As he started a nation-wide job hunt for a university position, a grad school friend once told me that he would never live in an area where he could not find arugula in the supermarket.
Arugula, that bitter sharp lettuce, was Lawrence’s shorthand method for narrowing down his options for jobs. Any position must be located in areas with a sophisticated culture, liberal politics, and hopping community life to keep him amused when not in the classroom. His arugula method ruled about 3/4rd of America at that time; he ultimately landed in London.
Today, Lawrence would need some other shortcut to find a sophisticated, educated, progressive community. Because food is the rare thing in our culture that has not been politicized. Pretty much anywhere in this country, you can find a bearded, tattooed hipster, who will make you a cocktail involving rosemary, smoke, and small batch vodka distilled just a mile away at a shiny distillery in a former paper mill. There’s shaved brussel sprouts salads in the heart of West Virginia, and burnt brisket ends in a converted garage in upstate New York. For me, the ubiquitousness of fine food is a sign of hope, a rare sign of agreement in our polarized society.
Read more at my newsletter, Apt. 11D
Apt. 11d 
Poplar Forest is pretty cool.
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So we’ve moved beyond “Real men don’t eat quiche”? Or in every area there’s some establishment that specializes in quiche lovers?
Recently had a friend say that one of the reasons she wouldn’t want to move east the food. We do have good food here, but I think there’s good food in NY & DC, too (and, imagine you’d be shocked that someone in Seattle would question food quality in NY).
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I use the ghee index. Is ghee at the local grocery store?
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You won’t want to shift to NZ, then – Ghee is very much niche here – though some supermarkets (in high-ethnic areas) do carry it. 😉
You’d just have to be satisfied with grass-fed lamb, cream from grass-fed cows, fresh raspberries, outstanding ice-cream and farm-fresh veggies and heritage fruit.
[Easter dinner: roast leg of lamb, with paprika, pimentos, olives, rosemary and garlic accompanied by roast potatoes, kumara and steamed peas; followed by pannacotta (vanilla and raspberry) and apple frangipane tart with ice cream]
Yep – I know you guys do foodie, too…..
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Wow!!
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No beets? Or maybe I’m thinking of Australia.
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Beetroot is a thing in NZ – though it tends to be pickled and cold – in salads (and famously in burgers) – rather than roasted. It’s fairly optional (is in Oz, too) – and my family isn’t that keen.
Kumara (Maori sweet potatoes) in multiple colours (original dark cream, and now orange, yellow and purple) are much more part of the traditional Kiwi roast, as is pumpkin (Kiwis think that this is a vegetable – not a sweet pie filling), and parsnip.
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Yes, I think what you call pumpkin, we call butternut squash. We also eat it as a vegetable. I looove beet greens.
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Yes, I think what you call pumpkin, we call butternut squash.
Actually, at least in Australia (and I can’t imagine New Zealand being different), pumpkin is pumpkin. It is just an edible variety that has very little pulp/seeds and is almost all flesh. It is almost unobtainable in the US, just as the sort of thin walled variety that is bred for Halloween is almost unobtainable there. As my Australian colleagues found out when they decided to do Halloween and found it incomprehensible that one could actually carve a pumpkin…
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Wow, I am learning stuff in this thread.
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Agree with Jay — pumpkin in NZ is very much as he describes it in Australia – there are different varieties (just as there are of potatoes, and tomatoes) but they’re all of the ‘eat mostly as a vegetable’ variety (well, you can make pumplin pie, cake, etc. out of them – assuming you can find a US recipe which doesn’t say ‘take 2 cans of pumpkin’ 😉 )
Examples:
https://www.vegetables.co.nz/vegetables-a-z/pumpkins-paukena/
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Jay said “As my Australian colleagues found out when they decided to do Halloween and found it incomprehensible that one could actually carve a pumpkin…”
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ann wrote:
“…assuming you can find a US recipe which doesn’t say ‘take 2 cans of pumpkin.’”
Some real talk–I’m pretty sure that canned pumpkin is better for pies and for baking than starting from fresh.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/canned-pumpkin-vs-fresh-pumpkin/
It’s also a lot more convenient and is accessible year-round. Our family usually keeps a couple cans of canned pumpkin around for making pumpkin muffins, which are a staple for our household.
I agree that canned pumpkin pie filling (the kind that’s pre-sweetened and pre-seasoned) is pretty questionable as an ingredient, but plain canned pumpkin has a place in any household that enjoys pumpkin baked goods.
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Amy said “Some real talk–I’m pretty sure that canned pumpkin is better for pies and for baking than starting from fresh.”
Yep, but no such thing as canned pumpkin in NZ (or certainly not in any of the major supermarkets or even niche foodie stores – I guess the American store might have it).
So if the recipe says 2 cans of pumpkin- you have no idea how much ‘fresh’ pumpkin to substitute….
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Pumpkin tends to be sold in 15 ounce cans. So each can is 442 ml, which works out to 884 ml. Each can holds about 2 cups of fruit, so it’s roughly a little short of a liter.
In the US, pumpkin is understood to be the orange, Halloween-type of pumpkin. Other types are called squash. Canned pumpkin is much neater and more convenient than slaughtering the pumpkin in your own kitchen. It may also be safer, as my hands get slippery with pumpkin guts, which makes using knives dangerous.
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We roast our own pumpkins at Thanksgiving, because we got hooked on the real stuff when we belonged to a CSA. I must have a blog post about that somewhere….
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Jay said “As my Australian colleagues found out when they decided to do Halloween and found it incomprehensible that one could actually carve a pumpkin…”
ROFL here – just imagining trying to carve a crown pumpkin – which (true story) my mum used to chop up with the chinese cleaver into chunks to roast! The technique was to embed the blade into the pumpkin, then lift it up and bash down blade-and-pumpkin on a chopping board until the pumpkin broke in half – usually 8-10 full swings – not exactly a quiet and ladylike occupation.
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