Footnotes to a Conversation, July 12, 2021
“What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine.” – Thomas More
Art & Age
Age discrimination is universal and has been readily apparent during the Covid pandemic. But what will it take to break the cycle? Experts recommend abolishing mandatory retirement and paying more attention to volunteer contributions to society. Above all, “our success in fostering equality among generations hinges on people realizing that fighting ageism is also in the interest of the young, as this is about their future too.” [Knowable Magazine]
Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait poses more questions than it can answer. Is the woman pregnant? Why is there a bed in the living room? What do the oranges below the window symbolize? Who are the two people seen entering the room in the mirror? A 4-minute video offers some answers and emphasizes the wide variety of objects in the painting. [The National Gallery]
A Cornucopia of Flavours
How familiar are you with the different types of pasta? An extract from Rachel Roddy’s new book, The A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes, introduces a whole range of different pastas – from casarecce that goes well with broccoli “mush” to lumachel (snail shells) and vincisgrassi (baroque lasagne). Roddy says, “The idea that you need to buy special equipment to make pasta is not just a shame, it’s at odds with the nature of pasta. Looking back at the evolution of shapes, we find the results of hands working with everyday objects. Sheets rolled with a bottle; caved, ridged shapes made by rolling lumps of dough against baskets; hollows in a rope created by an umbrella spoke; edges of parcels sealed with the twist of a glass; ridged tubes formed by rolling a square of soft, flour-and-egg dough obliquely over a comb, and around the handle of a wooden spoon to make garganelli.” [The Guardian]
Commercial chili powders are a blend of many different kinds of chiles and their name often tells you more about their heat level than about their origins. Start buying spices from specialty providers and you’ll discover a whole range of different chile powders, but “what winds up in a jar to use as a dried seasoning often has less to do with the type of capsicum seed than how it’s been harvested and processed from there. From the sun-dried and coarsely ground Korean gochugaru to the wood-fire-dried and smoky Spanish pimentón, there are many techniques and styles behind bringing on the heat that are practiced around the world.” But there are similarities and experienced cooks aren’t rule-bound. They use Sichuan xiang la la jiao mian in Italian dishes because it creates such a beautiful colour and cayenne pepper can work well in Indian dishes. [Taste]
A native North American tea was a regular and ceremonial drink among the Indigenous tribes of the southern United States and was readily enjoyed by the Spanish when they arrived. It was so popular that the “British East India Company deemed it a threat to their control of the tea market, and England limited yaupon’s importation into Europe.” Yaupon, a holly, is now being grown and roasted by small entrepreneurs who hope to promote the plant’s sustainability and Indigenous roots. [BBC]
Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
If you share my love of nature, I suggest you also read EcoFriendly Sask that I publish in collaboration with my brother, Andrew. Check out EcoFriendly Sask’s Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces (downloadable directly from the website).