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto would come up with? Whose cuisine would reign supreme? Bon appetit!

The Sixpack Gourmet (1): Goldfish

Once upon a time, when I was young, there were no Goldfish. I mean Goldfish crackers, of course. As for the other kind of goldfish, I, like many children before and after me, brought a goldfish home in a plastic bag filled with water and tried to keep it as a pet. It died pretty promptly, as they always did. Of course, if I had had the slightest idea what was really needed to keep a goldfish alive, I might have done better, but I didn't.

But back to Goldfish crackers. The dictionary definition of a cracker is "a thin crisp wafer made of flour and water with or without leavening or shortening; unsweetened or semisweet." That covers a lot of territory, from your basic bland soda crackers, to hearty crispbread (Knäckebröd) made with whole grains, to sweetened, like graham crackers, to flavored, like Cheezits. Every cuisine has some kind of crackers, and American cuisine certainly has many, including the notorious Crown Pilot cracker used in chowder for decades in New England. Nabisco, the manufacturer of the Crown Pilot cracker, has tried to discontinue its production, only to be met with a huge uproar and a segment on Sixty Minutes. So the Crown Pilot lived on for a while, but it appears it has been discontinued again. I don't know what those poor Down-Easters are supposed to eat with their chowder, but that's their problem. I'm trying to get back to Goldfish.

The ancestor of the Goldfish is, in my opinion, the humble oyster cracker, which is a kind of soda cracker used in soup. I have fond memories of these crackers from my childhood. At any rate, the original Goldfish, made by Pepperidge Farm, tastes like an oyster cracker, but it is shaped like a tiny fish and baked. By this time, a couple of generations of little children have snacked on Goldfish, which now come in a variety of flavors, such as pizza, cheddar, and parmesan, and they can be tiny, small, or large, and even come in colors. I only like two flavors of Goldfish, original and pretzel. I mostly buy original, because Peterkin, my dog, doesn't like the pretzel flavored ones. He finds them too difficult to chew, and it's very disheartening to see him juggle one around in his mouth, spit it out, sniff it suspiciously, then sigh and turn away. Goldfish are my bedtime snack, and it is particularly upsetting to have Peterkin sighing when I'm trying to relax and get to sleep, so we only eat original Goldfish these days.

I suspect that a sociologist could discover interesting things about the United States by researching who eats what kinds and brands of crackers in which part of the country. Do you and your neighbors eat Ritz or Town House crackers? Do you eat Saltines or Zestas? Cheezits or Cheese Nips? Maybe I could interest you in a Triscuit? Do you want your crackers salted or unsalted? Are you into whole grain? Or maybe gluten-free is your preference. Whatever you want, you'll probably find a cracker to suit you, because this is America, the land of choice. Unless you want Crown Pilots, of course, in which case you're out of luck. But my favorites are Goldfish, which are eaten in their millions all over the country. Does that make me a Joe Sixpack? If so, I'll just have to plead guilty.

My Struggle With Scones

Cream tea, anyone?

I love scones, but I have no luck at all at making them. No matter which recipe I try, there comes a point when the dough is sticking to my hands and anything else in sight, and I can't seem to get them rolled out and onto a baking sheet. The other day, I was watching Ina Garten make scones on the Food Network, and I thought it was interesting that there was a convenient film splice between the lump of sticky dough and the nice, patted out disk of dough that she cut into pieces. Somewhere in that splice is my struggle with scones.

Scones are a type of quick bread, which basically means you use something other than yeast as a leavening agent, such as baking powder. The Scots are generally given credit for the scone, although the word itself may come from Dutch, or it may come from Gaelic; no one is quite sure. Early scones were probably made with oat flour and baked on a griddle, but there are dozens of basic scone recipes available, including many flavor variations. If you want to travel to San Francisco, you can participate in a Irish scone-making workshop. Whether the origin of the scone is Scottish or Irish, I would probably benefit from the workshop, because I might finally discover how to get that gooey dough off my hands and into the oven.

What better way is there to enjoy scones than a cream tea? A cream tea is a Devonshire variation on afternoon tea featuring, tea, scones, jam, and clotted cream, also known as Devonshire cream, which certainly sounds nicer. As far as I can tell, it is very similar to creme fraiche, which you can buy in the USA if you don't want to make it. Anyway, I wouldn't turn down a cream tea for any reason I can think of, but I'll probably have to buy the scones, unless I finally figure out how to make them myself without suffering grievous bodily injury. If I succeed, I'll let you know.

Favorite Lieder (2): Franz Schubert's "Im Frühling"

This lovely song by Franz Schubert was written in 1826 and published in 1828 (D 882).

If I had to choose my favorite Schubert song, this would most likely be it. There are so many beautiful songs by Schubert, but the text and music of Im Frühling have made a deep impression on me since I was a teenager.

The mood of the song is somewhat ambiguous. It is not a happy song, nor is it a sad song. The song embodies the emotion of Sehnsucht, which is the German word for longing, a key emotion of romanticism. The singer recalls a beautiful springtime experience and would like to have it back. The final stanza is not hopeful, but there is a kind of wistfulness and a bittersweet pleasure in the memory.

The music starts out simple and innocent, as the singer describes his springtime love encounter, then, at the end of the second stanza, the piano flows into a rippling, ecstatic interlude that then becomes the background for the singer's next two stanzas. There is a major change in music in mood with the fifth stanza, which recalls the changes wrought by time and conflict, then the rippling melody returns for the final stanza, a little damped down but as gentle and sweet as the memory. Some singers try to give the song a "happy ending" by raising their volume on the repetition of "Den ganzen Sommer lang," the final line of the singer's text. This does not correspond to the mood of the song. Just watch Fischer-Dieskau's facial expression and notice the little breath pause between "Und säng ein süsses Lied von ihr" and "Den ganzen Sommer lang." He knows it isn't going to happen, but the memory is beautiful.

You can see and hear baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore perform Im Frühling here.

Im Frühling

Still sitz' ich an des Hügels Hang,
Der Himmel ist so klar,
Das Lüftchen spielt im grünen Tal.
Wo ich beim ersten Frühlingsstrahl
Einst, ach so glücklich war.

Wo ich an ihrer Seite ging

So traulich und so nah,

Und tief im dunklen Felsenquell

Den schönen Himmel blau und hell

Und sie im Himmel sah.

Sieh, wie der bunte Frühling schon

Aus Knosp' und Blüte blickt!

Nicht alle Blüten sind mir gleich,

Am liebsten pflückt ich von dem Zweig,

Von welchem sie gepflückt!

Denn alles ist wie damals noch,

Die Blumen, das Gefild;

Die Sonne scheint nicht minder hell,

Nicht minder freundlich schwimmt im Quell

Das blaue Himmelsbild.

Es wandeln nur sich Will und Wahn,

Es wechseln Lust und Streit,

Vorüber flieht der Liebe Glück,

Und nur die Liebe bleibt zurück,

Die Lieb und ach, das Leid.

O wär ich doch ein Vöglein nur

Dort an dem Wiesenhang

Dann blieb ich auf den Zweigen hier,

Und säng ein süßes Lied von ihr,

Den ganzen Sommer lang.

(Ernst Konrad Friedrich Schulze [1789-1817])

German text with thanks from Emily Ezust's Lied and Art Songs Texts Page.

In the Springtime

I sit quietly on the hillside,
The sky is so clear,
A little breeze stirs in the green valley,
Where, once by the first ray of spring,
I was, alas, so happy.

Where I walked at her side
So intimate and so close,
And deep in the dark rocky pool
I saw the lovely sky so blue and bright
And saw her in the sky.

Look how the many-colored spring already
Peeps out of every bud and blossom!
Not every blossom is the same to me,
I want to pick from the twig
From which she picked!

For everything is the way it was then,
The flowers, the meadows;
The sun doesn’t shine any less brightly,
No less pleasantly swims in the pool
The blue reflection of the sky.

Only will and illusion shift,
Desire and conflict change,
The happiness of love goes away
And only love remains,
Love and, alas, the pain.

Oh, if I were only a little bird
There on the meadow slope,
Then I’d stay here in the branches
And sing a sweet song of her
The whole summer long.

(English translation © 2008 by Celia A. Sgroi)

The Other American Cheese

The other American food-- craft-brewed beer, artisanal cheese, and artisanal bread made with locally grown grain. How authentic can you get?

When I was a kid in Fulton, New York, my mother made us toasted cheese sandwiches quite often. A toasted cheese sandwich and a bowl of Campbell's cream of tomato soup was considered a very nice lunch. The sandwiches were made with Velveeta. Imagine my astonishment in middle age to discover that Velveeta is not considered to be cheese! The product that is called Velveeta is a "processed cheese food" made with cheese, milk, salt, preservatives, artificial colorings, and whatever else the company chooses to put into the mix. Velveeta is orange, because-- well, because someone thought it ought to be orange, just as many cheddar cheeses are orange, but "American cheese" can be white, too. It just isn't cheese in the strict sense because it contains additional ingredients that give it the texture and melting quality that the manufacturer wants. And that's what American cheese is all about. It may not taste like much of anything, but it melts beautifully in toasted cheese sandwiches, on top of a hamburger, or in macaroni and cheese, and that's what it is supposed to do. Americans love it. Kraft Foods, to mention just one manufacturer, sells millions of dollars worth of their cheese product every year.

So, if "American cheese" as I know it from my childhood isn't really cheese, is there any real American cheese? The answer is yes, more and more of it, and some of it is considered to be very good indeed. Ordinarily, you cannot say the words "big cheese producer" and "artisanal cheese" in the same breath, because artisanal cheese is not made in big batches. It is not a mass-produced product. However, a mass producer of cheese may also make an artisanal cheese. One example of this comes from the Cabot Creamery Cooperative in Vermont, which makes an aged, cloth-bound cheddar. Cabot describes this as "single breed, small batch cheddar." The cheese is cave-aged in Jasper Hill Farm's cellars. Jasper Hill Farm, located in Greensboro, VT, produces its own hand-made, raw-milk cheeses. Jasper Hill Farm cheese is made from cow's milk, but many sheep's milk and goat's milk cheeses are made in America, too.

At this point, perhaps I should explain what makes cheese "real cheese" and not "cheese food" or "processed cheese." Cheese starts with milk, which may be raw or pasteurized, which involves heating the milk to kill bacteria. Then the cheese must be curdled, which involves separating the milk solids from the remaining liquid, using a natural ingredient such as rennet. Remember little Miss Muffett eating her curds and whey? That's cheese solids(curds) and liquid (whey). The curds are separated from the whey and drained, then salted or seasoned and put into containers to give them a shape and pressed. After that, the cheese must be aged. The aging could range from a few hours for a fresh cheese, such as ricotta, to two years for Parmigiano Reggiano, to even longer. Cabot Creamery sells a cheddar that is aged for five years, for example. The aging gives the various cheeses flavor and texture, and that is what they are known for. "Real" fontina cheese doesn't taste like "real" swiss cheese or "real" cheddar cheese. What it comes down to is that real cheese consists of milk, the substance that curdles the cheese, and salt. It might also contain other natural flavorings, such as herbs. But that's it. And that's why Velveeta isn't cheese.

Artisanal cheese is specialty cheese made by hand in small batches. It is usually made using milk from a specific known producer, such as the milk produced on the farm where the cheese is made, which makes the product farmstead cheese. In the United States, artisanal cheese may be made from the milk of cows, sheep, or goats, and it may be made from milk of a specific breed of cows, sheep, or goats. Cheese has to be aged in a temperature-controlled room, and artisanal cheesemakers are now turning to cellar-aging or cave-aging to try to make a more authentic product. A number of cave- or cellar-aged cheeses are produced in Vermont. Lest you conclude that artisanal cheese is a Vermont kind of thing, artisanal, or hand-crafted, cheeses are made from Maine to Texas to California.

The manufacture of artisanal food products, from cheese to beer to bread, has grown in the United States in recent years because of the greatly increased interest in food and food culture and the fact that more people have had the chance to taste the "real thing" and want to have more. But the catch is that artisanal food products are not cheap. Making a food product by hand in small batches and, in the case of cheese, storing it during the aging process, takes time and money. At this point, one is not likely to encounter artisanal cheese at the local supermarket in Oswego, New York. Fortunately, we can buy industrially made cheeses that are real cheese (i.e., no "extra" ingredients or additives), just produced on a larger scale than artisanal cheese. They may not taste like the best artisanal cheeses, but they are several cuts above "American cheese" and much more reasonably priced than hand-crafted cheese. It might be a Cabot cheese or an Alpine Lace industrial cheese, but just look carefully at the label. If it says "processed," or contains ingredients you can't identify, it isn't real cheese. And hold onto your pocketbooks, because artisanal cheeses, local and imported, are becoming big business in the United States. So, dump the Velveeta and try some real cheese!

More Business at the Port of Oswego

This is a view from the pedestrian bridge over the Oswego River toward Lake Ontario. The Port of Oswego is on the right side of the picture, while a cement storage facility is on the left. The Oswego lighthouse is just visible in the center of the background. The photo was taken in June 2006 for the website http://www.city-data.com

Things are looking up at the Port of Oswego on Lake Ontario. According to Sen. Charles Schumer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has received $650,000 to perform much-needed dredging at the Port of Oswego, as part of a $6.5 million appropriation to the Corps for Great Lakes dredging. The removal of accumulated silt that is clogging the harbor will allow ships with heavier cargos to unload at the port. Now, a Canadian company is interested in developing Oswego as the only container ship port on Lake Ontario. Under this plan, large cargo ships would dock at the Melford Terminal in Nova Scotia and transfer their cargo containers to Great Lakes ships that would bring the containers to Oswego, where they would be distributed by rail and truck. According to the Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the Melford Terminal will be fully operational in 2011 or 2012, and Oswego may end up handling three cargos a week consisting of 600 containers. This would require some expansion of the current port facilities and create some new jobs, which is welcome news for the City of Oswego and Oswego County. Oswego County's unemployment rate is the fifth highest in New York State.

Recently, the mayor of Oswego announced that UniStar Nuclear Energy Corporation had submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a fourth nuclear power plant at Nine Mile Point in Scriba, New York, near Oswego. While not everyone is looking forward to yet another nuclear reactor on the shores of Lake Ontario near the City of Oswego, most local people are anxious for the jobs, including 4000 construction jobs, that this plant would bring. Some people find this willingness to have a fourth nuclear plant strange, but it's a genuine Oswego phenomenon.

Exotic Foods (2) Truffles and Morels

This black truffle from Perigord in France might not look like much, but good truffles sell for more than $500 a pound.

Chefs on the Food Network are always cooking with truffles and morels. A truffle is a wild, edible fungus that grows in some wooded areas, mostly associated with oak trees. The best truffles are either black, from Perigord in France, or white, from Tuscany in Italy. Naturally, both the French and the Italians claim superiority for their type of truffle, but both agree that, although truffles grow in other places, such as the USA and China, they are of inferior quality. Truffles can cost more than $500 per pound, so you can imagine that most home cooks have never laid eyes on one, much less cooked it. A morel is a mushroom with a long, conical, wrinkled cap on a thick stem. Sometimes the caps are a light reddish brown, while others are a very dark brown. Fresh morels can be found in some parts of the United States. I have only ever seen them dried in a little plastic bag. I have never eaten morels, but once I had a dish of angel hair pasta with sauteed vegetables that had a miniscule amount of white truffle shaved over the top. There was so little of it that I couldn't tell you what it tasted like, but the dish as a whole was delicious.




The truffle is surrounded by a jargon and culture similar to that of wine. Connoisseurs speak fluently of black truffles and white truffles, summer truffles and winter truffles, of the best way to slice or shave truffles, and what dishes to put them in. They also discuss their aroma, which is usually described as "earthy." Everyone seems to agree that white truffles have a stronger aroma than black truffles. Truffles are hunted, using a trained dog or female pig to sniff out the aromatic fungi. Dogs are preferred in Italy, while pigs are the hunter of favor in France. There does seem to be agreement that it's harder to get a newly discovered truffle away from a pig than a dog. As is the case with other sought-after wild mushrooms, such as morels, chanterelles, and cepes, the hunters keep their best patches secret and have been known to come to blows over disputed truffle ground. Surprisingly, both truffles and morels can be farmed. In fact, there is an internet site that gives precise instructions for propagating morels. No one seems to want to talk about this, no doubt because their price depends on their being rare and difficult to gather.



Truffles are available both fresh and preserved, often in bottles or little cans. Morels can be found fresh in various places in the United States, but most often they are found in the dried form. There is also a truffle oil that less wealthy cooks can use to give truffle flavor to a dish.

The cost and desirability of truffles has led to truffle fraud. Some people have concocted fake truffles, and Chinese truffles are sometimes given a darker color to pass them off as black truffles. The truffle has also given rise to a related industry, the truffle hunt for tourists, which is very popular in Tuscany. If you have the time and the money, and a taste for truffles and adventures, an Italian truffle hunter and his dog will take you out into the woods of Tuscany to search for white truffles.


This description could not be complete without mentioning the other kind of truffle, the one that doesn't cost a fortune and gives pleasure to many, the chocolate truffle. This is basically a chunk of chilled chocolate ganache roughly shaped into a sphere and dusted with cocoa powder. Of course, this basic recipe has been the subject of endless variation. One thing is certain, people may make pigs of themselves over chocolate truffles, but it doesn't take a pig to find them.

My Ups and Downs in Fantasy Tennis

Today, Andy Murray beat Roger Federer in the first semi-final at the ATP Masters Series tournament in Madrid. I can only describe my feelings as mixed. Roger Federer is my favorite tennis player, but I had Andy Murray on my fantasy tennis team for this week, so his victory was a good thing for me. After several weeks of disastrous results, two of my fantasy team were among the four players left in the semi-finals. That left my other guy, Gilles Simon (pictured), a very hot young player from France, to play the ATP's new number one player, Rafael Nadal, in the other semi-final, and, beyond my wildest dreams, he won.

I have been playing fantasy tennis on the ATP Tour website for the past three years. My first year was great. I fulfilled my goal of ending the season in the top 200 out of more than 12,000 competitors. Last year wasn't so good, and again this year I'm struggling, although I have not yet given up on my goal of ending the year in the top 500. After Murray's and Simon's victories today, my ranking is 643 out of 11,823 teams entered, with only two weeks left in the season, so you can see that I have an uphill battle. Nevertheless, I now have a lock on the title in this week's tournament, one of the biggest on the tour after the Grand Slams, so my ranking will be going up, no matter what.

The way the Fantasy Tennis game works is, you can choose 8 singles players and 1 doubles team for every week while the game is being played. My team is called Gremlins, because that was the only name I could think of when I registered to play the game. In 2008, it started on April 20th with the ATP Tour Masters Series tournment in Monte Carlo. Whatever prize money your players win during the tournament is credited to you, and the fantasy players who win the most prize money are ranked the highest. As of today, my team has won $15.068,757 for the season. The catch is that you can only use each player 5 times, so no matter how you try to manage your resources, by the end of the season most of the top 10 players are used up. Fortunately, there are always a few lesser-ranked players who turn out to have a very good year, like Argentine Juan Martin del Potro and Gilles Simon, who has done so well for me this week and those are the players I am relying on right now. Next week I have to cover three tournaments, in Lyon, St. Petersburg, and Basel, and then the last week of the season consists of only one tournament, the ATP Masters Series event in Paris. Don't ask me what players I'm going to choose for the coming week because the tournament draws are just being announced. Whoever they are, I just hope they have a good week.

The New Chic: Shopping with Coupons

In the good old days, ordinary people used to sneer about rich people sitting in their big houses clipping coupons. In those days, clipping coupons didn't mean what it does today. The reference was to coupon bonds, a kind of corporate or municipal bond that had little coupons that you cut off and took to the bank to receive your interest payment twice a year. Thus, people who clipped coupons were the idle rich, whose only labor involved clipping coupons so they could cash in on their inherited wealth.

Now, it seems, nearly everyone is clipping coupons, but the coupons in question are the ones from the newspapers and the internet that give people a discount when they buy certain products. In these days of rising prices, nearly any kind of discount seems to be a good deal. A couple of days ago, the New York Times published an article about a Connecticut coupon-clipping queen and how she fed her family economically using coupons. When the New York Times thinks its Whole Foods, green to the gills, audience needs a lesson in using coupons, you know the economy is in bad shape.

I think that practically everybody who shops must use coupons sometimes, and some people use them a great deal. There are tips and even online guides to getting the most out of coupons. The thing is, shopping with coupons works better for some people than for others. For one thing, if you shop at a discount supermarket, such as Aldi, you may get goods at a price lower than you can get them at other stores using coupons. Also, some stores double the face value of coupons, while others, such as Walmart, do not. But if the price of the item is cheaper at Walmart to start with, using the coupon elsewhere may be a false economy.

Then there is the question of what you can buy with coupons. Now that I am dieting and trying to eat healthier food, coupons for foods filled with refined sugar and preservatives are no good to me, and one thing that is never covered by coupons is fresh fruit and produce. Also, because I am shopping for only one person, coupons that require the purchase of more than two items are usually not any bargain for me. The exception is non-perishables, especially paper products, which I can store ahead. As winter comes, I seem to hoard toilet paper. No blizzard in Oswego, New York will ever find me with an extra roll or two. And finally, there are the big dollars-off coupons for things that you can never find when you go to the store. The store has every variation on the product in question except the one covered by the coupon, so you're out of luck.

I have to admit, I'd rather be clipping the old kind of coupons rather than grocery store coupons, but with prices as high as they are, I'll clip the "ordinary" coupons whenever I can.

Favorite Popular Songs (1): "God Bless America"

Kate Smith, who sang "God Bless America" countless times while she toured the country selling U.S. War Bonds during World War II.



I'm not one of those gung-ho, wrap yourself in the flag, "America, love it or leave it" types, but I love to listen to Kate Smith sing "God Bless America." Beloved as America's unofficial national anthem, "God Bless America" was written in 1918 by Irving Berlin. Berlin, who allegedly did not think much of the song, updated it in 1938, and Kate Smith, one of America's most popular singers, first sang it on the radio in the same year. In a country already anticipating being drawn into World War II, "God Bless America" was an enormous success, and Kate Smith was identified with the song for the rest of her life.

When I was a kid, Kate Smith was one of the many popular radio stars who had made the transition to television. Her theme song was "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," which I thought was a very lame song. I still think it is. Besides, Kate was fat and wore what to me seemed like funny dresses. I used to parody her song by singing "When the moon comes over the mountain, You can't see the mountain for Kate."

As I grew older and more (ahem!) full-figured myself, I didn't think it was funny that Kate Smith was fat. I was also interested to learn that she had started out in vaudeville as a figure of fun because of her weight and then became a great star on radio because of her lovely alto voice. Kate Smith made many movies, and in one of them, This is the Army (1943), she sang "God Bless America." During World War II, Kate Smith was a tireless worker on behalf of the war effort, touring the country to sell War Bonds. In fact, she sold more war bonds than anyone else. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan awarded Kate Smith the Medal of Freedom, in part a belated thank-you for her war bond efforts.

I forgot about Kate Smith for a long time, and I really didn't think much about "God Bless America" either, until the 1970's when the Philadelphia Flyers were one of the leading hockey teams in the NHL. In 1969, the Flyers had started playing a recording of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" instead of the "Star Spangled Banner" at their home games at the Spectrum. In 1973, Kate Smith came out of retirement to sing "God Bless America" in person at a home game, and the Flyers won. From time to time thereafter, Kate Smith returned to the Spectrum to give a live rendition of "God Bless America." The good luck charm didn't always work, but overall, the Flyers have a winning record in games played when the song is sung. Kate Smith now ranks among the Greatest Hockey Legends. Erected in 1987, a bronze statue of Kate Smith stands outside the Spectrum in Philadelphia.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, "God Bless America" was played frequently to keep up the spirit of a population shocked by the attacks. Unfortunately, although Irving Berlin thought of his song as a song of peace, it has often been associated with warlike sentiments. Woody Guthrie wrote his anthem "This Land is Your Land" as a parody in reaction to the popularity of "God Bless America." Guthrie would probably be amazed to know how popular both songs still are.

Anyway, I consider myself a peace-loving person, and I don't enjoy just any old rendition of "God Bless America." But when they play the old Columbia Records recording of Kate Smith singing it, backed up by a full band, it brings me to my feet,

Favorite Lieder (1): Hugo Wolf's "In der Frühe"

It has been said that art is concentrated and intensified experience. That is certainly the case in Hugo Wolf's song "In der Frühe."

There is a well-known proverb that says it is always darkest before the dawn. That is the theme of Eduard Mörike's poem "In der Frühe" (In the Early Morning). This poem was set to music in 1888 by Austrian composer Hugo Wolf.

The song starts in a dark, oppressive mode, with slightly discordant chords. Then there is a transition with the second stanza. One can almost feel the sun rising as the piano lightens and the voice begins to soar. At the end, you can hear the peal of the morning bells in the background.

Below is the German text of the song, followed by my English translation.

In der Frühe

Kein Schlaf noch kühlt das Auge mir,
Dort gehet schon der Tag herfür
An meinem Kammerfenster.
Es wühlet mein verstörter Sinn
Noch zwischen Zweifeln her und hin
Und schaffet Nachtgespenster.

Ängste, quäle
dich nicht länger, meine Seele!
Freu' dich! Schon sind da und dorten
Morgenglocken wach geworden.

(Eduard Mörike, 1804-1875)


In the Early Morning

No sleep yet soothes my burning eyes.
Day is already breaking
outside my bedroom window.
My anxious thoughts still
probe among my doubts
and create night monsters.

Fear not. Torment
yourself no longer,
my soul!
Be happy.
Already, here and there,
morning bells are stirring.

(English translation 2008 by Celia A. Sgroi)


You can hear this song sung by the great soprano Lotte Lehmann. Scroll down the "Featured Recordings" page to "Selected Songs/Lieder" and click on number 31.

Transmissible cancer-- You're kidding, right? Wrong.

They're not exactly cute and cuddly, but Tasmanian devils have their special place in the environment, and they're dying off fast.

You probably don't spend a lot of time worrying about Tasmanian Devils. I know I don't. In fact, I thought they were some kind of cartoon character until I saw a program about them on Animal Planet.
It turns out that these nasty little critters live on the Island of Tasmania and, after many years of doing just fine, are now endangered. Apparently this is not something new, but I just found out about it from an article in the New York Times.

Considering the rate at which species of mammals are becoming extinct, this is just more bad news. But the thing that absolutely floored me is what is killing Tasmanian devils. They have a form of transmissible cancer that manifests itself in tumors on their faces, and given how aggressive they are, they frequently pass it on to other devils by biting them in the face.

Did you know there was such a thing as transmissible cancer? I didn't. It turns out that least two other kinds of animals get transmissible cancer, dogs, mainly in tropical and subtropical climates, and Syrian hamsters. All of this concerns me, but, let's face it, it's only human to worry that such a cancer might occur in humans. There is some evidence that it does, which blows to smithereens the idea that human cancer isn't infectious. Lest you become too worried, it is a lot more likely that a Tasmanian devil will catch cancer from another devil than that a human will catch cancer from another human, but if you want something to take your mind off the economic crisis, this is just the thing.

Sensuous Fruits (1)

Unless you live in California, you have probably not eaten fresh dates. If you get the chance, try them by all means. The most sensuous fruit experience I have ever had!

I love dried fruits. At least, I love dried fruits that haven't been messed around with. I want them unsweetened and not "enhanced" in any way. That's not to say that I would pass up a big, plump glaceed apricot from Australia, but I think of that as candy, not fruit. My favorite dried fruits are figs, dates, raisins, and pears.

My father used to bring home fresh figs when he could find them, usually the green calimyrna figs. I see them in the grocery store once in a while, and I can rarely resist them. The problem is that it's hard to get them when they're perfectly ripe. Some people don't like all the tiny seeds, but I think they're less of a problem in a fresh fig than in a dried one because they're softer. I can remember having bottled figs when I was a kid, and they tasted pretty good. Now I don't see them anymore, but sometimes you can buy figs in a can. Don't waste your money. Unfortunately, the figs taste like the can, not like themselves, which is no good.

There are also brown figs, such as Turkey figs and mission figs. I like these, too, although not quite as much as the green ones. Figs are grown in California, as are dates. Figs grow in Florida and the other Gulf Coast states, as well, and many an old Italian "up north" has a fig tree that he or she has to cover or take inside for the winter. It's a lot of trouble, but the fruit is worth it.

I used to think there was no fruit-eating experience to surpass a perfectly ripe fig, but that was before I tried fresh dates. Dates are an ancient food and a staple in middle eastern diets. In 2003, Saudi Arabia gave over 600 tons of dates to the World Food Program for distribution in Afghanistan. Although many dates are grown in California, in Oswego, New York (and almost everywhere else) we only see dried dates. Barhi dates, grown in California, are available fresh locally, but I don't think they are shipped very far. If they are, I haven't been able to find any! The only time I have had the chance to eat fresh dates was in Germany. It's hard to describe what a fresh date tastes like. Honestly, I always thought that dried dates must be sweetened, but when I first ate a fresh date, I was shocked to discover that they are nearly as sweet as the dried ones. The main difference is the greater moisture content. A fresh date pops in your mouth when you bite into it. Then your mouth fills with an unbelievable sweetness. True, fresh dates are a bit fibrous near the pit, but the whole "mouth feel" is of something plump, a little crunchy, and amazingly sweet.

There are many varieties of dates. My favorite dried date is the large Medjool date. The fresh dates I have eaten were the size of a Medjool, but I'm not sure if that is what they were. But if you can imagine a Medjool date plumped up, with smooth skin and three shades lighter in color, that's about what I had. To die for!

What Happened to Aeryn Gillern?

Kathy Gillern's son Aeryn disappeared in Vienna on October 29, 2007. The Vienna police say they have done their best to find him, but have they?

A mother in Cortland, New York is still trying to find out what happened to her son, who disappeared nearly a year ago in Vienna, Austria, but she isn't getting much help from Viennese authorities.


At the time of his disappearance, Aeryn Gillern was 34 and employed as a research clerk by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), a UN specialized agency headquartered in Vienna, Austria. He had been living in Austria for the past six years. He was scholarly, well-liked by his coworkers, a deeply religious Catholic who had studied theology and earned a masters degree, and winner of the title "Mr. Gay Austria" in 2006. When Aeryn Gillern vanished on October 29, 2007, there were clothes left in the washer in his apartment and freshly baked Rice Krispies treats on the kitchen counter. When he didn't show up at work for two days, concerned a concerned neighbor and a coworker notified authorities. But the official investigation of Aeryn Gillern's disappearance has gone nowhere.

Areyn Gillern's last telephone contact was a cell-phone conversation with a female friend at about 7:30 pm on October 29, 2007. He is believed to have visited the Kaiserbruendl, a gay sauna in Vienna, later that evening. An employee at the spa told Mrs. Gillern that a group of tourists started a fight in the upscale sauna at around 10 pm on the night Aeryn disappeared. His clothes and personal belongings were left behind at the sauna, but Aeryn vanished, never to be seen again. A video camera belonging to the sauna has also disappeared. According to Mrs. Gillern, police reported to her a few days after Aeryn's disappearance that a bald-headed man had been seen floating in a canal. Later, the story changed. Police have also suggested that Aeryn was "despondent" after learning he was HIV-positive and committed "an act of spontaneous suicide." However, a lab report of the missing man's clothes showed that he was not HIV positive.

Kathy Gillern, a former Ithaca police officer, has urged the Vienna police to press the investigation in a more aggressive manner, but they have refused. Mrs. Gillern wonders whether this may be because the openly gay Gillern had a run-in with the Viennese police in January 2003 and may have made a complaint about it to Amnesty International. Austrian federal criminal investigations bureau spokeman Armin Halm says that the police have done all they can, and an American state department spokesman, Cy Ferenchak, stated that American authorities have no power to intervene in an investigation in a foreign country. A high-ranking official in the Vienna Police wrote in an email: “No shortfalls whatsoever were determined; all necessary measures were taken within the scope of what was legally possible. I have nothing more to say about this case. Our officers did their work; there are no shortfalls.”

The record thus far suggests that the Vienna police investigation was slipshod at best, and the cover-up of a hate crime at worst. The characterization of Aeryn Gillern as a suicide-prone, HIV-positive man who "spontaneously" threw himself into a canal sounds like an excuse not to pursue the investigation because the victim was gay. The homophobia is barely concealed, and the unwillingness to dig deeper into the case is suspicious. Officially, the investigation is proceeding, but nothing is being done. If Gillern went into a canal, on his own or with help, where is his body? What measures have the Vienna Police taken to locate the alleged corpse, including contacting the police of neighboring countries? Why is the disappearance of a properly documented foreign employee of a UN agency in Vienna being swept under the rug as if he were a foreign sex-tourist who got what he deserved? And why is the U.S. government, which intervenes in the affairs of foreign countries routinely, doing nothing to pressure Austrian authorities to probe deeper?

Anyone who cares about basic human rights should be outraged about how the Aeryn Gillern case has been treated by both Austrian and American authorities. I hope that Mrs. Gillern asks New York's senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, to exert pressure on the U.S. State Department to pursue this case vigorously.

As the Economic Downturn Picks Up Speed, What Will Happen To Personal Credit?

Like most people, I have more than one credit card. In fact, I have about six credit cards, although I don’t charge on all of them. I might have canceled several of them in the past year, but I was told by a loan officer at my bank that all those unused credit cards make you look better to a lender. Somehow, they represent all the untapped borrowing power you have. It seemed like a strange idea to me, but the whole personal credit thing is a mystery, so I just went along with it. Now, it’s very possible that the banks will cancel some of those unused credit cards of mine, which won’t look good to prospective lenders either. However, since I’m not looking to borrow any money right now (or in the foreseeable future), maybe that doesn’t matter.

What I do have that matters to me, are two credit cards, one that is my “everyday” card, that I use to charge things and strive to pay off in full at the end of each month. The other is a 0% balance card, on which I have a balance that I am paying off in installments. That 0% rate is good until March 2009. Unless some unexpected expense comes along, I will have paid off my balance before March 2009, but unexpected expenses do arise. Last month I had to buy a new laptop. That’s over $900 on my everyday credit card that will have to be paid off when the credit card bill comes. That’s $900+ that could have been applied to the 0% balance card, but now is spoken for. So, given the bad economic times, I find myself asking, suppose I went looking for another 0% balance credit card offer when March 2009 approaches. Will I find one, or will those offers have disappeared?

Although we all have credit cards, I'm not sure that we all understand how credit cards work. I know that I am one of the people that the credit card companies regard as a "deadbeat," because most of the time I pay off my balance in full each month. This is good for me, but the company doesn't make money, so I am not numbered among their favorite customers. Considering how many credit card offers we receive, and how often we are solicited on TV and in print to buy things on credit, it can be easy to lose track of the fact that this is business, not charity. If anyone needed proof of that, the change in the bankruptcy law that made credit card debt harder to discharge ought to be sufficient. The credit cards companies are happy to lure a customer into overspending, but they don't want that debt to disappear in a bankruptcy.

Right now, the media are full of suggestions about how to reduce the load of credit card debt burdening the individual consumer. It's pretty hard to argue with the logic of reducing one's debt load, especially at a time when money is becoming incresingly tight. But what will consumers do if they do need credit? One obvious point is that you need to have established good credit. Another is to keep an eye on your credit limits, which may have been reduced without prior notification. This is more likely to occur if the consumer has made late payments. Of course, missing payments in the current financial climate is an invitation to disaster.

None of this speaks to the question I raised earlier: Will 0% APR balance transfer credit card offers disappear? I just did a Google search, and such offers are still being made at the present time. However, I suspect that these cards will not be issued to just anyone. I have noticed that TV ads for cars that offer the inducement of low-percentage auto loans now qualify this offer with the words, "to well qualified buyers." Given my current financial state, I probably qualify as a well-qualified seeker of a 0% credit card, but I still wonder if these offers will survive into the next year. We'll just have to see.

Antioxidants, Straight Up Or On the Rocks

Mangosteens, pictured left, are simply delicious, but do they prevent cancer?

These days, it seems that everyone is concerned about getting enough antioxidants. Lest you be one of the few uninformed left in the world, antioxidants are substances present in certain foods that are claimed to help prevent cancer. The list of foods containing antioxidants is long and varied, from humble kidney beans and green tea to exotics such as goji berries. At the moment, many juices are touted as a great source of antioxidants. These range from cranberry juice, easy to obtain and relatively inexpensive, to pomegranate juice, which has become quite common in recent years, to the rarer, and consequently more expensive, goji and acai. Many of these antioxidant juices are available in blends, such as raspberry and acai, which is marketed by Tropicana. It will come as no surprise to learn that many vendors have made extraordinary claims for the efficacy of these juices, and others have decried these claims as lies.

One of the most exotic, and hence hardest to come by and most expensive, sources of antioxidants is the mangosteen. Mangosteens are native to Asia, and the U.S. climate has not proven suitable for growing them, although experiments are being made in Hawaii. The mangosteen fruit may not be imported into the U.S. because of an insect often present in its rind. Recently, a few mangosteens have been permitted into the country after irradiation, but in general, the only way Americans can get mangosteen is in juice form. Not only is the mangosteen juice touted for its cancer-prevention properties, but it is also claimed that it can relieve the pain of arthritis. For those who might want to spend less, tart cherry juice is also touted as an anti-inflammatory and arthritis pain-reliver. Not surprisingly, others have disputed this claim, including the FDA.

To get back to the mangosteen, forget about juice. If you are ever anywhere that permits the import of the fruit itself, try it. I had some in Germany this past summer, and it was exquisite. The edible part of the fruit, inside a thick, tough rind, consists of four or five plump segments that look rather like orange sections, but they have an almost indescribable flavor and texture, an incredible blend of tropical banana, strawberry, and lychee, just to give an approximation. Until you can eat the fruit for its wonderful flavor, forget about the claims for the healing power of its juice and drink cranberry juice instead. It will help you or not, but it tastes good and is pretty cheap. Bottoms up!

Exotic Foods (1)

In one episode of the cooking series Two Fat Ladies, the ladies go to the seashore, and Clarissa Dickson Wright, the younger of the TFL, harvests and cooks some ormers. I had never heard of ormers, and, owing to the ladies' British accents, I wasn't even sure I had heard the correct word, but when Jennifer Paterson (the older of the TFL) tasted the ormer and said, "Snaily, whelky," I figured it had to be a shellfish of some sort. Sure enough, a Google search revealed that there really is such a thing as an ormer, which turns out to be a shellfish (of the family Haliotidae) related to the abalone. Abalone can be found on the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. What you eat is the tough muscular "foot," which must be tenderized before it can be eaten. A similar meat comes from the geoduck clam. Both ormers and abalone have become harder to find, partly due to over-harvesting and partly due to pollution. However, ormers are now being farmed in the UK. Apparently, there was a time when ormer-cooking was more common. Not being a fan of seafood (with the exception of lobster, shrimp, and scallops), I am not anxious to try ormer or any of its relatives.

However, the shells of both ormers and abalone have a pearly coating inside called nacre, which is also known as mother-of-pearl. Now, mother-of-pearl is fine with me. It is used to make jewelry, and much of it comes from Asia, including Australia. For those of us who can't afford real pearls, mother-of-pearl jewelry can be a lower-cost, yet still beautiful, substitute. And that's where I can stand on the matter: I'll wear ormer gladly; just don't make me eat one.

Caution, Lifestyle Shift Ahead

When I was a child, my parents saved string. They saved everything, from nails and screws and rubber bands, to rags and newspapers. There was a drawer in the kitchen that had little bits of everything in it, because it might come in useful some day, like the wooden spools left over when thread was used up and rubber washers. They re-used paper bags, and clothing was handed down from sibling to sibling, as long as there was wear left in it. They darned socks and patched holes.

In those days, there were people who repaired vacuum cleaners and small appliances, and people got new heels put on their shoes and zippers replaced on their pants and jackets. My mother put leftover bread in the oven to dry it, then broke it up and went over it with the rolling pin to make bread crumbs. She did the same thing with crackers. Nobody wasted anything. We ate leftovers a couple of times a week, and stale bread went into bread dressing, bread pudding, and french toast, which my mother called egg-toast, because it was not sweetened. In the same way, thrifty French and Italian mothers made croutons and panzanella (bread salad). Now we buy croutons and throw stale bread in the garbage. In those days, when people heard the adage "Waste not, want not," they knew exactly what it meant.

That was in the 1950's, and my parents had been through the Great Depression and the Second World War, had experienced joblessness and rationing, and the habit of saving everything had been absorbed into every fiber of their beings. They had victory gardens and canned the harvest. They saved scrap metal for the war effort. They had done without butter and sugar, and experienced the times when people walked everywhere to save the little bit of gasoline they were allotted. Naturally, as times got better, some of these habits went by the board, even for "depression babies" like my parents, but even so, they always were averse to wasting things.

As the present economic crisis worsens, some of the habits of thrift will likely be rediscovered, but the adjustment is likely to be painful, because there are now a couple of generations of people who have no connection to this way of life beyond stories they may have heard from their grandparents. Now people are discussing and writing about parents who have always been overly generous with material things finally having to deal with the economic anxieties of their teenaged children and talk to them about money and inevitable lifestyle changes.

I am not a parent, and, much as some people might not believe it, that was a choice, not an accident. With my upbringing and temperament, I don't think I would have ever been an overly indulgent parent, but I certainly feel for the parents who are having to have these conversations with their children now, because I know they are not talking only about the children making lifestyle changes, but about the lifestyle changes they themselves are having to make, as well. Whether it is the disaster of losing one's job or one's home, or the only somewhat lesser disaster of seeing the value of one's retirement investments diminish daily while the price of everything goes up, everyone is in shock. People are having to teach their children how to save money. At the same time, people are getting rid of gas guzzling cars, insulating their homes, and learning to be more careful with their own money, and governments from the local level to the U.S. Post Office are trimming budgets and making cuts in services.

It seems as if the wheel has turned full circle again. I am much more careful about not wasting food, and I have hit the off-switch on impulse buying. I put fewer routine expenses on my credit card these days. Yesterday, I wrote a check for an oil change and tire rotation, when in the past I would have just handed over my card. I even saved a rubber band today. We're all in this together (except the super-rich and the people who never had anything to begin with), and we're all making lifestyle changes, both large and small. It hurts, but we'll just have to get used to it.