Mindful Eating – New York Times

Blessing of the Olives: Mission Sonoma. CA (c) 2011 Russell Johnson

In the Mediterranean, olive oil was a wonder substance, used as a medicine, a skin oil, a soap, even as fuel. Fill’er up with Extra Virgin please! Olive oil tastes good and doesn’t clog your plumbing. Hercules planted olive trees by pounding them into the ground with his hunky arms. Father Serra (he of the pointy finger statue next to a local freeway) and his priests had to work harder at it, but managed to establish the olive at monasteries throughout California, including Mission San Francisco Solano de Sonoma.

Father Serra was no longer available to bless the crop so Saturday, in his stead, was the Reverend Michael Kelly, an Irish priest out of central casting, (possibly a voice on The Simpsons or South Park).  He added that the olive was also important as a garnish for a Martini.

Tom Mueller author of the upcoming book “Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil” said he witnessed a baptism in Crete (one of the first places to cultivate olives) in which a baby was greased head to toe, to which Father Kelly commented: “so Satan couldn’t get a hold o’ the lad.”

Maybe it reveals me as the pious food snob that I am, but today, in a Continental jet wafting over Winnemucca I stare at a sealed, steamed-up baggie labeled “Pierre Creations: Charbroiled Beef With American Cheese” wondering just what it would taste like. First, I was stunned to get a meal on a plane, the first one on a domestic flight in more than a year. Then, my only choice was a cheeseburger. Glad I am not a vegan or a Hindu or a cardio case. What surprised me is that everyone around me gleefully accepted this artery-buster. But, why not? It is small (everything in moderation is my mantra), nobody’s watching, nobody will tattle.

American Cheese: I can’t remember when I last sunk my jowls into a hot glob of American Cheese (I don’t eat Nachos). When I was a kid I had a choice of American or Swiss. One was orangish, the other was more whitish and had holes. I grew up In the Midwestern US, an American/Swiss, Chop Suey/Chow Mien sort of place. Pizza was exotic: Eye-talian. American Cheese, in one form, still comes in true American-style “don’t mess with me” individually wrapped slices. Not wrapped, actually, but a mixture of substances (51% real cheese by law) poured onto each plastic wrapper and chemically induced to emulsify and congeal.

So, struggling with the plastic, I unwrap this “handmade” delicacy, which looks something like a prop from CSI. I take a bite: not a savoring, slow, tooth-sinker as when I first sampled Kobe beef, but a more businesslike, matter-of-fact chomp. It is…edible, a blunt cheddar that neither amuses or offends. Scientist say smells can provoke powerful memories, and this flashes me back to the White Castles (aka gut bombs or sliders) I snarfed by the half dozen while cramming for college exams, memories of slob roommates and barely making the rent. It certainly does not have the pure, lovingly assembled by mom ‘n’ pop elan of an In-And-Out Burger (but then I have never ordered one with cheese).

But, who am I to criticize? I, who am corrupted by rock star chefs who swing their cleavers as cheekily as Eric Clapton swings his axe, by a misapprehension that radicchio is superior to iceberg lettuce, that slabs of cold, fat tuna served with horseradish rate higher than tunafish with Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

I have forgotten what Kobe beef tastes like and I will forget this one too but, that aside, I am curious as to whether American Cheese may have lost respect in the rest of the world. And I do wonder what it would taste like on French Fries.

What ever happened to the idea of fun candy? As a kid I used to sit around with my pals biting the heads off of giraffes and the butts off hippos, giggling self-indulgently at my cleverness. Likewise with Cracker Jacks: one always opened the box from the bottom as that where the tschotske was buried. I knew it was a plastic whistle or something similarly lame, but the adventure was in the discovery. Imagine my delight when a friend brought my wife and me a Kama-Cao chocolate bar from Galleries Lafayette in Paris.

Kama-Cao is a treat in the tradition of my childhood favorites, an X-rated one. In fact you have to be over 18 years of age to buy this adult confection (which probably means that every 12 year old in Paris bought one for his playground sweetie). Kama-Cao, by chocolatier Francis Miot, features bite-sized squares of dark chocolate embossed with positions of the Kama Sutra. Every bite is a wonder. (“I wonder how they do that.”) And, like Cracker Jacks, there is a surprise inside. Hidden in one piece is a porcelain replica of one of the poses (there is a warning on the label: “Attention de ne pas vous casser une dent en croquant.” Hey kids: be the first in your neighborhood to collect them all!

Happy Valentines Day.

In November I surprised my wife on her birthday. We got in the car and started driving, not to dinner in San Francisco but toward the Northern California coast, and not to our usual haunts in Muir or Stinson beaches. Not to Bolinas, the little town that counterculture built, now inhabited by a melange of millionaires with ponytails and organic bikers, known for tearing down a sign that points its way every time “the authorities” tack one up. Not to Dogtown, population about 12, and its man who makes pots.

But Inverness. Not Scotland Inverness, but a town perched on a lagoon that looks like a loch, and a place where we were greeted by a stuffed squirrel, where deer heads and trophy fish adorn the walls, a place that would bring glee to Elmer Fudd, Dick Cheney…and, oh, Prince Charles and Camilla hyphen hyphen, who stayed there and dined recently, not to mention, just a few days ago, actress Frances McDormand and hubby Joel Cohen. (This is the kind of place, in the redwoods, where one might find a woodchipper in back).