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[ File this dispatch under "Blatant Self-Promotion." ] 

First, the oxtails. We've been talking about oxtails ever since I wrote an essay for my gastronomy program on the evolution of oxtails in American cuisine. If you turn the history dial back to 1619, that's where this story begins - when 15 indentured servants from Africa were brought to this country in the hull of a Dutch privateer's ship. The story of slavery in America is one of the bleakest chapters in our nation’s history – strong, proud, and creative men and women wrested from their villages and families to live in bondage and servitude first to the Jamestown colonists and, by the 1860s, to plantation owners in the 15 states where slavery was legal. By the time the first shots of the Civil War were fired, four million black people lived as slaves, the vast majority of them in the American south. The diets of slaves consisted largely of the food the plantation owners didn't want, including oxtails and other extremities and organs of animals. The oxtail - perhaps the lowliest cut of meat from the hindquarters of a beast of burden - is now chic, cooked by the likes of Emeril and Mario and served in hot and happening restaurants from San Francisco to New York. Marian is sizzling up a pan of oxtails as I type. Stay tuned for a full report.

Next, the ostrich. The ostrich filet, oddly enough, was right there on the shelf next to the oxtails. We had to look up to make sure we hadn't wandered into the "Weird Meats" section. We really like the idea of ostrich - red meat that comes from a bird. No fat whatsoever. A beautiful plank of meat that we're going to thinly slice for a stir fry. We'll enjoy it with a South African red wine as a nod to the homeland of this regal flightless bird. We first had ostrich at La Maison, chef Heinz Sowinski's restaurant here in Augusta. He does a lovely ostrich carpaccio. When we eat out, we like ordering things we don't typically whip up at home - so any time something like ostrich or kangaroo or llama (or a strange vegetable, for that matter) appears on a menu, we're on it. 

Lastly, the ground beef heart. Let's just say that the dog has absolutely no idea what a wonderful day she's going have.

Bitegeist Productions is pleased to present A Girl and Her Cake, starring Marian and the strawberry and cream layer cake I baked for her birthday.

A Girl and Her Cake from Deb Barshafsky on Vimeo.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to layer so I just poured a bit of the chocolate into the strawberry. At first, the Godiva just hangs there in the center of the strawberry liqueur, unsure of its next move. Then it starts to fan out over the top of the drink but not to the extent that the pink of the Tequila Rose is completely obscured - just slightly diminished. I drank a few of these (they're small; think cordial glasses) and slept soundly. 

I woke up this morning not with a headache but with inspiration for a new cocktail ... just add a tiny little sprig of fresh mint near the edge of this concoction and call it a Faded Rose. Next time you're at the Black Cat Bar ... that's what I call my little corner of the kitchen dedicated to the spirit world ... order one. I'm happy to oblige.

As many of you know, my mother is German. While she is very Americanized (dang, she makes a killer grilled cheese sandwich), we enjoy her traditional German fare for holidays and special occasions. My mother learned to cook not as a child but as a young Army wife stationed with my father in Fort Riley, Kansas. An older German woman (my sister and I called her Aunt Margaret) took my mother under her wing and showed her around her German kitchen. That's where my mother mastered rouladen (braised beef rolls) and rot kohl (red cabbage) and other tastes of the motherland.

I didn't spend much time in the kitchen with my mother while I was growing up. When I was a teenager, some guy from one of the utility companies came to our door taking a survey to determine how many households in our neighborhood were cooking with gas versus electric. I had to invite him in to take a look at the stove. Mind you, that was back in the day when you could still invite strange men into your home. I remember the look on his face as he was leaving and I chirped in adolescent ignorance, "So what was it?" He made a notation on his clipboard (I'm sure he wrote the word IDIOT), told me it was electric, and descended our driveway shaking his head. I've since learned the difference and, this weekend, stood in front of my six gas burners with a pot of red cabbage on one and a pan of rouladen on another. This was not my first batch of red cabbage but never before had I rolled rouladen. 

My mom coached me over the phone. And, I always have confidence in the kitchen when Marian is at my side. Nonetheless, I was a bit worried about our meal because we weren't simply cooking - we were accepting the baton of culinary responsibility from my mother. We were channeling the spirit of Aunt Margaret and Magdalena Gerbig Schellenschlager (my mother's mother) and all the other proud and sturdy women who populate the branches of my German family tree. I felt generations of German cooks watching over me as I carefully seasoned the beef and prepared the generous rolls of bacon, pickles, and onions. And when Marian asked me how long we should simmer the rouladen before serving, I told her just as my mother told me ... "cook it til it's done."

from Chris ... a chocolate chip cookie cake

from Marian ... red velvet cake with raspberries and blueberries

from my sister ... (say it all together now) ... mayonnaise cake

from my mother ... carrot cake

(sigh)

Charmed, I'm telling you. Charmed. 

This past August, for my 43rd birthday, someone did. I marveled over the layers, as numerous as the rings of an ancient tree. I poured a glass of ice cold milk, and I devoured two slices. Over the next three days, I consumed my cake, but I also consumed love and passion and commitment. That’s what that cake meant to me. It symbolized everything I had looked for my entire life. (Last year's posting - Cake Parade 2007 - covers this and the other gifts of cake I received.)

In her essay about the role of sweets in British society, Allison James explores the “mythology of confectionery.” By using the term mythology in her opening paragraph, James sets the stage for a rich philosophical exploration of how “an ambiguous substance” helps us navigate our social interactions and gives us insight into our humanity. Confectionery, as neither food nor non-food, dances between rigid culinary classifications and, therefore, assumes “a variety of symbolic meanings.” As in mythology, when something is beyond our scope of understanding, we develop stories to explain, to justify, and to create meaning. Confectionery, because of its undefinable nature, has inspired mythological and symbolic treatment. We use it to define and add meaning to our gestures, our rituals, and our social interactions. Confectionery, James explains, is the coda of our consumption, “liberated from the concept of the meal” and free to “take on a variety of social meanings.”

Confectionery, therefore, is much more than sugar in an altered state. In Sweetness and Power, Sidney Mintz chronicles the evolution of sugar from a symbol of power and authority to, by the 18^th century, an everyday item consumed by the privileged and the middle classes alike. As sugar became more broadly consumed, “it was endowed with ritual meanings by those who consumed it, meanings specific to the social and cultural position of the users."

Once a “luxury of kings,” sugar—indeed all confectionery—has become the “kingly luxury of commoners.” And more specifically, confectionery, as James explains, has become the “symbolic register of affectivity in social relationships.” Sweet things, like my chocolate fudge cake, symbolize love and affection. What then are we saying when we evoke images of sweetness in our references to each other? You are somewhat forbidden, but I desire you nonetheless? I crave you? You are a rare treat that I allow myself? Is that the complexity of emotion we try to convey when we call each other the names of sweet foods? Or is it more simple? You, my love, bring me pleasure.

In her discussion of the morality of food, James illustrates how, historically and certainly in popular culture, bad foods, foods that aren’t good for us, have “come to symbolize pleasure.” Candy, chocolate, cakes, puddings, and pies—these are indulgences laced with illicitness, walks on the wild side for otherwise compliant consumers. Bad, naughty, wicked, dangerous, and, as James herself writes, “the evil sprite” of the food world, confectionery is a socially acceptable temptation, the only harm in which is a few extra inches around our collective waistband.

A closer look at the social meaning, the symbolism, of a more specific type of confectionery, candy, amplifies this characterization. The term “candy” is slang for crack, heroin, and other street drugs. “Candy” also is replete with sexual meaning, referring to the act itself and sexual organs. Diablo Cody’s autobiographical tale, Candy Girl, penned before she received her Oscar for Juno, chronicles her year-long stint as a stripper in the adult entertainment industry. Lady Chablis, a well-known albeit somewhat faded female impersonator in the southern United States, titled her autobiography Hiding My Candy, a reference to her pre-performance preparations. And, in the book Candy and Me, Hilary Liftin writes that candy “affords a fleeting spike of pleasure, sometimes guilty or elusive or bittersweet, like an impossible love affair.”

The British have long had a love affair with candy, indeed with all things sweet. James refers to this relationship as a “national addiction.” In a country saddled with stereotypes that suggest a population with high levels of self control—reserved, queuing, formal, stiff upper lip, obsessed with safety—the near universal daily consumption of chocolate suggests that British society may respond to the burden of these characterizations by toeing the edges of a more unbridled existence—with a slice of cherry pie, a pot of pudding, or a small square of dark, delicious chocolate.

Why is all this on my mind, you may ask? The baker of my fantasy has asked me what cake I might like to celebrate my 44th birthday next week. I'm pondering my choices, and I'm basking in the sweetness of another beautiful year in a charmed life.