Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (At Table)

Eating in Eden

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

At Table

Eating in Eden Food and American Utopias Edited by Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch

}{

University of Nebraska Press  {  Lincoln and London

1

2

3

4

5

6

© 2006 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. 

7

8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

9

Eating in Eden : food and American utopias /

0

edited by Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch.

1

p. cm. — (At table series)

2

Includes bibliographical references and index.

3

isbn-13: 978-0-8032-3251-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

4

isbn-10: 0-8032-3251-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

5

1. Gastronomy. 2. Food habits.

6

I. Madden, Etta M., 1962– II. Finch, Martha L.

7

III. Series.

8

tx631.e37 2006     641'.013—dc22

9

2005036474

0

1

Set in Monotype Bulmer by Kim Essman.

2

Designed by A. Shahan.

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

To Mary Etta Madden, for teaching me many values of food, and to Burton Dale Guion and Daniel Pike Guion, for motivating me to pass on some of those.

e. m. m. For Gretchen Finch Mahoney, who taught me to cook, and in memory of Peter Sutton Finch, who taught me to think.

m. l. f.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

Contents List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xi Introduction  1 Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch



part i . new wo r l d u to p i a s:

Cultivating Immigrant Identities through Food  33 1. Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty: Fasts and Thanksgivings in Early New England  35 Martha L. Finch 2. Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Spanish-American Borderlands  54 Phillip H. Round 3. An Appetite for America: Philip Roth’s Antipastorals  74 Debra Shostak 4. You Are Where You Eat: Negotiating Hindu Utopias in Atlanta  89 Kathryn McClymond

part ii. c o m m u na l u to p i a s: Eating In, but Not Of, the World  107 5. Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys: Debates over Meatless Diets in Nineteenth-Century Shaker Communities  109 Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

6. Strawberries and Cream: Food, Sex, and Gender at the Oneida Community  125 Wendy E. Chmielewski 7. Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana  143 Jonathan G. Andelson 8. Recipes for a New World: Utopianism and Alternative Eating in Vegetarian Natural-Foods Cookbooks, 1970–84  162 Maria McGrath

2

part ii i. st r at e g i c u to p i a s:

3

Cooking Up Values for a New World  185

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

9. “This Fatal Cake”: The Ideals and Realities of Republican Virtue in Eighteenth-Century America  187 Trudy Eden 10. “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”: The Evolution and Meaning of the “Spread” at Northern Women's Colleges, 1870–1910  203 Priscilla J. Brewer 11. Revolution in a Can: Food, Class, and Radicalism in the Minneapolis Co-op Wars of the 1970s  220 Mary Rizzo 12. Veggieburger in Paradise: Food as World Transformer in Contemporary American Buddhism and Judaism  239 Ellen Posman 13. The Pixel Chef: pbs Television Cooking Shows and Sensorial Utopias  258 Monica Mak

4

5

f

Contributors  275 Index  279

Illustrations Following page 142

Title page from A Fast of Gods chusing, 1674 Broadside announcing a public thanksgiving, 1677 Advertisement for kosher Pepsi-Cola, 1940 Girls husking corn, Watervliet, New York, 1894 Shaker dining hall, Mount Lebanon, New York, ca. 1880 Visitors at the Oneida Community Mansion House, ca. 1870 Amana Society preparation of cabbages for kraut, ca. 1925 An ideal family in Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, 1984 Founders of the Bloodroot restaurant and authors of The Political Palate, 1980 Commensality in the Vegetarian Epicure, 1978 Chafing dish party at Mount Holyoke College, ca. 1906 Chafing dish party at Wellesley College, 1904 Vassar College students demonstrate their culinary ingenuity, 1893 Self-described “eating club” depicted in the Vassarion yearbook, 1898 Cartoon illustrating Minneapolis Co-op Wars, ca. 1974 Cartoon, “Ideas Fell Like Raindrops,” ca. 1994

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

Acknowledgments

3

4

5

6

7

As with a good communal meal, many have contributed generously to the production, preparation, and presentation of Eating in Eden. We first began sharing our food projects over coffee, after hearing from colleagues of the related and overlapping aspects of each other’s work. The Communal Studies Association Conference in Oneida, New York, in 2002 enabled us to bring together for the first time the writing and thinking we had been conducting separately. An audience responsive to our csa panel on food in communal societies encouraged us to proceed with plans for the volume. Senior scholars of utopian societies, Lyman Tower Sargent and Robert S. Fogarty, provided support and advice. Several other conferences fed the project: sessions on food organized by the History of Christianity Section (2000) and the Comparative Studies in Hinduisms and Judaisms Group (2004) at American Academy of Religion Annual Meetings; the “Second Conference on the Representations of Food in Literature, Film, and other Arts,” sponsored by the University of Texas, San Antonio (2002); and the NineteenthCentury Studies conference “Feast and Famine” (2003). To the many with whom we discussed food theory and food experience at these conferences, we are grateful. As the work with the volume progressed, the support of our colleagues and students at Missouri State University was crucial. Victor Matthews in the Department of Religious Studies and George Jensen, formerly of the Department of English, commented on drafts of our original proposal. Other colleagues at Missouri State and elsewhere provided thoughtful criticisms and helpful suggestions regarding our introductory chapter; we especially thank Stephen C. Berkwitz, Amy DeRogatis, Elizabeth De Wolfe, Pam R. Sailors, and Sarah McFarland Taylor. Undergraduate and graduate students in our food studies

8

xi

r

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

courses and seminars allowed us to develop and clarify our ideas about American foodways. Among students we thank Rachel McBride, in particular, who did early copyediting of all the essays and then carefully read and provided suggestions for the volume’s introduction. George Welch’s master’s thesis research contributed greatly to our understanding of the role McDonald’s restaurants play globally. Several audiences invited us to discuss our work, thus furthering the project: the Institute for Mature Learning, Drury University; Missouri State English Department colloquia for faculty and the public; and Angela Allen of the Columbian, Clark County, Washington. The critical feedback we received from publishing house editors and their anonymous readers helped us to refine the content and shape the volume. We are indebted to Elizabeth Demers at the University of Nebraska Press, whose knowledge of food studies, both scholarly and popular (she introduced us to the “Julie/Julia Project,” for example), expertise in publishing, immediate interest in our project, and unflagging enthusiasm for it as it evolved made our early, perhaps somewhat utopian, visions of the book a reality. In addition, we appreciate the numerous other people with the press who helped with editing and moving the book through the production process. The Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University generously supported Martha with a Visiting Research Fellowship during the final stages of editing. Missouri State University’s London program enabled Etta some release from teaching and a significant escape from the confines of America, enhancing her view of some of the volume’s claims. Finally, it is to our contributors, who have provided the many-coursed banquet we offer to our readers, that we owe the greatest debt of gratitude. Each of the authors helped us to think creatively about the numerous ways that food has contributed to meanings and practices of utopianism in American communities, and each worked diligently and in a timely manner to produce the essays collected here. To all who have contributed to Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias, we express our deepest appreciation.

5

f

xii  Acknowledgments

For permission to reprint materials, we gratefully acknowledge the following: University of South Carolina Press, for permission to reprint from pages 102 and 117–19 of Debra Shostak, Philip Roth—Countertexts, Counterlives (July 2004). Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, for permission to print materials from the Charlotte Leonard Diary, Oneida Community Collection. Museum of Amana History, Amana, Iowa, for permission to reprint from Bruderrath Beschluss (June 12, 1869). North Country Co-op, Minneapolis, for permission to reprint materials from A History of North Country Co-op, written by Betsy RaaschGilman and illustrated by Kevin Kane.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Acknowledgments  xiii

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

3

Eating in Eden

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

Introduction

3

4

5

Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch

6

7

8

9

1

1

In 1986 the activist Carlo Petrini led a band of protesters armed with bowls of penne pasta in a demonstration against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant on the ancient Piazza di Spagna in Rome. Petrini and his friends represented the Italian organization Arcigola (archgluttony), which was working “to create awareness of local products and awaken people’s attention to food and wine and the right way to enjoy them.”1 For Petrini, American fast food represented all that was wrong with the world: homogenization, industrialization, colonization, globalization, dehumanization—in short, McDonaldization.2 Europeans and North Americans, Petrini argued, had lost touch with their gastronomic roots, with their sources of true pleasure and taste. “Fast-food culture”—its corporate economics, its assembly-line mode of meal production and consumption, its fat- and chemical-laden Big Macs and fries, and the superficial, frenetic lifestyle it promoted—was destroying authentic human life physiologically and aesthetically. That day, on the Spanish Steps in Rome, the Slow Food movement was born. Slow Food went international in 1989 and by 2004 had grown to more than eighty thousand members in more than one hundred countries, including an American affiliate, Slow Food USA. The organization promotes a global philosophy that is rooted locally in small convivia— groups that meet regularly in a member’s home or at a restaurant, winery, or farm to learn about “matters of taste.” Convivia hold “food and wine events and initiatives, creating moments of conviviality, raising the profile of products, and promoting local artisans and wine cellars.”3 As

1



r

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Slow Food USA puts it in its Guiding Principles, the members want to “cultivate and reinvigorate a sense of community and place,” as well as promote “global collaboration.”4 The Slow Food Manifesto, approved by delegates to the “International Slow Food Movement for the Defense of and the Right to Pleasure” conference held in Paris in 1989, outlines the organization’s global philosophy. The manifesto rejects “industrial civilization” for it has “enslaved” us to “Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes, . . . forces us to eat Fast Foods,” and threatens the environment and humanity itself with extinction. The manifesto defends “quiet material pleasure” as the only effective antidote to “the universal folly of the Fast Life.” Sensory pleasure derives from the “slow, long-lasting enjoyment” experienced when family and friends gather “at the table with Slow Food.” Those hungering for authenticity can “rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food,” as well as participate in “virtuous globalization”—an “international exchange of experiences, knowledge, and projects.”5 Slow Food has generated an expanding international network of heirloom food producers, distributors, and consumers, among them the likes of the renowned Berkeley chef Alice Waters, and retailer of highend gourmet products Williams-Sonoma. Among the organization’s numerous projects, a primary one has been building the Ark of Taste, based on The Noah Principle: to “save” the world from the “flood” of the homogenizing excesses of the modern world. Countering McDonald’s official One Taste Worldwide mission, Slow Food celebrates regional uniqueness and global diversity. Into the conceptual ark go endangered species of wild and domesticated plants and animals, endangered artisan techniques of food and drink production, and endangered practices of social civility, conviviality, and commensalism in order to build “a more human and highly developed society.”6 The Slow Food movement captures in a nutshell (or a snail shell, since the slow-moving snail is the emblem of the organization) the themes of this volume. Taken together, the essays explore an American “culinary triangle,” to borrow a familiar term from the structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.7 Rather than the raw, the cooked, and the

f

  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

rotted, however, the essays here bring together three central themes that weave their way throughout American culture and history, contributing to a distinctly American ethos: the role played by food and foodways within communities that hold utopian aspirations for bettering themselves or the world at large. Foodways, according to the folklorist Lucy M. Long, include “the network of behaviors, traditions, and beliefs concerning food, and involve all the activities surrounding a food item and its consumption, including the procurement, preservation, preparation, presentation, and performance of that food.”8 Shared foodways, as the Slow Food movement demonstrates, contribute to the successful construction of any community of like-minded individuals. However, communities are complicated entities, particularly in our postmodern global society. Reviving “the kitchen and the table as centers of pleasure, culture, and community,” a Slow Food convivium’s leisurely, intimate gatherings around food paint a familiar picture of a community as a group of individuals who physically meet, talk, and enjoy the pleasures of eating together.9 Participants intend these convivial gatherings to connect the grassroots-embodied local community with a diffuse but active global community of members who likely never will meet face to face and sit down to a meal together. Yet they are linked meaningfully not only by participating in an innovative economic system of food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption that spans the globe but also by sharing their ideas, stories, and values about food through print publications and the Internet. Utopianism, like community, is also a complex notion. The Slow Food movement offers a clear instance of a community with utopian ideals and goals. Petrini claims they are “without nostalgia,” but members want to bring from the past into the present, and from rural locales into industrialized society, an idealized time and place when people grew their own vegetables, made their own cheese, baked their own bread, and sat down with family and friends to enjoy a meal produced and prepared by their own hands.10 They want to access real or imagined “taste memories” and “rescue” unique regional foods and foodways—the Andean root yacòn, Indian mustard seed oil, British Somerset cheddar cheese, American heritage turkeys, for example—from extinc-

1

Madden and Finch  

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

tion caused by such “evils” as agricultural industrialization and biogenetic modification, typified by fast-food culture. Slow Food is typical of many utopian groups, for it looks to an ideal past in order to promote its distinct vision of a better present and future, one in which human beings are “saved” by learning to slow down, develop taste memories, experience true pleasure, and live authentically, with deeply felt connections to each other and a more humane, “civilized” world. America has provided an environment particularly conducive to our culinary triangle’s three elements—foodways, communities, and utopianism—coming together in a dynamic generation and exchange of meanings and practices. Especially since the publication of Eric Schlosser’s popular exposé, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (the subtitle of the UK edition is What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World), the global spread of American fast-food restaurants represents to many the displacement of local values and practices by U.S. cultural imperialism.11 And yet for others, whether in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, or Capetown, consuming a Quarter-pounder with Cheese means symbolically ingesting all they see as positive about the United States: political and religious freedoms, military superiority, educational opportunity, technological advancement, economic power, material luxury, and the abundance of natural resources that have made these possible.12 This real and imagined American cornucopia of natural and cultural products, symbolized and enacted through American food and foodways, provides the setting for the diverse communities explored in Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias. Yet contradictory interpretations of America—as both a utopian land of abundant resources and possibilities and, because of that abundance, also a fallen nation of consumers who fret over their diets, health, and apparent cultural poverty—complicate meanings of America-as-utopia. In response, communities have developed distinct food practices to promote their own visions of how life should be lived in America.

2

5

A Brief History of American Abundance The seeds of American fast food, the cultural meanings it symbolizes, and the contradictory responses it has elicited were planted more

f

  Introduction

3

4

than five hundred years ago by the earliest European explorers, who exclaimed at their discovery of a marvelous “New World” overflowing with unimaginable riches. From early travel narratives that described in vibrant detail the discovery of exotic new foods, to recent accounts that have presented the United States as “breadbasket to the world,” food has served as a primary symbol of American abundance. Utopian images of America as the land of plenty were shaped by the first explorers, who often used biblical language to rhapsodize about America as a millennial land, the New Jerusalem foretold in the Bible. Christopher Columbus imagined he had found the Garden of Eden and claimed that God had shown him where to find this “new heaven and new earth,” where a richness of natural resources awaited harvesting.13 Later voyagers promoted American riches to Europeans hungry for economic profit, religious or political freedom, and other opportunities. Captain John Smith described Virginia in 1612: “The mildnesse of the aire, the fertilities of the soile, and the situation of the rivers are so propitious to the nature and use of man as no place is more convenient for pleasure, profit, and man[’]s sustenance.”14 Other travelers in the 1600s compared the abundance of American commodities with their lack in Europe, claiming that the “savage” Native people they encountered were unable to take full advantage of the land’s riches. Indians simply took what they needed with ease, said these writers, and celebrated with feasts during which they ate “until their bellies stand forth, ready to split with fullness.”15 Numerous colonial promoters provided long and detailed descriptions of indigenous fruits, fish, and game, hoping to attract more settlers, with technologies supposedly superior to those of “indolent” Native people, to harvest American resources, creating wealth for colonial investors.16 Many of those who did settle in America believed that they had been led by God out of Europe into the “land of promise” and a “new paradise.” Plymouth’s William Bradford imagined Christ inviting his people in New England to “eat . . . and drink freely” of the banquet of wine, milk, sweet spices, and honey spread before them in the wilderness garden.17 Proponents of the myth of American abundance held up both the land and the “New World” societies established there as physically,

1

Madden and Finch  

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

morally, and spiritually more healthy and pure than those left behind in Europe. Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian ideal for the New Republic was reflected in the “new man,” the American farmer, about whom Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote in 1782. In Europe men were “mowed down by want, hunger, and war.” In America the “precious soil . . . feeds and clothes us; from it we draw even a great exuberancy, our best meat, our richest drink; the very honey of our bees comes from this privileged spot.” In America, Crèvecoeur’s imaginary farmer proclaimed, a European immigrant experiences a “sort of resurrection.” He “involuntarily loves a country where everything is so lovely,” where there is “room for everybody,” where “instead of starving, he will be fed.”18 In 1817 the English visitor William Cobbett perpetuated this vision: in America “you are not much pressed to eat and drink, but such an abundance is spread before you . . . that you instantly lose all restraint.”19 Crèvecoeur and earlier colonists did express some fears about the detrimental physical and moral effects that consuming foods grown in the “savage” American wilderness might have on their “civilized” minds and bodies, and many immigrants, of course, encountered far more hardships than those who glorified American abundance had described.20 Nevertheless, the glowing rhetoric prevailed. It has shaped the expectations of the millions of immigrants who have arrived here since the early nineteenth century. In the 1800s eastern European Jews, encouraged by letters from relatives and friends who had already participated in the “New Exodus” to the New World, were lured by the “land of milk and honey” and “of mystery, of fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations.”21 In her study of nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants’ foodways, the historian Hasia Diner has noted that pangs of hunger drove the immigrants out of their countries of origin and promises of plenty powerfully drew them to America, “a place where [they] could find work,” and work “meant being able to feed oneself and one’s family.”22 Visionary ideals of American abundance continued to shape discourse at the national level throughout the twentieth century. Writing in the 1950s, the historian David M. Potter argued that a primary factor influencing “the American character” was “the unusual plenty of avail-

f

  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

able goods or other usable wealth which has prevailed in America.” For Potter, the land’s physical resources and political freedoms had generated a “politics of abundance,” which “fused . . . these two ingredients— freedom and abundance— . . . in American democratic thought.” This fusion, in practical terms, meant a higher standard of living, including better nourishment, for Americans than for the rest of the world.23 More recently, however, Harvey Levenstein has pointed to the cultural revolutions of the 1960s as initiating a “crack” in the “facade” of the American abundance myth as Potter had described it, a crack noticed by proponents of Slow Food. Industrialization of agriculture, biogenetic modification of foods, continuing malnutrition and obesity, and obsessions about health, dieting, and thinness have challenged former meanings of America as the land of plenty, creating the “paradox of a people surrounded by abundance who are unable to enjoy it.”24 Nevertheless, not unlike colonial travel narratives that served up a cornucopia of American fruits, fish, and game to a European readership hungry for the exotic and for profit, it is still primarily food products—now Coca-Cola and McDonald’s restaurants—that serve as the most potent emblems of the inherently conflict-laden myths of American abundance and consumption to the rest of the world.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

Utopianism, Communities, and Foodways Throughout American history visionary ideals of abundance and the paradoxes they have generated have been articulated by communities of like-minded individuals and enacted in those communities’ foodways. We refer to such visionary ideals as “utopian”—a term that extends beyond the religious connotations of Eden and paradise to other discourses of social reform and improvement. Since Thomas More’s Utopia was published in 1516, many people have used the term utopia to signify “an imaginative vision of the telos, or end, at which social life aims.”25 More cleverly coined the word utopia from the Greek eutopia, which means “good place,” and outopia, which means “nowhere.” In their discussions of utopia, scholars often consider two basic types: “fictional” utopias such as More’s—appearing in print as political or philosophical treatises, religious manifestos, or novels—and “commu-

2

Madden and Finch  

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

nal” utopias—actual groups of people who live together, sharing property and labor, with the intentional purpose of creating “good places” in specific locales.26 For some utopias, this familiar classifying scheme works, but for others, including many of the utopian communities described in this volume, attempting to place them in one of these two categories—either fictional or communal—reveals both the problematic and limiting nature of the classifications.27 Examples of American fictional utopias abound, but some have transgressed the boundaries of the printed text. Étienne Cabet’s Voyage to Icaria (1839), for example, has been called a fictional novel.28 Yet Cabet’s Icarians existed both in the world of print and as an American communal utopia, in which people shared property and living quarters. Formerly a political leader in France, then exiled and living in England, Cabet imagined Icaria, a community “better” than the country in which he had lived. Through the voices of characters such as Eugene, who writes home to his brother, Cabet described this “good place.” Writing of its food practices, for example, he explained that members of the Republic produce and consume “what is necessary . . . what is useful . . . and what is agreeable.” Likewise, everyone in Icaria has “an equal share of all foods without distinction.” The meals consumed in a common hall “present a great economy,” “induce the masses to fraternize[,] and . . . simplify the housework for women.”29 Although Cabet wrote initially for a limited audience, his fictional utopia was a success. Five editions appeared between 1840 and 1848, and its popularity prompted some readers to attempt living according to the pattern Cabet created; believers in Cabet’s vision sailed to America to live out their dreams in Icarian communities established in Texas, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and California between 1848 and 1881.30 Cabet’s Icaria not only makes blatant the values of specific food practices in utopian communities but also demonstrates the difficulties of classifying utopias as either fictional or communal. The Icarians, clearly, were both. Thus, the boundaries between utopias described in writing and those experienced in communal sites are often blurred.31 Labeling utopias as one of these two traditional types is problematic not only because of the blurred boundaries between them; it is also lim-

f

  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

iting when we complicate meanings of “community.” Benedict Anderson asserted many years ago that sharing idealized images, promoted through particular technological innovations and economic relations, creates a community.32 Thus, limiting utopian communities to communal utopias—consisting of people who, because of common intentions, choose to live communally by sharing living quarters, property, and labor—excludes two kinds of utopian groups. First, these categories do not include those people who hold a common vision and live in close proximity to one another but do not live together “in community,” as do members of communal utopias. However, because their members attempt to achieve shared idealized visions by living near each other and sharing some practices, such as foodways, they are utopian communities. We refer to them as “local” utopias. The Puritans in early New England, for example, attempted to establish orderly villages with intentions of fostering moral and spiritual improvement. In the eighteenth century members of the all-male Tuesday Club, influenced by More’s Utopia, gathered weekly to discuss the shape of the New Republic. And throughout American history, immigrant groups have arrived with dreams of what America would offer and have established religious and ethnic enclaves in which to share their distinct identities, visions, and experiences. In addition to excluding these local utopias, another limiting element of previous understandings of utopia arises from Anderson’s claims about communities. While some might only consider as “community” those who live in close proximity to one another, Anderson and many others have acknowledged since his Imagined Communities was published that even geographically dispersed individuals can be meaningfully connected by idealized values and practices circulated through various media.33 Prior categories of utopias have not considered people who might gather with small groups of others to promote their ideals but never meet face to face all the members of their widely dispersed community. We refer to these as “global” utopias.34 Not only Slow Food USA but also the Weigh Down Workshop, a twelve-week program designed by the Protestant evangelical Gwen Shamblin to improve body and spirit and lead its followers, according to R. Marie Griffith, into

1

Madden and Finch  

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

“the Promised Land of thinness,” exemplify this type of utopian community. Begun in 1986, the Weigh Down Workshop is now “the largest devotional diet program, by far, . . . offered in as many as thirty thousand churches, seventy countries, and sixty different denominations.”35 Bound by various communication means as well as by practices intended to materialize their visions of perfecting self and society, these new American utopian communities are products of an increasingly globalized culture. In addition to members of Slow Food USA and the Weigh Down Workshop, people who buy cookbooks by celebrity authors, follow vegetarian diets, or view televised cooking shows each share visions of a “good place”—a world where people appreciate the quality of the food produced and consumed, eat foods nutritionally beneficial to them, or want food production and consumption to be environmentally friendly. Such utopian communities fully illustrate the ways in which participants are unified by their idealized visions and practices of foodways, in spite of their diffuse geographic locales. Adding the categories of “global” and “local” to the more common “fictional” and “communal” utopias acknowledges the ways that the nature of American utopianism and understandings of community have changed over time, and such changes can be demonstrated by a single utopian community. For example, founded by the visionary Joseph Smith and a few family members and friends in central New York in 1830, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, is today one of the world’s largest religious organizations. Based on what he understood to be divine revelations, Smith established many new practices intended to effect physical and spiritual purity among his followers, including dietary regulations.36 While some might see Smith’s visions and The Pearl of Great Price, in which he described them, as fictional, the group that followed him west from New York was a communal utopia. Over time the lds Church grew into the locally based but geographically diffuse utopian society it is today, exemplifying the combination of global and local, or “glocalization,” that characterizes recent understandings of the global community.37 Scholars include Mormons in studies of American utopias because Latter-day Saints have sustained Smith’s visionary ideals through-

f

10  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

out their remarkable growth and achievement of social prominence, which has been supported by technological inventions. Missionaries now travel more rapidly than ever before and disseminate Mormon beliefs not only by word of mouth and in print but also via radio, television, and the Internet. Believers may draw support from one another through many of the same means missionaries employ. Other groups that depend on technological advances in communication and travel to promote their visionary ideals and for their creation, networking, growth, and sustenance deserve also to be considered among American utopias. America has provided the ideal setting for utopianism to flourish. Besides the Mormons, almost six hundred other communal utopias existed in America between 1663 and 1970. Several social factors early on shaped this distinct utopian spirit in America: the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance emphasis on exploration, and the secular, individualistic spirit that accompanied the Enlightenment.38 Such influences and the resulting optimistic visions spurred on the explorers, colonists, and later immigrants who chose to travel to America. Utopias are created, according to the German sociologist Karl Mannheim, when people move “against what was in order to produce something new.”39 And America—the “new world”—was seen as the ideal place to accomplish such innovations. For many of those who arrived, Robert S. Fogarty has explained, “religious perfectibility and secular progress” were wedded.40 In addition, as Paul S. Boyer has summarized, the “comparative lack of hierarchy, freedom from the weight of tradition, and openness to social innovation” in America have “provided a . . . congenial environment” for utopian visions and their implementation.41 These scholars echo the claims Potter made a half-century ago, when he argued that the economic system and democracy in the United States offered opportunities to people not available elsewhere and contributed to American idealism. As Potter explained, abundance is not merely natural resources—many “third world” countries have vast natural resources, but their people do not maintain hope of improving their lives. Rather, North America’s social environment promises upward mobility to those who are able to work hard and wish to be successful. This

1

Madden and Finch  11

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

promise of accessible abundance and the social and economic mobility associated with it are unique to the United States, making America particularly conducive to the development of communities with utopian aspirations.42 The ideas of abundant material resources, democratic political institutions, and free-market capitalism have offered people in America opportunities not only to voice their complaints about the present and their dreams about the future—either aloud or in print or via other media—but also to maintain a hope that those dreams might be realized. The imagined future of a community is as significant to its formation as the economic systems and political and social situations within it.43 For a utopian community’s hopes and dreams to be fulfilled, they must be enacted in concrete ways as members struggle to translate their visionary ideals into daily activities. Thomas More’s etymology suggests, however, that these “good places” called utopias are, in fact, nowhere. Indeed, a group’s practices invariably fall short of its initial visions; the perfect societies imagined and promoted by their founders can never, finally, be achieved, at least not without continuous adjustments and alterations in visionary ideals. As Furaha Norton has noted, the “seed of its own destruction” is sown along with the generating forces of a utopia.44 That is, when we shift our gaze from the utopian ideals officially promoted by a community to the ways those ideals are enacted in actual practices, such as foodways, we are drawn into the complex, often conflicted, very human realm of daily life, of members’ individual opinions, experiences, and activities. To access that realm, in which foodways are debated and practiced, this volume draws on the work of cultural theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault. According to Bourdieu, societies that “seek to produce a new man” do so through processes of “deculturation” and “reculturation,” which attend to the seemingly insignificant activities of daily life, like dress, bearing, manners, and foodways. Such an embodied “pedagogy” is effective in instilling a new worldview because members are often unaware of its presence and effects as they go about their daily lives. Through this process, members of a society learn specific values, or “tastes.”45 These pedagogies, Foucault reminds us,

f

12  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

do not flow only from the top down, from authorities to members. Because social meanings are so deeply embedded in everyday practices, any individual, by virtue of participating within the community’s habitus, has at his or her disposal the tools and know-how to reshape those practices according to personal tastes and desires. This reshaping often creates conflict among members, which, if it does not cause the community to self-destruct, can generate broader change within it.46 Thus, studying lived practices such as foodways allows us to observe how power flows and is challenged within utopian communities. Within the group, practices themselves shape beliefs, and even members at the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy are agents of change, altering communal identity. Furthermore, the most rigidly bounded communities nevertheless exist within a larger world with which members interact, also generating changes in communal values and practices. In Shaker communities, for example, influences from and exchanges with the world continuously occurred, causing conflict at times, sustaining the communities at others, and constantly asking members, even at an unconscious level, that they consider the ideals of their communities and how they should be embodied. Shakers discussed the sale of their communally produced goods, such as apple cider, to the world, and the benefits and potential dangers of sending traders out from the communities’ supposedly safe havens in order to gain a profit and, perhaps, converts to the faith. They also argued about whether to adopt popular, middle-class practices from the world, such as vegetarianism and abstinence from alcohol. These aspects of daily food activities revealed the groups’ interactions with the outside world even as they affected the communities’ unity and unique utopian vision.47 As these examples from Shaker life suggest, food has the capacity to “absorb and reflect a host of cultural phenomena,”48 although we generally remain unaware of food’s many meanings or the impact those meanings have on us as we go about our daily lives. “We are defined by our relations to the food we eat,” writes the philosopher Deane W. Curtin, but “we live in a dominant culture which does not . . . understand them as defining.”49 Utopian communities, however, frequently recognize the power food carries to define and shape self and culture, and

1

Madden and Finch  13

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

foodways often explicitly take center stage in social groups with clearly defined and intentionally promoted ideals. Regulating activities around food and investing those activities with specific meanings enable members to achieve their ideals and display those ideals to themselves and outsiders. Their foodways, in fact, help members continuously create a particular world and define their relations to the larger world in which they live. In such utopian communities food functions in at least four interrelated ways: symbolically, as a means for representing and communicating group values; functionally, as a primary factor in the construction of bonds within and boundaries around a community and as a means of material and ideological negotiations with the outside world; mnemonically, as a memory device connecting past, present, and future; and dynamically, as a means for enacting and reflecting changing social values. The semiotician Roland Barthes sees food as “a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior.”50 A culture’s food system constitutes a symbolic language that transmits information about the underlying values, the ethos, of a society. In his Empire of Signs, for example, Barthes explores Japanese aesthetics by analyzing Japanese foodways, which, he argues, produce a “grammar” that communicates the Buddhist value of “emptiness” or “nothingness” at the heart of Japanese culture.51 Likewise, other social groups explicitly invest certain foods with a potent symbolism that conveys “specific meanings . . . in specific contexts.”52 Thus, the heritage Narragansett turkey, ordered from a small farm in Rhode Island to grace the Thanksgiving table of Slow Food proponents in Southern California, communicates to those gathered around the table a distinct set of meanings. Such symbolic foods constellate and magnify specific values for a group, continuously reconstituting and reinforcing the group’s identity and existence. The anthropologist Mary Douglas also is concerned about how food communicates social structures and values, allowing us to consider how food functions to construct social bonds and boundaries. Douglas’s investigations into food regulations and practices within small social groups, from the ancient Israelites to the modern British family, are

f

14  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

particularly helpful for understanding foodways in utopian communal groups.53 The “natural body” or individual human body, she claims, is a potent symbol of the “social body” or communal group that has erected clearly defined boundaries around itself. Communities particularly concerned about sustaining distinct, visionary values strive to maintain distinct lines between insiders and outsiders, order and disorder, purity and pollution by carefully monitoring individual members’ bodily practices, especially those that pertain to the body’s boundaries and its openings.54 Dietary restrictions and other foodways that regulate what goes into one’s body—for example, the kosher laws of kashrut in Orthodox Jewish communities—reflect a primary concern with regulating the social boundaries around the community, enclosing and containing members and clearly differentiating them from outsiders, with whom they do not eat. Individuals within such a community can undermine communal values and construct alternative identities, however, through eating differently—when the child of a Jewish immigrant breaks kashrut and eats a cheeseburger with his non-Jewish American friends—and suffer the consequences, such as rejection by the community. Other communities are less concerned about maintaining distinct boundaries. When 1970s vegetarian communal restaurants fed their customers and marketed their cookbooks to “outsiders,” for example, their exchange of food and foodways represented the permeability of group identity. Thus, food practices create and reflect not only the boundaries around but also the bonds within a community and between communal members and outsiders. As David Bell and Gill Valentine put it, food serves as the “social glue.”55 Commensality, or “eating, the sharing of food,” writes Anna Meigs, “is a means by which to establish physical commingling, interdependence, and oneness.” An “eating-induced unity,” a kind of “mystical sharing,” is generated and experienced when people sit down to a meal together.56 Commensality within a geographically and ideologically constrained social group, like an Orthodox Jewish community or a Puritan New England church, binds together individual members and allows them to engage and materialize their idealistic values. But meaningful sharing of life-shaping values

1

Madden and Finch  15

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

can also occur when like-minded individuals share foodways through media such as cookbooks, television, or the Internet. Therefore, members of a more diffuse global community—Slow Food proponents, those who created a “virtual community” by participating in the online weblog the “Julie/Julia Project,”57 or those who are dedicated to viewing a particular celebrity television chef ’s cooking show—also can be connected meaningfully by sharing discourses—practices, experiences, values—about food. While utopian groups want to create new and “better” social worlds and frequently orient themselves toward the future, in which members envision an ideal world coming into being, they nevertheless often draw their values from the past. The social bonding that occurs while sharing food and foodways connects participants not only with each other but also with a shared history. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls these complex meldings of “sensory and social experiences” through food exchange “edible chronotopes,” in which experiencing particular foods creates “space-time convergences.” In other words, specific foods have the capacity to work mnemonically, to “hold time, place, and memory” and elicit particular deeply felt meanings.58 Some communities, for example, long for the foodways of an idealized agrarian past. Americans throughout the last two centuries, have reminisced about what they have construed as simpler and healthier ways of eating, as the historian Rachel Laudan has noted.59 The nostalgic reminiscences mushroom into myths, often draw attention from the larger public, and become social reform movements reacting against “unnatural” or “processed” foods. Culminating in campaigns like vegetarianism, food cooperatives, or Slow Food, these food-centered utopian movements teach taste and create communal boundaries, albeit permeable ones, for they envision the entire world adopting their foodways and values. In other groups, such as immigrant communities, food also serves a mnemonic role, as they struggle to maintain ties to their homelands and sustain their visions of distinct ethnic and religious life, as Hasia Diner has noted. Eating specific foods elicits visceral memories that provide feelings of familiarity, comfort, and continuity—but for some eating traditional foods can elicit feelings of limitation and constraint. As immi-

f

16  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

grants access the benefits that drew them to America, they soon learn that maintaining all of their traditional food practices is difficult and, for many, undesirable. Bringing familiar foodways with them, they also embrace the abundance and variety of foods the new land has to offer, thus creating uniquely American, “creolized” foodways, as Donna R. Gabbacia has discussed in her study of ethnic food’s role in the shaping of American culture.60 Such alterations in an immigrant community’s foodways redefine communal life. When Indian Americans in Atlanta, for example, prepare and eat dishes of fragrant vegetarian curry and basmati rice during a Hindu temple potluck meal to which non-Hindu visitors have been invited, they are enjoying the viscerally familiar tastes of ethnic and religious identity—they are, in fact, reproducing Mother India in America. But by performing a distinctly American food practice, the potluck, and sharing their food with non-Hindu Americans, they mark and embrace their new identities as American citizens. Food’s ability to link the old and familiar with the new and innovative allows it to function effectively in furthering utopian ideals, for foodways, like other lived practices, are dynamic, continuously enacting familiar continuities as well as new alterations that often challenge the familiar. Many groups attempt to maintain a rigid adherence to ideals and practices once they are established, but contestation and change are inherent forces within utopian societies—after all, they have been established with the explicit purpose of challenging the status quo and creating something new. In his analysis of ceremonial meals, for example, the historian of religion Bruce Lincoln refutes the notion that food rituals serve only to maintain the status quo: “If such banquets . . . serve[d] to catalyze, confirm, celebrate, and thereby perpetuate the established order, there existed other possibilities as well: By rendering the social order visible, these same exercises also opened it up for possible contestation.”61 Thus, as Lincoln’s argument suggests, members who want to challenge their community’s leadership or alter its values and goals can do so by challenging specific food practices. Administrators’ understandings of the ideal middle-class female were challenged, for example, by students’ food practices in women’s colleges in the nineteenth century.

1

Madden and Finch  17

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

Within communities, tensions and conflicts ensue over which practices to maintain, which to reject, which to adapt, and which from the outside cultural environment to adopt. For a group and its ideal visions to survive, it must hold on to enough of the familiar to sustain continuities, but it must also be flexible enough to adjust to changing circumstances. The dynamic nature of food practices reminds us that the American culinary triangle is also a dynamic model. Each of the three elements— foodways, communities, and utopianism—continuously reshapes the others. For groups with distinct visions of their goals and of how their foodways contribute to achieving those purposes, conflict and change signify to some members the threat of group dissolution and to others the promise of freedom and access to America’s bounties.

4

5

About the Essays This volume’s essays are clustered to represent three ways that individuals and communities have incorporated ideals of American life and experience through their foodways: as first- and second-generation immigrants constructing new identities as they engage the natural and social environments in America; as relatively small, distinct social groups attempting to perfect their communal lives and distinguish themselves from American society at large; and as communities, often composed of geographically disparate individuals, that envision the improvement of national or even global society. Within each section essays are arranged chronologically in order to suggest ways that Americans have both sustained and altered understandings of utopia over time and how food has functioned to materialize those ideals within specific historical moments. Part 1, “New World Utopias: Cultivating Immigrant Identities through Food,” includes essays that investigate ways recent arrivals anticipated America as the ideal place in which to reproduce religious and ethnic identity and achieve economic success, yet they also discovered that these two impulses—to sustain original identity and achieve new success—could be at odds with each other. Each group envisioned itself as constituting a community organized around specific ethnic and

f

18  Introduction

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

religious values, and each used food both to enact those values and distinguish its members from outsiders, as well as to embrace the utopian promises of New World abundance. But each also learned that geographical change required alterations in communal ideals, identity, and foodways. The first two essays of the collection employ historical methods—one cultural and the other literary—to explore foodways within English and Spanish colonial immigrant communities. Seventeenth-century English Puritans arrived in New England with the expectation that they were entering the Promised Land, but also with visions of building God’s “city on a hill” by gathering tightly knit, godly communities in the wilderness. Martha L. Finch investigates the ways New Englanders’ ritual cycle of fast and thanksgiving promoted not only the well-known Thanksgiving feast but also a moderate diet and frequent days of fasting in order to sustain their communal covenants with God and each other and to differentiate themselves from the “corrupt” English society they had left behind. Also viewing foodways as a means of cultural differentiation, the Spanish Franciscan Father Pedro Font bemoaned the “savage” foods and “heathen” peoples his group encountered in upper California during the Anza expedition of 1775–76. Phillip H. Round’s essay details the physical and ideological conflicts that ensued among members of the party when another Franciscan padre suggested by his behavior that participation in the Natives’ lively celebrations, or fandangos, of feasting and drinking was crucial to a successful mission to plant an ideal Christian society in the desert. More recent immigrant groups also have struggled to negotiate old and new identities through their foodways. Debra Shostak’s literary analysis of Philip Roth’s mid-twentieth-century novels reveals that second-generation Jewish immigrants’ desires to erase difference and embrace American culture—commonly known as “passing” and often symbolized through eating taboo foods such as lobster and cheeseburgers—are almost always vexed by metaphorical indigestion. Consumption of these foods by Roth’s characters indicates successful assimilation into the culture of American abundance, yet the novels, argues Shostak, ultimately suggest that those who consume them are hollow,

1

Madden and Finch  19

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

lonesome, or self-deluding. The differences maintained through traditional food practices in Jewish American communities, by contrast, provide stabilizing and healthy concepts of identity. Similarly, Kathryn McClymond’s ethnographic study of the contemporary Hindu Temple of Atlanta investigates food as a primary vehicle by which Indian immigrants transplant the utopian meanings of Mother India into American soil. Food sustains temple members’ connections to their Hindu deities through devotional rituals of prasad, or eating fruit and other foods that have been offered to the gods, and to their Indian identity through cultural events during which Indian foods are consumed. Yet food also provides Atlanta Hindus a way to engage American society and embrace their identities as Americans, McClymond argues: temple members prepare and distribute peanut butter sandwiches to those who are homeless, and they contribute to several urban food banks. Within each immigrant group in part 1, encounters with unfamiliar natural and social environments expose both the possibilities and the difficulties of immigrants maintaining their distinct visions and intentions through food practices. The ability of foodways to promote and sustain difference becomes more explicit in part 2, “Communal Utopias: Eating In, But Not Of, the World,” which explores food meanings and practices among groups more familiarly utopian. These communities intentionally drew clear boundaries between themselves and the surrounding American social culture, often by sharing property, labor, and living quarters; most significant to this volume, they ate differently from other Americans, if not by consuming all their meals together then at least by purposefully using food and its symbolic meanings to distinguish the group from outsiders and to promote the physical and moral improvement of insiders. But such groups were also members of the larger American social culture, often negatively labeled “the world.” Exchanging values with the world, which is exemplified in these essays by food exchange, incited alterations in the communities’ original visions and foodways. The first three essays in part 2 are historical studies of foodways in three of the hundreds of communal utopias that flourished during the nineteenth century, located primarily in rural areas of New England,

f

20  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

central New York, and the Midwest: the Shakers, the Oneida Perfectionists, and the Amana Society. Each group regulated cultivation, cooking, and eating activities that explicitly revealed its beliefs about achieving earthly perfection. Nonetheless, as Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz’s analysis of the Shakers shows, the ideals often were disrupted by heated debates and shifting visions, as male leaders introduced practices such as vegetarianism and female members resisted changing years of cooking habits. Images of eating often corresponded to images of sexual practices among Oneida Community members, as Wendy Chmielewski argues in her essay. With Oneida, as with the Amana Society, food practices marked a difference from the world, even as communal members offered food to the world as a means of communion with it. The Oneida Community, Chmielewski reveals, offered strawberries and cream, a markedly sensual food, to visitors in order to demonstrate their willingness to be good neighbors. Visitors, however, may have read the offering as a sign of the communities’ notable sexual practice of “free love.” Jonathan G. Andelson’s essay follows the Amana Society from its nineteenth-century origins into the twentieth century, when community organization changed in response to outside social pressures and internal desires of members. Moving from living in community to living in separate family households, members shifted from cooking and eating meals together in communal kitchens to cooking and serving “authentic” midwestern German-style food in privately owned commercial restaurants. The restaurants’ meat-and-potatoes meals provide tourists a taste of an idealized earlier world of American agrarian life. In the late twentieth century, other utopian communities also used food both to distinguish themselves from the outside world and to share their values with the world, sometimes through restaurants and particularly through cookbooks. Maria McGrath’s essay analyzes the content as well as the social context of popular natural foods cookbooks published by countercultural communities of the 1970s and 1980s. Located in places as intimate as Laurel Robertson’s family kitchen and as public as the Moosewood Restaurant, these communities attempted to construct ideal social groups oriented around back-to-the-land, feminist, or religious vegetarian values. The decisions to produce and market cookbooks of

1

Madden and Finch  21

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

utopian foodways indicate the communities’ desires to effect larger social change. The desire to share idealized visions with the world is more fully developed in the essays in part 3, “Strategic Utopias: Cooking Up Values for a New World.” With far-reaching visions of a better world for all, some of these communities are more geographically delimited local utopias, while others are more diffuse global utopias. All, however, have attempted to reshape significant social categories such as citizenship, gender, or socioeconomic class, with food as the primary vehicle for promoting local, national, or global change. Yet the very act of implementing particular food practices as overt or subtle strategies to further larger social improvement agendas, the essays demonstrate, can generate highly charged conflicts regarding appropriate foods and their production, distribution, preparation, and consumption. Such “food fights” emerged among elite republican men in eighteenth-century dining clubs, for example, as they debated whether to serve plain or elaborate foods at their meetings. In her study of the Tuesday Club, the historian Trudy Eden argues that the accompanying labor and expense of hosting a meeting, as well as how these practices might produce manly citizens of the New Republic, were at the heart of the debate. Again, in the late nineteenth century, as Priscilla J. Brewer’s historical essay explains, gender and liberal ideals were at the center of discussion, as students at northern women’s colleges began to indulge in dorm-room “spreads.” The display and consumption of rich delicacies—welsh rarebit, fudge, nuts, and cakes—created tensions between students and college authorities. Administrators, who upheld progressive, liberal education for the shaping of upper middle-class young women, resisted the late-night food fests, while students wrote home begging for money and cooking implements to support their ideals of progressive female behavior. In the twentieth century foodways’ ability to reflect tensions between competing values regarding socioeconomic status occurred in 1970s Minneapolis. The social historian Mary Rizzo argues that idealistic members of food cooperatives argued about whether the co-ops should stock their shelves with more expensive “whole” and “natural” foods or

f

22  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

with cheaper processed foods. Thus, even as the co-ops tried to minimize class differences among Americans, their heated debates explicitly reflected arguments based on social and economic class distinctions. Connections between class and foodways have been disseminated more subtly, yet effectively, through public television. According to the media studies scholar Monica Mak, although those who sit at home watching gourmet cooking shows do not consume literal foods produced in the television studio, the shows’ celebrity chefs define, demonstrate, and promote contemporary North American ideals and practices of elite taste. The shows’ viewers participate in the imaginary utopian world of gastronomic experiences and disparate “foodie” communities being mediated on pbs, Mak argues. As they consume specific interpretations of American abundance and taste, they distinguish themselves from those who are titillated by fast-food commercials on other stations. While the intention of pbs cooking shows is to open a world abounding with exotic foods to their viewers, some contemporary vegetarian Jewish and Buddhist groups want to close the door on the consumption of certain foods, namely animal flesh. The religious studies scholar Ellen Posman reveals in her essay that these religious groups draw their explicitly utopian visions of transforming the world from sacred texts. They promote an ethical vegetarian lifestyle in order to heal the earth and create a spiritually, morally, and physically enlightened global community. Collectively, these essays reiterate that because food is a primary element of daily lived experience and, therefore, a potent symbol of social organization and tensions, it provides a crucial means of identification and “improvement” of self and society. Although many Americans have realized that reentry into Eden is impossible, and the term “utopia” suggests by definition that a perfect society is nowhere to be found, people have continued to dream of and attempted to construct such places of perfection. A community’s visions of the meanings of food and its relationship to other communal ideals—regarding ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender roles, socioeconomic class, or involvement with or exclusion from the surrounding society—motivate, create, and sustain its foodways. Yet, as they enact their beliefs through food practices, ten-

1

Madden and Finch  23

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

sions often emerge among group members, causing them to redefine communal boundaries in an ongoing construction of the meanings of self, community, and utopia in their American context. These essays, then, provocatively illustrate the ways in which American ideals—of enticing abundance and individual freedom on the one hand, and of collective, communal visions and identity on the other—are often at odds with one another, especially when food is the lens through which these relationships are examined. Throughout the interdisciplinary discussion of the linkages among utopia, communities, and foodways in this collection, we have depended on the richness of the abundant scholarship in food, utopian, and communal studies that has proliferated during the last decade. Several have considered already food in religious communities, food in ethnic communities and, more generally, food practices in America, and we are grateful to those who have done the difficult work of preparing the forests and fields for our foraging and reaping. In spite of this abundance, however, studies of food in utopian communities are relatively few, as are studies that emphasize the idealism reflected in American foodways. Because we believe the utopian nature of American food practices is their most pervasive aspect, we offer this collection and the new culinary triangle it invokes. Bringing together the utopian character of American foodways and the ways in which many Americans have built their communities, this volume illustrates how lived food experiences both emanate from and contribute to ideas of perfection and improvement in American culture. Eating in Eden also suggests the possibilities available for further fruitful work on food in the American and utopian contexts. Studies in the volume not only serve as models, demonstrating applications of contemporary food theory, but also put forth several “new” utopian communities meriting further analysis. Many more studies of American communities’ food practices might have been included. For example, numerous fictional utopias, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, include references to foodways. Many communal utopias, such as the Latter-day Saints, have dietary regulations that offer rich material for analysis. Local utopias might be further understood through

f

24  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

study of an African American church’s or a Chinese immigrant community’s foodways. And global utopias—a significant new area within utopian studies—could be explored through consideration of dieting communities such as South Beach and Body for Life. Additionally, the collection’s interdisciplinary nature enhances the possibilities for further studies of food in utopian communities. Because readers may be more familiar with the methodological lenses commonly used in one discipline than with those used in another, they may have ideas about how to employ different approaches to develop other interpretations of a utopian group already included here. Indeed, each essay may be viewed as a kaleidoscope; when it is turned ever so slightly, or considered from a different angle, an array of new ideas appears, inviting further investigation and analysis. Because utopia is still very much a part of American discourse, the potential subjects for studies of food and utopias increase daily. As Edward J. Rothstein has noted, the quest for utopia is “an imaginative precondition for achievable change in the here and now.”62 The thought of a world without conceptions of utopia is, like the thought of a world without food, disturbing. Material resources in the United States continue to combine with the sociopolitical values of freedom, democracy, and mobility to create an environment in which food plays a central role both to embrace and to critique American culture. Symbolically, functionally, mnemonically, and dynamically, food and foodways nourish a group’s understanding of its relationship to the American setting, which offers ideological possibilities and material aplenty for pursuing visionary ideals. Notes 1. Carlo Petrini, Slow Food: The Case for Taste, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 4. 2. Many scholars, journalists, and others have discussed the “McDonaldization” phenomenon. See, for example, George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (Newbury Park ca: Pine Forge Press, 1993); George Ritzer, ed., McDonaldization: The Reader, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks ca: Pine Forge Press, 2004); David Bell and Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (London: Routledge, 1997); and Elspeth Probyn, “Feeding McWorld, Eating Madden and Finch  25

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

5

Ideologies,” in Probyn, Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities (New York: Routledge, 2000), 33–57. 3. “The Movement,” Slow Food, http://www.slowfood.com (accessed July 26, 2004). 4. “Our Guiding Principles,” Slow Food USA, http://slowfoodusa.org (accessed July 28, 2004). 5. “The Official Slow Food Manifesto,” in Petrini, Slow Food, xxiii–xxiv. Also at http://www.slowfood.com. 6. On the Noah Principle, Ark of Taste, and foods and foodways being saved, see Petrini, Slow Food, 85–90; Carlo Petrini, ed., Slow Food: Collected Thoughts on Taste, Tradition, and the Honest Pleasures of Food (White River Junction vt: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2001); http://www.slowfood.com. On the problem of Americans lacking “memories going back over generations of food with actual flavor, food that’s carefully raised,” see interview with Corby Kummer, author of The Pleasures of Slow Food: Celebrating Authentic Traditions, Flavors, and Recipes (Chronicle, 2002), in “The Values of Good Food,” The Atlantic Online, Nov. 14, 2002, http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002–11–14/htm (accessed October 18, 2005). 7. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Culinary Triangle,” in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), 28–35. 8. Lucy M. Long, Culinary Tourism (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003), 8. 9. “Live Slow!” Slow Food USA; Michael Pollan, “Cruising on the Ark of Taste,” Mother Jones (May/June 2003): 75. 10. The historian Rachel Laudan has argued that the current belief that preindustrial “natural” and “traditional” foods were tastier and healthier than those bought off the modern supermarket shelf represents a nostalgic yearning for a past that never was. Ancient peoples avoided eating fresh, “natural” foods because they were dangerous; early on they developed technologies to process and preserve foods (e.g., cheese, wine, olive oil, salted and dried meats). Nevertheless, wine was often sour, meat rotten, and grain infested with insect larvae (“A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food,” Gastronomica 1, no. 1 [2001]: 36–44). 11. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); (uk edition: London: Allan Lane Penguin Press, 2001). 12. See, for example, James L. Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in

f

26  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

East Asia (Stanford ca: Stanford University Press, 1997); Constantin Boym, “My McDonald’s,” Gastronomica 1 (2001): 6–8. 13. Christopher Columbus to Doña Juana de la Torre (1500), quoted in Kay Brigham, Christopher Columbus: His Life and Discovery in the Light of His Prophecies (Barcelona: Libros clie, 1990), 136. 14. John Smith, A Map of Virginia (1612), in The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631), ed. Philip L. Barbour (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 1:159. 15. William Wood, New England’s Prospect (1634), ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 87. 16. See, for example, Wood, New England’s Prospect; John Josselyn, Two Voyages to New England (1674), in John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler, ed. Paul J. Linholdt (Hanover nh: University Press of New England, 1988); Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, ed. Jack Dempsey (Scituate ma: Digital Scanning, 2000); John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), ed. Hugh Talmage Lefler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967). 17. William Bradford, “A Descriptive and Historical Account of New England in Verse,” in “Governor Bradford’s Letter Book,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections 3 (1794): 79. 18. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America, ed. Albert E. Stone (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 69, 54, 81–82. 19. Quoted in David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 79. 20. See, for example, Trudy Eden, “Food, Assimilation, and the Malleability of the Human Body in Early Virginia,” and Martha L. Finch, “Civilized Bodies and the Savage Environment of Early New England,” both in A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America, ed. Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 2001), 29–59. 21. Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917; repr., New York: Harper Colophon, 1966), 110. 22. Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 2001), 1. 23. Potter, People of Plenty, xix, 126–27, 84. 24. Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), quotation p. 255.

1

Madden and Finch  27

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

25. Northrop Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias,” in Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Boston: Beacon, 1967), 25. 26. For examples of “fictional” utopias, see The Utopian Reader, ed. Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent (New York: New York University Press, 1999); British and American Utopias (Eutopias, Dystopias, and Satirical Utopias), 1516–1974, comp. Lyman Tower Sargent (St. Louis: University of Missouri, 1974). Included in The Utopian Reader are also “communal” utopias, as well as in the following: Donald E. Pitzer, ed., America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Robert S. Fogarty, Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History (Westport ct: Greenwood, 1980); and Arthur E. Bester, Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663–1829 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950). For definitions and etymologies, see Claeys and Sargent, Utopian Reader, 1–2. In addition, Utopian Studies, the journal of the Society for Utopian Studies, manifests a variety of applications of the term. 27. In addition to “fictional” and “communal,” scholars sometimes employ other labels and categories for utopias, such as religious or spiritual, political, and economic. See Fogarty, Dictionary, xv–xvii, xx. 28. Robert P. Sutton, “An American Elysium: The Icarian Communities,” in Pitzer, American Communal Utopias, 280. 29. Quoted in Marie Louise Berneri, Journey through Utopia (Freeport ny: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 228–30. 30. Berneri, Journey through Utopia, 222. 31. Illustrating the converse movement, from “communal” experience to “fictional” account, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance (1852) provides a critical vision of the author’s experiences at the utopian Brook Farm. Notably, Hawthorne comments on food practices. 32. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 33. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 36. See also Bell and Valentine, Consuming Geographies, 94. 34. Our choice of both “local” and “global” emerges from Bell and Valentine, who use these terms to discuss the impact of food on communities. On the complexities of globalization, see Consuming Geographies, 190–207. 35. R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1; Griffith, “‘Don’t Eat

f

28  Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

That’: The Erotics of Abstinence in American Christianity,” Gastronomica 1 (2001): 36–47. 36. Mormons believe that in 1833 God gave Smith the “law of health,” known as the “Word of Wisdom,” which details the substances to avoid and those that contribute to physical and spiritual health: alcohol, coffee and tea, tobacco products, and illegal drugs must be avoided; all vegetables, fruits, and grains may be consumed; and meat and poultry may be “used sparingly . . . during times of winter, . . . cold, or famine” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:1–21). For contemporary Mormon interpretations and applications of the Word of Wisdom, see “Nutrition and Health,” The Official Website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, http://www.providentliving.org/content/ list/0,11664,2411–1,00.html (accessed Aug. 6, 2004). 37. Elspeth Probyn has defined glocalization as “the foldings and imbrications of local and global cultures that are producing supposedly new experiences of the local in the global” (“Feeding McWorld,” 38). 38. On American utopias, see Fogarty, Dictionary, and Pitzer, American Communal Utopias. Anderson’s insightful work does not use the term “utopia” but discusses the impact of these three elements on the imagining of “new” nations (Imagined Communities, 37–46). See also Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Secker and Warburg, 1957); Ernest Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of Utopia and Progress (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949); and Manuel, Utopias and Utopian Thought. 39. Quoted in Fogarty, Dictionary, xv (emphasis added). 40. Fogarty, Dictionary, 236. See also Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia, as well as his Redeemer Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Middletown ct: Wesleyan University Press, 1988); and Charles L. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961). 41. Paul S. Boyer, foreword to Pitzer, America’s Communal Utopias, xi. 42. Potter, People of Plenty, 90–110. 43. Anderson, Imagined Communities. 44. Furaha D. Norton, introduction to Visions of Utopia, ed. Edward Rothstein, Herbert Muschamp, and Martin E. Marty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), vii. 45. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 94; Bourdieu, Distinction: A So-

1

Madden and Finch  29

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

cial Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1984). 46. Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 78–108; Foucault, “Afterword: The Subject and Power,” in Herbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 208–26. 47. Folk music and American hymnody, “New Light” theology and worship, and shifts in American pedagogy and literacy practices, for example, influenced the Shakers. See Daniel W. Patterson, The Shaker Spiritual (Princeton nj Princeton University Press, 1979); Stephen Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1982); Etta M. Madden, Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies (Westport ct: Greenwood, 1998); Etta Madden, “Cider as a Sign: Shifting Interpretations of Shaker Spirits and Spirituality,” Communal Societies 23 (2003): 45–62; John Brenton Wolford, “The South Union, Kentucky, Shakers and Tradition: A Study of Business, Work, and Commerce” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1992). 48. Carol M. Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power (New York: Routledge, 1999), 6. 49. Deane W. Curtin, “Food/Body/Person,” in Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, ed. Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 11–12. 50. Roland Barthes, “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture, 21. 51. Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 15–26. 52. Counihan, Anthropology of Food and Body, 20. 53. On ancient Israelite dietary laws, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 1966; repr., 1994), 42–58. On family meals in modern Britain, see Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” in Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1999), 231–51. 54. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 115–40. 55. Bell and Valentine, Consuming Geographies, 15. 56. Anna Meigs, “Food as a Cultural Construction,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture, 104, 103, 95. 30  Introduction

57. The “Julie/Julia Project” was created by New Yorker Julie Powell, who, from August 2002 to August 2003, cooked her way through Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Throughout the year Powell maintained an almost daily online weblog (or “blog”) in which she described her culinary failures and successes as well as events in her personal life. Visitors to her blog posted comments and cooking tips, commiserating with her failures and celebrating her successes. The online discussions that ensued created a virtual community around the problems and meanings of reproducing the culinary ideals promoted in Child’s cookbook. See http://blogs.salon. com/0001399/2002/08/25.html. Powell quickly negotiated a book contract based on her blog. Julie Powell, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (New York: Little, Brown, 2005). 58. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, foreword to Long, Culinary Tourism, xiii. 59. See n. 10. 60. Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1998). 61. Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 81. 62. Noted by Norton, introduction, viii.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Madden and Finch  31

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

i : New World Utopias Cultivating Immigrant Identities through Food

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

}{

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

1. Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty Fasts and Thanksgivings in Early New England

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

Martha L. Finch

1

1

1

1

1

In March 1623 the plantation at Plymouth was just two and a half years old, its survival still tenuous as the colonists struggled to adapt to an unfamiliar “wilderness” environment. The meager spring found them “half naked” and “full of sadness,” scavenging for food and finding only lobsters—considered “garbage fish,” fit only for swine—to sustain them. Then a two-month drought from mid-May to mid-July further threatened their survival, as the young corn, planted in recently cleared fields, withered. Believing that God “seemed in his anger to arm himself against us,” colonial leaders called for a day of fasting and humiliation, and the people “assembled themselves together nine hours in prayer.” Throughout the “parched” day, hour after desperate hour, they sat in the close, still air of the meetinghouse in fervent supplication, while outside “it was clear weather, and very hot, and not a cloud nor any sign of rain to be seen.” Yet, in the evening, as they returned to their homes, “it began to be overcast, and shortly after to rain, with such sweet and gentle showers” that “the earth was thoroughly wet and soaked therewith, which did so apparently revive and quicken the decayed corn and other fruits, as was wonderful.”1 We can imagine the cooling touch of raindrops and sharp, fresh scent of dampened soil that greeted the godly folks as they gathered outside

1

35

r

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

the meetinghouse, overcome with relief and joy. “Their drooping affections,” like the drooping corn in the fields, were “most revived” at what they perceived to be a providential answer from a merciful God. Prolonged prayer as a communal body seemed to have elicited this sign of “God’s favor and acceptation,” so that even nearby Native people, also suffering from the drought, were “astonished to behold” the divine response. Hobomok, a Pokanoket Indian staying with the English at Plymouth, acknowledged that “ ‘the Englishman’s God is a good God, for he hath heard you, and sent you rain.’ ” For fourteen days it rained, and throughout the rest of the summer the weather alternated between showers and warm weather, so that “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” and in the autumn they were able to gather in a “fruitful and liberal harvest.” Rather than “smother[ing]” their gratitude, the devout colonists agreed that the proper response to God’s benevolent care for his people was to observe a “day of thanksgiving unto the Lord.” Throughout this drama of hunger and survival, anxiety and relief, humiliation and rejoicing, the Plymouth planters performed their personal and communal relations with the divine, with each other, with the environment, and with food in distinct ways. During the seventeenth century churches and civil courts across the New England colonies spontaneously called for literally hundreds of days of fasting and thanksgiving in response to external and internal threats and blessings. The saints at Plymouth saw themselves as divinely chosen to constitute the body of Christ, self-consciously separated from the “abominations” of the Church of England and the “corruptions” of English society and in a contractual, or covenant, relationship with the divine. To maintain the covenant, devout New Englanders read events in the natural world as divine providences—signs of their standing with God—and any event could serve as a providential message. Breaking the covenant by disobeying divine laws, they believed, elicited God’s anger, which he expressed through ominous divine providences—such as sickness, war, religious persecution, and agricultural dangers like drought, flooding, and insect infestation. Dangers also arose from within covenanted communities themselves; ministers interpreted the sinful behavior of individual members—drunkenness, forni-

f

36  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

cation, murder—and internal conflicts that divided the church body as signs both of personal and corporate pollution and of God’s displeasure with his chosen ones. The appropriate response to these divine providences, which indicated the presence of sin and threatened the social body’s moral and physical survival, was to call for a day of public fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Ideally, they believed, God recognized the heartfelt desires of his people to repent and purify themselves through their fast-day activities. He responded accordingly by answering their prayers and sending merciful divine providences: healing of physical sickness and of divisions within the church, success in war, rain during a drought, or a good harvest. In turn, the community called for a day of public thanksgiving to express their gratitude to God for his “wonderful favor and mercy,” the crucial sign that they remained his covenanted people.2 Among the rituals observed by early New Englanders—such as baptisms, the Lord’s Supper, and election days—fasts and thanksgivings are the ones most frequently noted in church and court records and personal journals. In its ability to respond immediately to providential events in the natural and human worlds, the cycle of fast and thanksgiving days served as the primary strategy Puritan communities employed to maneuver their tenuous physical and moral existence in the American wilderness. Implementing particular foodways on these days, participants elicited divine favor, distinguished themselves from corrupt English society, and reinforced their sense of divine chosenness and exclusivity. Through fast and thanksgiving practices, godly colonists attempted to embody their utopian visions of building what Plymouth’s original pastor in England, John Robinson, termed “the house of God which you are and are to be” in America, or what Massachusetts Bay’s first governor, John Winthrop, imagined as a “city upon a hill,” to produce a visible community of God’s people.3 While colonial records note the frequency and significance of these days and the reasons for which they were called, they are almost silent about the activities the days entailed, particularly regarding food. However, recent food studies theory, prescriptions for observing fast and thanksgiving days brought from England to New England, and the scant information available in

1

Finch  37

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

colonial records uncover the practices and meanings of Puritan fasting and thanksgiving to reveal food and foodways at the center of social and religious life in early New England. For devout colonists, fast and thanksgiving practices worked in several interconnected ways. They believed that ritually avoiding or consuming food literally produced alterations in members’ bodies and souls, communal morality, and divine attitude, thus invigorating their covenants with God and with each other. The anthropologists Mary Douglas and Anna Meigs have noted that shared food practices reinforce social meanings and structures, regenerating the affective bonds within and protective boundaries around communities.4 Indeed, an “eating-induced unity,” as Meigs has termed it, was engendered when early New Englanders—already joined in a community intentionally grounded in “common affections for the common good,” as Robinson promoted, and “knit together . . . in brotherly affection,” as Winthrop anticipated—sat down to share a meal.5 Moreover, the communal avoidance of food on fast days contributed to community building. Like enjoying the pleasures of a thanksgiving feast with family and friends, suffering with others the discomforts of food deprivation also produced intense feelings of social bonding. The historian Stephen Mennell and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu have discussed foodways’ ability to reproduce and communicate shifting cultural values, often unconsciously.6 Devout New Englanders’ food practices displayed to themselves and others meanings about their individual and group identities, such as a member’s social status and the community’s belief they had been chosen by God for a special purpose in New England—meanings that changed over time. New England Puritans drew on a rich and complex history of fasting and thanksgiving, which extended from biblical Hebrew practices, through medieval Roman Catholic fast and feast days, to the English Puritan instigation of civil fasts and thanksgivings. Rejecting the lavish, regularized fast and feast days of the medieval church, Puritan reforms of the Church of England in the 1500s looked to the ancient Israelite model of fasting, humiliation, and prayer within a community that understood itself to be in covenanted relationship with a demanding yet

f

38  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

merciful God. Elizabeth I’s parliament spontaneously called for civil fasts in response to national crises and local disasters, and Puritan ministers published the first Protestant treatises on “the Holie exercise of a true Fast.” These condemned the “Popish Fast,” which proscribed meat eating but allowed for fish as well as rich and elaborate concoctions of sugars, spices, eggs, nuts, and fruits molded into the shapes of peacocks and haunches of beef. Written against such “fleshy” self-indulgence and “prideful” display, the treatises explained why a “true” fast required total abstinence from all food intake and should be done quietly, without advertising one’s devotional expertise. Fasts linked “outward” and “inward exercises,” bodily and spiritual activities; physical self-denial produced a strong sense of one’s moral “unworthinesse.” One’s body was to be “brought down” so that the mind, likewise, might be humiliated and divine mercy engaged.7 In his Holy Exercise of Fasting (1604), the English Puritan Nicholas Bownde detailed the proper activities and meanings of fasting and thanksgiving and set the standards for their practice, which the Reverend Thomas Thacher reiterated seventy years later in a fast-day sermon at Boston’s Third Church in the Bay Colony. Bownde described a fast’s physical and spiritual activities: “The outward appertaineth to the body, and is called a Bodily exercise, as to abstaine from meat, drinke, sleepe, and such like; . . . the other is belonging to the soule, and consisteth in the inward vertues and graces of the minde holpen [helped] forward by this bodily exercise.” Outward and inward activities immediately linked providential afflictions of the community (such as Plymouth’s 1623 drought) with corresponding afflictions imposed on one’s body during fasting, which in turn afflicted one’s soul.8 At the heart of fasting and its primary driving force was food, or rather its lack—above all, a godly fast required utter abstinence from all meat and drink from one evening to the next. Additionally, a fast entailed four other self-denying activities: limiting one’s sleep in order to pray; not wearing “costly apparell . . . which might puffe up the body with pride”; abstaining from sexual activity; and avoiding all worldly labors and recreations in order to dedicate the day to God’s worship and service.9 In practice, surely there were many like the Harvard lecturer

1

Finch  39

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Michael Wigglesworth, who, wearied by the long hours spent listening to sermons and prayers, found himself “hanckering in my thoughts after creature comforts as of meat and drink &c when I should be [w]hol[e]y intent to gods worship in religious services.”10 Nevertheless, in denying themselves the pleasurable fulfillment of natural desires for food, sleep, fine clothing, sex, and secular activity, participants understood that they were separating themselves from “the world” and its comforts and purifying themselves of bodily and spiritual sin. Each individual, then, carried responsibility for maintaining the moral and physical integrity of the entire godly community on fast days; in order to purify the church as a whole, each member purified his or her heart, or moral soul, by purifying his or her body. New England ministers taught the doctrine of “visible sainthood,” which posited direct linkages among soul, body, and community. They imagined the individual godly person as an integrated moral being who was, furthermore, an integral participating member—a “leg,” a “mouth,” or a “hand”—of the church body.11 Each member visibly displayed inward sinfulness or saintliness in his or her outward behaviors, either undermining or supporting the godly community. When the heart required repentance and purification, one treated one’s body in rigorous ways intended to produce physical and mental weariness and feelings of self-abnegation and humiliation. Indeed, Thacher argued, if a person’s emotional state during a fast were appropriately saddened by recognition of personal sin, he or she lost all desire to consume food. “Extream grief,” he observed, “takes away the appetite to eating and drinking.”12 Proponents like Thacher believed that such emotional grief in the face of sin and the physical weariness that came from denying oneself sustenance during a fast denoted an appropriately humiliated—but also empowered—soul. Self-effacement placed one in proper relationship to the divine and generated the sense of urgency necessary to elicit God’s attention. The Plymouth pastor John Cotton Jr. apparently avoided at least food, drink, and sleep on fast days, for they caused him great fatigue. In 1688, for example, the church at Plymouth held a fast “for the awfull hand of God in the measles this winter, that God would in mercy recover us [and] blesse our labours by sea & land, our seed time & har-

f

40  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

vest.” The next day Cotton penned a short note to his brother-in-law Increase Mather, revealing a rare moment of lethargy: “This day past our congregation kept a fast, with reference to the present visitation [of measles], so that I am too weary now to write.”13 Without a full belly, when the wearied body was weakened and “pinched with hunger,” claimed Bownde, one’s prayers of supplication became more potent— they took on a “sharper edge” and were “more piercing” of the divine ear.14 John Winthrop discovered similar effects when controlling his appetite. He despaired that his “fleshe” was repeatedly tempted by “variety of meates,” “gluttonie,” and other “lusts and follies” of the world. But Winthrop found that when “the fleshe had gotten head and heart againe and beganne to linger after the world,” through prayer and fasting he was able to recover “life and comforte.” For Winthrop, body, mind, and soul were inextricably conjoined: by keeping “a strict watche over my appetite” and “hould[ing] under the fleshe by temperate diet,” he discovered that he could control the “ordinary wanderinge of heart, and am farre more fitt and cheerfull to the duties of my callinge [as an attorney and governor of the Bay Colony] and other duties.”15 The extravagant eating habits of the upper classes in late-sixteenthand early-seventeenth-century England, exemplified by their consumption of rich foods on fast days, significantly shaped Winthrop’s and other Puritans’ views on the moral and social meanings of food. English social critics such as the infamous Philip Stubbes railed against those who were “given to daintie faire, gluttony, belly cheere . . . drunkennesse and gourmandize,” for such “nice fare hath altered our bodies & changed our nature.”16 The historian Bryan S. Turner has noted that Puritan critics considered widespread obesity among the wealthy a “physical manifestation of the social flabbiness of the social system,” and pious dietary treatises intended to remedy the situation were popular, but their effectiveness questionable—much like dieting books today. Meanwhile, sumptuary laws, enacted to control the public display of wealth and status by regulating clothing styles and food consumption, attempted to reinforce distinctions among social classes.17 For Winthrop and other New England Puritans, controlling one’s appe-

1

Finch  41

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

tite for conspicuous consumption and sharing the resulting “superfluities” with the poor produced a society that functioned as God intended. In America, Winthrop believed, this ideal society, this “city upon a hill”—free from the corruptions of England’s immoral excesses and selfish desires, which allowed the poor to starve rather than be fed by the wealthy—would thrive. When he put down his prideful “flesh” by ingesting a modest diet, Winthrop lived as a visible saint, cheerfully, humbly, and generously contributing to the godly political and moral structure of his community. The church deacon Robert Cushman made a similar argument soon after the Mayflower’s arrival, when hungry colonists were grumbling about the hardships of wilderness life at Plymouth. Cushman recognized that one of the greatest difficulties of their venture in New England was leaving behind “the satiety of bodily delights.” But, he argued, that they could eat only meager, simple fare was precisely why they were physically and morally superior to those who selfishly overindulged their appetites in England. “Nature is content with little, and health is much endangered by mixtures upon the stomach,” he warned. “The delights of the palate do often inflame the vital parts as the tongue setteth afire the whole body.”18 In a sermon delivered in Plymouth in 1621, Cushman proclaimed the recent founding of the plantation as “the dawning of this new world” but warned that the settlers’ “self-love”— that is, being more concerned with “serving their bellies” than serving the common good—would precipitate the downfall of the still tenuous plantation. He vividly differentiated between “a temperate good man, and a belly-God” who craved “belly-cheer”: “A good man will not eate his morsels alone, especially if he have better then other[s], but if by Gods providence, he have gotten some meat which is better then ordinary, and better then his other brethrens, he can have no rest in himself, except he make other[s] partaker[s] with him. But a belly-God will stop all in his owne throat, yea, though his neighbour come in and behold him eate, yet his grip[p]le [grasping] gut shameth not to swallow all.” Cushman believed that selfishly filling one’s own belly with a surfeit of rich foods, especially when others went hungry, caused a “dangerous

f

42  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

disease,” both physical and spiritual, that was contagious, infecting the entire social body.19 Like Winthrop, Cushman imagined that physical deprivation could enhance one’s godliness: “See whether thine heart cannot be as merry, and thy mind as joyfull, and thy countenance as cheerfull, with co[a]rse fare, with poulse [pulse; legumes], with bread and water (if God offer thee no better, nor the times afford other) as if thou hadst great dainties.” This period of early settlement, when so much was at stake, was “no time for men to looke to get riches, brave clothes, daintie fare . . . no time to pamper the flesh, live at ease, snatch, catch, scrape, and pill [pile], and hoord up.” It was a time to function as a spiritual and communal body “jointed together and knit by flesh and synewes” and to “open the doores, the chests, and vessels, and say, brother, neighbor, friend, what want yee, any thing that I have?” Cushman exhorted, “Let [your neighbor’s] hunger [be] thy hunger.”20 Cushman, Winthrop, and others believed that a godly life and a thriving, moral society depended on daily controlling one’s appetite and sharing one’s edible resources with others. But the social and spiritual meanings and effects of appetite suppression and food sharing took on greater potency when ritualized—the former on fast days and the latter on thanksgiving days. Although abstaining from and indulging in food and other pleasures were fundamentally individual activities, doing so as a unified social body generated the critical mass required to elicit divine attention. Individuals could and did hold private fasts for personal difficulties and private thanksgivings for personal blessings—the diaries of the Bostonians John Hull and his son-in-law Samuel Sewall, for example, note frequent private fasts and thanksgivings for a daughter’s illness, a merchant ship returned safely, and numerous other events of personal import.21 But the most effective kind of fast was public, when individuals acted in unison to heal the corporate body and regenerate the affective bonds within and protective boundaries around the godly community. According to Bownde, others’ physical or moral sicknesses should deeply move a godly individual with pity and compassion to participate in their distress and “succor them . . . by our prayers . . . with fasting and humbling of our selves.” Ideally, when each member

1

Finch  43

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

denied oneself sustenance, they all felt, physically and emotionally, a corporate suffering.22 Upon divine acknowledgment of such physical debilitation and spiritual repentance and providential affirmation that they remained God’s chosen ones, the community responded by shifting from feelings and activities of humiliation and self-denial to those of joyful gratitude and feasting. Because devout New Englanders believed themselves always at risk of moral pollution and, especially early in the colonizing process, physical dissolution, civil and religious leaders paid excessive attention to public fast days and the ominous divine providences for which they were called. Throughout the seventeenth century the church at Plymouth, for example, observed at least three times as many days of fasting as it did days of thanksgiving.23 But the days set apart to express gratitude to God for his benevolent mercies toward his people were important turns in the ritual cycle. Bownde argued that when God answered their heartfelt prayers, it was time for “rejoicing”: now “feasting were more fit for them then fasting.”24 Across New England, church and civil leaders spontaneously called for days of thanksgiving in response to such merciful providences as civil and religious “liberties,” health, an ordained ministry, and victory in wars against Indians and European powers. Public thanksgivings, often announced by broadsides, frequently occurred in the autumn, fusing with the ancient tradition of harvest festivals. Plymouth colonists, for example, observed more than half their recorded thanksgivings in the fall, usually in November but sometimes in late October or early December. These autumnal observances expressed gratitude to God for, among other blessings, “the fruits of the earth” and another year of being “fed by God’s merciful hand.” The most detailed description of an early New England thanksgiving harvest festival is of one that occurred in the autumn of 1621, when the plantation at Plymouth was just a year old. Half their company had not survived that initial year, due to illnesses acquired during the Mayflower’s Atlantic crossing and a meager food supply (what historians have immortalized as “The Starving Time”). The remaining souls were deeply thankful, however, for what they believed to be God’s benevolent support of their undertaking, providentially confirmed in a plen-

f

44  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

tiful harvest. “They found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings,” exulted Plymouth’s governor, William Bradford, about this time, “for which let His holy name have the praise forever, to all posterity.”25 Edward Winslow described the joyful celebration in a letter to a friend in England:

1

2

3

4

5

6

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms [weapons], many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.26

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

Winslow hoped his delightful relation of what has since been mythologized as America’s “First Thanksgiving” would encourage those still in England to support the infant colony in its godly enterprise.27 He described the festivities in vivid detail, including open-armed celebrations with the Pokanokets, who contributed to the abundant food supply. Regarding the foods prepared and served during the feast, Winslow mentioned only wild game: fowl (Bradford noted “waterfowl” and “wild turkeys” in his description of that year’s harvest) and deer. The other foods likely eaten were also indigenous to New England, for colonists had not yet transplanted any domestic English plant or animal foods to New England soil. Some were “wild” and others cultivated by the Native people, who had shared their expertise with the English: “Indian corn,” squash, “pease” (legumes), nuts and berries, “groundnuts” (a root vegetable), and, according to Bradford, “cod and bass and other fish,” such as eels and shellfish. Men roasted whole deer and fish over

2

Finch  45

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

outdoor fire pits, and women baked duck, eel, or venison in savory “pasties,” or meat pies, as at the wedding celebration of Bradford and Alice Southworth in 1623.28 Colonists preferred their cornbread sweetened, by mixing ground and sifted parched corn with water and dried wild strawberries or cranberries, maple syrup, or honey; housewives baked the thick batter in the bottom of an iron pot set into the coals. Meanwhile, both Indians and English boiled legumes, corn, and squash together into a “mess of pottage,” or “succotash.”29 Not all thanksgivings were recreational autumn harvest festivals, but all apparently involved some form of feasting. The days spontaneously called throughout the year in grateful response to divine blessings brought people together in the meetinghouse for several hours of worship, prayer, and a sermon, after which participants dispersed to members’ homes to share a meal. Colonial leadership shunned Christmas observances, but on December 22, 1636, the church at Scituate in Plymouth Colony kept a day of thanksgiving. At eight o’clock that winter morning, members gathered in the meetinghouse to pray, sing psalms, and listen to a sermon. Because of the cold weather, they cut the service short after four hours to “mak[e] merry to the creatures, the poorer sort beeing invited of the richer,” exhibiting the communal generosity promoted by Cushman and Winthrop. Three years later, on another “very cold” day in December, the nearby village of Barnstable held a day of thanksgiving “for God’s exceeding mercye in bringing us hither Safely [and] keeping us healthy & well in o[u]r weake beginnings & in our church Estate.” Not yet having a meetinghouse, they gathered instead “att Mr. Hulls house” to hold public “praises to God.” Afterward, they “devided into 3 companies to feast togeather, some att Mr Hulls, some att Mr Maos, some att Brother Lumberds senior.”30 During these early years of settlement and in rural areas, where colonists were often on the edge of survival, such winter feasts likely were not the abundant feasting of annual harvest thanksgivings, nor were they England’s excessive, “gluttonous” feasting, condemned by those who abhorred the carousing and overindulgences of Anglican thanksgiving days. And yet sharing even simple foods to display gratitude to God for abundant blessings, to draw the community together in cel-

f

46  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ebration, and to redistribute resources by providing a meal for those less prosperous was a powerful ritual gesture, both symbolic and practical. Seventeenth-century dining etiquette wove more tightly the complex social threads among members while it communicated one’s place in the social schema. Scituate’s and Barnstable’s thanksgiving “feasts” were, perhaps, simple one-dish meals of corn, legumes, and, in recognition of the special day, a joint of meat or some fish, all boiled together for several hours into an undifferentiated “mess.” At the hearth the mistress of the house spooned the pottage out of the iron cooking pot into a few wooden trenchers, pewter porringers, or earthenware bowls from which two or more diners ate, while also sharing mugs of beer or water.31 Consuming homogeneous foods—like a pottage eaten out of a common trencher with the fingers, a piece of corn bread, or, less frequently, a spoon, or like a roasted haunch of venison from which diners sliced off pieces of charred flesh and ate with their hands—reinforced one’s sense of identity as a member of a larger corporate body. But a common code of table manners disallowed lower-ranked family members and guests putting their fingers into a dish or their lips to a cup before the household adults had taken their first portions.32 Indeed, when “the poorer sort [were] invited of the richer,” those of lower economic status were cared for while simultaneously reminded of the social superiority of their wealthier neighbors, even as they all “made merry” together. As the seventeenth century unfolded, conceptions and practices of fasting and thanksgiving changed. Physical survival in New England became less tenuous, the population grew and diversified, some colonists accumulated a fair amount of wealth, and those who subscribed to Puritan ideals, while they maintained their positions of colonial leadership, were outnumbered by those who avoided participation in church activities. Over time fasts and thanksgivings became less spontaneous in response to divine providences that threatened or blessed the community and more regular, with fasts usually held in the spring, when food resources were at their lowest and illness more common, and thanksgivings in the autumn after the harvest, when foods were most abundant and varied and communities could indulge in celebratory con-

1

Finch  47

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

sumption.33 Furthermore, despite Winthrop’s promotion of “common affections” and “familiar commerce” among all members of the godly community, the governor’s vision of the ideal society did not include equal ranking among its members. Rather than erasing class differences, Winthrop hoped to motivate those blessed with worldly goods to help those in need by proclaiming that God ordained some to be rich and others poor, “some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in sub[j]eccion.”34 Indeed, over time social divisions based on economic and religious distinctions became more clearly defined in New England. A shift away from the relatively egalitarian nature of early thanksgiving meals, when wealthy and destitute church members ate together, was reflected in social gatherings that became more stratified and exclusive according to socioeconomic class. The Boston merchant and selectman Samuel Sewall, for example, recorded frequent fasts and thanksgivings observed in his home and the homes of his elite friends. Twice, he mentioned food. In 1685 Sewall noted that a day-long fast in his home with other magistrates and their wives ended in the evening with the distribution of “some Biskits, and Beer, Cider, Wine.” In 1692, upon the Boston merchant Elisha Cook’s safe return from a voyage to England, a day of thanksgiving among twenty-seven illustrious friends at Cook’s home entailed psalm singing and a sermon. Then, they “ate dinner.”35 Sewall’s simple statement suggests an entire world of social practices and meanings not accessible to most New Englanders. A dinner for twenty-seven of Boston’s religious, political, and economic leaders was undoubtedly an elaborate affair. English foods by then domesticated in New England—wheat bread; cow’s milk, butter, and cheese; a joint of beef or perhaps a roasted pig; apples and other fruits and vegetables— might have been prepared over several days by Cook’s indentured or enslaved kitchen help, served by his housemaids on individual dishes of fine ceramic or pewter, and consumed by his guests, each with his or her own place setting of spoon, knife, perhaps even a fork (a utensil that had only recently found its way onto the tables of the upper classes in England), and a silver cup of beer or imported wine, at a long table

f

48  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

covered with white linen.36 Meanwhile, heady conversation about important happenings at home and abroad flowed. The entire event, both religious and gustatory, bound participants together in common as they displayed to each other (and Cook’s servants) their provincial gentility and social influence, as well as their elite late-seventeenth-century Bostonian godliness. Much changed during the seventy years between the “First Thanksgiving” in Plymouth Colony, when rich and poor, Indians and English shared “wild” and “native” foods and rigorous recreation in a rustic, outdoor setting, and Elisha Cook’s refined thanksgiving dinner, produced by servants and consumed by Boston’s pious upper crust. At both, however, people who understood themselves as covenanted with God to obey his laws and receive his blessings ritualized their thanksgiving-day activities, hoping to elicit divine approbation and ensure the survival of their communities. Early in the seventeenth century, those who fled the prideful display and immoral excesses of England expected to see the dawning of a new world, the establishment of God’s society, in America. And they explicitly understood their food practices as a crucial means for creating that society—a society bound by common affections, in which those blessed with worldly goods controlled their appetites in order to give to those not so blessed and, in turn, to receive divine support of their enterprise. But the potency of that utopian vision declined over time as social distinctions became progressively more clearly defined in gatherings around food, colonial desires to define themselves as distinctly different from their friends in England diminished, a growing number of detractors questioned God’s support of the Puritan endeavor, and even ministers believed (and feared) that New England had failed to live up to the moral intentions of its early visionaries. Nevertheless, throughout the seventeenth century, fasts and thanksgivings placed food at the center of religious and social life in New England. Abstaining together from bodily pleasures on days of fasting, humiliation, and prayer and celebrating together by sharing worship, a meal, and recreation on days of thanksgiving served to create a sense of kinship and unity among participants. Even at the end of the century,

1

Finch  49

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

these days reminded the devout of their original, self-ascribed identity as God’s people, chosen to establish God’s society in the American wilderness. Perhaps they also remembered, in the words of William Bradford:

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

Famine once we had— But other things God gave us in full store, As fish and groundnuts, to supply our strait, That we might learn on providence to wait. . . . But a while after plenty did come in, From his hand only who doth pardon sin.37

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

Notes 1. The arrival of rain immediately following a fast day during the 1623 drought was apparently a remarkable event in early New England history, for several authors described it. The narrative in this and the following paragraph is drawn from Nathaniel Morton, New Englands Memoriall (1669), ed. Howard J. Hall (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1937), 37–39; John Smith, Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New-England (London, 1631), 18; Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England (1624; repr., Bedford ma: Applewood Books, n.d.), 54–55; William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 130. 2. See Richard P. Gildrie, “The Ceremonial Puritan: Days of Humiliation and Thanksgiving,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 136 (1982): 3–16; W. DeLoss Love Jr., The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Alfred F. Knopf, 1989), 166–72; Amanda Porterfield, Female Piety in Puritan New England: The Emergence of Religious Humanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 124–27; Horton Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans, 1629–1730 (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 58–67; R. Marie Griffith, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 27–32. 3. [Edward Winslow,] A Relation or Iournall [Journal] of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth in New England 50  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

(1622), in Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight B. Heath (Bedford ma: Applewood Books, 1963), 10–13; John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” in The Puritans, ed. Perry Miller and Thomas Johnson, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 195–99. 4. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, 115, 121, 126–27; Anna Meigs, “Food as a Cultural Construction,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture, 95, 103. 5. “The Rev. John Robinson’s Farewell Letter to John Carver, July 1620,” in Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 368; Winthrop, “Modell of Christian Charity.” 6. Stephen J. Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory. 7. Patricia Curran, Grace before Meals: Food, Ritual, and Body Discipline in Convent Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 51, 103–4; Susan Hardman, “Puritan Asceticism and the Type of Sacrifice,” in Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition, ed. W. J. Sheils (Great Britain: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 288–89; Winthrop S. Hudson, “Fast Days and Civil Religion,” in Winthrop S. Hudson and Leonard J. Trinterud, Theology in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (Los Angeles: University of California, 1971); C. J. Kitching, “’Prayers Fit for the Time’: Fasting and Prayer in Response to National Crises in the Reign of Elizabeth I,” in Sheils, Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition, 241–50; Mennell, All Manners of Food, 20–39. 8. Nic[h]olas Bownde, The Holy Exercise of Fasting (Cambridge, 1604), 28; Thomas Thacher, A Fast of Gods Chusing (Boston, 1678). 9. Bownde, Holy Exercise of Fasting, 39–40, 45–46, 50–51, 56; Thacher, Fast of God’s Chusing, 4. Those who were very young, old, or ill were allowed to eat and drink as necessary on a fast day. 10. Michael Wigglesworth, The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653–1657, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Gloucester ma: Peter Smith, 1970), 18. 11. Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1963); see, for example, John Robinson, The Works of John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, ed. Robert Ashton (Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1851), 2:167–70, 267. 12. Thacher, Fast of God’s Chusing, 22. 13. Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1859 (New York: New England Society, 1920), 1:260; John Cotton Jr. to Increase Mather (Mar. 8, 1687/8), “Letters

1

Finch  51

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

of John Cotton,” in “The Mather Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections 38 (1868): 254. 14. Bownde, Holy Exercise of Fasting, 112. 15. John Winthrop, “Experiencia,” in Winthrop Papers (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929–1947), 1:167–68, 190–215, esp. 193–97. 16. Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (London, 1595), 69–70. 17. Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 1st ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 166–67. 18. R[obert] C[ushman], “Reasons and Considerations Touching the Lawfulness of Removing Out of England into the Parts of America,” in Heath, Mourt’s Relation, 95. 19. Cushman,] A Sermon Preached at Plimmoth in New-England, December 9, 1621 (London, 1622), 15, 6–7, 2. 20. [Cushman], Sermon Preached at Plimmoth, 11, 15, 18. 21. John Hull, “The Diaries of John Hull,” American Antiquarian Society, Transactions and Collections 3 (1857); Samuel Sewall, The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1973). 22. Bownde, Holy Exercise of Fasting, 338–49, quotation from p. 349. 23. Plymouth Church Records; Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, 12 vols. (Boston: William White, 1855–61). For a virtually complete record of all fasts and thanksgivings held throughout New England during the 1600s, see Love, Fast and Thanksgiving Days. 24. Bownde, Holy Exercise of Fasting, 190. 25. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 89–90. 26. Edward Winslow, “A Letter Sent from New England” (1621), in Heath, Mourt’s Relation, 82. 27. Some scholars have argued that the event Winslow described was not a religious thanksgiving but a secular harvest festival (see, for example, Andrew F. Smith, “The First Thanksgiving,” Gastronomica 3 [2003]: 79–85). Others have noted the tendency of New England Puritans to infuse traditionally secular events with religious meanings and practices, making harvest festivals also days of thanksgiving, particularly by the end of the seventeenth century (see, for example, Gildrie, “Ceremonial Puritan”; Ann Blue Wills, “Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines Made Thanksgiving,” Church History 72 [2003]: 138–58). 28. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 90; Emmanuel Altham, “Letter to Sir Edward Altham, September, 1623,” in Three Visitors to Early Plymouth, ed. 52  Pinched with Hunger, Partaking of Plenty

Sydney V. James Jr. (Plymouth: Plimoth Plantation, 1963), 29. 29. See Sarah F. McMahon, “A Comfortable Subsistence: The Changing Composition of Diet in Rural New England, 1620–1840,” William and Mary Quarterly 42 (1985): 26–65; Sarah F. McMahon, “Provisions Laid Up for the Family: Toward a History of Diet in New England, 1650–1850,” Historical Methods 14 (1981): 4–21; James W. Baker, “Seventeenth-Century English Yeoman Foodways at Plimoth Plantation,” in Foodways in the Northeast, ed. Peter Benes, (Boston: Boston University Press, 1984), 105–13; John Winthrop Jr., “Indian Corne” (ca. 1662), in Fulmer Mood, “John Winthrop, Jr., on Indian Corn,” New England Quarterly 10 (1937): 125–33. 30. [John Lathrop,] “Scituate and Barnstable Church Records,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 10 (1856): 37. 31. James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 50–56; Sara Paston-Williams, The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking and Eating (London: National Trust Enterprises, 1993 and 1999), 184, 190. 32. Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 40–42; Norbert Elias, The History of Manners, vol. 1, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 89, 92. 33. Gildrie, “Ceremonial Puritan,” 4; see also Love, Fast and Thanksgiving Days. 34. Winthrop, “Modell of Christian Charity,” 195. 35. Sewall, Diary, 1:63, 300. 36. McMahon, “Comfortable Subsistence”; McMahon, “Provisions Laid Up”; Bushman, Refinement of America, 74–78; Daniel A. Romani Jr., “‘Our English Clover-grass sowen thrives very well’: The Importation of English Grasses and Forages into Seventeenth-Century New England,” in Plants and People, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University, 1996), 25–37; Peter W. Cook, “Domestic Livestock of Massachusetts Bay, 1620–1725,” in The Farm, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University Press, 1988), 109–25. 37. William Bradford, “A Descriptive and Historical Account of New England in Verse,” in “Governor Bradford’s Letter Book,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections 3 (1794): 77.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Finch  53

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

2. Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the SpanishAmerican Borderlands Phillip H. Round

1

2

3

5

Armies, as Napoleon once famously observed, travel on their stomachs. The same can be said of European settlers in the New World. In 1620 the survival of the Plymouth Pilgrims’ utopian dreams for New England hung in the balance—could they get enough to eat their first winter? Poorly provisioned and unused to farming, they were so weakened by hunger that half died during the first few months of settlement. Editors of William Bradford’s History of Plimouth Plantation always label the opening chapters of his narrative “the starving time.” Yet food held not only the key to the Pilgrims’ physical survival but also their cultural connectedness to the mother country. They discovered, as Sidney Mintz has observed of humanity in general, that “consumption is always conditioned by meaning” and is “at the same time a form of self-identification and communication.”1 Once they had enough to eat, they performed a harvest festival that harkened back to English village rituals they had known back home, long before they emigrated to Holland and then on to the New World. That harvest festival has become Thanksgiving, the one shared mythic celebration of food and nationhood in modern American culture. Food, conquest, and the settlement of America have gone hand in hand in ritual and symbolic ways since 1492, and the Pilgrim story is simply the most well-known and well-worn example. But many other stories can be told about food and the American “experiment.” Thou-

f

54

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

sands of other emigrants to the New World—Portuguese, Spanish, and French—came bringing foodways that differed starkly from their Pilgrim counterparts, shaped in large measure by the sacramental rituals of Catholicism and their immersion in a Mediterranean food world dominated by olive oil, wines, spices, plants, and herbs virtually unknown to English men and women. An especially illustrative case in point is the experience of the nearly two hundred emigrants from New Spain who traveled overland from San Miguel de Horcasitas in Sonora to Monterey in upper California over the fall and winter of 1775–76. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Juan Baptista de Anza, this group—consisting mostly of families of the soldiers who accompanied the expedition—went on to found the settlement of Monterey. Together they traversed a total of some sixteen hundred miles, including the Lower Colorado River Desert, a sixthousand-square-mile, below-sea-level valley of sand dunes, no pasturage, and little water. Despite the obstacles and the challenges of the first overland route from Mexico to California, only one life was lost on this journey, a mother who died in childbirth just a few days out of Horcasitas. The rest of the party, including three children born during the excursion, would serve as the nucleus of a community of people who would be known as Californios, and whose hybrid culture would dominate Euro-California life from 1775 to 1848. This was Anza’s second trip from Sonora to Monterey. In January 1774 Bucareli, the viceroy of New Spain, had asked him to establish a reliable land route for settlers and provisions to stock the missions then springing up along the California coast. With seven presidios and missions stretched out along five hundred miles of upper California, the viceroy was worried that Spain’s toehold in North America was slipping. The handful of soldiers and friars who occupied the makeshift settlements of tule-covered log huts could not be considered “settlers.” Lacking agricultural produce and manufactured goods, they relied on ships for their provisions—ships that took from fifty to one hundred days to travel from Mexico to California. In the four years between Father Junípero Serra’s founding of the mission in San Diego and Anza’s first overland excursion, the Spaniards in upper California had experi-

1

Round  55

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

enced two “starving times.” It took Anza four and a half months to travel from Sonora to Monterey and back in 1774. He took only about forty men and enough pack animals and beef cattle for the journey. When he returned to Mexico City, the viceroy immediately ordered him to assemble a party of settlers and set out to realize Father Serra’s dream of a California where “the conquest might be notably increased and souls won for heaven.”2 The second Anza expedition offers an especially useful application of food studies theory to our understanding of the colonization and settlement of North America from a cultural viewpoint (Spanish and Catholic) and a historical period (the late eighteenth century) that is only now beginning to be explored in the literature of early American cultural studies. The diary of Father Pedro Font, the Franciscan missionary who traveled with the expedition, has been called by Herbert Bolton, the dean of Spanish borderlands studies in the first half of the twentieth century, “one of the best in all Western Hemisphere history.”3 Ethnographers and historians in the last century have praised Font for his keen eye and precise reporting on the native inhabitants of the regions he explored. However, few literary or cultural studies have looked at his diary as a record of a Spanish Catholic whose utopian vision would come face to face with the harshest desert environment and perhaps most intractable Native people he and his countrymen would encounter in the eighteenth century. Most importantly, no one has noted how Pedro Font employed the disjunctions between Spanish and indigenous foodways, and sacred and secular consumption, as indices of his community’s distance from his utopian vision of what the Spanish borderlands ought to be once New Spain had colonized this final frontier of its American empire. My essay takes its title from a triad of food-related semiotic categories that Font employs to shape the otherwise quotidian events of the settlers’ journey into a struggle between good and evil. Faith is represented in Font’s diary as the ritually purified meal of the Mass. As a priest, Font was required to celebrate this ritual—and to ingest symbolically the blood and body of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist—daily. His narrative of Anza’s expedition contains countless pages that detail these ritual feats.

f

56  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

The Mass’s obverse is “flatulence”—the unpurified residue of “unholy” meals eaten by the Native people. As common as his descriptions of the Mass are Font’s equally persistent use of olfactory imagery to characterize the Native people he encounters. These descriptions are almost always negative and usually function to signal the fundamentally indigestible, “nasty and dirty” local foods. “Fandangos” complete the text’s semiotic triad by epitomizing the loose morals and social disorder of the Spanish emigrants, mostly soldiers and people of the poorer classes. As with his shorthand use of the Mass to symbolize purified eating and social order and of Native flatulence to epitomize Indian “bestiality,” the Franciscan’s fascination with the bawdy songs and dances and heavy drinking of the lower orders serves to provide narrative form to a diary whose official purpose was much more tame: to record “the latitudes and directions on the way.”4 A close examination of the historical context in which the Anza expedition was mounted shows that Font’s food-related fixations were by no means peculiar to the Jesuit missionary, but rather reflect deep structural changes in the social order of New Spain itself. As the noted anthropologist Mary Douglas has observed, “If food is treated as a code, then the messages it encodes will be found in the pattern of social relations being expressed.”5 In late-eighteenth-century New Spain, food encoded the complex social ordering of soldiers, settlers, aristocrats, missionaries, and Native people. During the last decades of the eighteenth century, Mexican secular authorities increasingly sought to limit the power of the clergy by managing the popular festivals themselves. In allowing strong drink and “lewd songs,” they both made themselves popular with the common people and wrested the maintenance of social order from the church.6 Font’s diary, written in retirement at the Sonora mission at Tubutama, represents a highly crafted literary rendering of the “Short Diary” that he kept daily on the actual journey. Throughout the longer literary work, Font attacks the secular rule of Anza and the other soldiers in such a way that the ethical appeal of the diary becomes clear. “I note these things down,” Font reports, “in order that they may serve as light by which it may be seen that in such journeys and with such lords it is

1

Round  57

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

necessary to arm oneself with patience” (156). In essence, Font’s diary is intended to fight a rear-guard action against the secularization of New Spain in general, and its final frontier in particular. In addition, Font’s triad allows the narrative to situate the Native people of the Pimería Alta and upper California firmly within the battle between secular and sacred he has outlined for the Spanish themselves. Since the sixteenth century, priests in New Spain such as Father Sahagún, the famous author of the Florentine Codex, had been telling the Native people to “eat what Castilian people eat, . . . because they are strong and wise, you will become the same way if you eat their food.”7 Christian conversion became a “civilizing process” that employed both the secular and religious foodways that held throughout the rest of New Spain. That Father Font remains profoundly ambivalent about this aspect of his enterprise will become clear in the reading of his diary that follows. As a matter of course, the foodways of the emigrants in the Anza expedition were set up to reinforce the existing social order of New Spain. Anza took along about one hundred cattle so that the common people might have a barbecue each day. His provision list included “thirty pack loads of flour for tortillas, sixty bushels of pinole (corn meal), sixty bushels of beans, six boxes of chocolate, and sixteen arrobas—four hundred pounds of sugar.”8 These foodstuffs are consistent with Jeffrey Pilcher’s descriptions of the dietary practices among everyday people in Mexico City during the eighteenth century.9 Because wine and olive oil never became affordable in New Spain and were never produced locally with much success, Mexican Criollos relied heavily on pork lard and aguardiente (sugar cane alcohol).10 They adopted maize to some extent, but insisted on wheat flour when they could have it. Anza’s provision ledger shows a similar preference for flour tortillas over the Native corn tortillas, and a heavy reliance on beef and beans. He also requested “three barrels of brandy,” reflecting the community’s desire for strong drink, the aguardiente that fueled so many village fandangos across eighteenth-century Mexico. Two other significant items of culinary interest appear in the ledger—chocolate and sugar. Chocolate, which Pilcher terms the “most popular drink” in New Spain, was so

f

58  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

seductive a New World stimulant that it had apparently led to addiction in some and was thus supervised by the Hold Office of the Inquisition. Likewise, sugar, the companion of chocolate and, as Sidney Mintz has pointed out,11 a major factor in the transformation of the European palate and in transatlantic power politics during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, makes an appearance in what seems to be the staggering quantity of four hundred pounds. For a projected one-hundred-day trip with nearly two hundred people, however, Anza had in fact planned for a mere two teaspoons of sugar per person, per day. A second list of provisions, this one for the officers (and, evidence in the diary suggests, for Father Font), shows how social status was sharply distinguished and enforced by food consumption. The officer’s mess reads like a continental gourmet’s wish list compared with that of the regular citizens: “175 pounds of hams; 25 pounds of sausage, six boxes of biscuits, and 175 pounds of fine chocolate, a barrel of wine, six arrabas of cheese (150 pounds) four pounds of pepper, half a pound of saffron, four ounces of cloves, four ounces of cinnamon, a jar of olive oil, and a jar of vinegar.”12 Where the Creole lower classes eat a hybrid cuisine of Native and local “American” products, the officers eat a peninsular Spanish diet, replete with hard-to-get wines, olive oil, and even saffron. From the outset of the expedition, then, it is clear that food was one important method by which the ruling elites managed social order and maintained social boundaries. The rituals of the Catholic faith were another method the party employed to keep order. Font’s diary opens with images of Catholic rituals explicitly reinforcing the social order: “Friday, September 29 . . . I sang Mass for the success of the journey in the presence of the people. After the gospel I made them a talk concerning the matter of the expedition, . . . exhorting every body to have patience in the hardships of the journey and above all concerning the good example which they must set for heathen, as a mark of Christianity, without scandalizing them in any way” (5). The moral pressure of Font’s sermon falls on the performance of social and religious order before the “heathen” backdrop of Native people and an inhospitable desert landscape.

1

Round  59

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Catholic ritual was by 1775 in New Spain intimately bound together with the semiotics of food and social order. As the central ritual, the Eucharist required the sanctified Host, a wafer made from European wheat. In New Spain, however, wheat was hard to grow and Native people disliked it, so the eating of the Body of Christ became a profoundly conflicted act that underscored the essential difference between European and American foodways. As Jeffrey Pilcher reports, “Priests stationed in the abandoned, desolate north frequently complained of their inability to say Mass for lack of Altar breads.”13 The desolate north is exactly where Father Font found himself with Anza in 1775. The lack of wine in New Spain created another problem for the prelate seeking to celebrate a proper Mass. Early in the expedition, Font records, “it was not possible to say Mass because [the wine] was so bad it did not resemble wine either in color or taste” (86). Soldiers were dispatched to Caborca for better wine to complete the father’s ritual larder. The other rituals involved in the Mass—the singing of the various chants, the numerical repetitions of special prayers, and the burning of incense in the censer—all served to make sacred space out of secular geography and sinful bodies. Father Font even carried with him a psalterio, a musical instrument that other missionaries had recommended for pacifying the Native people, especially the Yumas (Quechan), who were said to be “very festive” (14). The psalterio would cleanse the sound space of both the “lewd songs” of the common people of New Spain and the “silence,” “harangues,” and “harsh” languages of the Native peoples. As the expedition leaves behind the last permanent settlements of the frontier, Font describes how the long train of emigrants reflects an idealized image of New Spain’s social order: “Leading the vanguard went the commander, and then I came. Behind me followed the people, men, women, and children, and the soldiers who went escorting and caring for their families. The lieutenant with the rear guard concluded the train” (24). Each day, when the campsite was reached, the group of tents “looked like a town,” and Font’s description of the early campsites makes them sound like cities of God: “At night the people said the Rosary in their tents by families, and afterward they sang the Alabado, the Salve, or something else, each one in its own way, and the result was a

f

60  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

pleasing variety” (25). The pious encampments are knit together with the harmony of the diverse hymns sung by individual families. Font’s utopian vision soon breaks down, however, as the expedition reaches the Gila River valley in present-day Arizona and encounters Native people who resist his faith’s ordering rituals and his culture’s culinary niceties. The good padre treats the Gila River people (known in Font’s day as Gileños) roughly: “They . . . are very ugly and black, especially the women. And perhaps because they eat so much péchita, which is the mesquite pod ground and made into atole[,] . . . when they assemble together one perceives in them a very evil odor” (44). Here begins a persistent theme in the narrative that is carried straight through to the emigrants’ successful arrival at Monterey: Indian people smell, and the smellier they are, the further from God they must be. Font’s logic rests on two principles, secular and religious. The first is apparent in his deduction that the Gileños’ indigestion results from eating mesquite pods. As Father Sahagún had declared two centuries earlier, the more European the food, the stronger and more moral the eater. But the second, theological rationale for Font’s fixation with the smell of the Pimería Alta is more complex and is developed over the course of the next few weeks’ entries. When he first encounters the Yuma people along the banks of the Colorado River, some one month’s ride from the Gila, Font confronts his hosts in a rather ungracious scene that deserves to be quoted at length for the way it elaborates this second, theological point in his reasoning:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

We halted in a plain with plenty of pasturage. . . . Many Indians came to the camp, bringing calabashes, beans . . . and making their trades with the soldiers for beads. . . . Near the tent of the commander a beef was killed for today, to give rations to the people, as was done every six days. I was seated with the commander near the beef, taking chocolate. The Indians became such a mob and were so filthy, because of their vile habits, that we could not breathe. . . . So I stood up and, asking an Indian for a long stick . . . I took hold of it at the bottom and with it gently and in good nature, as if I were

2

Round  61

r

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

laughing, made them get away from me and behind me. Thereupon an Indian immediately appeared offended, and . . . again pushed in and others followed his example. Then the owner of the stick took it from my hands, and the one who was offended assumed a haughty air, and kept his eyes on me until I went into my tent (92).

6

5

Aside from the obvious ethnocentrism this passage reveals, a reading based in food theory exposes some deep-rooted anxieties in both the priest’s actions and in his recording of them. The scene begins, significantly, with Font allying himself with Anza and the officers, eating near their tent, consuming beef and chocolate. The scene is, quite literally, pastoral, as the party has found grass and water enough to rest themselves, their horses, and their herds. In a reflection of New World plenitude, the Yuma people offer a bountiful harvest of melons, squash, and beans—fresh native foods that the common folk eagerly barter for as a supplement to their own limited provisions. But when the Yumas close in to get a better view of these strange outsiders, they invade what Font considers his personal space, not only as a Spaniard, but also as a member of the upper class. Taking a stick, he feigns a humorous air as he waves them off. His obvious assumption of class superiority immediately offends the Native people, however, and they turn the tables on him, assuming social superiority of their own, taking back the stick with “a haughty air.” The conclusion Font draws from the scene underlines the close relationship between faith, foodways, and social order that structures Font’s utopian vision: “Their affability might easily be converted to arrogance whenever an attempt is made to reduce them to the catechism and to obedience, especially if we take into account their mode of living, of which I shall speak later on” (92). Before Font can come to terms with this Native intrusion into his ideal city of God, his own flock creates a similar disturbance. As a “treat” to the emigrants for having successfully reached the other side of the Colorado (and perhaps in anticipation of the difficult desert crossing ahead), Anza gives the group a large quantity of aguardiente. The result, Font reports, “was a great carousing and noise making among the rabble” (96). When confronted about his contribution to public drunk-

f

62  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

enness, Anza insists that his intention was not to get people drunk, but merely to allow them a good time. Font, never one to give his secular superior the last word, lectures the colonel on the sin of inebriation, maintaining “anyone who gets drunk sins, and anyone who contributes to the drunkenness of others also sins” (96). Font records that Anza controlled his temper and took this criticism silently. We cannot know Anza’s thoughts on the matter, but from Font’s concluding comment, it is clear what purpose his narrative version of the events is meant to serve: “I note this down not through ill will . . . merely in order that it may be inferred from this what caution and patience it is necessary to show these absolute lords” (97). Given this minor victory over the aristocratic elites, Font now turns to the examination of Yuma flatulence he promised a few pages earlier. Herbert Bolton, the twentieth-century translator of Font’s diary, left portions of the friar’s comments here in their original Spanish, thus obscuring them to most American readers (Bolton’s edition remains the only full-length version in English). The passage that follows thus becomes doubly significant to an exploration of foodways and Spanish colonization in the northern borderlands because it clearly contains materials that both Font and Bolton find worrisome. The eighteenth-century priest is frank about the sounds and smells he encounters among the Yumas and draws attention to them in order to dramatize the Natives’ “mode of living,” which he felt would probably inhibit their easy conversion to Christianity. Bolton, for his part, apparently felt these passages were too earthy for his twentieth-century audience. Again, a somewhat lengthy quotation (with the untranslated Spanish passages intact and in italic type) will give the present-day reader a sense of what is at stake for both the eighteenth-century prelate and the twentiethcentury historian:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

We saw some Indians wearing blankets of cotton, and black ones of wool which come from El Moqui, which they have been able to acquire through the Cocomaricopas and Jachedunes. These they wear around their bodies from the middle up, leaving the rest of the body uncovered, y las partes mas indecentes, porque dicen a las

3

Round  63

r

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

mujeres no les quadra que les tapan. But as a rule they go about totally naked, and they are so shameless that they are always con las manos in las partes vergonzosas, jugandose y alternadoes la naturaleza. And they are so brutal that if they are reprimanded they make it worse and laugh about it, as I experienced. And if les vience gana de orinar, whether standing still or walking about they do so like beasts, and even worse, que estas se paran para mear. Asimismo quando les vienen sus flatos, los echan delante de todos con mucho frescura, and since they eat so many beans and other seeds they are very offensive with their flatulency. And if they are seated on the ground they do no more than levantar la nalga por un lado, y como echan los cuescos tan largo, redondos, y recios, con el soplo levantan el polvo de la tierra. (103–4)14

4

5

The untranslated Spanish passages reveal Font’s obsession with the Native body as a site of social disturbance. They scratch their “indecent parts” (more vigorously and with more effrontery the more he complains), they urinate and defecate when and where they please, and when they fart, they do so with a gusto that inspires Font to some of his most vivid prose. When called by indigestion to break wind, the Native people “lift a cheek a little to one side and thus produce a fart so generous, round, and long, that it raises a small dust cloud with its wind.” As Sidney Mintz has pointed out, such scenes of discomfort at “indigestion’s consequences and its accompaniments, noises and smells” reflect “the propensity [in the West] to expunge and suppress our animal need to eat” and are the result of “uncomfortable manifestations of our animality.”15 The Yumas’ failure to discipline and control their bodies leads Font to speculate briefly about “freedom” itself. That is, they lead him to think about the connections between food and power. “I don’t know whether this freedom,” Font muses, “is to be attributed to their ignorance, innocence, and candor, or is the result of great brutality” (104). Like his secular categorization of European food as morally superior to Indian food, Font’s emphasis on the “stench” of Indian digestion turns on another trope of European food culture, this one as old as the medieval Catholicism from which it derives. Along with the general

f

64  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

belief that the pleasant smell of spices came from the Garden of Eden, medieval theologians believed in something they called “the odor of sanctity.” It was “a mystical fragrance, thought by Christians to signal the presence of the Holy Spirit. When manifested by an individual, this fragrance was not only a sign of divine favor . . . but also a mark of the individual’s exemplary holiness. Whereas the ambrosia of the classical cults had been closely linked with sensual fulfillment, the Christian odor of sanctity was clearly a sign of spiritual rectitude.”16 Although the scene of flatulence Font describes in great detail might seem somewhat sensational to the modern reader, somewhat taken out of context, it underscores for the author a question he and many theologians struggled with throughout the Spanish conquest of the New World. As Font phrases the question, “Since the Apostles asked Christ that question concerning the man who was blind from birth . . . [“Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (John IX, 2)], I might inquire what sin was committed by these Indians and their ancestors that they should grow up in these remote lands of the north with such infelicity and unhappiness, in such nakedness and misery, and above all with such blind ignorance of every thing?” (110). Font then recites what had been the stock answer for Catholic theologians over the last two centuries: “I know the answer is ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’ ” That is, the Yumas are “unsanctified” in their bodily habits not so much as a result of their inherent sinfulness, but rather as part of God’s divine plan to have people and parts of the world available to make manifest his light and grace through the work of missionaries like Pedro Font. Without such a backdrop of “innocence, and candor, and . . . great brutality,” the works of God might not shine nearly so brightly. Food is at the center of Font’s understanding of the Native people’s need for salvation: “It seems as if they have hanging over them the curse which God put on Nebuchadnezzer, like beasts eating the grass of the fields, and living on herbs and grass seeds” (110). The problem is, Font is not disposed to help the works of God become manifest in the Native people. He cannot eat their “dirty” food,

1

Round  65

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

and he cannot stand their smell. There was, however, another Franciscan among the Anza group who could. Font’s description of Father Garces, who had traveled in the region before, provides a striking contrast to Font’s own personal fastidiousness and utopian vision. Watching Garces one night at the fireside among the Yumas, Font makes these remarks:

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Father Garces is so well fitted to get along with the Indians to go among them that he appears but an Indian himself. Like the Indians he is phlegmatic in everything. He sits with them in the circle or at night around the fire, with his legs crossed, and there he will sit musing two or three hours or more, talking with them with much serenity and deliberation, and although the foods of the Indians are as nasty and dirty as those outlandish people themselves, the father eats them with great gusto and says that they are good for the stomach and very fine. In short, God has created him, as I see it, solely for the purpose of seeking out these unhappy, ignorant and rustic people. (121)

9

5

Although somewhat sarcastic and critical, Font’s description is consistent with the logic of the narrative as a whole. The indices by which he judges Garces, and by which he grudgingly admits Garces’s potential success as a missionary, are those of foodways, temperament, and bodily deportment. Perhaps the single most significant stretch of the narrative, and of the journey itself, follows hard on these lengthy reflections on the Yumas. At this point in the diary, the settlers face the Lower Colorado Desert, a land Font calls simply “a deadly place.” When Anza first crossed this desert the year before, he and his men got lost. They wandered for days between waterholes toward present-day Mount Signal, a jagged peak that juts up out of the otherwise flat desert landscape. In their wearied state, confused by the desert’s optical tricks, the group dubbed the mountain Cerro Imposible, because it seemed that the harder they marched toward it, the farther it receded into the distance. Northeast of this mountain stretched an expanse of sand dunes nearly impassable

f

66  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

with pack animals. Having learned his lesson on the first expedition, on Font’s expedition Anza was careful to hug the sparse trail of waterholes marked out by Native people like the Kumayaays and the Cahuillas. Although plagued by snow and rain, the party safely reached the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains on December 17. In all, the desert crossing lasted only a week—just seven days out of the 165 that it took to journey to Monterey. Like the ocean crossing for the English settlers to New England, however, Font and his fellow Catholic pilgrims viewed this part of the journey as the roughest and the most spiritually challenging. The party lost more than fifteen horses and mules over this stretch of land; eight cattle and a few more mules froze to death the first night in the foothills. The people themselves were “half dead with thirst and cold” (138). From Font’s point of view, a Mass of thanksgiving is in order for the morning following the settlers’ safe arrival. Yet Anza and the people override the good padre’s pious plans:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

At night, with the joy at the arrival of all the people, they held a fandango here. It was somewhat discordant, and a very bold widow who came with the expedition sang some verses which were not at all nice, applauded and cheered by all the crowd. For this reason the man to whom she came attached became angry and punished her. The commander, hearing of this, sallied forth from his tent and reprimanded the man because he was chastising her. I said to him, ‘Leave him alone, Sir, he is doing just right,” but he replied, ‘No Father, I cannot permit such excesses when I am present.’ He guarded against this excess, indeed, but not against this scandal of the fandango, which lasted very late. (138)

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

As in the case of the fiesta that followed the Colorado River crossing, Font and Anza are at odds over the management and meaning of such celebrations. Anza hands out the aguardiente but draws the line when a woman is beaten. The priest, appalled by the drinking and bawdy behavior, applauds the beating. Pious bodily discipline trumps paternalism and secular social order. Predictably, Font’s sermon the next

3

Round  67

r

3

3

3

3

3

5

morning, delivered no doubt to more than a few hangover victims, rails against “the performance, saying that instead of thanking God for having arrived with their lives, and not having died from hardship, as the animals did, it appeared they were making such festivities in honor of the devil” (139). As in his previous response to Font’s moralizing, Anza refuses to acknowledge the priest’s words: “I do not think that the commander liked this very well, for he did not speak to me once during the whole morning” (139). For the remaining 395 pages of the diary, and the five hundred miles of the journey, Font’s narrative efforts at controlling the bodies of the settlers and the social authority of the aristocratic commander turn again and again on the axes of faith, flatulence, and fandangos. Font himself says after his second clash with Anza, “I suppose he was offended at me a good many times, for I spent most of the journey in this way” (139). The diary bears this out, as the civility of Indian tribes is continually measured by the degree to which they smell and by the sort of food they eat, while the settlers are judged according to their participation in “lewd songs” or sacred Alabados. Beyond the Santa Rosa camp, Font’s pilgrims have a much better time of it, marching from mission to mission, taking in the pleasures of central and upper California in springtime all the way to Monterey. Looking north from the Santa Rosas, Font sees “the Sierra Madre de California totally different—green and leafy, with good grass and tree . . . whereas in the distance looking toward the California sea [to the south] it is dry, unfruitful, and arid” (160). Throughout the rest of the narrative, this new California becomes in Font’s imagination much like the old country of his youth. On December 31 he discovers shells along the trail “like those which grow in the woods of Spain, things which do not exist in the interior of this America and are unknown” (168). On the first day of the new year, after delivering a Mass of great hope, Font reports to his diary that “this country is entirely distinct from the rest of America which I have seen; and in the grasses and the flowers and the fields, and also in the fact that the rainy season is in winter, it is very similar to Spain” (171). “In short,” Font writes, “this is a country which, as Father Paterna says, looks like the Promised Land” (178). Except for

f

68  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

a brief detour to San Diego, where Font finds the Kumayaays to be “the Apaches of this region” and their butchering of whales “so malodorous that with the bad scent which they exude they are a veritable pest” (206), the trip north shows Font another, more positive side of Native life. Even though they are universally given to thievery (in Font’s view), Indians have suffered unjustly the depredations of the Spanish soldiers, so much so that Chumash women will now no longer leave their houses for fear of being raped. Although he never quite gives in to the humanity of the Native people of upper California, when he arrives at the Mission San Luis, Font is met by priests waving censers and singing Te Deums, and surrounded by Indians who are so clean, he calls them “little Spaniards.” The final arrival at Monterey is a bit of a letdown. The few soldiers who man the presidio have not built anything so beautiful, odiferous, or melodious as the Mission San Luis. Their “lack of effort” has left timbers and other building materials lying around and forced Anza “to lodge in the storehouse” and the good padre “in a dirty little room full of lime” (290). Font treats his arrival and final celebratory Mass as the sanctifying ritual that will transform the dirty and disorganized settlement of Monterey into a city of God: “We sang the Mass, then, as an act of thanksgiving for our successful arrival. I sang it at the altar, and the five fathers assisted, singing very melodiously and with the greatest solemnity possible, the troops of the presidio and of the expedition assisting with repeated salvos and volleys of musketry, all this together causing tears of joy to flow” (291–92). Secular and religious order are finally harmonized in this Mass, triggering a spontaneous outpouring of emotion that unites the formerly divided colonists. Font follows this scene with a verbatim transcription of the sermon he delivered that day. The harrowing crossing of the Lower Colorado figures most prominently in the homily, as does a typological parallel with the Israelites. Singled out for greatest praise, the Virgin of Guadalupe becomes the centerpiece of Font’s talk, and it is from her inspiration that the priest digresses into a bizarre numerological interpretation of the expedition, observing that in “the one hundred and sixty-five days exactly which we have spent on the way . . . our patrons are depicted.

1

Round  69

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

. . . And to whom might this number more appropriately be likened than to our principal patroness, the most Holy Virgin of Guadalupe?” (295). Here Font reveals himself to be a man of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, not of the eighteenth. Font’s numerology is common enough in Christian mysticism, but when one examines the physical properties of the manuscript itself, it becomes clear that the diarist has a pathological need to control the societies and the landscapes he has encountered on the Anza expedition. The completed diary that he penned at Tubutama served as a ritual in its own right. The 336-page manuscript is inscribed with exacting precision, each page comprised of forty lines with fortyfive characters to the line. Font makes the idealized utopianism that is implicit in the numerology explicit in the penultimate paragraph of the sermon:

4

5

And for what purpose have we come? To gain Heaven by suffering trials in this world, and assisting in these lands by setting a good example of Christianity in the conversion of the heathen, whose souls are the precious pearls sought by that celestial merchant, Jesus Christ. . . . Now you will understand what Christ says to us in the gospel . . . that the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net which He casts into the sea. . . . Notice what happens to the net, for it is all very applicable to this expedition. The fisherman casts the net into the sea and immediately many fish begin to enter it, but with different motives, some drawn by the bait, others by curiosity, some to follow the example and to be in the company of others, some perhaps moved by their evil nature to disturb and break the net, some, finally, because they are naturally good. . . . And so it is with this expedition. The commander, in the name of the king our Lord, cast the recruiting net in Sinaloa. I have no doubt that you entered the net and enlisted with the good intention of serving God on this journey. But who knows how many were moved by the wax of wealth and advantages . . . ? Who knows whether some joined the expedition drawn, perhaps, by bad example and by bad company, with the intention to destroy more than to build up, seeking liberty of conscience? . . . Let it not be that in the day

f

70  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

of Judgment there be found fish rejected by God after having taken the trouble to come to a land in which suffering is the chief advantage (298–99).

1

2

3

4

The sermon both reveals Font at the height of his art as an orator and exposes his and his community’s innermost fears about the nature of the “Promised Land” they had come so far to settle. From his characterization of Indians as “pearls” and Christ as a “celestial merchant” to his extended explication of the fishing simile, Font reveals his anxieties surrounding mercantile exchange, secular goals, and individual motivations. His economic imagery overwhelms the final charge that “suffering is the chief advantage” of the California landscape. Fearful that New Spain’s final frontier will inspire “liberty of conscience,” the friar has tried desperately in his sermon and throughout the narrative to curb consumption, control the various hungers that motivate his flock, and make sacred a landscape that at every turn seems to resist his efforts. Although Font’s diary goes on for another two hundred pages, detailing the exploration of San Francisco Bay and his continued bickering with secular authorities and the military, the moral climax of the diary is here, with the sermon at Monterey. Font’s diary reverts to its theme one last time on the final pages of the manuscript. Upon his return to San Miguel in June 1776, a jubilant village proposes a fandango in the expedition’s honor. Font, now wearily predictable, proposes a church fiesta and Mass instead. Overruled by Anza and the commissary, Font is left to stew about this slight. “I did not think it best to go to the fandango,” he grumbles, “lest my presence should sanction this worldly merrymaking, when Señor Ansa did not approve the Church fiesta which should have come first” (530). And so the diary ends in protest, with Font once again excusing his rage against secular authority by claiming to have recorded such events “solely that they may serve for enlightenment in similar cases, to me or any other person who may happen to read this diary, and in order that we may understand that Nihil sub sole novum [‘Nothing under the sun is new’]” (534). The new world of upper California is not new after all, but merely repeats the failings of the old. The foul odors and “nasty” food of the desert tribes are almost to

5

Round  71

r

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

be preferred to the Edenic, fruitful land to the north. At least in the desert, among the Indians, suffering can be realized and hunger employed as a constant reminder of the believer’s struggle to achieve sanctity in an increasingly secular world.

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

Notes 1. Sidney Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 7, 13. 2. Quoted in Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., An Outpost of Empire, Anza’s California Expeditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), 1:59. 3. Pedro Font, Font’s Complete Diary, in Bolton, Anza’s California Expeditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), 4:vi. 4. Font, Font’s Complete Diary, xiii. All further citations in the text refer to Bolton’s edition of Font’s diary. I have also consulted the new Spanish language version of the text, Diario Intimo, ed. Juilo Cesár Montané Martí (Paza y Valdes: University of Sonora, 2000). 5. Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” in Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1999): 231–51. 6. See Sergio Rivera Ayala, “Lewd Songs and Dances from the Street of Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, ed. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington de: Scholarly Resource Books, 1994), 27–46; and Cheryl English Martin, “Public Celebrations, Popular Culture, and Labor Discipline in Eighteenth-Century Chihuahua,” in Beezley, Martin, and French, Rituals of Rule, 95–114. 7. Quoted in Jeffrey Pilcher, Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 35. 8. Bolton, Outpost of Empire, 1:223. 9. See Pilcher, Que Vivan!, 25–43. 10. I use the term Criollo here as it is used in Latin American studies, not so much to describe mestizo or mixed-blood people, but to distinguish Spaniards born in America from those born in Spain. The contemporary term for European Spaniards at the time of Font’s writing was “Peninsulares.” Font was himself Catalán. 11. See Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (New York: Viking, 1985). 12. Bolton, Outpost of Empire, 223–24. 72  Faith, Flatulence, and Fandangos in the Borderlands

13. Pilcher, Que Vivan!, 35. 14. The Spanish passages, translated, read as follows: “and the most indecent parts exposed, for they say of the women that they are less becoming if they are covered”; “always with their hands in their private parts, playing [with themselves] against nature”; “[And if ] they must urinate . . . the same is true when they stop to shit”; “Likewise, when they go to fart, they make them before everyone with much impudence . . . lift a cheek to one side, and thus produce a fart so generous, round, and long, that they raise a cloud of dust with its wind.” In the next paragraph, Font describes in great detail how the Yumas’ leader, Captain Palma, though on his way to secular and religious “civility,” still insists on farting loudly in public, even when chastised by Anza himself, because “the people expect it of him.” 15. Mintz, Tasting Food, 6. 16. Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnot, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (New York: Routledge, 1994), 52.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Round  73

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

3. An Appetite for America Philip Roth’s Antipastorals

7

8

9

Debra Shostak

0

1

5

When I was a child, my parents, both first-generation Jewish-Americans, told me stories of the work they had performed, with some resentment, as children. My father’s mother, a widow, operated a little Jewish bakery on Chicago’s south side. From a very young age, my father would sit at the table in the attached living quarters eating his meals or doing his homework, required to leap up to wait on customers whenever the bell rang in the shop. My mother’s parents ran a mom-and-pop grocery store, also in Chicago; my mother recalled how she sat at the cash register reading books from the public library whenever she wasn’t ringing up sales or filling orders at the soda fountain. My parents were asked to contribute to their families as my grandparents took advantage of their immigrant Jewish culture to sustain themselves with the small incomes they could earn purveying food to other Jews. As Hasia Diner has pointed out, the demand for “Jewish” food was a significant binding agent for immigrant social life, causing Jews to live together where they could buy Jewish food and, in turn, offering to some Jews an “obvious occupational choice” in the culinary business.1 As my parents’ experience of the immigrant food business attests, however, the relationship to this central social function, whereby food helped to make communities out of Jews who had emigrated from various European regions, was nevertheless disturbed by the tensions between familial obligation and group identity, on the one hand, and the pull of assimilation, on the other—my father wanted to do his homework, my mother to read her books, all surely in English.

f

74

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Like many immigrant Jews, my eastern European grandparents came to the United States at the turn of the century because, as in Mary Antin’s aptly titled account of Jewish immigrant experience in Boston, it seemed to be the Promised Land.2 Immigrants with vivid memories of scarcity and want in Europe stepped into a country marked by abundance of meat, grain, and produce. For centuries Jews had regulated their consumption according to prescriptions for the “good life” in which, as Diner writes, “food embodied a palpable manifestation of Jewish conceptions of divine will” as detailed in “texts considered the word of God, and buttressed by law.”3 Faced with the vastness of American stores, Jewish immigrants and their offspring reconceived the “good life” increasingly in terms of the bounty before them rather than the regulation of their appetites. Their nostalgia for old country foods and respect for traditional practices began to dim as they challenged the long-standing food taboos of kashrut, the rules of kosher eating.4 This new home, seemingly the land of milk and honey, instilled in the immigrant Jews an image of a new Eden, conflating (and confusing) the spiritual satisfactions of the Promised Land—ancient Israel—with the physical satisfactions of a fertile agricultural landscape, a New World pastoral offering to erase the hardships of the past. As consumption became central to the process of Jewish acculturation,5 however, it was perhaps inevitable that a shift in identity would accompany shifts in the guiding myths of Jewishness and in the fulfillment of appetites. Across his writing career, Philip Roth has traced the consequences of such cultural changes in the lives of Jews. In particular, he has explored the ambivalence to which such shifts opened Jews like my parents, who simply wanted to get on with the business of being Americans, as well as the guilt that for some Jews attended the loosening of tribal ties as they hungered for a place amid the gratifications of the American landscape. For anyone familiar with Roth’s work, the first appetite that comes to mind in connection with his name is probably not the appetite for food. Instead, another basic and insistent hunger—for sex—has figured far more flagrantly in many of his more than twenty books. Like Roth’s representation of the sexual appetite, however, his view of the appetite for food advances the exploration of the meanings

1

Shostak  75

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

and forms of postimmigrant Jewish-American cultural identity. Appetite is key for Roth, whose characters act so as to claim their share of the plenty of the United States—to participate in the utopian dream of consumption and satisfaction offered by a mythic America viewed from the perspective of immigrant privation. Roth’s portraits disturbingly expose the desires that have motivated American Jews and the ways in which they have enacted those desires in the world, notably in relation to the underlying ideology of American consumerism. His fiction sheds light especially on the middle classes in the middle decades of the twentieth century, a time when the compelling ideal for many JewishAmericans of the first and second generations was to disappear into the Promised Land of gentile America. The nostalgia that caused Jews to cling to Jewishness for their cultural distinctiveness opposed this ideal, and it was in any case often unattainable because individuals were indelibly stamped by the beliefs and practices that preceded and even enabled their entry into the United States. In Roth’s fiction, the meanings attached to the desire for food illuminate the midcentury JewishAmerican’s conflicted desires for cultural assimilation. In Roth’s hands, in fact, the Jewish protagonist’s relation to food revives the dead metaphor of assimilation so that it regains its physiological connotations of digestion and consumption. At the same time, Roth enfolds his Jews in distinctly antipastoral narratives that belie the assimilative process. If the pastoral myth implies a lack of differentiation—in Eden before the Fall, nakedness caused no shame because Adam and Eve had no consciousness of differences—Roth forces the postimmigrant Jew, driven by his appetites, to encounter the intransigence of differences. In doing so, his fiction demonstrates the usefulness of a close reading of the details of Jewish-American food consumption in relation to the two influences described above and, at times, operating in opposition to one another: first, the historical memory of immigrant hunger, and second, the dietary laws that had governed Jewish eating for centuries. A case in point appears in passing in Roth’s autobiography, teasingly titled The Facts (1988).6 Roth recounts an agonizing early marriage to a non-Jewish woman, undertaken when she used another woman’s urine specimen to “prove” that she was pregnant. After describing the storm

f

76  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

of that marriage and its crippling aftermath, Roth concludes the narration of his life’s events with a declaration of renewed independence that involves a brief summary of why he had been disastrously drawn to a woman so different from him. It was his “exhilarating, adventurous sense of personal freedom” as an innocent young instructor of composition at the University of Chicago that caused him to “handily pick up on a Chicago street the small-town blond divorcée with the two little fatherless children, the penniless ex-waitress whom he’d already spotted serving cheeseburgers back in graduate school, and who’d looked to him like nothing so much as the All-American girl” (Facts, 160). The symbolic equivalencies in the details are intriguing: the midwestern, small-town, gentile blond—in derogatory Yiddish, the shiksa, as opposed to Roth, urban Jew from Newark—equals the all-American girl, an Eve who first appears in order to seduce him with that all-American food, cheeseburgers. And why, in the cultural economy of the narrative, cheeseburgers rather than the more obvious hamburgers? The cheeseburger would be a prohibited food in a kosher household, where Jewish dietary laws forbid the mixing of milk products and meat. The cheeseburgers signify the young man’s temptation to throw off the restrictions of traditional Jewish culture in his embrace of America. To eat cheeseburgers is to marry a shiksa. And perhaps, in turn, to be digested into America, leaving behind no trace of his difference. Roth’s autobiography implies that he did not go unpunished for such a gesture of independence. Implicit in the catastrophic developments of his marriage is that his impulse to escape Jewishness by pursuing an inappropriate mate—mixing milk and meat, as it were—must be punished even as it is satisfied. Indeed, the very pursuit of the shiksa might be seen as a self-punishing act, triggered by the complementary mechanism of transgressive desire and repression. According to the structuring myth of the immigrant’s assimilation into the Promised Land, then, the antipastoral is inherent in pastoral gratifications. Roth suggests that this paradox has special implications for the American Jew’s experience of cultural identity. Roth is guided by the larger determinations of a set of cultures—the traditionally Jewish, the omnivorously American, and the unstable, figuratively hyphenated Jewish-American—that are rich

1

Shostak  77

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

in the particularities of their own practices and opportunities, and in which the complementary ideas of appetite and consumption are ideologically central and marked by contradiction in these overlapping cultural contexts. In each context, what matters for Roth is not so much the actual practices of preparing and consuming food, but rather the complex meanings that accrue to consumption, which underlie his development of metaphors to represent the American Jew’s experience. In traditional Jewish culture, as I have suggested, the individual’s relation to food is defined in terms of the ancient dietary laws that distinguish Jews irreversibly from other tribal groups and, by their observance, serve as material proof of the Jew’s covenant with the monotheistic God. In American culture food represents the tension between the sensual satisfactions the Puritans strove to moderate and the capitalist ethos according to which the proof of one’s success is the ability to satisfy—and more than satisfy—one’s hungers. The American context introduces the myth of the Fall, which pivots on the satisfaction of regulated appetites and the punishment of uncontrolled appetites. In the mid-twentieth-century Jewish-American context, however, the wherewithal to indulge one’s appetites signifies a family’s successful entrance into American culture, focusing, if one heeds the old Jewish mother jokes, on the ability of the mother to show her love by drowning her family in the bounty of the table (preferably, while she goes hungry).7 This is the Jewish version of the pastoral myth, in which the American Jew disports not among the sheep but among the fruits of his own labor, and where the only Fall lies in the twin failures to produce and consume. Roth’s exploration of the problem of Jewish-American identity as it encounters these conflicting and intersecting valuations of material desire can be traced by looking at three works that span his career. From his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), to his most notorious, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), and through the first volume of his mature trilogy, American Pastoral (1997), the contradictions and tensions in American Jewish self-definition manifest themselves through food. Roth’s imaginative engagement with the cultural position of the mid-twentieth-century American Jew enables him to construct metaphors that,

f

78  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

drawing on the symbolic weight given to food and foodways, serve as pivotal devices in the narratives. When Roth’s protagonists encounter food, their experience signifies simultaneously a promise and a threat to the very process of assimilation that had at midcentury seemed implicit in consumption. The titular novella Goodbye, Columbus offers a sequence of scenes centered around the admiration and consumption of food in order to demonstrate both the romance of plenty for the Jew attempting to define a place in 1950s American culture and the disillusionment that plenty can cause. Roth focuses especially on the moment in which the transition of the Jewish middle classes into the suburbs shifted the function of the home: it was, as Jenna Weissman Joselit argues, “no longer the site of production,” becoming instead “the site of consumption, a showcase of increased affluence.”8 Neil Klugman, Roth’s protagonist, lives in Newark with his Aunt Gladys, who epitomizes the ideal of Jewish-American domesticity whereby the mother’s self-abnegation in the service of her family’s desires confirms their mutual value and enables the family’s success in the world. Gladys serves a different meal, at a different time, to each member of the family, it apparently never occurring to her that she could serve the same meal to all four at once. When Neil declines the sodas she offers, Gladys makes explicit the link between appetite and the work ethic that drove postimmigrant Jews in America: her husband, Max, she crows, “‘could drink a whole case with his chopped liver only. He works hard all day. If you worked hard you’d drink.’ ”9 Gladys is Roth’s ironic portrait of the balebusta, the housewife charged with holding the Jewish family together, whose devotion to modernizing her family under the sway of American abundance backfires, encouraging their fragmentation instead. Neil’s resistance to Gladys’s ministrations portends his fundamental rejection of both the siren song of American prosperity and its implication of waste, a position he dryly asserts in his account of Gladys’s misplaced offerings of fresh and canned fruit: “Whichever I preferred, Aunt Gladys always had an abundance of the other jamming her refrigerator like stolen diamonds. . . . Life was a throwing off for poor Aunt Gladys, her greatest joys were taking out the garbage, emptying her pantry” (gc, 4). Because the Jew-

1

Shostak  79

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ish diet at the time of immigration was spare of fresh fruit and vegetables,10 the embarrassment of riches among Gladys’s fruits signifies this Jewish family’s transcendence of the conditions of privation that came to be associated with Jewish origins. The jammed refrigerator is an emblem of material success in America, a holy vessel that demonstrates the equal importance of gathering and spending material wealth. Neil’s ideological resistance is tested when, in a summer romance, he becomes sexually involved with Brenda Patimkin, the pampered daughter of an affluent Jewish businessman. If in Gladys Roth offers a parody of the urban balebusta, in the Patimkins he provides an image of the suburban disintegration of Jewish family life. Where Irving Howe could reminisce about his Bronx childhood in the twenties and thirties that “sometimes the family was about all that was left of Jewishness; or, more accurately, all that we had left of Jewishness had come to rest in the family,”11 the Patimkins of the fifties demonstrate that consumption banishes Jewishness from the family altogether. Brenda’s father is “strong, ungrammatical, and a ferocious eater,” the Patimkin dinner table marked by little conversation and Rabelaisian appetites: “Eating was heavy and methodical and serious . . . the words gurgled into mouthfuls, the syntax chopped and forgotten in heapings, spillings, and gorgings” (gc, 15). Roth gives Neil a vision of excess that turns the figurative fruits of assimilation into a literal cornucopia: in the Patimkins’ basement, Neil sneaks open another of Roth’s emblematic refrigerators to discover that “it was heaped with fruit, shelves swelled with it, every color, every texture, and hidden within, every kind of pit.” After cataloging the vast stores, Neil apostrophizes, “Oh Patimkin! Fruit grew in their refrigerator and sporting goods dropped from their trees!” (gc, 31). Whereas Gladys always had the wrong fruits on hand, signifying her failure to leave the Jewish enclave, the Patimkins seem at Neil’s first glance to get it right. Neil tastes of Patimkin bounty when his repeated lovemaking with Brenda is punctuated by nightly feasts of fruit, including heaps of cherries and watermelon slices, whose pits and seeds they spit out onto the dark suburban lawn. The banquet of fruit is a clear metonymy for their sexual extravagance—the gluttonous desires, the waste of seed—which

f

80  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

is, in turn, enabled by an American cultural context that, flush with postwar prosperity, averts its eyes from the transgressions of the rich and the educated. But that their actions are transgressive and may be punished appears in Roth’s choice of representative metaphors. Surely lovers who eat heartily of fruit while they lounge on the grass cannot be seen altogether outside the symbolic structure of the Fall. If the full refrigerator is a bright and humming Tree of Knowledge, then the pits they spit into the dark signify incipient corruption. The Eden that is the Patimkin household on the brink of the Fall is irretrievably exposed for Neil when he attends the wedding reception for Brenda’s brother Ron. At the reception Neil meets Mr. Patimkin’s half-brother Leo, who represents the obverse of Mr. Patimkin’s success story. Leo is the “little guy,” a traveling salesman who sells lightbulbs and “wears out three pairs of rubbers every winter” (gc, 80). Surpassed by the invention of fluorescent bulbs, he recognizes that he is already obsolete because he barked up the wrong American dream. His long, drunken monologue warning Neil not to be a “sucker” is reinforced by the wasteland scene in which he speaks: the leavings of the wedding party, at the center of which is the table, “a tangle of squashed everything: napkins, fruits, flowers; there were empty whiskey bottles, droopy ferns, and dishes puddled with unfinished cherry jubilee, gone sticky with the hours” (gc, 79). Here is the spoilage portending the fate of those other cherries juicy with promise, and hence of the identity that would form itself around material success as the road to American selfhood. For Neil, the Patimkins’ freedom to define themselves in the Diaspora proves equivalent to their wasteful and precarious consumerism. He perceives the fallen Jewish-American family as self-consuming artifacts of their own desires. In his final rejection of Brenda, Neil rejects the appetite that might have led to assimilation into America by way of success in the free market economy. In doing so, he rejects the Promised Land of Mary Antin’s immigrant dream. Roth shows the utopia as repugnant precisely for the plenty that had, as Diner writes, “staggered the imagination of women and men who had been hungry.”12 If Goodbye, Columbus uncovers the Jewish appetite for assimilation in relation to consumption, in Portnoy’s Complaint Roth brings appe-

1

Shostak  81

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

tite much closer to the terms of fundamental bodily desires and their repression. As David Biale has pointed out, “The historical Judaism of Portnoy is a religion devoid of the erotic: sexual repression . . . is the product of the heritage of Jewish suffering and compulsive legalism.”13 The notoriously desiring Alexander Portnoy turns food toward its potentially transgressive cultural meanings as part of his desperate effort to “put the id back in Yid” and release himself from the prison of renunciation—the “self-control, sobriety, [and] sanctions” that constitute the “key to a human life” according to the dietary (and other) laws that traditionally regulate Jewish behavior and identity.14 It is the peculiarly Jewish habit of renunciation that he feels inhibits him from attaining the liberty and sensual gratification that the gentile American context seems to offer. That Portnoy experiences his Jewish identity as inescapable physical renunciation—even, implicitly, death—appears in a brief paranoid fantasy. He imagines adolescent peers jeering at how his nose has grown— ‘‘kid,” one says, “you have got J-E-W written right across the middle of that face”—and he thinks in his panic that “a couple of years and I won’t even be able to eat, this thing will be directly in the path of the food!” (pc, 168–69). That is, the indelible physicality of his Jewishness—which is implicitly the mark of circumcision displaced upward for all to see on his face—threatens to prevent the satisfaction of his most basic physical desires. Literally, the nose (and figuratively, the circumcised member, hence Jewishness itself) stands in the way of consumption and bars his access to the fruits of American prosperity. But in Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth focuses on the symbolic power of meat, not fruit, as an index to the Jew’s evolving ambivalence toward his inherited cultural identity. Meat was another abundance available to the American Jew who had strong memories of the hunger before migration.15 In the novel’s most notorious incident, Portnoy uses food to rebel against renunciation during his adolescence, when he masturbates into a piece of liver destined for the family table. In an attempt to detach himself from the dense obligations he feels to his family, which represent, in microcosm, his tribal obligations to the Jews, he has the liver, as he puts it, “rolled round my cock in the bathroom at three-thirty—and then had [it] again on the end of a fork at five-thirty, along with the oth-

f

82  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

er members of that poor innocent family of mine.” It is “the worst thing I have ever done,” he admits. “I fucked my own family’s dinner” (pc, 150). Portnoy’s indulgence of the id offers a two-pronged transgression against his Jewishness: he challenges a conventional sexual taboo—fortified by the ancient proscription against the wasteful spilling of seed— and he invents a highly imaginative, ironically secret offense against the family, for whom nourishment normally serves as a binding force. Food signifies a particular kind of transgression against Portnoy’s Jewish identity, since, as Biale suggests, Roth represents the repressive legalism of Judaism in terms of food taboos.16 Roth explores how deep seated are such cultural prohibitions and how ill equipped we are to resist them as the ineradicable basis of identity. In one example, Portnoy’s older sister and her fiancé have treated him to a dinner, at which they order lobster for him. On his way home alone on a bus, he finds himself masturbating next to a drowsy young shiksa in the seat beside him, and, expressing later his horror at the risk he took, he observes that “maybe the lobster is what did it.” Because shellfish are prohibited by the dietary laws, he concludes that the ease with which he broke one taboo may have released “the whole slimy, suicidal Dionysian side of my nature” (pc, 87). As one critic has remarked, “Portnoy’s pursuit of shiksas is a pursuit of ‘junk’ sex, unkosher goods,”17 and so the girl Roth chooses for him to masturbate beside simply replicates the transgression he has already performed at the dinner table. Portnoy raves that the purpose of dietary laws is “to give us little Jewish children practice in being repressed” as a reminder from their God “that life is boundaries and restrictions if it’s anything” (pc, 88). In the end he distinguishes Jews from non-Jews in relation to appetite itself: “A diet of abominable creatures well befits a breed of mankind so hopelessly shallow and empty-headed as to drink, to divorce, and to fight with their fists. . . . They will eat anything, anything they can get their big goy hands on! And the terrifying corollary, they will do anything as well” (pc, 90; emphasis in original). In reaffirming his Jewish difference as a way to slow his own free fall, Portnoy paradoxically returns to the tribal fold he has renounced. Roth makes him reinstate the special status of the Jew not just in relation to the God who has “chosen” him but also to the notion

1

Shostak  83

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

of civilization, which limits ethically the Jew’s possibilities for autonomous self-definition. If Portnoy’s Complaint provides a snapshot of the Jew poised in perpetual torment over his ability to assimilate, the more recent American Pastoral exposes the illusions that, according to Roth, deceive the American Jew into believing that it is possible to complete the assimilative process. In American Pastoral Roth details the fall from innocence of an apparently fully “American” Jew, Swede Levov, whose pastoral dream is destroyed by his attempt to create a future fattened on the pleasures of his idealized America. As in Goodbye, Columbus, Roth represents the desire for a midcentury archetype of assimilated identity in the heavily freighted image of fruit. The Swede’s attempt to realize his fantasy of unending prosperity as a sign of his Americanization begins in his golden adolescence as an athlete, continues during his successful running of his father’s glove-manufacturing business and his purchase of a revolutionary-era stone house, and is dashed when his teenage daughter blows up a local post office in protest against the Vietnam War. His assimilative fantasy is epitomized by his dream of himself as Johnny Appleseed: “Johnny Appleseed, that’s the man for me,” he thinks. “Wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t an Irish Catholic, wasn’t a Protestant Christian—nope, Johnny Appleseed was just a happy American. . . . Had a big stride and a bag of seeds and a huge, spontaneous affection for the landscape, and everywhere he went he scattered the seeds.”18 The Johnny Appleseed fantasy speaks to both the abundance of food offered by America and the immigrant’s labor and husbandry that allow him to participate in that abundance—the capitalist virtues to which the Swede commits himself. Yet the Swede’s is a dream painfully innocent of history or difference, a dream whereby he can not only take from the land’s bounty but return it in kind, and where the scattering of seeds is productive, without waste, and innocent of erotic menace. Roth refers to no real apple, of course, but rather to the fruit of the overarching American myth of consumption, with all its doomed and contradictory undercurrents of promise, temptation, and fall. The Swede’s view of himself as Johnny Appleseed, a figure of prelapsarian harmony, ultimately offers Roth’s most ironic “American

f

84  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

pastoral.” The titular notion is made more concrete in the narrator’s account of two ritualized occasions in which food bears a weight of cultural meaning. First is the description of the annual dinners when the Swede’s Jewish family is brought together with his wife’s Catholic family “on the neutral, dereligionized ground of Thanksgiving, when everybody gets to eat the same thing, nobody sneaking off to eat funny stuff—no kugel, no gefilte fish, no bitter herbs, just one colossal turkey for two hundred and fifty million people. . . . A moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity. . . . A moratorium on all the grievances and resentments” (ap, 402). This “American pastoral par excellence” centers on food that is inflected not with the tastes and prohibitions of tribal identity but with the signs of a singular or primal (if specious) “American” culture, one that goes back before the immigrations that made contemporary American identities multiple and indeterminate. If gefilte fish is an iconic Jewish food, then to abandon it, to eat of the same turkey as the non-Jew, is, for a brief moment, to be the same.19 But the Fall, the failure of this pastoral dream of nondifferentiation, is evident not only in the violence that the Swede’s daughter, Merry, commits—a daughter first grown fat in explication of her parents’ yearning for the pleasures and trappings of prosperity, and then grown gaunt in renunciation of all material signs of identity in the world—but also in the novel’s long concluding episode, a tragicomic dinner party. The party represents the Swede’s attempt to reconfigure the ritual Jewish meal in wholly American terms so as to confirm his cultural transition. Practically speaking, this harvest dinner party is the Swede’s Americanized seder. It represents his fond if futile hope that a ritualized meal can signify and thereby install family unity, providing material proof that, in its pursuit of American domesticity, the family has been “passed over” by vengeful historical forces. The Swede offers his guests the new icons of bountiful American modernity: grilled steak, corn on the cob, beefsteak tomatoes from the garden, imported wine. Amid the hearty fare of the party, however, the illusions represented by the Swede’s innocent hopefulness for an uncompromised American identity are all stripped away, as if to suggest that such apparently solid nourishment is insub-

1

Shostak  85

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

stantial. If the covenant implicit in the Passover seder is the Jew’s return to the Promised Land, then the Swede learns instead on this night that he and his family are forever cast out of paradise. He discovers the infidelity of his wife, a former Miss New Jersey, whom he had married as if to wed gentile America. He learns of the deception of a former mistress, who had, unbeknownst to him, harbored his daughter after the post office bombing. He imagines the visitation of that daughter, crashing into his disintegrating world like an avenging angel of history. And he witnesses his father, a Jewish patriarch and the source of all the Swede’s midcentury assimilationist energies and optimism, nearly blinded by a non-Jewish drunk. This final affront occurs in specific relation to the consumption of food, posing the hostility of the non-Jew against the misplaced optimism of the Jew. Lou Levov has taken under his wing a desperate alcoholic, a “Philadelphia heiress, a finishing-school girl” with flaxen braids, flawless skin, and a vast well of disappointment (ap, 328). Lou takes away her drink and tries to make her eat, to nourish her and the culture she represents as he has his own family, by force of will—like his son, to return his own Jewish bounty to America. When Lou feeds her forkfuls of her strawberry-rhubarb pie and praises her as a “good girl,” he articulates the moral dimension of consumption that has defined his own efforts toward prosperity, reflecting midcentury postimmigrant Jewish-American ideologies that conflated moral and material fulfillment. The disillusioned heiress takes the fork and aims it at his face, missing his eye by an inch, implying that he is in a sense already blinded by his aspirations. Her refusal of the healing power of that all-American pie, in an absurd act of violence, exposes the futility of all hopes for an idyll of consumption to harmonize American social organization and to make disparate and conflicting American identities coherent. The final scene of American Pastoral discloses Roth’s antipastoral interpretation of the mythic American Eden. The wounding of the coarse but well-intentioned Jew by the figure representing the hollow dream of an elite Protestant America, a dream that guided innocents such as Lou and his son, confirms in plot terms the long-standing critique of that originary, prelapsarian cooking metaphor from early in the centu-

f

86  An Appetite for America

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ry: the melting pot. Roth gathers together the symbolic strands of the novel—and indeed of all three works I have treated here—in this scene. The Jew’s appetite for the good things in what he construes as American life and his acceptance of the ideology of consumption as the path toward being American are counterbalanced by irrevocably Jewish compulsions toward renunciation. By implication, the very objects of appetite are misplaced and mostly indigestible, and the “assimilated” identities thus demarcated are mere phantoms. By confronting his American Jews with foods that fail to satisfy their hunger for an uncompromised cultural identity, Roth demonstrates the signifying power of apparently innocuous foods as an index to cultural transition. His plots uncover the illusory mechanism driving the habits of the midcentury Jew: to eat American is not to become American nor to erase the tribal definitions of identity. In Roth’s view, cheeseburgers, cherries, lobster, turkey, and strawberry-rhubarb pie may in the end compose a menu not for a feast but for a large, lonesome, self-deluding Jewish bellyache. Notes

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1. Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Immigration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 196–97. 2. Mary Antin, The Promised Land (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912). Antin’s highly successful autobiography, first published in 1901, affirmed the possibilities of attaining the “American dream.” 3. Diner, Hungering for America, 151. 4. Diner, Hungering for America, 191. See also Jenna Weissman Joselit, The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880–1950 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 172–74. Joselit argues that American Jews began to respect the rules of kosher eating selectively, often “following the dictates of convenience rather than those of tradition” (173). 5. Andrew R. Heinze makes an excellent case for examining the consumption (rather than production) of material goods as a guide to Jewish acculturation into the United States. See Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 4. 6. Roth, The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). Hereafter cited as Facts in the text.

1

Shostak  87

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

7. See Diner’s description of Jewish parents’ “obsession with their children’s consumption, the belief that food indicated love and ensured health” (Hungering for America, 193). 8. Jenna Weissman Joselit, “‘A Set Table’: Jewish Domestic Culture in the New World, 1880–1950,” in Getting Comfortable in New York: The American Jewish Home, 1880–1950, ed. Susan L. Braunstein and Jenna Weissman Joselit (New York: Jewish Museum, 1990), 48. 9. Roth, Goodbye, Columbus (1959; repr., New York: Bantam Books, 1981), 3. Hereafter cited as gc in the text. 10. Joselit, “‘A Set Table,’” 30. 11. Irving Howe, “A Personal Reminiscence,” in Braunstein and Joselit, Getting Comfortable in New York, 16. 12. Diner, Hungering for America, 229. 13. David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 2. 14. Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969; repr., New York: Fawcett, 1985), 236, 89. Hereafter cited as pc in the text. 15. See Diner’s description of the symbolic desirability of meat among Jews (Hungering for America, 164). 16. Biale, Eros and the Jews, 2. 17. Hermione Lee, Philip Roth (London and New York: Methuen, 1982), 15. 18. Roth, American Pastoral (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 316. Hereafter cited as ap in the text. 19. Donna R. Gabaccia argues for the central significance of Thanksgiving as an entry for immigrant populations into American culture: “No other eating event so symbolized the changing eating habits in ethnic enclaves as an immigrant family’s first American Thanksgiving celebration. . . . Many immigrant mothers prepared the feast when children requested it after studying the Pilgrims in school” (We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans [Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1998], 178).

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

88  An Appetite for America

1

2

4. You Are Where You Eat Negotiating Hindu Utopias in Atlanta

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Kathryn McClymond

1

1

1

1

On a busy Monday morning in late May 2003, the kitchen of the Hindu Temple of Atlanta is abuzz with activity. More than a dozen volunteers— women in saris and men in shirts and slacks—move in and out of the lower-level kitchen, working under the supervision of the temple cook. They prepare tamarind rice, fresh fruit, and vegetable dishes, served buffet style to an ever-changing sea of devotees standing or sitting in small groups in the crowded cafeteria-like dining area. This particular morning food is needed in abundant quantities, as visitors have come not only to celebrate the eleventh anniversary of the temple but also to mark the ground-breaking ceremony for the Shiva complex, one of several additions planned for the next few years.1 Celebrations such as this one pepper the American landscape with increasing frequency as Hindu communities establish temples across the country. In American Hindu temple life, food is one means by which members negotiate multiple utopias. That is, food brings “there”—traditional India—“here”—to the United States. By maintaining traditional observances in temple life, Hindus who are otherwise thoroughly American maintain religio-cultural ties to the mother country. They create a kind of “deferred utopia” by replicating (or, in some cases, translating) Indian activity, creating a tangible tie to the auspicious land of India, which, in turn, links devotees to the means of liberation. Hindu communities construct an idealized world in the United States by

1

89

r

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

constant reference to life in India, traditionally understood as the concrete representation of the cosmic realm on earth. Thus, at one level American Hindus approach the eternal utopia by re-creating its earthly equivalent. At the same time, adaptations in food preparation, practices, and distribution reflect communities’ embrace of life in the United States, what many see as the land of economic and educational opportunity. American Hindus constantly negotiate maintaining traditional Indian practices and values while pursuing improved lives in America. While developing a better material life, American Hindus pursue the best spiritual life through food interactions with the gods, with other devotees, and with outsiders. Multiple utopias—earthly and spiritual—come together, constantly at play with one another. The study of food and utopias in American Hindu communities draws together several fields of study: American religions, Hindu temple practice, utopian studies, and food theory. Extensive literature exists in each of these fields independently, but relatively little work has been done specifically on food practices in Hindu communities in America. As Pyong Gap Min notes, “Literature on religion and ethnicity is largely based on the experiences of the turn-of-the-century white immigrant groups . . . mostly Catholic and Jewish.”2 Interest in Asian immigrants, and south Asian immigrants in particular, has developed relatively recently.3 Work in this area is helpful, however, because it highlights a dynamic very different from early patterns of immigration. In particular, studies on south Asian immigrants reveal different understandings of and engagements with food from those of their Western predecessors. Within south Asian studies, food has long been recognized as the means by which ritual and social relations are negotiated. The works of Louis Dumont, R. S. Khare, and McKim Marriott are classics in this field.4 However, these have not considered how food manipulations change as communities develop their identities in the United States. Examining Hindus in America through the lens of food transactions in the temple life of the Hindu Temple of Atlanta (hta) raises broader questions about how the food practices of immigrant Hindu communities challenge peculiarly Western notions of utopia. More specifically, food

f

90  You Are Where You Eat

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

functions in three contexts in temple life. First, food is used by devotees in their worship of temple deities. Second, food plays a role in community dynamics, as some traditional dietary restrictions and caste distinctions are transferred to the United States and others are not. Third, cooperation with non-Hindu communities to distribute food brings a distinctly American twist to a traditional Hindu value by joining Hindu and non-Hindu communities.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Food and Worship The most recent wave of south Asian immigrants came to the United States in the wake of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, searching for economic, educational, and social opportunities believed to be unavailable to many in India. The Hindu Temple of Atlanta was founded and continues to be dominated by families from south India, particularly Andhra Pradesh. The hta can be traced back to a group of Indian physicians who were part of a growing Hindu community in metropolitan Atlanta in the 1970s.5 The community purchased land in the early 1980s, and temple construction began in 1986. As with many other temples built in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, the community modeled its structure on the famous Sri Venkateswara temple in Tirupathi in south India. The first murtis (statuary images of male and female deities) were installed in May 1993, and regular puja (worship) began. In the summer of 2002, the community hired a temple cook to meet the demands of the growing numbers of devotees and activities, numbers that were putting a strain on the numerous volunteer cooks. Food plays a central role in the outworking of Hindu identity, both in India and in America. Dumont has noted that food categorization, manipulation, and restrictions are intimately connected with notions of kinship, purity, and caste in Hindu communities. Food offerings were central to the ancient brahmanical Hindu (Vedic) sacrificial tradition, which scholars have often characterized as an elaborate meal.6 Priests presented animal, grain, and liquid offerings to the gods in various ritual settings as part of a complex cosmogony that required regular sacrifice to maintain the ordered functioning of the universe. Over time elaborate sacrifice largely was replaced by domestic and temple-based

9

McClymond  91

r

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

puja. The current view is that consecrated murtis host the presence of the deities so that devotees may worship and pray to them. While private worship is all one needs to be a practicing Hindu, many Hindu communities in the United States, largely in metropolitan areas, have constructed temples to accommodate public worship, festival celebrations, educational and cultural programs, and social events. At the heart of Hindu worship is the regular honoring of the gods. For example, Krishna, speaking in the Bhagavad Gita, states, “The leaf or flower or fruit or water that he offers with devotion, I accept from the man of self-restraint in response to his devotion” (9:26). Daily activities in a Hindu temple include several food offerings (naive-dya) to the gods, as well as bathing, decorating, and dressing the gods and waving lamp flames before the image. With these actions, the deity is treated as an honored guest. It is important to note that the murtis are treated as living beings who see and are seen, who give and receive in the act of worship. Food preparation, offering, and consumption play key roles in this activity. Devotees offer food gifts (primarily fruit) to the deities, and temple priests maintain daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual worship through food offerings as well as other activities. Several times throughout the day, priests present various foods to the deities, from morning, when they “awaken” the deities, until they close the deities’ chambers for the night. Traditional food offerings include bananas, oranges, mangos, coconuts, various rice preparations, and milk. Only a properly trained priest may prepare food for the gods.7 One sign of the growing numbers and prosperity of the Hindu Temple of Atlanta is that it has been able to hire a full-time cook to tend to these responsibilities. Rangachari, the employee responsible for food preparation at the Hindu Temple of Atlanta, was trained by his father in Andhra Pradesh, and he supervised food preparation for several years at a temple in Vizianagaram before he came to Atlanta. He is part of a large staff of nine full-time priests (pujaris) and two part-time temple managers. In addition to the daily and festival offerings, Rangachari is responsible for food provided to devotees during the busy weekend activities, which include worship and classes in the Vedas, the Gita, classical dance, and Sanskrit. He determines the type and quantity of food

f

92  You Are Where You Eat

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

necessary each week, and a volunteer from the food committee (headed by an executive committee member) purchases the food from a local Sam’s Club and Atlanta’s International Farmer’s Market.8 Rangachari prepares the offerings of fruit and rice dishes for the temple gods according to traditional guidelines. In addition to voluntary offerings by individual devotees, the temple priests present required food offerings to the gods as part of regular temple practice. While Rangachari’s position is traditional, the presence of a volunteer staff and the establishment of a food committee are distinctly American adaptations. Weekly trips to Sam’s Club are also unique to American metropolitan life, but the parallel trips to the International Farmer’s Market serve as a reminder that specific food choices are rooted in Indian tradition. The International Farmer’s Market brings India to Atlanta in the form of foodstuffs. One of the most interesting elements of traditional Hindu devotionalism to students of religion is the phenomenon of prasa-d, which refers to food that has been offered to temple deities, blessed by them, and then made available to devotees for consumption. At the hta, Rangachari makes prasa-d balls of Rava Kesari (similar to cream of wheat), ghee (clarified butter), sugar, cashews, raisins, and cardamom. Strictly speaking, prasa-d is food that ritually has been presented to and received by the deity. The offering is waved before the murti and sprinkled with water. These sacred food remnants convey the graciousness of the god to the devotee as he or she consumes them. Traditionally, devotees would consume portions of the food that has been placed before the murtis by the priests. Prasa-d is distinctive in that it is not simply a gift to the deity. Rather, it involves giving and receiving, reflecting the dynamic relationship between the gods and their devotees. Arjun Appadurai explains, “In a very real sense, in Hindu thought, food, in its physical and moral forms, is the cosmos. It is thought to be the fundamental link between men and the gods. Men and gods are co-producers of food, the one by his technology and labor (the necessary conditions) and the other by providing rainfall and an auspicious ecological situation (the sufficient conditions). Men assume this cooperation by feeding the gods and eating their leftovers (prasa-d).”9

1

McClymond  93

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

The foodstuff is ritually offered to and consumed by the deity, but then a portion of it is returned to the devotee as a sign of the god’s grace. The intimacy of this food exchange underscores the private dimension of worship in Hinduism. The giving and receiving of prasa-d, much like dars´an (viewing and being viewed by the deity embodied in the murti), brings the devotee into close and private contact with the god. For convenience, Rangachari prepares ladus, which are available to devotees throughout the day when they come to worship. In fact, a sign near the temple manager’s office invites devotees to the kitchen to pick up their prasa-d on the way out of the temple. As a result, devotees can stop by the hta at their convenience throughout the week and have prasa-d available to them. Devotees, therefore, relate to the gods through food offerings that they bring directly to the temple and place in front of the deities’ images, through the priests’ regular food offerings to the murtis on behalf of the community, and through receiving prasa-d. In addition, food can link devotees to their gods in a more indirect way. The hta Web site provides a calendar of regular and occasional celebrations. The site also provides a comprehensive list of the elements (such as food) necessary for various rituals, including their costs. For example, Table 1, below, lists the items necessary for the Satyanarayana puja, which is performed to give thanks for success in a new endeavor or to express gratitude for having been brought through a difficult time.

5

Table 1. Items required for Sri Satyanarayana Puja10

6

7

8

9

0



1

2



3



4



5

f

                  

Turmeric powder    Kumkum powder    Sandalwood powder    Rice    Incense stick (agarbatti)    Camphor    Betel leaves    Betel nuts    Flowers    94  You Are Where You Eat

100 grams 100 grams 1 small box 2 lbs. 1 packet 1 packet 25 # 1 packet 2 bunches

   Garland        5 types fruit       Banana       Coconut       Dry coconut       Milk       Yogurt       Ghee       Honey       Sugar       Juice       Rose water       Lemons         Navadhanyam     (9 varieties of natural seeds)    Raisins, cashew, dates, almonds,     and sugar candy     Maha naivedyam (for distribution)    Havan samagri         Blouse piece     

1 Each 5 3 lbs. 8 1 1/2 gallon 32 oz. 1 small bottle 1 small bottle 1 small packet 1 small packet 1 small bottle 10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Rava Kesari 1 packet 2 (1 1/2 meter)

1

1

2

2

Rather than purchasing and transporting the necessary items to the temple, a devotee can “sponsor” a ritual. While the rites and food items used are traditional, the Web site mechanism is an American innovation, allowing devotees who live far away from a temple to participate in temple life by underwriting the cost of various rituals. Devotees participate in the ritualized food activity of temple life in three ways. First, when they visit the temple, devotees often present food offerings (usually fruit) to the deities. Second, at the temple, a devotee may receive prasa-d, which has been offered to and then received back from the deity. Third, a devotee may participate less directly in temple worship by underwriting the cost of the foodstuffs necessary to perform any number of regular or special rites, without necessarily attending the temple itself. Food, therefore, becomes one of the primary vehicles by which regular devotees participate in temple worship,

2

McClymond  95

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

either directly or indirectly. More specifically, food acts as the medium through which the divine and human realms interact and through which “there” (traditional India) is brought and adapted to life “here” (contemporary America).

5

5

Food and Community On the human plane, food also operates as an important element of community dynamics in traditional Hinduism. On one level, most Hindus observe general food guidelines, such as not eating meat. In addition, however, further guidelines are related to caste and subcaste distinctions. Social distinctions can be traced back to the four varn·as or “estates” of brahmanical Hinduism, which were laid out in the Vedic period. Brahmins (priests), ksatriyas (warrior-kings), vais´yas (farmers, · merchants), and s´u-dras (laborers, servants) distinguished themselves from one another, at least in part, by food practices. Manu Smr·ti, the first-century law code, notes, “A twice-born man who knowingly eats mushrooms, a village-pig, garlic, a village-cock, onions, or leeks, will become an outcast” (5.19).11 Dumont has argued that, over time, social distinctions that originally played themselves out in ritual activity were replaced by “an opposition between the pure and impure and a hierarchy of castes. Abstention from eating meat became a criterion of purity.”12 That is, hierarchical social relationships were played out in food dynamics: the higher one’s social rank, the more restrictive one’s diet. Brian K. Smith summarizes the relationship between food and social hierarchy: “The hierarchical encompassment of the lower by the higher in society is here articulated in alimentary (and elementary) terms: you are more than the one you eat and less than the one by whom you are eaten.”13 What one can and cannot eat traditionally indicates one’s caste. Contemporary diaspora Hindu communities in the United States continue to grapple with these dietary restrictions, despite the fact that caste distinctions are generally more relaxed among diaspora Hindus. The temple cook at the Hindu Temple of Atlanta, in addition to preparing food for the deities, is responsible for the preparation of food for community gatherings. On Saturdays and Sundays the temple offers

f

96  You Are Where You Eat

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

activities from morning through evening. Many members travel long distances to come to the temple, and they often stay for the full day, so food is provided cafeteria style in the kitchen for devotees. In addition, at special events such as the eleventh anniversary celebration, the cook is responsible for making sure that food is available. Until recently, as in many other American Hindu communities, the hta depended entirely on volunteers (mostly women) to prepare the food for devotees and food offerings for the deities. In this setting, certain differences between traditional Indian practice and immigrant practices become clear. John Y. Fenton has noted that temples in America have to be built according to American building codes. In addition, “Temple buildings are often constructed for multipurpose uses, which result in the central sanctuary being placed over lower floors used for nonritual purposes.”14 Like many other American Hindu temples, the hta, situated on a hill, has two stories. The upper level is the consecrated ritual space, housing the gods. The lower level includes the kitchen and a comfortable seating area, several entries to the complex, the temple manager’s office, a small area for shoes (which must be removed upon entering the sanctuary), an area for washing one’s feet, an auditorium, several small classrooms, and the bathrooms.15 Traditional temples in India, however, are almost invariably one level, and the kitchen is usually not attached. The hta’s attached kitchen is a largely Western adaptation that allows community members to prepare food offerings and host meals comfortably. Despite this modern architectural adaptation, the hta attempts to accommodate traditional dietary observances of its members. At the most basic level, Hindus traditionally consider raw foods universally acceptable; hence McKim Marriott refers to these as “gift” foods, since they can be given by anyone to anyone. In addition, most of the hta members are vegetarians, so no meat is prepared in the temple kitchen.16 Complications arise, however, when one begins to prepare cooked food for the community at large. Some community members refrain from eating lentils, onion, garlic, and certain leafy greens that are considered unacceptable to higher castes. Rangachari honors these traditional dietary restrictions by offering menus that are acceptable to everyone—that is,

1

McClymond  97

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

within the most restrictive diet. He has stated that the Hindu temple prepares “Vasis··t h·a vegetables,” not “Vis´va-mitra vegetables,” indicating that he follows a more restrictive line of teaching regarding the foodstuffs that are and are not permitted.17 Thus, the hta replicates India by means of the prohibition of certain foods, in accord with traditional guidelines. Dietary restrictions involve not only what is prepared, but who prepares it. Traditionally, an individual may eat only food prepared by someone of his own caste or higher, because food prepared by one’s inferior is considered impure. The hta temple priests, for example, as brahmins, may eat only food prepared by a brahmin. More specifically, they must eat food prepared by a brahmin priest. They do not eat food prepared by any of the community volunteers, only food prepared by Rangachari (a brahmin priest himself ) or food they have prepared themselves. Rangachari is integral to the temple life, then, not only because he prepares the correct food for consumption but also because he is the correct person to prepare it. It is interesting to note that devotees generally consider the food, which is prepared and served cafeteria style in the kitchen, as “blessed by the lord,” much like prasa-d. Dr. Seshu Sarma, a leading member of the hta, explained that a portion of all the food prepared for devotees is presented to the main deity. This token amount, having been received by the deity, symbolically represents all of the food being consumed that day. As a result, everyone is symbolically eating consecrated food and receiving a blessing from the god.18 Just as food creates an arena for spiritual exchange (prasa-d) in the context of worship, food reflects the boundaries of appropriate social exchanges in the context of community. These exchanges are circumscribed by issues of purity and, to a lesser extent, caste guidelines common in Indian life but outside the mainstream of modern American life. Studies seem to indicate that over time Hindu immigrants relax dietary restrictions somewhat, simply out of practical consideration.19 Subsequent generations often relax these restrictions even further. It will be interesting to observe over time how dietary restrictions linked to caste and general Hindu teachings do and do not persist in upcoming generations.

f

98  You Are Where You Eat

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Food and Neighbors Manuel Moreno has argued that traditional Hinduism values “feeding” above “eating”: “Among all classifications related to food, the most important is that which distinguishes between ‘eating’ and ‘feeding’ . . . and valorizes the latter.”20 Traditional teaching encourages Hindus to feed not only the gods and one’s own community members but also the poor and needy. A desire to fulfill this traditional value in metropolitan Atlanta, however, has prompted hta members to work through contemporary mechanisms. One way they do this is through participating with other religious communities in a local food bank, donating money to buy foodstuffs for the Atlanta Union Mission. In addition, the teacher of the hta’s teenage Sunday school class involves the teens in a more “hands-on” way. Every other week the teens prepare peanut butter sandwiches, soup, fried beans, or vegetarian chili, which is distributed later to the homeless at Centennial Olympic Park. This program, like the holiday Toys for Tots program, is supervised by the humanitarian activity committee at the temple. Rather than distributing food or money directly to the needy on a personal, individual basis (which is traditionally what happens in India), the hta community fulfills its humanitarian commitments through urban mechanisms. By distributing food through community-based nonprofit organizations, temple members implicitly acknowledge their identity as Americans living in Atlanta, home to hundreds of religious, ethnic, national, and cultural communities. At the same time, the hta fulfills traditional Hindu values of hospitality and feeding the poor. By participating in these programs, the hta community, while maintaining ties to traditional Indian practice, acknowledges that it is, in fact, not in India. “Feeding” occurs in at least three different forms in the hta. Devotees feed the gods, community members feed one another, and the community as a whole feeds the needy in Atlanta. Consequently, close study reveals a complicated negotiation between attempts to replicate the old world and efforts to generate a unique identity within pluralist America in the context of feeding practices. Food brings traditional India to America, while it simultaneously provides opportunities for contemporary American culture to influence the development of Hinduism

1

McClymond  99

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

and for American Hindus to establish their place in and contribute to American society. Food, Place, and Identity The societies of the past, most societies, have believed themselves to be based in the order of things, natural as well as social; they thought they were copying or designing their very conventions after the principles of life and the world.21

9

5

What is a utopia? There are, of course, numerous understandings of utopia, some of which hearken to an ancient golden age, and some of which look forward to or attempt to usher in a perfect future. Theodore Olsen has proposed a general description of utopias as “good patterns of life in an ahistorical cosmos.”22 Hinduism traditionally interprets “good patterns of life” through the lens of varn·a-´sramadharma, or guidelines for living based on one’s gender, caste, and life stage. Ancient legal codes prescribe how individuals ought to behave, depending on these factors, in order to achieve moks·a, liberation from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (sam · sara). Within this worldview, one understands the body as a temporary “sheath.” This sheath envelops the self in a manifest, or concrete and visible, form. While earthly existence is important as a vehicle through which one may attain liberation from sam · sara, ultimately it is transitory. The transactions that the body performs and undergoes in saguna brahman (manifest reality) have their most important effects in nirgun·a brahman (unmanifest reality). Dietary regulations promote a “good pattern of life” in manifest reality by governing what one may or may not eat and from whom one may or may not receive food. Khare goes so far as to say that food in Hinduism “is a dimension of none other than the Creator himself and is integral to the formation of the cosmos. . . . It is a manifestation of Brahman, the ultimate Reality.”23 Consequently, food plays a crucial role in the working out of one’s ultimate liberation. At one level, then, food practices are a means by which individuals pursue the utopia of release from this world. On another level, dietary practices centered on the Hindu temple

f

100  You Are Where You Eat

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

also help older generations transmit their Indian cultural heritage to younger generations. The temple cook and volunteers prepare food for weekend activities, family celebrations, holidays, or cultural events. In these contexts food is often tied to traditional dress and customs, sacred or regional languages, and mythic or political history. Devotees maintain traditional practices, rooted in thousands of years of history and mythology. These specific spiritual and practical disciplines, dietary included, are based on the assumption that activity in the bodily and social realms must resonate with activity on the cosmic, divine, and subtle planes. Only in that resonance can liberation from the karmic cycle of birth-death-rebirth be accomplished. The land of India is the most auspicious place in which to work out this liberation. The gods dwell on her mountaintops, create her rivers, and leave their marks on sites that become places of pilgrimage. Devotees visit the dwelling places of the gods, retrace the footsteps of saints in pilgrimage, and merge with the murky waters of the Ganges upon death. The cosmos is inscribed on the landscape of India, and through sacred temple architecture it is transposed onto American soil. Observance of traditional worship and social practices transports the Hindu immigrant symbolically back to India, maintaining a thread of contact across the oceans. In an effort to accomplish this transposition, Hindu temple life in America models Hindu worship in India as much as possible and, in so doing, lifts the devotee into ahistorical time. Priests use the sacred language, Sanskrit, during temple rituals; the temple community hires priests with proper lineages from India to reside at the temple; weekend classes focus on instruction in traditional texts, language, and dance. This is the ahistorical utopia, the world operating as it should, according to fixed and predetermined cosmic laws that transcend historic, geographic, and societal contexts. The temple manifests this utopia in concrete form. As Fenton notes,

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

Bhumi-puja (ground breaking or dedication of the land) symbolically creates a temple site with a solid foundation, and by extension, it brings the land in which it is located into existence, thus inducting a local area of America into God’s universe. . . . A point

3

McClymond  101

r

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

of access, a fording place (tirtha), is established between immanent and transcendent reality. That is to say, God who is everywhere, who is universal, and who is in all things and all spaces nevertheless consents to become present, to become incarnate, in the temple in a special way—even here in this strange land so far from home.24

7

5

Temple life links the devotee to the universal and eternal through its architecture, its worship, and the dynamics among gods, priests, and laity. In partnership with these other traditional elements, foodways help connect younger members to their Indian past in the setting of the larger “extended family” of the community. Just as traditional architecture, language, and ritual practice connect the Hindu American with India (and, by that, with the unchanging reality), traditional food practices link temple members to their culture’s birthplace. At the same time that these traditional means of connecting with nirguna brahman and Mother India are at play, certain elements of food practice are different in America than in India. Specific differences— lower-level kitchens and dining areas; food committees and volunteer staff; Web sites that facilitate distant devotees’ participation in devotional life; and urban modes of feeding the needy—reveal cracks in the foundation of traditional Hinduism. The disparities are traces of the search for another utopia, in the land of plenty and opportunity. This search has been largely successful, as evidenced by the fact that many hta members are well-educated professionals with sons and daughters enrolling in top American universities.25 One could argue that Hindu Americans have created an earthly utopia here, generating material, educational, and professional opportunities for themselves and their families. The growing temple-based activity among Hindu communities reflects another kind of utopia. As noted earlier, Hinduism does not require temple practice. That is, one can be a perfectly good Hindu and not participate in temple life at all. This characteristic is in marked contrast to American Christianity, which emphasizes attendance at and participation in a church community, “the body of Christ,” as an impor-

f

102  You Are Where You Eat

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

tant mark of one’s religious commitment. As Hindu communities have grown and established themselves in the United States, they have increasingly developed their institutional identity, offering parallel activities to their Christian counterparts: religious rituals, religious instruction, youth education, social and cultural events, and humanitarian outreach. This institutional component reflects practical issues, to be sure, but more significantly it reflects the American religious utopia, which emphasizes communal, institutionalized spiritual identity. The dynamism in Atlanta Hindu life comes from the constantly shifting juxtaposition of four different utopias: the manifest utopia of traditional India, transposed onto American soil by means of temple architecture and activity; the unmanifest utopia made available to individual devotees by observance of devotional activity and dietary prescriptions; the economic utopia found here in the United States; and the historical American religious utopia, concretized in institutional structures and activities and focused on community—rather than individual—religious life. Food practices are part of each of these realms, constituting the material medium through which devotees exhibit loyalty to traditional ways while adapting to contemporary America. It has become common in food theory studies to argue, “You are what you eat.” And in Hindu studies, it is common to note that you are “from whom you eat.” That is, from whom you do and do not receive food indicates who you are. I would argue that studying food, utopias, and Hindus in America leads to another pithy saying: you are where you eat. Hindu immigrants, who otherwise operate in a modern, urban American world, shift their symbolic locations when they engage in temple-based food-centered activities. Food transactions simultaneously place devotees in traditional India and in contemporary America, straddling two realms. At the same time, food practices lift American Hindus out of both worlds, effectively putting them in intimate relationship with Brahman, the eternal reality that ultimately underpins all places. Notes

1

The well-known phrase “you are what you eat” initially suggested this title, but readers should be aware that other authors have played with this

3

McClymond  103

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5



6

7

8

9



0

1

2



3

4

5

6

7

8

9



0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f



phrase. Note, for example, Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1998); and David Bell and Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (New York: Routledge, 1997). 1. The author would like to thank Aimee Parkhurst, Sasikala Penumarthi, Ellen Posman, Rangachari, P. V. Rao, Ravi Sarma, Seshu Sarma, Brian Schemer, Phani Tummala, and the Hindu Temple of Atlanta for their assistance throughout this project. 2. Pyong Gap Min, “Immigrants’ Religion and Ethnicity: A Comparison of Korean Christian and Indian Hindu Immigrants,” in Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America, ed. Jane Naomi Iwamura and Paul Spickard (New York: Routledge, 2003), 126. 3. See Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, eds., Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (New York: AltaMira Press, 2000); John Y. Fenton, Transplanting Religious Traditions: Asian Indians in America (New York: Praeger, 1988); Iwamura and Spickard, Revealing the Sacred; Raymond Brady Williams, Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan: New Threads in the American Tapestry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 4. See in particular Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System, trans. Mark Sainsbury (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); R. S. Khare, The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Food, Society, and Culture: Aspects in South Asian Food Systems (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1986); The Hindu Hearth and Home (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1983); McKim Marriott, “Caste Ranking and Food Transactions, a Matrix Analysis,” in Structure and Change in Indian Society, ed. Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology no. 47, ca. 1968); Caste Ranking and Community Structure in Five Regions of India and Pakistan (Poona: Deccan College Monograph Series no. 23, 1960). 5. See Renee Bhatia and Ajit Bhatia, “Hindu Communities in Atlanta,” in Religions of Atlanta: Religious Diversity in the Centennial Olympic City, ed. Gary Laderman (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 241–54, for studies of several Hindu communities in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Fenton’s Transplanting Religious Traditions also discusses the Hindu Temple of Atlanta at some length. Finally, the Hindu Temple of Atlanta chronicles its own history on its Web site, http://www.hindutempleofatlanta.org. 104  You Are Where You Eat

6. See, for example, Charles Malamoud, Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India, trans. David White (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 7. Seshu Sarma notes, “The hta had a non-brahmin cook for a few years. Since not prepared by a priest, the food that he cooked could not be offered to the Lord. He and his wife made food for the devotees on the weekends” (Sarma, e-mail communication, August 7, 2003). 8. Before Rangachari was hired, a volunteer food staff fulfilled these responsibilities. Volunteers, approximately two dozen, continue to help the temple cook on weekends and holidays. 9. Arjun Appadurai, “Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia,” American Ethnologist 8 (1981): 494–511. 10. Adapted from the “Items Required for Sri Satyanarayana Pooja” list at http:// www.hindutempleofatlanta.org/PoojaReq3.htm (accessed July 12, 2003). 11. The Laws of Manu, trans. Georg Bühler, The Sacred Books of the East, ed. F. Max Müller (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 25:172. 12. Quoted in Francis Zimmerman, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 1–2. 13. Brian K. Smith, “Eaters, Food, and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India: A Dietary Guide to a Revolution of Values,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58 (1990): 187. 14. Fenton, Transplanting Religious Traditions, 174. 15. See Joanne Punzo Waghorne’s analysis of “split-level” American Hindu temples in “The Hindu Gods in a Split-Level World: The Sri Siva-Vishnu Temple in Suburban Washington, D.C.,” in Gods of the City, ed. Robert A. Orsi (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1999): 103–30. 16. “A twice-born man who knows the law, must not eat meat except in conformity with the law [in the context of sacrifice]; for if he has eaten it unlawfully, he will, unable to save himself, be eaten after death by his (victims)’’ (Laws of Manu 5.33). 17. Rangachari, personal communication, May 26, 2003. 18. Seshu Sarma, personal communication, July 7, 2003. 19. Fenton interviewed one man who admitted to eating beef and pork and then asked anxiously, “You are not going to tell my Mom, are you?” Clearly, generational differences are at play here (Fenton, Transplanting Religious Traditions, 43).

1

McClymond  105

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

20. Manuel Moreno, “Pan ca-mirtam,” in Khare, Eternal Food, 148. 21. Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 253. 22. Theodore Olsen, Millennialism, Utopianism, and Progress (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). 23. Khare, Eternal Food, 5. 24. Fenton, Transplanting Religious Traditions, 172. 25. Note that not all Hindu American communities are as economically well off or as seamlessly integrated in the community at large as members of the hta, and this has led to tensions between different Hindu communities. Generally, however, the median income for Indian Americans is higher than the overall national average and second only to the Japanese among Asian Americans.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

106  You Are Where You Eat

1

2

ii : Communal Utopias Eating In, but Not Of, the World

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

}{

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

5. Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys Debates over Meatless Diets in Nineteenth-Century Shaker Communities Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

In the mid-1850s Freegift Wells, an Elder at the Shaker village in Watervliet, New York, reported the “fanatical” and disturbing demonstrations of a fellow Believer, Ephraim Prentiss. Wells recalled a specific event when Prentiss found a small piece of pork in a dish of beans during dinner. He responded to the discovery with surprising anger and theatrics: he removed the threatening item from the dish, processed through the village with it, and finished by ceremoniously burying the scrap of meat.1 Prentiss’s actions and their role in Wells’s writings against food restrictions suggest that the consumption of meat symbolized a critical division in the community. For Prentiss, an adamant food reformer, pork represented a physical threat to the health of the boys under his care and a political threat to his religious authority in the village. In contrast, Wells argued vehemently throughout his tenure as a Shaker Elder that rules against the use of tea, coffee, and pork produced significant confusion and disunion among Shakers. The United Society of Believers, also known as the Shakers, remains one of the longest-running utopian communal societies in American history. The society’s founder, Ann Lee, emigrated from England to New York in 1774 with a small group of believers. Celibacy, industriousness, and simple living as means of Christian sanctification and separation from “worldly” practices represented enduring tenets of Shakerism from the days of Mother Ann. Vegetarianism among the Shakers started

1

109

r

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

in the 1820s and 1830s, when popular interest in health reform began to emerge in the United States. Throughout the nineteenth century Shakers promoted (and opposed) dietary restrictions as an important means of strengthening the communal principle as well as the spiritual development of individual Shakers through greater self-denial. In the tradition of Shaker organization, nonetheless, leaders often accepted laxness in obeying proposed restrictions on food and drink. The Shakers, similar to other Americans, pursued diet reform because of its implications for controlling unhealthy and immoral impulses.2 The notion that abstention from specific foods such as alcohol, condiments, or meat made it easier to withstand the temptations of the flesh was particularly attractive to the Shakers. In addition, Shakers sometimes explained physical sickness and disease as outward signs of a Believer’s inner turmoil or moral decline.3 Prominent leaders, such as Seth Wells at New Lebanon, New York, argued that indulgences in “worldly” foods and practices threatened both the physical well-being of Believers and their effectiveness as witnesses to the outside world.4 For the Shakers as well as nineteenth-century Americans more generally, experimentation with vegetarianism embodied the quest for physical and moral perfection through diet and health.5 Previous explanations of Shaker diet reform have emphasized the influence of Sylvester Graham—the prominent antebellum health reformer who advocated abstention from a variety of foods, including meat, alcohol, tea, and coffee—at the expense of identifying ways in which food practices also represented issues that were Shaker in and of themselves. The tendency to idealize Shaker life explains, in part, this trend to depict the Shakers’ adoption of diet reform as a generally peaceful transition. Closer analysis of Shaker food practices and consumption reveals a much more contentious narrative. While Shakers favorable to reform claimed that abstention from specific foods distinguished the Believers from the outside world and ensured the society’s spiritual and corporeal health, members opposed to restrictions argued that the changes too closely resembled “worldly” practices. Rather than another example of Believers’ uncontested acceptance of outside influences, vegetarianism—introduced formally by the Central Ministry as early as

f

110  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

1820—became a battleground for broader disputes.6 Like other utopian groups, the Shakers adopted meatless diets to encourage spiritual purity, to promote simple living and frugality, and to uphold the communal principle, especially among youth and women. Recent scholarship on the connections among food, spirituality, and identity also prompts further examination of food practices and consumption within utopian religious communities.7 In particular, these works demonstrate how historical analysis of food enriches scholarly interpretations of the tensions between “spirituality as preached” and “spirituality as lived.”8 The adoption of vegetarianism by nineteenthcentury utopian groups represented a widespread attempt in American society to implement moral, physiological, and social reforms in daily life. In the process, diet reform raised intrinsic questions about how utopian groups maintain a balance between individual preferences and communal values. From its beginnings, the United Society of Believers offered appealing solutions to contemporary social and health concerns. As the 1820 proposal for restricting the consumption of animal food and the 1821 Millennial Laws demonstrate, arguments for abstention from specific foods emerged in Shaker records a decade before Graham began his career as a popular lecturer. The Central Ministry’s 1820 warning against meat coincided with a tumultuous period of growth and expansion in Shaker history, including the increasing number and prosperity of Believers in the eastern communities and the organization of new communities in the West. With Lucy Wright’s death in 1821, this period also signaled the end of her twenty-five-year leadership as a respected but not uncontested head of the group. Wright had resisted the writing and publication of Shaker rules and laws because of her concerns for continued union among Believers, but both her strong warnings about the growing emphasis on temporal issues and the realities of the group’s expansion led to the first written set of regulations, published as the “Millennial Laws” in 1821.9 In addition to prohibiting several practices, including restrictions on applying to “outside” doctors for medical care, the 1821 Millennial Laws banned specific foods such as raw or unripe fruit and freshly baked bread.

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  111

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

One year earlier the Lead Ministry at New Lebanon had drafted a letter to the other Shaker villages for “discussing some changes for the better.”10 The proposed changes included a reduction in the amount of animal food consumed by Believers and greater attention to habits of healthy living. Unlike the written bans on specific foods and drinks that followed, however, the 1820 letter merely recommended dietary restrictions and clearly intended for individual villages to decide for themselves how to address these changes.11 The Lead Ministry’s proposal, representative of regularly issued recommendations from New Lebanon for all of the villages, presented a thorough and multifaceted argument for diet reform on the basis of economy, taste, and physical and spiritual well-being. The letter began by questioning the consumption of “high fattened meat especially swine’s flesh as favorable to our healths [sic].”12 The Lead Ministry also suggested that the consumption of animal food represented a growing concern in the society, and the leaders expressed their disappointment that the matter had not been brought to their attention sooner to be discussed openly as a “family,” rather than privately between individuals. “We found our little assembly to be unanimous in the decision that some small change or alteration might take place in that respect for the better.”13 Their emphasis on the need to address this issue as a community suggested that the leaders viewed resistance to meatless diets as a threat to the communal principle and not just a danger to Believers’ physical health. The Lead Ministry also revealed the terrible moral and physical consequences of eating too much meat. They argued, “And is it not a rational conclusion, that, while soul and body are united, whatever serves to obstruct the free action of the mind must necessarily be a hindrance to the opperations [sic] and work of the spirit in the man or woman?” The letter’s scientific rationale for restrictions on pork—a “hindrance” to the body would inevitably become a “hindrance” to the soul—reflected Shaker theology, which constructed the body and the spirit as inextricably connected. The 1820 letter stressed that all members, regardless of moral or physical stature, could be susceptible to the evils of pork: “It appears reasonable that an abundant use of very strong food by persons of any description, should have attendancy [sic] to increase

f

112  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

the [chance] of corruption and bad humours in the blood, and thereby render them, finally, the more liable to deadly fevers, cancers and other fatal maladies.” According to the Elders, less meat could even increase mental activity. Pork especially made people “feel slow and heavy in body and cloudy in mind.”14 The language of purification and renewal to promote abstention from meat became a primary trope in arguments for vegetarianism among Shakers and other perfectionists interested in changing ideas about morality, health, and the body. A spiritual vision received by the Second Family at Watervliet in 1848 concerning the condemnation of swine’s flesh used similar references to Shakers’ purity, economy, and separateness to reiterate the spiritual urgency and purpose expressed in the 1820 arguments for restrictions on meat consumption: “I have not called you, O my people, from the four quarters of the Earth to live in luxury. . . . But I have called you to be shining lights to the world, to hear witness to my word, and show by your Godly example that you are harvested from the world, and become joint heirs with Christ, in his new and spiritual kingdom upon Earth.”15 The majority of the 1820 letter defended restrictions on meat consumption against possible counterarguments. Because there is no available evidence for the villages’ responses to the initial proposal for food reform, this part of the letter provides needed insight into the origins of debates over meatless diets among Shakers. The leaders examined and refuted three forceful arguments that could be made at the time against diet reform: individual food preferences, economy, and the potential inconvenience to sisters responsible for preparing meals and household goods. Despite the seeming flexibility and openness of the proposal, the authors based their rebuttals on traditional and religious principles typical of Shaker society: emphasis on the community over the individual, simple living, and the sexual division of labor. First, the Ministry admitted that some members liked animal food as a matter of taste. They claimed, however, that such an argument blatantly ignored the society’s foundation as a communal group and that personal impulses were inappropriate, if not sinful.16 Second, the Elders weighed the economic advantages and disadvantages of restricting meat

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  113

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

consumption. A central question in the debate, according to the letter, was whether the use of animal fat for “sweetening” foods (comparable to the idea of “flavoring” today) was less expensive than honey or sugar. Not surprisingly, in view of the leaders’ aims, the letter claimed that pork cost more than alternative sweeteners. This argument indicated widespread concerns about the group’s immediate financial stability, yet their fixation on a minor expense—honey versus pork fat—reveals more than a troubled economic situation. Their rhetoric of economy also acknowledged the broader society’s preoccupation with economic instability and the group’s tradition of strict rules against waste forged in their past experiences with food scarcity and pioneer life. A rise in Shakers’ access to “worldly” goods and growing concerns about spiritual laxity—often cited in explanations for the subsequent written bans on meat—most likely contributed to the Lead Ministry’s initial decision to propose diet reform. The 1820 letter emphasized the need for Believers to find satisfaction in a common diet and simple living. In her history of Canterbury village, Bertha Lindsay claims, “From the late eighteenth century to about 1820, the Shakers were given considerable freedom when it came to their diet,” but “as their prosperity increased, so did their consumption of food.”17 The Shakers’ strained relationship with the outside world and the influx of new members contributed to leaders’ desires to strengthen the society, morally and physically. Restrictions on meat represented both a material and spiritual sacrifice on behalf of the community as well as a step toward preserving good health. Third, the letter recognized and responded to sisters’ potential arguments against the recommended diet reforms: “The kind sisters that cook are in favour of a good deal of pork, in order that they may have fat to enable them to make their victuals good. Doubtless the feeling they have to want to make their brethren and sisters comfortable is commendable. But in case they had more sweetening in addition to what they now use, could they not do with less meat in alike proportion and their victuals still be as good and palatable as it is at present, or more so?”18 As demonstrated by the nineteenth-century debates over food reform, Shaker men and women attached significant religious impor-

f

114  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

tance to the preparation and consumption of food. The act of cooking, especially for such large numbers of people and with such attention to detail as demanded by Shaker tradition, produced a unique sense of women’s contributions and value to the community.19 By addressing the potential responses of “kitchen sisters” to the restrictions on pork, the leaders acknowledged the significance of women’s roles as cooks in the society. The 1820 letter reinforces the idea of the communal kitchen as an important site for negotiation and conflict in communal societies. The letter’s address to the kitchen sisters acknowledged women’s authority and the Lead Ministry’s attempts to persuade the sisters to their side. A dispute between Brother William Evans of the Lower Family in Canaan, New York, and several women in his community suggests the extent to which sisters would defend their influence in the kitchen. Described as bossy and authoritative with the sisters, Evans went too far when he offered advice about their cooking. Even though none of the brethren chose to admonish Evans, Sisters Hannah Bryant and Harriet Sellick “took him by the collar and put him into the street and threw his clothes after him.”20 Similar disruptions between kitchen sisters and brethren occurred in several Shaker villages specifically over the question of dietary restrictions in the antebellum years.21 It seems reasonable, based on these later conflicts, to assume that the authors of the 1820 proposal understood that they needed to gain the support of kitchen sisters if their proposal was to be taken seriously. Attempts to restrict sisters’ use of pork, however, raised both practical and ideological questions about food and bodily perfection in Shaker society. Preserved meats and animal fats played crucial roles in Shaker cooking and housekeeping.22 In addition, meat, whether fresh, salted, dried, or smoked, often provided an important staple or a welcome change in the usual monotony of early-nineteenth-century, rural American diets. During the less prosperous years of early settlement at Canterbury village, “porridge and hash appeared repeatedly at meals in the summer. . . . Bean porridge was served in the winter for breakfast and dinner.”23 Many members in the more-established eastern villages during the 1810s and 1820s probably viewed more extravagant meat dishes

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  115

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

as a well-deserved reward for their years of economic and agricultural hardships. Abstention from pork also threatened to increase the burden of women’s work in the village and limited sisters’ prerogatives in the kitchen. In a clear attempt to diffuse kitchen sisters’ objections to the recommendation, the leaders conceded that pork fat could still be used for the preparation of traditional dishes. Both the later controversies between brethren and kitchen sisters and the Ministry’s negotiations in the original proposal suggest that kitchen sisters were likely to challenge diet reform when they perceived that it would make their own work more difficult or undermine their notions of authority and identity in the community. Leaders anticipated that members would be reluctant to obey recommendations for abstention from animal food. The Lead Ministry, with little success, tried to guard against attempts by Believers to attribute negligence to complex or indefinite regulations regarding meat consumption. The 1820 proposal urged the villages to develop for themselves effective and “proper methods of proceeding in the execution” without becoming bogged down by questions of quantity, proportions, and quality. The Lead Ministry did not provide specific guidelines, but they urged the Office Deacons to decrease the amount of money spent on pork and allow more for other sweetenings. Families could retain their usual budget and quantity of pork fat, leaders argued, by parting only with the meat. The letter clearly stated that families “could continue to have the final say” regarding diet, and leaders would approve of decisions to keep animal fat available for cooking and sweetening.24 Although missing from this early proposal for vegetarianism, Shaker youth were central in later debates over diet reform in Watervliet as well as other villages. Dietary restrictions provided the means for older members to assert their authority over children as they reached early adulthood. As the future of the society, children and their spiritual and physical health represented an important concern in Shaker communities.25 The dispute between Freegift Wells and Ephraim Prentiss—beginning with the Watervliet leaders’ decision to assign a group of young boys in the village to Prentiss’s care and supervision in 1831 and leading to both men’s removal from Watervliet by 1851–represented the most

f

116  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

famous and perhaps most volatile conflict over diet reform among the Shakers.26 Shortly after receiving this charge, Prentiss decided to begin a meatless diet—several years before Grahamism took a firm hold among Believers. He attributed this change in diet to concerns about health and in conjunction with his understanding of earlier teachings by leading members of the society. He claimed that other Believers felt that the time would come when animal foods would not be used among the members, and “it was said that this was the testimony of some of the first Elders” who actually abstained from meat because it was “injurious to health and therefore wrong to indulge themselves in it.”27 Although it would be easy to view Prentiss as an exception and a fanatic in the community, his arguments represented continuity with earlier Shaker theology and the 1820 proposal. According to Prentiss’s “Report of Interesting Experiences with Boys in Regards to Health, Discipline, and Fleshless Diets,” none of the children under his care were forced to accept the restriction on meat. Instead, they freely chose to adopt vegetable diets, following his example and rationale. The evidence is not available to discern whether the boys were as willing to accept diet reform as he suggests, but one of Freegift Wells’s primary criticisms of Prentiss was that he used the boys as helpless subjects to benefit his own reputation in the community. Prentiss, however, described the boys as potentially harmful and terribly in need of great restraint and authority. Yet his insistence that the boys followed his example based on their own reasoning and not by blind force suggests that he viewed them as controllable by reason, not by physical violence, an increasingly typical characterization of childrearing in antebellum America. His concerns about youth represented anxieties about the increasing numbers of young people who decided to leave during this period or those who stayed but openly challenged the authority of older members and practices. Within a few years and as the number of boys under his care increased, Prentiss decided that the boys’ behavior and physical health required more drastic and rigid supervision. Prior to the adoption of fleshless diets, he noted their serious emotional and physical weaknesses. They were “disagreeable,” “crass,” “ready to use violence on the

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  117

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

least occasion,” as well as “sickly,” “troublesome at nights, talking in their sleep, restless, feverish,” and even “much addicted to wetting their beds.” He blamed the boys’ shameful behavior and physical ailments on a lack of adult guidance, most notably in relation to diet. “But these were not the worst difficulties I had with them—young as they were their stimulating food evidently excited and brought into action those base propensities which boys of their age ought never to feel—in short, their vere [sic] real excitements and filthy indulgences caused me much tribulation.”28 Prentiss’s report described the typical diet of ordinary Watervliet residents: for breakfast, members often ate some form of animal food (beef, pork, mutton, or fish), fried, mostly with hog fat, bread, and potatoes. For dinner, members consumed more meat (either boiled, roasted, baked, or fried) with vegetables and condiments. Supper often included cold meats, bread, butter, cheese, milk, and tea. With the exception of tea and coffee, he claimed, children ate all of these “stimulating articles” too.29 The lack of guidance for children’s diets had “plain and obvious” effects on their physical health and dispositions. After the gradual adoption of simple and meatless diets, however, he observed astonishing improvements in the boys’ health and discipline. No longer were they plagued by bed wetting or violent tantrums but acted as orderly and promising members of the community. Criticism of Prentiss’s experiment and the adoption of meatless diets by individual members intensified after all of the Shaker villages received the inspired message in 1841 that reinforced earlier recommendations for meatless diets. During this period of dramatic revivalism, known as the Era of Manifestations, “the gift that sparked the greatest controversy in these years was undoubtedly the 1841 prohibition of pork, tea, and coffee.”30 The heavily disputed spiritual gift directed all members younger than sixty to abstain from eating pork and drinking tea and coffee. Older members were given greater discretion in their adoption of these restrictions.31 Objections to the 1841 ban reiterated many of the counterarguments proposed by the Lead Ministry in 1820: concerns about personal taste, the cooking practices of the sisters, and threats of disunion in the society. The ban’s emphasis on age also re-

f

118  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

vealed the leaders’ concerns about intergenerational conflict and the more fundamental tensions in the society between communal order and individual preferences. Opponents to diet reform acknowledged the need for order and greater attention to healthy living, but they warned that excessive restrictions and “false” messages might lead to greater harm than that caused by the consumption of specific foods or drinks. After his appointment as an Elder at Watervliet in the 1840s, Freegift Wells claimed that he discovered widespread dissatisfaction among the brethren and sisters with the recommended dietary changes. Wells conceded that the rules against meat were issued with the best of intentions but efforts to promote food reform only encouraged extreme “unreconciliation,” “discouragement,” “loss of confidence,” and even “self-indulgence” among Believers, as his experience at Watervliet demonstrated.32 The adoption of meatless diets, he protested, represented a dangerous move toward outside philosophies and sciences. In regard to the ban’s authority as an inspired message, he invoked Mother Lucy and her emphasis on spiritual gifts only for the purpose of union building. He argued that the messages regarding diet reform, received mostly by young Shaker women, emanated from “deceiving spirits.” Disputes between sisters and brethren over the question of diet indicated that sisters were less likely to adopt vegetarianism than were their male counterparts, “perhaps because they were less concerned about suppressing sexuality or realized the extra work that would follow if the regime were adopted.”33 The lack of support for diet reform by Shaker women, at least initially, might also be explained by the creation of stricter rules concerning kitchen work.34 “Mother Lucy’s Word to the Sisters,” a spiritual message received in 1841, warned against practices that compromised the society’s communal principle and order. These practices ranged from “the sisters’ cooking extra meals for each other” to “young girls refusing to be appropriately supervised in their work by more experienced sisters.”35 Female members might have resisted diet reform, in part, as a reaction against restrictions on their authority and roles as cooks. Despite the erratic practice of vegetarianism throughout most of the

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  119

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

nineteenth century, abstention from meat had become an important part of Shaker life for many Believers by the 1870s.36 Supported by prominent male and female leaders in the society, arguments for abstention from meat took on a renewed notoriety, even among the sisters. The position of Shaker women had changed significantly by the end of the nineteenth century. A new and increasingly vocal cadre of female leaders in favor of diet reform now proclaimed its practical and spiritual benefits. In an article for a popular nineteenth-century vegetarian periodical, Martha J. Anderson, a member of the North Family at Mount Lebanon, commented on the arduousness of preparing animal foods: “Then came the hard and disagreeable work of chopping mince meat to be used for frying, and for the unwholesome, but time honored, hot mince pies.” She continued, “The cooks grew weary of ‘broiling their brains over hot coals,’ of seething, and stewing, of roasting and frying, and trying out fat, and finally declared in favor of universal Vegetarianism and that all should share and fare alike.”37 Eldress Anna White, a writer, activist, and influential leader, based her arguments for vegetarianism on traditional principles of Shaker spirituality and community: “The bloodless diet would seem a natural outcome of the simplicity, purity and kindness of the Shaker faith and practice, and in one group at least, the North Family at Mount Lebanon, New York, the practice of vegetarianism has been adhered to for over fifty years.”38 Despite their passionate defense of meatless diets, proponents of vegetarianism still encouraged Believers in favor of reform to respect the authority of kitchen sisters: “Care is taken, however, not to encroach upon the province of cook, baker or head commissary, remembering in all cases the Shaker principle, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ ”39 Proponents, then, appealed to kitchen sisters’ sense of duty and interest in domestic science, rather than asserting adamantly from positions of authorized leadership. Anderson wrote, for example, “With a moderate amount of skill, and an interest in hygienic methods of preparing food, a good housekeeper can place on the table many appetizing dishes cooked without fat or soda.”40 These reformers had learned from earlier experiments with vegetarianism of the need to convince kitchen sisters that changes in diet would neither increase their work nor challenge their authority.

f

120  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Although the spiritual and physical benefits of abstention from meat appeared in Shaker discussions of diet throughout the nineteenth century, rationales for vegetarianism often reflected contemporary anxieties and concerns within the group. This essay demonstrates how the study of food practices and restrictions enriches our understanding of Shakerism as a “lived religion.” Vegetarianism represented more than the society’s accommodation to “worldly” values and ideas; it provided a system to achieve spiritual and physical perfection. The adoption of meatless diets served to distinguish the Shakers from the outside world, but it also revealed the difficult balance between individual preferences and communal ideals. The practice of vegetarianism in these communities, therefore, suggests useful directions for further study of how utopian groups have endowed food consumption with spiritual, moral, gendered, and communal meanings.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

Notes

1

I wish to thank Stephen J. Stein and the students in his fall 1998 seminar at Indiana University, Bloomington, for their valuable comments and suggestions for this essay. This paper also benefited from research and writing suggestions by Susan Ferentinos, Martha L. Finch, Wendy Gamber, Etta M. Madden, John E. Murray, and Lynn Pohl. 1. Freegift Wells, “Writings Protesting the Rules against the Use of Tea, Coffee, and Pork by Freegift Wells,” Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland oh, collection (hereafter OClWHi), VII B 67, 1855–56. 2. See Priscilla J. Brewer, Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives (Hanover nh: University Press of New England, 1986), 106–10; Suzanne R. Thurman, “The Order of Nature, the Order of Grace: Community Formation, Female Status, and Relations with the World in the Shaker Villages of Harvard and Shirley, Massachusetts, 1781–1875” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1994), 146–60 and 268–99. 3. Disease and chronic illnesses were often interpreted “as a manifestation of one’s troubled relation with God.” See John E. Murray, “The White Plague in Utopia: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century Shaker Communes,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (1994): 278–306, 305. 4. See Thurman, “Order of Nature,” 276. 5. See Catherine L. Albanese, “Body Politic and Body Perfect: Religion, Poli-

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  121

r

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

tics, and Thomsonian Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America,” in New Dimensions in American Religious History: Essays in Honor of Martin E. Marty, ed. Jay P. Dolan and James P. Wind (Grand Rapids mi: W. B. Eerdman Publishing, 1993), 131–51; Lawrence Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1991); and Leonard I. Sweet, Health and Medicine in the Evangelical Tradition: “Not by Might nor Power” (Valley Forge pa: Trinity Press International, 1994). 6. “A Statement Concerning Diet and Dress Addressed to Elders, Deacons, Brethren, and Sisters,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63, New Lebanon, 1820. Overlooked in previous discussions of Shaker diet reform, it represents the society’s earliest recommendation for abstention from meat. I am grateful to Stephen J. Stein, who originally directed me to this document. 7. For examples of this development, see Michelle Mary Lelwica, Starving for Salvation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Eating Problems among American Girls and Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Robert C. Fuller, Religion and Wine: A Cultural History of Wine Drinking in the United States (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996); Walter Vandereycken and Ron Van Deth, From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls: The History of Self-Starvation (New York: New York University Press, 1994); and Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 8. David D. Hall, “Narrating Puritanism,” in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 52. 9. Anna White and Leila S. Taylor, Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message (New York: ams Press, 1972), 136. See also Brewer, Shaker Communities, 40. 10. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 11. According to Brewer, “Prior to 1821, any rules or general instructions that leaders at any level of the sect’s hierarchy felt to be necessary were communicated verbally” (Shaker Communities, 39–40). 12. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 13. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 14. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 15. “A Spiritual Record; Concerning Many Things, Written in Two Parts,” New York State Library (nysl) reel 9, 1841–48. My citation refers to the microfilm holdings and guide at Indiana University Main Library, rather than to the manuscript collection at nysl.

f

122  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

16. The use of diet reform to suppress natural impulses was expressed even more vigorously in the institution of the 1821 Millennial Laws regarding food and drink. See Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1992), 156. 17. Bertha Lindsay, Seasoned with Grace: My Generation of Shaker Cooking, ed. Mary Rose Boswell (Woodstock vt: The Countryman Press, 1987), xx. 18. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 19. The contemporary and recent works that I have examined suggest that the preparation of meals was generally considered to be “women’s work” and often endowed with special meaning in the community. See Frances A. Carr, Shaker Your Plate: Of Shaker Cooks and Cooking (Sabbathday Lake me: United Society of Shakers, 1986), 15; Lindsay, Seasoned with Grace, vii; and Caroline B. Piercy, The Shaker Cook Book: Not by Bread Alone (New York: Crown Publishers, 1953), dedication. 20. As quoted in Priscilla J. Brewer, “’Tho’ of the Weaker Sex’: A Reassessment of Gender Equality among the Shakers,” in Women in Spiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States, ed. Wendy E. Chmielewski, Louis J. Kern, and Marlyn Klee-Hartzell (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 146. 21. Marsha Mihok, “Women in the Authority Structure of Shakerism: A Study of Social Conflict and Change” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1989), 194. 22. Piercy, Shaker Cook Book, 136. 23. Lindsay, Seasoned with Grace, xix–xx. 24. “Statement Concerning Diet and Dress,” OClWHi, VII, B, 63. 25. For evidence of vegetarianism among Shaker youths at other villages, see “Journal, Shirley, 15 Oct. 1842,” OClWHi V B 215, 1835–50. 26. “Wells was sent to Union Village, Ohio, as first Elder in March 1836, returning east in 1843. Prentiss was moved to Sabbathday Lake, Maine, at an undetermined time prior to 1851” (Brewer, Shaker Communities, 249–50, n. 89). 27. Ephraim Prentiss, “Report of Interesting Experiences with Boys in Regards to Health, Discipline, and Fleshless Diets,” OClWHi VII B 258, 1835–37. 28. Prentiss, “Report of Interesting Experiences.” 29. Prentiss, “Report of Interesting Experiences.” 30. Brewer, Shaker Communities, 131. 31. Lindsay, Seasoned with Grace, xxiii. 32. Wells, “Writings Protesting the Rules.” 33. Brewer, Shaker Communities, 110.

1

Puskar-Pasewicz  123

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

34. See 1845 revised Millennial Laws in Andrews, The People Called Shakers, 270; Stein, Shaker Experience in America, 198; and Jean M. Humez, ed., Mother’s First-Born Daughters: Early Shaker Writings on Women and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 216. 35. Humez, Mother’s First-Born Daughters, 216. 36. Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1875), 141; Murray, “White Plague in Utopia,” 298; Margaret Moody Stier, “Blood, Sweat, and Herbs: Health and Medicine in the Harvard Shaker Community, 1820–1855,” in Medicine and Healing, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University Press, 1990), 154–67; David Richards, “Medicine and Healing among the Maine Shakers, 1784–1854,” in Benes, Medicine and Healing, 142–53; and “Letter from James Sullivan Prescott (1803–1888) at North Union, Ohio to Rufus Bishop and Seth Y. Wells at Mt. Lebanon, and to other Shaker elders at Watervliet, ny and Harvard,” n.d., IV, A, 51, reel 23, p. 26. 37. Martha J. Anderson, “History of Dietetic Reform, as Practised at North Family, Mt. Lebanon and Canaan, Col., Co., N.Y.,” Food, Home and Garden (January 1894): 6, 7. 38. See Anna White, Vegetarianism among Shakers, repr. from “The Counsellor,” wrhs no. 504 (n.d.): 3. 39. White, Vegetarianism among Shakers, 10. 40. Martha J. Anderson, Social Life and Vegetarianism (Chicago: Guiding Star Printing House, 1893), 7–8.

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

124  Kitchen Sisters and Disagreeable Boys

1

2

6. Strawberries and Cream Food, Sex, and Gender at the Oneida Community Wendy E. Chmielewski

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

The Oneida Community, founded by the religious theorist John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in 1848, was one of the best-known intentional communities of the second half of the nineteenth century.1 Oneida lasted for thirty-three years as a communal society set in a rural area not far from Syracuse, New York. Nationally famous for its experimentation in religious perfectionism and Bible Communism, nontraditional sexual practices, and changes in gender roles, the community at its height housed between two hundred and three hundred men, women, and children. The founders were dedicated to the creation of a new society where all adults were married to each other, members held all goods in common, and they tried to overcome jealousy and possessiveness as they submitted individual will to the good of the community. As early as 1859, outsiders visited Oneida in the early summer for a daylong strawberries and cream social. The author of an article in the Oneida Circular, a community newspaper, claimed that it was pressure from these visitors for Oneida’s especially good fruit that led the members to oblige their neighbors with this annual event. The writer was suspicious that the strawberry eaters were more curious about community social and sexual relations, however, than hungry for a good, ripe berry. Even so, Oneida maintained the tradition, reporting seven years later that “nearly a hundred visitors were supplied with strawberries and cream, to say nothing of the ice cream furnished, the lemon-

1

125

r

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ade drank [sic], etc.”2 The Oneida Community (oc) member Charlotte Leonard wearily noted that during one summer day they served fortynine extra visitors. Despite the extra work involved, Leonard found it all worthwhile: “We can enter heartily into this business now, on the ground that we are doing missionary work,” thus connecting food with the oc’s religious agenda to spread Noyes’s theories of Christian perfectionism and Bible Communism.3 Emblematic of internal food culture at Oneida as well as relations with the outside world, these strawberry festivals demonstrate food’s economic importance, its function in the experimental gender and sexual roles, and its religious values in this intentional community. In utopian communities such as Oneida, consciously created in reaction to mainstream society, the culture of food is an important lens with which to examine the internal community workings and, by contrast, conventional society. The production or procurement of food, its distribution and preparation, the disposal of the remains, and the rituals surrounding food illuminate the relationships between individuals and the community’s cultural values. As Elspeth Probyn argues in Carnal Appetites, “the sensual nature of eating . . . constitutes a privileged optic through which to consider how identities and the relations between sex, gender and power are . . . renegotiated. In eating, pleasure offers itself to be problematised.”4 At Oneida food and eating were sites of such renegotiation between the community members and the outside world. Examining the culture of food at Oneida and its production, consumption, and distribution provides insights into how food played an integral part in not only the community’s theological core but also the complex social and economic relations within the community and with the outside world. Food and Sexuality Oneida Community founder and patriarch John Humphrey Noyes firmly connected his theories of social reform with sexuality, gender roles, and religion. Noyes wrote, for example, “The restoration of true relations between the sexes is a matter second in importance only to the reconciliation of man to God.” The connections among new ideas of gender roles, theology, and perfected society were clear to Noyes:

f

126  Strawberries and Cream

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

“Reconciliation of the sexes emancipates woman and opens the way for vital society.” In theory, to achieve this “vital society,” men and women would “mingle in both of their peculiar departments of work.” This mingling, Noyes explained, “will be economically as well as spiritually profitable.”5 Nonetheless, for Noyes Bible Communism and a patriarchal God were always at the center of his ideas for a new society. Because Noyes had published several articles and pamphlets explaining his theories of birth control and complex marriage, outsiders were extremely curious about the unusual social and sexual mores at Oneida. Food was an important medium of cultural exchange between the community and outsiders. Besides attending the strawberry festivals, visitors to Oneida could eat dinner in a special, separate dining room. By the 1860s the public could buy Oneida Community canned goods at local grocery stores across the United States. Yet the strawberry festivals provided the only opportunity for outsiders to view closely the community members, so it is not surprising that the visitors at the festivals might have connected them with their ideas about the unusual sexual practices at Oneida.6 Despite the sensual imagery in the descriptions of those strawberry and cream festivals, all the pleasure, gastronomic and erotic, was enjoyed by the visitors to Oneida rather than by community members themselves. The oc members viewed these festivals and dinners as economic business, tiring work, and religious mission, but not as pleasure. They seldom regarded food culture and eating at Oneida as sensual gratification. The types of food eaten and the ways in which meals were served were an outward sign of spirituality and commitment to community ideals.7 Perhaps contributing to outsiders’ curiosity were the sensual images Noyes included in his writings on spirituality. In these he frequently connected pleasure, food, and sexuality. Describing his relationship with God, he wrote, “The Lord . . . entered the secret chamber of my soul, and we sat down together to the marriage supper. . . . This morning I . . . would be consumed in the love of God. . . . I have eaten of the tree of life.”8 Noyes also combined images of the heavenly marriage supper and metaphors of feasting with his ideas about the sexual relation-

1

Chmielewski  127

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ships between men and women at Oneida. In the following passage he connects the Christian ceremony of Communion with his new, radical ideas about sexuality and uses homey images of familiar foods to make them palatable: “The eucharist is a symbol of eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood; . . . [he] sups with us. . . . Is not this a marriage supper? And is not sexual intercourse a more perfect symbol of it than eating bread and drinking wine? . . . We may approach the sexual union as the truest Lord’s supper. . . . To sup with each other, is really less sensual then [sic] to sup with roast-turkeys and, chicken-pies.”9 Noyes’s use of religious and food metaphors influenced not only outsiders but also members of the oc. Charlotte Leonard attributed the following to Noyes: “Prayer and fasting are one thing. Prayer is the hunger of the inside life . . . when we are hungry for God it takes away our appetite for food. . . . Our food is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”10 Noyes’s own use of food and dining metaphors to symbolize the sexual and the spiritual went beyond mere figurative speech or philosophical theory. Probyn has argued that “food and its relation to bodies is fundamentally about power”; Noyes often maneuvered shifts in community policies when he believed the Oneida family was drifting away from the ideal of community values over individual desires and when his own control over oc life seemed to diminish.11 Noyes couched these shifts in policies on food consumption and production for the spiritual betterment of the entire community. When there were internal difficulties over leadership in 1878, for example, Noyes called for a fast to bring the oc family back together, connecting prayer, food, and sexuality. Cornelia Worden reported in her diary, “jhn proposes a family fast for a week from all stimulants such as tea, coffee, cider, beer, meat, cards and sexual intercourse. His proposition was sympathized with by the [oc] family. His object is to promote unity by a state of prayer and earnestness.”12 Ideas similar to those of Noyes regarding the connections between sexuality, diet, and social harmony could be found in the works of popular contemporary reformers such as Sylvester Graham, William Alcott, and O. S. Fowler. By the 1830s and 1840s, when Noyes was developing his religious and social ideas, Graham was addressing audiences in

f

128  Strawberries and Cream

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

public lectures and through his writings on the need for young men to control their sexual lives, their diets, and their consumption of alcohol. Graham believed that loss of control would debilitate the individual and, through him, all of society. Exploring these connections, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has noted, “Combining temperance and vegetarianism, the male moral reformers constructed a physiological model that condemned male orgasm as the source of physical, mental, and social deterioration.”13 Not all of Graham’s ideas about male sexuality were popular at Oneida, but his concern about sexual control was incorporated into oc culture. For example, Noyes developed “male continence” at Oneida, a contraceptive technique by which men participated in sexual intercourse without ejaculation. Yet Noyes and his followers parted ways with Graham over the issue of recreational sex within marriage. Graham believed that frequent and nonprocreative sex was debilitating, especially for men. Noyes agreed with Graham about the potential debilitating aspects of orgasm. However, Noyes believed physical relations, even without orgasm, were pleasurable to both men and women and raised the spiritual connection between the couple.14 Given the universal use of male continence at Oneida, almost all sexual intercourse was nonprocreative. At various times the community followed several of Graham’s ideas about control of appetite and recommendations about food. The whole wheat flour and bread named after Graham were often served in the oc dining room. Coffee, spices, rich meats, and wine, Graham asserted, led to “degenerating habits of luxury, indolence, voluptuousness, and sensuality,” and these sentiments were echoed by oc members.15 That is, although the outside world believed sexual licentiousness was common at Oneida, the members of the community themselves were concerned that spirituality and religious belief formed the core of their society. Their sexual practices were one way to achieve that society.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

Preparing, Serving, and Consuming Food Ideas at Oneida about food and diet were thus a mixture of scientific theory, spiritual needs, healthy living, and a formula for communal uni-

3

Chmielewski  129

r

3

3

5

ty. The shifts in beliefs about what to eat and actual dietary practices at Oneida are difficult to chart over time, but the ways in which food was consumed were often considered to be a measure of the health of the community. The Oneida Circular reported in 1872, for example, “One of the signs of the unity and flexibility of the Community . . . is seen in the hearty readiness with which new and revolutionary manners are adopted. . . . It has been conclusively proved that better digestion, better assimilation, better sleep, and brighter faculties are the rewards of those who limit themselves to two meals.”16 Enthusiastic community reports appeared regarding doing without tea, coffee, and alcohol. These may have been ideals to which many oc members wished to ascribe, but the practice was seldom attained. Evidence from community records does not always agree with what was reported publicly as community practice. Like other nineteenthcentury health reformers, the oc reported that one goal was to reduce or eliminate meat from their diet and to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Considering the parallel debate over the role of sexuality and spirituality, appearing “animalistic” or “bestial” might have been an underlying concern at Oneida. Throughout the life of the community, the question of whether to include meat centered on shifting theories of health. In 1858 the Oneida Circular humorously reported on an oc family debate: “One side . . . thought it would be as reasonable to suppose that we should be turned into squashes and cabbages by feeding on these vegetables as that we should become like cows by feeding on beef; and if we must choose between them one would rather be a cow than a squash.”17 The emphasis on limiting meat in the diet was both a health issue and an economic one. One member remembered “a period when brown bread and applesauce, beans and milk-gravy were the staple, if not the only articles of diet” and “pie was an unheard-of-luxury.”18 For women who became pregnant, the community diet in the early years was especially difficult: “The Community was poverty-stricken and the tables were bare of appetizing food. Beans and potatoes, molasses and bread (without butter) were the common diet.”19 However, as early as 1855 the Oneida Circular reported that meals in the community consisted of

f

130  Strawberries and Cream

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

vegetables and fruits, “good bread of all kinds; tea and coffee; fish, salt, and fresh; some salt pork; and once in a great while . . . a dinner of fresh meat.”20 Many oc members reported great improvement in the meals in the later, more prosperous years of the community. Nevertheless, inventories of food canned “for the family” and menus for the fall of 1877 reveal a diet similar to those from the lean times.21 Doubtless far more food was available by the 1870s, when Oneida meals were served four times a day: 7 a.m., 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 4 p.m.22 Community menus from the period reveal that from one-third to one-half of all meals included some type of beef or fish. This change from the early years indicates a rise in the amount of food available that contained sources of protein.23 A typical menu for an oc meal, such as the one recorded for Monday, November 5, 1877, included the following:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

7 a.m. Breakfast cakes—baked potatoes and fried hasty pudding 10 a.m.   Bean soup—baked potatoes and gravy—tomatoes, a tapioca pudding  1 p.m.  same as at 10 a.m.   4 p.m.  pancakes and good maple syrup warmed up potato   and cheese

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

For Thanksgiving, however, members had a special dinner of roast turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce, which was served for two meals of the day.24 Extant menus indicate that leftover food from one meal typically was used to cook dishes for a second meal. The Oneida Community had almost nine hundred acres of orchards and gardens, on which they produced all kinds of fruit, vegetables, milk, and cheese. Despite the community’s reputation for marketing high quality fruits and vegetables and the philosophical debates over the need for additional quantities of such foods for a healthier diet, few vegetables and little fruit appeared on the dining tables. Throughout the life of the community, however, the types of food served in the dining room were almost exactly what would have been served in the homes of Americans of similar geographical and class backgrounds outside

2

Chmielewski  131

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Oneida. Vegetables, other than potatoes or beans, made up only about 20 percent of all meals, with an average of far less than one serving per meal. Fruit was served at only one-third of meals, and often it appeared as part of a rice pudding or pie. Potatoes were served at almost every meal, and carbohydrates formed the largest proportion of all meals, approximately 35 percent of the food served.25 As community workers regularly canned a wide variety of fruits and vegetables for market, it is puzzling to find that so few of them were served to the oc family itself. By the 1870s the community economy was strong and additional fruit and vegetables were well within the budget. However, out of the thirtyeight different kinds of fruit and preserves sold by the community, only grapes and apples appeared on the oc dining tables with any regularity, and these appeared during the colder months.26 oc kitchen inventories also reveal that the only spices used were cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, in desserts such as gingerbread. This limited range of spices matches that found in the U.S. household. Furthermore, oc members sometimes drank tea, coffee, cider, beer, and wine, despite this being a radical departure from the health reforms that had been popular at Oneida in the early years.27 Indeed, except for a lower consumption of meat, meals served at Oneida by the end of the 1870s were very similar to those in other households throughout the northeastern United States. The Business of Food Food production and the processing of canned fruits and vegetables formed a significant part of the economy at Oneida. The sales of the canned food and the preparation of meals for the large numbers of visitors to the community provided income for the oc family as well as invaluable, positive propaganda to counteract the rumors of free love and immorality for which Oneida periodically was under attack by opponents. In 1868 Jane Cunningham Croly, a well-known newspaper columnist, feminist, and author, visited the oc.28 Two years later when Croly reissued her Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, she included recipes from Oneida, providing positive publicity for the community.29 By 1870 the Oneida Community was known for its thriving fruit and

f

132  Strawberries and Cream

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

vegetable business, producing forty-five different kinds of canned or bottled foods.30 Grocery stores and bakeries as far north as Quebec, west to Minnesota, and south to Washington, D.C., purchased Oneida canned corn, succotash, peaches, plums, jellies, and other goods to sell to their customers. Fancy hotels in New York City, Boston, Grand Rapids, and Washington, D.C., also served Oneida goods.31 In 1873, according to the visiting reporter Charles Nordhoff, the Oneida Community “produced and sold preserved fruits to the value of $27,417.”32 Although the fruit and vegetable business was less than 10 percent of the $350,000 earned that year, it was a business that maintained ties to the land, an important element of community identity for the experimental society. By 1877, when the fruit and vegetable business was well established and had a steady market, sales were over $85,000 for the year. Sales increased yearly, and profits averaged about 18 percent for the period between 1872 and 1882, when the fruit business managers kept complete records. Not all the fruits and vegetables processed and sold by the Oneida Community were actually grown on their acreage. The uncertain weather of upstate New York sometimes ruined delicate crops, so large amounts were purchased from other areas.33 oc members and hired laborers processed the fruit and vegetables and prepared the cans for shipping by cart, rail, and steamship to destinations all over the country. As with other economic enterprises at Oneida, members regarded canning fruits and vegetables as part of the business of the community. They did not consider it an extension of the community kitchens or the sort of work traditionally performed by women in the outside world. In 1854 three oc men visited the North American Phalanx, a Fourieristic intentional community in Monmouth County, New Jersey, “to learn from this society their method or process of preserving fruits in glass.”34 All Oneida members, men and women, participated in the harvesting of fruits and vegetables. Jessie Kinsley remembered the harvesting “bees”: “Early mornings in summer found us out . . . culling fruit and vegetables. How well I remember being awakened by the shouting A pea bee! A pea bee!—Or Strawberries—Come and Pick!”35 An-

1

Chmielewski  133

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

other community member remembered that men and women worked together in teams to harvest the corn: “The march to the field was in pairs of a man and woman. . . . Each man took a row of corn and swiftly cutting the stalks handed them to his woman helper.”36 This pairing in the fields matched the sexual pairings in the community and gendered relationships in general, thus reenforcing Noyes’s ideas for a vital society. Although women served as extra hands in the fields and the fruit department when needed, they did not make decisions about the direction of the business. Oneida propaganda proclaimed that women’s roles were expanded at the community, yet in reality, women continued to work under the direction of men in almost every area.

2

5

Gendered Food Labor The growth of industrialization of U.S. society throughout the nineteenth century created constantly shifting relationships among the production, distribution, and consumption of food. A decreasing rural population continued to produce food for an ever-increasing urbanized population, a population that still had to eat. Such shifts affected both the overall U.S. economy and the individual household. Both men and women were crucial workers in the farm economy. However, men generally had charge of the crops or animals that produced the largest portion of the farm cash income. It was almost a universal custom for women to be in charge of household food preparation—from slaughtering of animals for home use, to preservation of meat and vegetables and cooking of all meals. In urban and suburban areas, by contrast, men often lost much of their connection to the production of food for their own households, while their work as food sellers or processors in factories became waged labor. Women, in all places, continued to be responsible for the unwaged labor of food preparation and disposal of the remains within their own households. Carole M. Counihan has written that the traditional role of women as food providers for their families “defines the nature and extent of female power.” In the nineteenth century U.S. women often controlled the culture and rituals surrounding food in both rural and urban areas. For some women, managing the distribution and preparation of food in

f

134  Strawberries and Cream

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

their households was connected to feelings of control and responsibility and formed a crucial part of their identity in the world. Counihan notes, “The mother determines when, what, and how much family members will eat. She controls the social mores of the table, which . . . behaviors and values [are] deemed right and just by society at large. She controls the symbolic language of food, determining what her dishes and meals will say about herself, her family, and the world.”37 From the earliest days of the oc, an essential tenet was the restructuring of the gender relationships found in the outside world. Women were encouraged to work at intellectual or physical pursuits and to be less “delicate” and attached to “feminine vanities.” Oneida women cut their hair short for convenience and wore short skirts with pantalettes underneath to ease the labor of physical tasks. They worked in the community fields and factories as well as in the publishing offices that produced literature and propaganda. But they also performed traditional women’s work in childcare and as cooks and waitresses. Women alone were responsible for the cleaning of the community buildings and for all the hand-sewing of clothing—for themselves, the children, and the men of the oc family. Although women at Oneida had a broader variety of jobs than did women in the outside world, the oc structure actually broke down the traditional lines of women’s power in the domestic sphere without providing equally empowering alternatives. A close reading of the historical sources reveals that any power women did have at Oneida occurred mostly within social relationships and was often entirely based on their sexual connections with powerful men. If Counihan is correct in identifying the mother’s oversight of food as a major source of identity and domestic power for women in the family, then separating women at Oneida from the oversight of food culture—limiting them to food labor—eliminated a significant portion of their traditional authority. The work of producing food encompassed work in the fields and in the kitchen. From the beginning of the Oneida Community, the philosophy of reordering gender roles led to customs that dictated that both male and female members work at outside tasks. Women could “throw off ” their delicate, feminine ways by participating in the outside work:

1

Chmielewski  135

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

“Mrs. N. who is a constant milker, said that she enjoyed milking in the winter. . . . If a woman wants to slip out of her effeminacy, she cannot take a more effectual way than to milk in the winter.”38 On the one hand, although women were greatly encouraged to work at these sorts of jobs, their participation was on a voluntary basis. Male members, on the other hand, were assigned permanently to outside work and in the decision making for the horticultural areas of the community’s cash economy. Members viewed having both men and women work at tasks usually associated with one sex or the other as a step toward that goal of a “vital society.” However, while women were encouraged to throw off their “effeminate” behavior, no overt calls were made to men to throw off their “masculine” behavior. Yet men at Oneida could be found working in the kitchens at domestic tasks traditionally performed by women in the outside world. Male community members, in fact, were in charge of the kitchens. A man ran the bakery with “a company of young women” to aid him in the daily baking of sixty-five loaves of bread.39 Two female members were in charge of the actual cooking, but a male steward was in charge of the entire kitchen facility, deciding on which food supplies would be available for meals. Thus, in the outside world women usually had complete authority over the kitchen; at Oneida they had to share that sphere and often acceded their traditional control to men. Yet male community leaders recognized that preparing food every day for the entire oc family, plus visitors, was hard work. For example, the kitchens at Oneida were initially located in the basement level of the community buildings.40 When the community was on a sound financial basis, modern conveniences were added: “The new Kitchen is provided with a ‘dumb waiter,’ speaking-tube, improved fixtures for cooking by steam, and, in short, with . . . all, the modern improvements. . . . It is anticipated that the labor of preparing meals for two hundred folk will be materially reduced . . . and a change is made with gladness.”41 Some of the conveniences in the kitchen were inventions of community members. Having men work in the kitchens alongside women had practical results as well as advancing that vital society important to community spirituality: “To many it may seem a waste of talent for . . . a mechanic to pare potatoes, but experience proves that such talent carries improvement where they would scarcely reach were those departments 136  Strawberries and Cream

regarded as exclusively the province of women. . . . A first-class joiner who worked in our kitchen . . . introduced a system of washing potatoes by means of a circular cage revolving in water; . . . and our women now think they could not do without it.”42 However, relationships in the kitchen did not always run smoothly: “The feeling of poverty which has come over us during the last few weeks and which has tempted the stewards to scrimp in the provision for the table was criticized very severely.” At a community meeting, “criticism of the Legal Spirit was exhibited in the kitchen and among the stewards—Mr. Craigin coming for a considerable share.” Community feeling was so strong on this that “Mr. Noyes thought that Mr. C had better not continue in that position any longer.”43 Unlike women in the outside world, who were used to feminized domestic space, oc women had few places that were theirs to control, completely apart from men. However, they used a small, secondary kitchen, known as the Nursery-kitchen, as a meeting place. Men were not excluded, but it was generally acknowledged to be women’s space: “This little kitchen . . . [is] the snuggest, coziest, handiest places within our ken. . . . Our ‘pocket-kitchen’ . . . might appropriately be called [a] ‘hub.’ . . . Here the women and girls are wont to rehearse the news, if any there be.”44 Like the kitchen, the first dining room at Oneida was located in the basement. Until 1874 two sittings were required, as the dining room was not large enough to seat all members of the community at one time. The children ate with the adults in the large dining room, but at their own table.45 At meals the community family sat at round tables big enough for ten to twelve people, filling the seats as they entered to eat a meal. Young women set the tables with food, plates, and other utensils and served as “waiters” throughout the meal. These women reported polishing hundreds of knives and forks every day before meals. The young women who waited on the tables also washed dishes. Jessie C. Kinsley, born at Oneida, reported that she remembered “waiting on table, dishwashing and wiping, dining room work, kitchen work.”46 By the late 1870s a steam-powered dishwashing machine was installed next to the dining room. Community delight in the modern conveniences of the kitchens was

1

Chmielewski  137

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

extended to the dining room as well. Several members and visitors reported the “ingenious contrivance” of the turntable in the center of the table—what we might call today a lazy Susan—where dishes of food sat so they could be accessible to all diners at each table. The Oneida Circular humorously reported on the drawbacks of this invention: “If you don’t look out, . . . as you are conveying a spoonful of gravy for instance from some dish on the center table to your plate, someone opposite to you may give the table a whirl, and before you are aware the dish from which you are dipping is two or three feet away, and you are lucky if you get a chance to put the spoon back.”47 Having all the dishes on the table at once saved the young female “waiters” considerable work and was welcomed as a new convenience. The members of the oc family focused on betterment of the individual and the community. All facets of life were examined and reorganized to reach John Humphrey Noyes’s vital society for the greater spiritual and social good of men and women. Community leader Noyes developed the theological theories that formed the basis of Oneida’s existence, and he connected these principles to reordered social relationships for other oc members. Noyes believed that major changes in gender roles and sexual relationships were crucial to the new vital society he envisioned. Food imagery often served as religious metaphor in Noyes’s writings, and he used this imagery to describe his theories on sexuality. The production and consumption of food and its economic and cultural significance at Oneida came under scrutiny as well. In the economic work of food production, men were in charge and women assisted in that process. Preparation and serving of food were tasks women shared with male members of the community, thus diluting their traditional domestic power. As with many other aspects of life at Oneida, food culture was shaped consciously to community ideals of the perfected society. Notes

5

1. Recent scholarship on the Oneida Community that explores issues of family, gender, and sexuality includes the following: Louis Kern, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias; The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

f

138  Strawberries and Cream

3

4

1981); Lawrence Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1991); and Marlyn Klee-Hartzell, “The Oneida Community Family,” Communal Societies 16 (1996): 15–27. The diaries of two oc members also address these issues: Tirzah Miller Herrick, Desire and Duty at Oneida: Tirzah Miller’s Intimate Memoir, ed. Robert S. Fogarty (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000); and Victor Hawley, Special Love/Special Sex: An Oneida Community Diary, ed. Robert S. Fogarty (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1994). 2. Oneida Circular, July 16, 1866. 3. “Journals of Charlotte M. Leonard,” August 31 and September 6, 1876, 39, Oneida Community Collection, Syracuse University (hereafter cited as oc Collection, su), box 63, folder: Leonard, Charlotte M. 4. Elspeth Probyn, Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities, 7. 5. John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 629, 636. 6. Those outsiders especially interested in Oneida could also subscribe to the community newspapers or purchase pamphlets written by Noyes on his religious and sexual theories. 7. The most extensive writing from Oneida Community members about food and eating was a cookbook published by the oc press for outsiders. See Harriet Skinner, Oneida Community Cooking, Oneida ny: Oneida Community, 1873. 8. John Humphrey Noyes, Bible Communism: A compilation from the annual reports and other publications of the Oneida Association and its branches; presenting, in connection with their history, a summary view of their religious and social theories, 1853 Digital Edition, http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/collections/b/BibleCommunism/, n.p. (emphasis in the original). 9. Noyes, Bible Communism (emphasis in the original). 10. “Journals of Charlotte M. Leonard,” September 10, 1874. 11. Probyn, Carnal Appetites, 7. 12. Diary of Cornelia Worden, 1878, oc Collection, su, box 76, folder: Worden, Cornelia, 17. 13. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Sex as Symbol in Victorian America,” in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, ed. Jack Salzman (New York: Burt Franklin, 1980), 5:57. 14. Female sexuality was controlled through a form of spiritually based “court-

1

Chmielewski  139

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ship” and limited maternity. Only male members of the community instigated heterosexual intercourse. Because in the nineteenth century female sexuality was intimately connected with maternity, the limiting of women’s opportunities to conceive by definition limited their sexuality. Given that male continence was totally controlled by the male partner, it is not clear if women at Oneida had many choices in this aspect of their lives. Two recently published diaries of oc members reveal the emotional aspects of this sexual control: Miller, Desire and Duty at Oneida; and Hawley, Special Love/Special Sex. 15. Smith-Rosenberg, “Sex as Symbol,” 63. For an example of oc beliefs on eliminating certain foods from the diet, see Oneida Circular, December 12, 1855. 16. Oneida Circular, October 28, 1872. 17. Oneida Circular, February 25, 1858. 18. Oneida Circular, February 22, 1869. 19. Jessie C. Kinsley “Dearest E[dith]—” [written in] Early summer of 1914, oc Collection, su, box 63, folder: Jessie C. Kinsley (folder 3). 20. Oneida Circular, March 29, 1855. 21. Thirty-one hundred quarts of vegetables, 792 jars of jellies and canned fruit, and 409 gallons of apples and applesauce were reported as having been processed for “the family” in 1867 for a population of about three hundred men, women, and children (“Fruit put up for the family 1867,” oc Collection, su, box 31, folder: Inventory 1867). 22. Charlotte Leonard reported that the new regime of four meals started on December 24, 1876 (“Journals of Charlotte M. Leonard,” 52). 23. Inventories of goods at Oneida on January 1 of each year reflected what was in the community kitchen and storehouses on that date. Included in the inventory for January 1, 1878, were more than 69 pounds of lard, 680 pounds of ham and fresh pork, and 770 pounds of corned beef and fresh beef (see inventories of “Store Room” and “Arcade Cellar” in “Subsistence Inventory,” January 1, 1878, oc Collection, su, box 34, folder: Inventory 1877). If all this beef and pork was served to the three hundred members of the oc family, it would have been enough for only nineteen meals, if one estimates each serving at four ounces of meat. Given the evidence of the menus of November and December 1877, nineteen meals with this amount of meat would have been served within one to two weeks of eating. While meat was consumed at Oneida, it was probably eaten in lower amounts than in the outside world. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual consumption of meat in the United States was 178 pounds per capita (Elaine N. McIntosh, American Food Habits in Historical Perspective [Westport ct: Praeger, 1995], 82).

f

140  Strawberries and Cream

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

24. oc Collection, su, box 16, folder: 1877 Menus. The steady repetition of these menus accentuated how typical this meal must have been. 25. Menus for November 4 to December 17, 1877, may be found in oc Collection, su, box 16, folder: 1877 Menus. Unfortunately these are the only actual menus to have survived. 26. Most vegetables consumed in the U.S. and the Oneida Community during the winter months were those that could be easily stored—squash, turnips, pumpkins, and beans. Some items, which appeared on oc fall menus, such as tomatoes, corn, and peas, must have been canned. 27. “Diary of Cornelia Worden,” 1878, oc Collection, su, box 76, folder: Worden, Cornelia, 17. Worden reported that during a fast oc members refrained from meat, tea, coffee, cider, and beer (“Inventory of the Horticulture Dept.,” oc Collection, su, box 31, folder: Inventory 1861); 970 pounds of coffee were reported in “Store Room [Inventory],” oc Collection, su, box 34, folder: Inventory 1877. Other inventories listed several hundred gallons of wine. In her cookbook, the oc member Harriet Skinner wrote, “The temperance of the Community in general is not the cowardly temperance of total abstinence, but the temperance of self-control” (Oneida Community Cooking, 41). 28. Croly visited Oneida in August 1868, and as Noyes wished to impress her, he asked his niece, Tirzah Miller, to host her tour (Miller, Desire and Duty at Oneida, 58). 29. Jennie June’s American Cookery Book: Containing upwards of twelve hundred choice and carefully tested receipts; embracing all the popular dishes, and the best results of modern science . . . also, a chapter for invalids, for infants, one on Jewish cookery, and a variety of miscellaneous receipts of special value to housekeepers generally (New York: American News, 1866, 1870). The first edition did not include the chapter of Oneida recipes. 30. See Sales/Letters books, oc Collection, su, for a list of items the oc sold. 31. “Fruit Department Sales Book,” 1865–66, oc Collection, su, box 29; William Hinds to William Levering, November 22, 1865, oc Collection, su, box 29. 32. Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 264. The equivalent of $27,417 in fruit sales in 1873 is $422,461 in 2005. 33. George E. Cragin, “Fruit Canning in the Community; Notes and Reminiscences,” oc Collection, su, box 44, folder: George E. Cragin (folder 2), 2. Pears, peaches, plums, and cherries were shipped from other parts of the state.

1

Chmielewski  141

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

34. Cragin, “Fruit Canning,” 1–2. 35. Jessie C. Kinsley, “Community Work,” oc Collection, su, box 63, folder: Jessie C. Kinsley (folder 4), 1–2 (emphasis in original). 36. “George N. Miller, Story of Early oc Life,” oc Collection, su, box 65, folder: George N. Miller (folder 12), 4. 37. Carole M. Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power (New York: Routledge, 1999), 48, 49. 38. Oneida Circular, October 29, 1857. 39. Oneida Circular, January 6, 1868. 40. “First Annual Report of the Oneida Association, January 1, 1849,” digital edition, http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/collections/f/FirstAnnualReportOfThe OneidaAssociation/ (accessed October 20, 2005). 41. Oneida Circular, June 13, 1870. 42. Oneida Circular, August 2, 1869. 43. Oneida Circular, April 4, 1864. 44. Oneida Circular, February 27, 1871. 45. “Second Annual Report of the Oneida Association, February 20, 1850,” digital edition, http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/collections/s/SecondAnnualReport OfTheOneidaAssociation/ (accessed October 19, 2005). 46. Jessie C. Kinsley, “Community Work,” 1–2, 5. 47. Oneida Circular, February 28, 1870.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

142  Strawberries and Cream

Title page, A Fast of Gods chusing, sermon by Thomas Thacher, preached in Boston’s Third Church on January 26, 1674, published in Boston (1678). Reproduced with permission from Readex, a division of NewsBank, Inc., and the American Antiquarian Society.

Broadside announcing a public thanksgiving to be held in Boston on October 10, 1677, for the Lord’s benevolent providences: “giving us peace” and “a rich Blessing on the Fruits of the Earth,” “preventing . . . a spreading of Infectious Diseases,” and sending other mercies. Reproduced with permission from Readex, a division of NewsBank, Inc., and the American Antiquarian Society.

An advertisement announcing Pepsi-Cola as “Kosher for Passover” addresses the desires of many Jewish families to be at least partially assimilated into what they imagined as mainstream American culture. Reproduced from American Hebrew, April 12, 1940, courtesy of the Dorot Jewish Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

opposite top: This photo of the United Society of Believers, “Eldress Anna Case at the Corn Cutter with the Girls Husking Corn, Watervliet, New York (1894),” reminds us of the intensive and exhausting female labor associated with food production. Courtesy of the Shaker Museum and Library. opposite bottom: Although this photo depicts a calm, sparse, female atmosphere in a Shaker dining hall, mealtimes and issues surrounding food preparation and consumption were not always orderly and serene in early periods of the nineteenth century. The North Family Dining Room, Mount Lebanon, New York. A. J. Alden, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, photographer (ca. 1880). Courtesy of the Shaker Museum and Library. below: This view of visitors on the lawn in front of the Oneida Community Mansion House, ca. 1870, demonstrates that outsiders were well treated by the Oneida Community. From the Collection of the Oneida Community Mansion House, Oneida, New York.

above: As in the Shaker communities, Amana women found themselves performing extensive labor associated with food preparation and commodification, such as turning cabbages into sauerkraut. “Putting up Amana Kraut—Homestead, Iowa,” ca. 1925. Courtesy of Amana Heritage Society. opposite: Laurel Robertson attempted to resuscitate family unity through natural-foods cooking and fresh, home-baked bread, illustrated in this woodblock print crafted by the author for Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking (1984). Reprinted by permission of Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, p.o. Box 256, Tomales ca 94971, www.nilgiri.org.

The founders of the Bloodroot restaurant and authors of The Political Palate, Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea (sitting), decorated their restaurant with photographs of women. Photo by Noel Furie, reprinted with permission from the Bloodroot Collective, The Political Palate (Bridgeport ct: Sanguinaria Press, 1980).

Anna Thomas’s Eden of alternative good living, gourmet vegetarianism, and commensality are depicted not only through recipes but also in such prints in The Vegetarian Epicure. From The Vegetarian Epicure: Book Two, by Anna Thomas, copyright © 1978 by Anna Thomas and Julie Maas. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Mount Holyoke students at a chafing dish party, ca. 1906. Courtesy Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Comparing this photo of a Wellesley College chafing dish party in 1904 with the party at Mt. Holyoke illustrates the similarities among “spreads” in women’s colleges at the turn of the twentieth century. Courtesy of Wellesley College Archives.

above: Vassar College students demonstrate their culinary ingenuity, 1893. The yearbook for that year noted, “There is no longer any ground for the complaint that Vassar does not afford opportunities for domestic training to her students. A flourishing Cooking Department exists . . .” Vassarion (Poughkeepsie, New York: the senior class of Vassar College, 1893), 130. Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries. opposite: One of several self-described “eating clubs” at Vassar as depicted in the college yearbook, 1898. Vassarion (Poughkeepsie, New York: the senior class of Vassar College, 1898), 90. Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries.

Image Masked

The central debate in the Co-op Wars, this cartoon illustrates, pitted the counterculturalists, dedicated to “whole” foods, against the co, whose organizers wanted to include a broad spectrum of processed foods in order to bring the working class into the stores. “The Aims of the Coop Movement,” copyright ca. 1974 Pete Wagner. Greg Davis, compiler, Labor and Radical Ephemera, 1974–1984 (manuscript collection), Minnesota Historical Society.

These talking vegetables provide folk wisdom as they summarize the counterculture’s valorization of the rural and preindustrial, ca. 1994. From A History of North Country Co-op, by Betsy RaaschGilman and illustrated by Kevin Kane. Courtesy of North Country Co-op, Minneapolis.

1

2

7. Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana Jonathan G. Andelson

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

In the annals of intentional communities, the Amana Society of Iowa is noteworthy in several respects. Amana was one of the longest lasting communal societies in American history. For eighty-nine years, from 1843 (when the community established its first American home at Ebenezer, New York; it relocated in 1855 to Amana) until 1932, members held all their property in common and labored without wages for the common good. The community sought isolation from the wider society in order to live according to its religious principles. Amana was also one of the largest American utopian communities, both in territory, comprising more than twenty-six thousand contiguous acres, and in population, with, at its peak in the 1880s, more than eighteen hundred members living in seven villages. However, as notable as Amana was as a communal society, the community’s story is larger than its communal existence. The group originated in 1714 near Frankfurt, Germany, as a religious association called the Community of True Inspiration. United only by a common faith, Inspirationists belonged to scores of small congregations scattered across Germany, Alsace, and Switzerland. When the associated communities decided to move to America, seeking asylum from increasing religious persecution, they also decided to hold property in common. This plan would provide opportunities for those whose financial situations otherwise might inhibit them from emigrating and from owning property. The relocation to Amana in 1855, moti-

1

143

r

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

vated by increasing economic development in New York, reflected another pragmatic decision regarding property ownership and successful communal farming. In the early twentieth century, when the communal system in Amana began to fail, the members democratically reorganized the community, preserving the church and establishing a separate forprofit joint stock corporation to operate the businesses. The reorganized Amana has thrived for nearly three-quarters of a century and has become one of Iowa’s leading tourist attractions.1 In this essay I examine the Amana Society’s “Great Change” in 1932 from the perspective of Amana’s foodways. I treat changes in food preparation and consumption as an expression of changing social relations, both within the community and between it and the wider society. My time frame is 1855 to the present, distilled into two periods: the communal period (1855–1932) and the capitalist period (1932–present). My ideas about Amana foodways have been shaped by countless conversations with Amana people, among whom I lived as an anthropologist for nearly two years and with whom I have kept in close touch for more than thirty years, as well as by my own observations in Amana. Unless otherwise noted, what I say here about Amana foodways is the result of my own field research. My thinking has also been influenced by the theoretical insights of two anthropologists, Mary Douglas and Anna Meigs. Food is more, Douglas argues, than just a matter of agricultural production, economics, nutrition, and individual taste preferences. Food also conveys meaning, and we need to “recognize how food enters the moral and social intentions of individuals.” “Food is a field of action,” she writes. “It is a medium in which other levels of categorization become manifest. It does not lead or follow, but it squarely belongs to whatever action there is.”2 Building on Douglas’s ideas, Meigs emphasizes how a “food system”—all the phenomena surrounding the production and consumption of food—embodies a people’s way of viewing the world. “Food systems are, like myth or ritual systems, codes wherein the patterns by which a culture sees are embedded.” One of those patterns is how “food exchanges develop and express bonds of solidarity and alliance, how exchanges of food are parallel to exchanges of sociality, and how com-

f

144  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

mensality corresponds to social community.”3 In other words, among the meanings that food expresses is the nature of social relations within a group of people and between it and other groups. In this sense, the food system in communal Amana differed significantly from that in capitalist Amana.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Food Production in Communal Amana Each of Amana’s seven villages had a farm department responsible for the tillable acreage and pastureland around that village. The Great Council, Amana’s governing body, appointed farm managers to supervise each of the farm departments. The farm managers, in turn, appointed men in charge of different categories of livestock, as well as a farm foreman who supervised the work of the roughly twenty farmhands in each department. Production was meticulously organized, and every man knew what tasks were expected of him according to the season. Agricultural records from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries indicate that the farms raised thousands of acres of wheat, corn, and oats, plus smaller amounts of barley, rye, and broomcorn, as well as cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and poultry. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, annual sales from the farm departments of cattle, hogs, chickens and other poultry, lard, whole grain, grain meal, and flour totaled between ten thousand and sixty thousand dollars annually and constituted an important source of revenue for the Amana Society. Of equal importance, however, was the fact that the farms supplied virtually all of the grain, meat, and dairy products consumed in the colonies. The wheat and rye, after being milled in Amana’s two flourmills, went to the society’s seven bakeries (one in each village) that baked bread, coffee cakes, and rolls. Barley was used both in the kitchens, for soups, and in Amana’s breweries, for beer. Colony livestock ate mostly colony corn and oats in addition to timothy or clover hay and grass in the society’s extensive pastures. The farm departments regularly delivered cattle and hogs to the butcher shops in every village for slaughter. The butchers sent some meat fresh to the kitchens, but much of it they preserved by smoking, curing, or making it into sausages. Dairy cows were milked on the farms. The milk then went directly to the kitchens,

7

Andelson  145

r

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

where some of it was processed further into cream and cheese. To close the nutrient cycle, the farm departments collected animal and human waste and spread it on the agricultural fields. Next to the farms, the most important sites of food production in communal Amana were the gardens associated with each of the community kitchens. Potatoes, cabbage, turnips, onions, tomatoes, carrots, rhubarb, spinach, endive, leeks, cauliflower, kohlrabi, string beans, wax beans, radishes, celery, hominy, beets, horseradish, lettuce, salsify, asparagus, sweet corn, cucumbers, kale, peas, and a variety of squashes grew well in Amana’s loamy soils. The kitchen workers cooperatively planted, maintained, and harvested the vegetables. The society sold some of the garden produce, especially onions, celery, sauerkraut, and potatoes, to wholesale markets, but most of it was fed to the members. Some produce reached the table fresh, but most was consumed in cooked form, and the kitchen staff preserved many of the vegetables by canning or pickling them for use in the winter. Each kitchen also had a chicken coop and raised chickens for egg production and for eating. Some other sources of nutriment supplemented the products of farm and garden. Each village maintained apple orchards and other fruitbearing trees. Much of the work of picking the fruit was done by schoolchildren under the direction of the schoolteacher. People in Amana ate some fruit fresh, while the rest ended up in jams, cobblers, and pies. Grapes from the society’s vineyards were used mainly in making wine, which the residents produced for sacramental purposes, but also for refreshment, providing each adult member a monthly ration (most of which the men drank). Individual members also made wine, both from grapes and from privately grown rhubarb, a custom that the council officially forbade but permitted as long as members did not try to sell the wine. The society kept bees and assigned individuals to care for the hives and gather the honey for distribution to the kitchens, where it was used on bread and in baking, or for sale. The Amana timber was a source of wild mushrooms, berries, and nuts that members of the community gathered in season and either ate privately or turned in to the kitchens. Pastures and ditches provided dandelions and nettles whose leaves, fresh or cooked, enhanced salads and other dishes. The society

f

146  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

imported only a few items in the diet, among which sugar, coffee, and tea were the most significant, as members consumed them on a daily basis. Meals in Communal Amana During the communal period Amana residences were not equipped with kitchen facilities. Members took their meals in buildings referred to as “community kitchen houses,” though these actually contained both a kitchen and a dining area. In 1932, the year the communal system ended, fifty-five community kitchens operated in the seven villages, ranging in number from sixteen in the largest village to four in the smallest.4 At the time of the colonies’ peak population, there may have been more. A female “kitchen boss,” appointed by the Great Council, supervised each community kitchen. The rest of the kitchen staff were also women, including an assistant manager, a garden boss, and half a dozen others who worked in various capacities getting food to the communal table. The kitchens provided women with a sphere of public responsibility and authority. Kitchen bosses were well known and respected figures, and members of the community typically referred to a kitchen by its manager’s name. Women who had worked in the communal kitchens told me that the cooperative character of the workplace fostered an atmosphere supportive of women and provided them with the sense that they made a vital contribution to the well-being of the community on a daily basis. The community kitchens served five meals a day: an early morning breakfast, a dinner at 11:30 a.m. or noon, and a light evening supper, plus midmorning and midafternoon lunches. Each kitchen boss planned the meals served in her kitchen in consultation with her assistant and the garden boss; in general, meals were similar in the different kitchens and the different villages. Breakfasts typically included a starchy staple such as potatoes or buckwheat cakes. Meat was not normally served. Bread and butter, syrup, and coffee rounded out the morning meal. Dinner began with a vegetable or bread soup and usually included an animal protein entrée (chicken, boiled beef, roast beef, ribs, eggs), potatoes or dumplings, a fresh or cooked vegetable (according to the season), and sometimes a dessert, again accompanied by coffee.

1

Andelson  147

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Supper consisted of cheese or a lighter meat dish (bacon, hamburgers, liver, or pork sausage) plus potatoes and a vegetable. Tea rather than coffee was typically served in the evening. The morning and afternoon lunches invariably included bread and either butter or jelly, plus cheese in the morning and a sweet (for example, a cupcake, fruit pie, or pudding) in the afternoon, and coffee. The kitchens did not serve lunches on Sunday, it being the day of rest. The Inspirationists did not observe any food avoidances. As might be guessed from the foregoing, by the standards of the day the diet in communal Amana was varied, ample, and healthful. Young women did most of the actual meal preparation. Girls began to gain kitchen experience while still in school, helping during the summer with the vegetable harvest and preparation. When a girl turned fourteen and finished eighth grade, she was assigned to work full time in one of the kitchens as a cook, quickly learning the recipes and routines under the tutelage of the kitchen boss and other cooks. Typically, three or four young women worked together, rotating the tasks of preparing, serving, and cleaning up after each meal. Several women who had worked in the communal kitchens told me that the task was enlivened by a friendly rivalry among the kitchens over which served the tastiest meals. Dining in communal Amana, like food production and preparation, was largely a collective affair. Between thirty and forty-five people took their meals at each of the community kitchens. Usually, an individual ate at the kitchen house closest to where he or she lived. The members of a household generally ate at the same kitchen house, though usually not together. Reflecting a pattern also seen in Amana worship services and most work places, men and women were separated at meals, men eating at one table and women at another. The separation expressed the Inspirationists’ belief that it was pleasing to God to keep the sexes apart as much as possible. The separation was also intended to reduce frivolous conversation. In fact, meals were to be eaten mostly in silence, with only the necessary communication. Consequently, mealtimes were not the leisurely affairs they are in some communal societies. Members ate in some haste, anxious to avoid delaying others or to be thought of as slackers in no hurry to return to work. The general quietness, plus

f

148  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

the fact that meals began and ended with a prayer, imparted a solemn, spiritual quality to mealtime. These characteristics were expected to extend to the children, who sat separately from the adults. Although oral testimony suggests that the amount of food served in Amana’s community kitchens met the needs of the population, some members may have been tempted by the communal larder to eat more than they needed. I draw this inference from the numerous admonitions from the Great Council to the kitchens to be more sparing in what they served and the members to be satisfied with less. “There never shall be two foods (like butter and molasses) on the bread at lunch,” one ruling stated. “Those who can eat no butter shall be allowed to ask for molasses, but none shall be put on the table.”5 Dozens of such exhortations appeared over the years, derived from a basic religious teaching against excessive consumption. Some eating occurred outside of the community kitchens. Farm workers normally received their lunches in the field, and some others likewise lunched at their places of employment. Expectant mothers and women with newborns frequently ate their meals at home, the food being brought to them by a family member or one of the kitchen staff. The same was true for the infirm. Some individuals used part of the modest annual spending allowance each member received to purchase food or snack items such as candy, fruit, or nuts in Amana Society stores, especially at Christmastime. Families occasionally were able to strike a private bargain with a friend or relative in the butcher shop to obtain meat that they would cook at home or enjoy with some bread from the bakery as part of a picnic. Despite these exceptions, however, the community kitchen was the symbolic center of communal Amana’s foodways, and commensalism—the sharing of a meal—was its main ritual expression.

1

From Communalism to Capitalism Not surprisingly, one of the first places to reveal the weakening of Amana’s communal system was the community kitchen. After the turn of the twentieth century, more and more families chose to pick up meals from the kitchens to eat at home. The new pattern was, in effect, a reassertion of the family at the expense of community, and it played a modest but symbolically significant role in the desire felt by a growing number

2

Andelson  149

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

of members to abandon the communal system. Communalism was under pressure from several directions, including the departure from the society of many young members who wanted to earn salaries and experience the comparative freedom of life in the wider society; increasing exposure of those who remained to worldly distractions from advertising, outside visitors, and the experience of young Amana men drafted into the army during World War I; a downturn in Amana’s businesses in the 1920s as demand for woolens and calico declined and economic recession hit the farm economy; and the church elders’ increasing difficulty enforcing the rules. These developments triggered a great deal of soul searching and discussions about alternative forms of community organization. In 1931, with the Great Council’s approval, a specially elected committee charged with studying the community’s options lay a choice before the Amana people, either to retain the old system—a choice, the members were told, that would mean returning to a more austere life— or to reorganize the community along lines yet to be determined, but which everyone realized would involve a more capitalistic form. The vote was heavily in favor of reorganization. After further deliberation, the committee crafted a reorganization plan and submitted it to the members for approval. The plan created a for-profit, joint stock corporation (to be called the Amana Society) in place of the old communal economic system, leaving the church (renamed the Amana Church Society) intact but separating it entirely from the community’s business operation. The members voted overwhelmingly to accept the new plan. Among the first changes to occur was the disbanding of the community kitchens, which took place on May 1, 1932. Felt by the members at the time more immediately and dramatically than most other aspects of the reorganization, the closing of the kitchens was also the event recalled most vividly fifty years later by participants in an oral history project conducted by the Amana Heritage Museum about the reorganization.6 Foodways in Capitalist Amana A major reorientation of Amana foodways accompanied the reorganization. When the community kitchens closed, each household immediate-

f

150  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ly became responsible for its own meals. As most homes lacked kitchen facilities, families had to improvise until they were able to obtain the necessary equipment. The society auctioned off the utensils and tools from the community kitchens, but many of these items were ill suited to the smaller scale of home cooking. The responsibility of feeding their families generally fell to the women. Most bachelors and widowers had female relatives who cooked for them. Families ate as separate units, and gender separation at meals no longer occurred (although it continued in church services). Each family scheduled mealtimes at its own convenience. Although many if not most families continued to say grace at the table, the ritualistic aspect of mealtimes diminished and, obviously, their communal character ended entirely. The sources of food and the routes by which food reached individual kitchens also began to shift after the reorganization. Driven by forces affecting midwestern farming generally in the years leading up to and following World War II, Amana’s farm departments increasingly expanded their acreage of corn and soybeans at the expense of small grains. In addition, increasing yields due to hybridization and the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides resulted in larger corn and bean harvests, of which a diminishing proportion went to feed Amana livestock and more to external markets. Other parts of the old food system also changed. The Amana flourmill, which had burned in 1923, was never rebuilt, and the West Amana flourmill (the last in operation) closed in 1939. In 1943 the society closed the remaining village bakeries and opened a consolidated commercial bakery that used purchased flour to produce several varieties of bread and other baked goods for sale throughout the Midwest. Similar changes overtook the old butcher shops. The new corporation continued to operate two of the original seven.7 These bought cattle and hogs from the farm department and retailed meat to Amana residents as well as to the general public. The meat markets continued to offer some traditional Amana products, such as sausages and smoked hams, but in general they came to resemble similar shops elsewhere, especially after the large increase of tourism in the late 1960s. As the volume of busi-

1

Andelson  151

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ness in the meat markets grew, they were increasingly forced to meet the demand with outside sources of meat. With the closing of the community kitchens, the kitchen gardens, chicken yards, and village potato fields also ceased operation.8 Many Amanans, not wanting to lose the familiar taste and freshness of their accustomed produce, established private gardens, and some raised chickens as well. Although canning and other techniques of food preservation were popular for many years after the reorganization, Amana families, like American families in general, increasingly purchased food that was produced, processed, and packaged elsewhere. Initially, the general stores in each village, which continued to operate after the change, supplied these items, but by the 1970s Amana homemakers usually shopped at supermarkets in nearby cities for most of their groceries, including meat and bread.

5

5

Feeding Tourists Amana’s reorganization plan allowed for the establishment of private businesses to operate within the colonies under permits from the corporation. The first private sector enterprises to appear were restaurants and wineries, natural choices given Amana traditions of group dining and wine making. The first restaurant opened in 1934, and several others followed. By 1960 five full-service private restaurants were operating in the colonies, and the corporation ran two smaller sandwich shops that also served full meals. The restaurants became one of the anchors of Amana’s tourist industry and constituted, with the meat shops, bakeries, and wineries, what Lucy M. Long and others have recently labeled “culinary tourism.”9 Amana tourism experienced significant growth in the 1960s following the completion of nearby Interstate 80 and the 1965 designation of the Amana Colonies as a national historic landmark. As one of the most visible and visited embodiments of capitalist Amana, the restaurants stand in a similar relationship to post-1932 Amana as the community kitchens did to communal Amana: economically and symbolically important places where large numbers of people regularly come together to eat. The restaurants that dominated tourist dining in the Amana Colo-

f

152  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

nies from 1934 to the present draw on Amana’s past in promoting themselves. The first five were located in structures that had a connection to communal Amana’s food system. Two were established in communalera hotels (which had served meals to outsiders), two were in former community kitchen houses, and one (now closed) was in the former South Amana meat market. All the restaurants adopted names that recalled an aspect of Amana’s past, though not necessarily its communal past: the Colony Inn and Colony Market Place, names that resonate with one designation for the community and also hint at Amana’s difference from the wider society; the Ox Yoke Inn, suggesting the pioneer past (including Amana’s); the Ronneburg Restaurant, named for a castle in Germany that had been home to many Amana people; and Bill Zuber’s Dugout Restaurant, originally owned and operated by an Amana native who played professional baseball with the New York Yankees in the 1940s. Two more recent additions, the Brick Haus Restaurant (opened in 1984) and the Amana Barn Restaurant (opened in 1985, but ceased operation in 2003), are in new structures built to resemble pre-1932 buildings, the latter on the site of a communal-era cow barn.10 The newest restaurant, the Smokehouse Restaurant, which opened in 2004, occupies the site of the former South Amana meat shop, which had included a room for smoke-curing meat. These restaurant names are part of what Long calls a “naming strategy” in presenting food to tourists.11 Although Long uses the phrase in reference to the naming of new or unusual foods by tourist hosts to make them more accessible or appealing to tourists, the same point can apply to the naming of Amana restaurants. All the restaurants have an interior decor that, to varying degrees and more self-consciously in recent years, hearkens back to communal Amana. Some use tablecloths modeled on those used in the community kitchens. Most have paintings or photographs of communal Amana hanging on the walls; scenes involving the kitchens, gardens, or farms are prominent. Several restaurants display artifacts from the communal period. The choices of names and decor show pride in Amana’s past, but they also constitute an attempt to define for guests a culturally dis-

1

Andelson  153

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

tinctive dining space. These features comprise a “framing strategy” for presenting food as at once exotic and edible.12 Meals at these restaurants reinforce and extend the same messages. In the first few decades after the reorganization, the restaurants served a modest number of entrées, at least some of which were billed as traditional Amana foods, including Amana smoked ham and bratwurst. American standards, like steak, ribs, fried chicken, and fried fish, shared the menu. Side dishes also were a combination of traditional Amana fare (pickled ham, beets, sauerkraut, fried potatoes, dumplings) and items found in most American restaurants at the time (cottage cheese, lettuce salad, mashed potatoes, and creamed corn). In time most of the restaurants added German entrées unknown in the community kitchens, such as sauerbraten and wiener schnitzel. This shift complemented some restaurants’ adoption of generic German decor motifs, such as beer steins and waitresses dressed in dirndls. German foods and decor apparently appealed to tourists, perhaps because they could grasp the notion of a German ethnic dining experience more easily than one in a former religious commune. Today nearly all of the meals served in the restaurants are prepared from food that originates outside the colonies. While the Amana meat markets and bakery supply some of the meat and the bread, the volume needed is too great to be supplied entirely locally. As a further point of distinction, the restaurants advertise that they serve their meals “family style.” Despite the name, this form of service resembles dining patterns in the old community kitchens. Waitresses deliver to every table of diners large bowls of several standard foods— usually lettuce salad, cottage cheese, cooked corn, potatoes, gravy, and bread—in addition to whatever main course each customer requests. These bowls circulate to everyone at the table, so each guest eats the same side dishes. When a bowl is emptied, waitresses refill it at no extra charge. Family-style meals are popular with tourists and became the norm in tourist-oriented Amana restaurants, though recently most restaurants have begun to offer smaller meal alternatives. Particularly since the mid-1960s, Amana has been one of Iowa’s leading tourist sites, and the restaurants have been one of the main attrac-

f

154  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

tions, known for providing good value for the traveler’s dollar. Several thousand tourists might visit Amana on a weekend in the summer, fall, or around Christmas, and hundreds if not more visit on weekdays and at other times of the year. No reliable statistics exist on the proportion of visitors who eat a meal at one of the restaurants, but it is substantial, perhaps more than three-quarters. The tourists come mostly from the Midwest. In addition to dining, they come to see Amana’s distinctive architecture and villagescapes, perhaps to visit one of several museums operated by the Amana Heritage Society, and to shop. The Amana Society continues to operate one of the woolen mills (though only on a “demonstration” basis, vastly reduced in extent from the communal and early capitalist periods) with a retail outlet that sells mostly non-Amana woolen articles. Dozens of other stores sell an impressive array of products, including packaged foods, beer, and wine. The beer and wine are locally made. Many of the packaged food items bear the Amana label, though the fine print reveals that most are manufactured elsewhere. Comparisons Mary Douglas and Anna Meigs have argued that food expresses meaning, and some of the most important meanings food expresses are about social relations. Foodways in capitalist Amana differ significantly from those during the communal period and reflect a very different pattern of social relations. First, with reference to its production source, nearly all of the food in communal Amana was of local origin. Amanans may not have articulated the meaningfulness of this self-sufficiency often, since they took it for granted, but it surely gave them a sense of independence. It also helped the leaders define and maintain a separation between the community and what they called “the world” and, from a practical standpoint, protected the members from fluctuations in the market price of food. Second, food was produced through collective labor on the farms and in the kitchen gardens, flourmills, butcher shops, and community kitchens. The Amana Society dedicated half or more of its labor force to the production and processing of food. Collective labor reinforced social bonds, reduced the onerousness of the work, Andelson  155

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

5

and expressed the core value of working together selflessly for the common good. In contrast, food production in capitalist Amana has become progressively decoupled from consumption. Very little of the society’s agricultural output feeds people in Amana, whether tourist or resident, and little of the food consumed in Amana is produced there. The local food system, with its self-sufficiency and closed nutrient cycles (the marketing of surplus notwithstanding), has largely been replaced by a commercial food system, mediated by money, in which production and consumption are widely separated in time and space. Consequently, food no longer reinforces the boundary between Amana and the world; to the contrary, food now brings the two into regular contact. Vestiges of the local food system survive in the bakeries, wineries, and meat markets, but all of the flour, most of the grapes, and much of the meat sold in those establishments now originates outside the colonies. The outsourcing of most food signals a shift in the meaning that food carries. Where or by whom food is raised has ceased to matter. Its origin is, in fact, anonymous (although many tourists imagine that the food sold in Amana’s restaurants, meat markets, shops, and bakeries comes from local sources). For most Amanans, as for most Americans, what matters most about food is its preparation and consumption, not where, how, or by whom it is produced. Similarly, social relations associated with food production and processing have changed. Women no longer work together in community kitchen gardens; although men still work together in the farm department, they work for wages rather than collectively, in the usual meaning of that term, and do not raise the food that they and their neighbors eat. Where food production and consumption remain coupled—in home vegetable gardens—efforts are individualized rather than collective. The meanings and social relations surrounding food consumption have also changed dramatically. In communal Amana, people ate collectively in large, extrafamilial groups, and everyone ate the same food. Dining thereby expressed the related core values of fellowship and equality. Furthermore, by bringing almost everyone in the colonies together to eat on the same schedule, meals, like work and worship, con-

f

156  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

tributed to the shared and orderly experience of time that pervaded communal Amana. In addition, community leaders taught that food should not be used wastefully, and they watched for indications of excessive use. Foodways thus reinforced the value of moderate (but not extreme) self-denial that the religion taught. For these reasons, and also because of the prayers that accompanied them and the quietness in which they were eaten, meals had a ritual quality that was a central feature of Inspirationist life. Here was commensalism of the first order: unrelated people routinely eating the same foods at the same table. The pattern bespoke a moral and social order of inclusiveness for members of the community and their separation from the outside world. Foodways expressed the Inspirationists’ most fundamental understanding of the character of their religious association and how their community ought to exist within the world. After 1932 the pattern of food consumption and the meanings associated with it became quite different. The closing of the community kitchens abruptly normalized the trend that had begun after the turn of the century toward separate family dining. In other words, the commensal unit contracted from the community kitchen to the nuclear family. This change strengthened the symbolic importance of the nuclear family, bringing it more into line with the rest of American society. The end of community meals, combined with a reduction in the number of worship services from eleven in a week to one, weakened the shared experience of time, as each family now sets its own eating schedule. More fundamental still, each family chooses its own menu, and although traditional colony dishes continue to be important in many homes, food choices express household preferences rather than centralized planning. Admonitions from the leaders to conserve food resources ceased; ironically, families may conserve more earnestly under capitalism since they, rather than the community as a whole, now bear the cost of wastefulness. Many families continue to ritualize mealtime to the extent of beginning (and perhaps ending) meals with a prayer, but in general meals have become a time of socializing within the coresidential family or with a limited number of friends or relatives. The restaurants actually preserve some features of the community

1

Andelson  157

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

kitchen: a large number of people eat generally similar food in the same space. However, diners do not eat synchronously at the same table and do not develop or reinforce a relationship with one another. Whether restaurant dining should even be considered commensalism is debatable. In any event, the dominant social relationship in the public provision of food in capitalist Amana, whether in the restaurants or the various shops, is scarcely one of community fellowship. It might be argued that the restaurants have aimed at creating a wider fellowship by breaking down the boundary between the colonies and the wider society. The message they broadcast has been and is “everyone is invited here to eat.” In conformity with Douglas’s and Meigs’s claim about consistency in cultural meanings, this message expresses a value pervasive in post-1932 Amana. The value was never stated more boldly than in signage displayed several years ago at the new Iowa Welcome Center in Amana: “Amana Welcomes the World.” But the fundamental relationship implied by this invitation is one of buyer and seller. The words not only sum up the colonies’ post-1932 entrepreneurial attitude, but they also clearly indicate the degree to which Amana has departed from its communal-era goal of social isolation for the sake of a religious life. The restaurants also contrast with communal dining on issues of conservation and abundance. The express cultural meaning in the restaurants’ offerings, particularly in the pattern of “family-style” meals, is abundance. “Eat as much as you want” is the explicit message. Implicitly, this abundance is linked to the bounty produced by free enterprise and capitalism. Although few modern visitors are aware that members of communal Amana faced constant restrictions on their consumption, the entrepreneurs who established Amana’s restaurants after the Great Change remembered them quite well and were happy to escape them. They created for their customers a contrary experience of bounty. Finally, I note the consequence of Amana’s changed foodways for gender roles. The community kitchens afforded positions of female responsibility and authority for the kitchen boss, her assistant, and the garden boss. The kitchens also constituted a sphere in which women enjoyed considerable autonomy in the workplace. While it is true that men ran communal Amana at the highest levels and that women’s work

f

158  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

was demanding and unrelenting, women nevertheless held honored and publicly recognized status. In contrast, in capitalist Amana there is no public women’s sphere. Women may be honored in the home for many things, including preparing meals, but this is a private honor. Women may find a place in the workforce, including owning a business (in fact, two of the restaurants have been owned by women), but this is a matter of individual initiative rather than ascription. Today some older Amana women express a preference for the freedom and individualism of the new system. Others miss the camaraderie and sphere of female influence in the old. All agree that women’s lives, especially in relation to food, changed enormously following the reorganization. Students of intentional communities frequently and rightly point to the Amana Colonies as a “successful” community, not only because of its size, prosperity, and longevity as a communal society, but also because Amana transitioned to a vibrant noncommunal form of organization without schism or rancor. Most Amana people I know agree with this assessment, claiming that the colonies have managed to retain the most important things about the old system, including the church, jobs, and a sense of community, while giving individuals more responsibility and allowing them more freedom, thereby correcting shortcomings of communalism. Viewed from the perspective of foodways, Amana’s change from communalism to capitalism has other dimensions that ought to be considered in attempting to understand and evaluate the reorganization more completely. It is difficult to escape the feeling that the reorganization led to the loss of positive features of communal Amana’s foodways, in particular the self-sufficiency and diversity in food production, the collaborative preparation of food in the community kitchens, and the ritualized commensalism of dining. In exchange, individual Amanans now have more freedom in where to eat, when to eat, and what to eat. But while individuals became food autonomous, the community lost its food autonomy, and the food itself—in its production and preparation, and even in the social relations surrounding its public consumption in restaurants—largely became anonymous. Seeing how the food system changed in a particular intentional community allows us to understand

1

Andelson  159

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

those meanings more clearly and perhaps to assess the implicit as well as explicit meanings in our own foodways.

3

4

5

Notes

5

The author wishes to thank Lanny Haldy, Rachelle Saltzman, and the volume’s editors for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I am entirely responsible for any errors that remain. 1. For a more detailed discussion of the historical development and religious basis of the Amana community, see Bertha M. H. Shambaugh, Amana That Was and Amana That Is (Iowa City: Iowa Historical Society, 1932); Diane M. Barthel, Amana: From Communal Society to Capitalist Corporation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); or Jonathan G. Andelson, “Communalism and Change in the Amana Society, 1855 to 1932” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1974). 2. Mary Douglas, introduction to Food in the Social Order: Studies of Food and Festivities in Three American Communities, ed. Mary Douglas (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984), 10, 30. 3. Anna B. Meigs, “Food as a Cultural Construction,” Food and Foodways 2:347, 351. 4. Emilie Hoppe, Seasons of Plenty: Amana Communal Cooking (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), 10. 5. Bruderraths Beschluesse, June 12, 1869, Archive Collection, Amana Heritage Museum. 6. This fact was pointed out by the Amana historian and native Peter Hoehnle in his study of Amana’s reorganization, “The Great Change: The Reorganization of the Amana Society, 1931–1933,” (master’s thesis, Iowa State University, 1998). 7. In 2004 the Amana Society consolidated the two meat shops into one. 8. The only exception I am aware of is that Middle Amana maintained a semicommunal potato field into the 1960s. According to Lanny Haldy, a lifetime Amana resident and the director of the Amana Heritage Museum, “On a designated day the farm [department] would plow a field. Families would get two rows to plant with potatoes. The farm would cultivate a time or two during the season. Then a harvest day would be set and the farm would bring the potato digger and we would all pick up potatoes in our rows and take them home” (personal communication, August 26, 2004). The blending of communal and individual elements is obvious.

f

160  Food and Social Relations in Communal and Capitalist Amana

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

9. Lucy M. Long, ed., Culinary Tourism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 10. A handful of other restaurants or sandwich shops exist or have existed in Amana that offer different kinds of food (e.g., pizzas, hamburgers, Continental cuisine), but these have not been as popular with tourists. 11. Lucy M. Long, “Culinary Tourism: A Folkloristic Perspective on Eating and Otherness,” in Long, Culinary Tourism, 38. 12. Long, “Culinary Tourism,” 38.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Andelson  161

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

8. Recipes for a New World Utopianism and Alternative Eating in Vegetarian NaturalFoods Cookbooks, 1970–84

0

1

2

Maria McGrath

3

4

5

5

In 1971 Frances Moore Lappé published Diet for a Small Planet, a groundbreaking work on nutrition, diet, and the world’s food order. Presenting an exposé of the worldwide political, economic, and, ultimately, spiritual repercussions of America’s dependence on animal protein, Lappé supplied instructions on how to reverse the conditions of starvation and environmental decimation caused by modern meat production. With a diet carefully organized by the rules of protein complementarity, Lappé offered readers not only a health-based argument for changing their diets but also a method by which to change the world.1 Considerable public commentary, worriedly warning of the insalubrious direction of the postwar American diet, preceded Lappé’s polemical publication. Beginning in the 1950s, studies from prestigious scientific institutions such as the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Health, the Rockefeller Institute, and the U.S. Public Health Service alerted Americans to the dangerous rise in arteriosclerosis among the nation’s meat-and-potato-eating men.2 The particular significance of Diet was that it added a global and political dimension to this growing unease. Furthermore, the monograph suggested that in one’s own kitchen, conventionally understood as a nonpolitical female sphere, steps could be taken to abate a global catastrophe. Through their individual

f

162

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

eating and cooking patterns, women (and men if they so chose) could halt world hunger and environmental ruin. The foreword to Lappé’s book described the implications of this reframing of the relationship between self and society through diet: “For the first time it is possible to implement an end to the gross waste of literally millions of tons of high-grade protein, to release men from the confines of a largely meat diet, to enjoy nutritionally sound protein from the richer and far more abundant sources that the earth provides. Here, step by step, is how you, the individual, can improve your own style-of-life—and at the same time help your very small planet.”3 The 1960s New Left, the counterculture, and, most explicitly, secondwave feminists had already challenged the accepted depoliticization of the private realm by asserting that activities in the home, the family, and the bedroom had sociopolitical implications. With politics reframed in this manner, many young Americans argued that, in the face of the deadening conformity enforced by the modern “technocracy,” striving for self-fulfillment was as pointedly rebellious as marching in an antiwar protest. Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, along with Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey’s Laurel’s Kitchen (1976); the Bloodroot Collective’s Political Palate (1980); Edward Espe Brown’s Tassajara Cooking (1973); Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook (1977); and Anna Thomas’s Vegetarian Epicure (1972), translated these idealistic and oppositional tendencies of the 1960s “movement” into their own programs of vegetarian dissent. With Diet hitting the one million mark by its second edition in 1975, and Katzen, Thomas, Brown, and Robertson et al. each selling close to or more than one million copies of their cookbooks in the years following their first publications, it is clear that this message was eagerly received by an ever-growing audience.4 While these countercultural cooks shared popular recognition, they did not agree on the message and purpose of vegetarianism and wholefoods cooking. Robertson et al. held that natural-foods cooking could help reconstruct families and womanhood from the wreckage of 1950s commercialism and the iconoclasm of 1960s second-wave feminism. The Bloodroot Collective pledged that strict vegetarianism was essential to their gynophilic, eco-conscious worldview and restaurant—an

1

McGrath  163

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

eating practice and social order that they saw as imperative in the making of a compassionate and righteous world. Brown, a devoted Buddhist, suggested that natural foods’ unadulterated simplicity and timeconsuming preparation brought necessary mindfulness to cooking and eating and, in so doing, could assist the development of widespread Zen consciousness. And Katzen and Thomas, who longed most for a world that appreciated the significance of creativity and individual expression, believed that natural foods and vegetarianism could encourage experimentation and indulgence in spices, textures, and lifeways generally unfound in their “bland” 1950s childhoods. Using food to express views of a joyful as well as socially responsible life—a mix of cultural and political consciousness that characterized post-1960s alternative thinking—these popular cookbook authors helped to define the naturalfoods movement. While they did not adopt vegetarian cooking for the same aims, they were conjoined in their desire to redefine the standard American diet. For these young cooks, every part of what was touted as the postwar food miracle was repugnant. The carnivorous gluttony, the plastification of natural foodstuffs through processing, and the romance with convenience and machines were all indications of the inauthenticity and misdirection of the modern American diet and society. Moreover, a decided schizophrenia had emerged in the representation of homemaking in the hyperdomestic 1950s. To demonstrate the nation’s break from years of want and frugality, the decade’s cookbooks set high criteria for good cooking and homemaking with glamorized photo spreads of meatladen tables, artistically cut Jell-O “salads,” and frosted cake castles. At the same time, the habit of the day was to equate convenience, speed, and fun with modernity—and the ideal was to be “modern.” The “modern” American woman was to serve her family well, fulfill their every gastronomic whim by using the most up-to-date electric appliances and foods, be creative but not so creative that she must do all the work from scratch, and have fun in the process. With such contradictory expectations thrown on their mothers’ generation, many of the female cookbook authors of the 1970s and early 1980s natural-foods movement not surprisingly rejected 1950s housewifery for an unconventional kitchen

f

164  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

and female culture. Reading their cookery manuals, we can gain access to the diverse and, what they believed to be, original identities that young women (and men) built after trading tv-dinner youth for vegetarian, whole-grain adulthood. As the food historian Sherrie Inness suggests, treating cookbooks such as these as historical documents can shed much-needed light on acts, like eating and cooking, so ingrained in daily life that their deeper symbolism and their power to induce conformity remains invisible to participants and, until recently, to historians. They can reveal, she argues, the “dreams of an era,” particularly the normative models for “how women (and men) are expected to behave.”5 The cookbooks of the 1970s and early 1980s natural-foods movement have much to tell us about the shared principles and utopian longings of the college-educated elite who were well aware of the social import of their eating habits and used their cookery manuals to contest the status quo and present their varied recipes for a new world.6 Moreover, the cookbooks display the wide spectrum of social alteration advocated and, sometimes, realized within this fluid cultural and culinary movement. Robertson and her coauthors and the Bloodroot Collective were as stridently and comprehensively utopian as Lappé, believing that natural foods fundamentally challenged the existing culinary order and the cultural, political, and economic systems that supported it. They were convinced that eating and cooking vegetarian whole foods could literally break the back of the establishment—setting free a more authentic, egalitarian, and ecologically sound civil society. Katzen and Thomas were more limited in their imaginings, seeing natural foods as one significant facet of an excitingly fresh, alternative lifestyle—one less hemmed in by postwar conformity and more internationalist and sophisticated than the nation’s suburban parochial ideal. Finally, Brown straddled these two positions, tempering his hopes for a comprehensive religious renaissance with a Buddhist acknowledgment of the world’s imperfectability. From Brown’s Zen perspective, at the very least, the rise of nondenominational spirituality and natural-foods eating in the second half of the twentieth century promised to insert heightened consciousness and environmental sensitivity into American culture.

1

McGrath  165

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

For those authors like Katzen, Thomas, and Brown, who took up natural foods to help advance cosmopolitan, ecological, and spiritual values, their aspirations were nearly realized in middle- and uppermiddle-class culture in the decades following the 1970s. For those who envisioned natural foods as a catalyst for grand social projects, such as Laurel’s Kitchen’s home-front revolution or the Bloodroot Collective’s lesbian feminist upheaval, success was more partial—fully actualized only in their homes and neighborhoods and in like-minded enclaves across the country. Yet as Stephanie Hartman suggests in her analysis of 1960s commune cookbooks, countercultural cookery texts do attest to the impressive fact that in this period “thousands of people sought to invent alternatives to mainstream culture, not on a theoretical level but on the plane of lived experience.”7 These natural-foods cookbooks capture the inventive spirit and utopian experimentalism that inspired many young Americans in the 1970s and early 1980s to embark on uncharted personal and communal journeys and to suppose that they were the cultural vanguard leading the world toward a more humane, creative, and, at the very least, tasty future.

9

5

Reviving the Hearth: Cooking and Authentic Homemaking in Laurel’s Kitchen The connection of female domesticity to the health of society has a long legacy in America’s gender history. From Republican motherhood to Jane Addams’s public housekeeping to the “feminine mystique” of the baby-boom 1950s, the model of wifely and motherly ardor has been variously portrayed as women’s patriotic, economic, or cultural duty. Interestingly, at the tail end of the 1960s, as second-wave feminists loudly denounced the cloistering of women within the invisibility of the household, the authors of Laurel’s Kitchen regenerated women’s stewardship of society by defining “the home and community” as “the crucial point where [women’s] efforts will count the most.”8 Echoing the nineteenthcentury temperance activist Frances Willard’s call “to make the world more homelike,” Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey used natural foods to realize their design of socially responsible, authentic homemaking.9

f

166  Recipes for a New World

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

No practice better enacted and actualized Flinders’s and Robertson’s social and personal goals than baking bread. The white machine-produced bread that was sold as a modern marvel in the 1950s had been resoundingly rejected by 1960s culture critics. In a 1962 essay the social commentator Lewis Mumford described white bread as a “devitalized foam-rubber loaf, laden with additives and substitutes, mechanically sliced for built-in staleness, that boasts of never being touched by human hand.”10 In complete agreement with Mumford, Flinders began true initiation into the secrets and skills of natural foods cooking when Robertson, the more experienced vegetarian of the two, decided that her former partner in Berkeley freedom politics must learn to bake bread. Laurel’s Kitchen and The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book (1984) use the story of the making of these books as a narrative thread. They trace Flinders’s natural-foods tutorial and the relationship that she, Robertson, and later Godfrey developed while writing these vegetarian cookbooks. The first step in the baking portion of Robertson’s natural foods seminars was to teach Flinders the significance of the whole grain, both to bread baking and to “living intentionally.”11 From Robertson’s perspective, left to its own devices, a purposefully ordered nature would produce nutritionally flawless foodstuffs. The mistake of modern mechanical food production was to process away the healthfulness contained within the whole barley or wheat grain for the sake of speed, convenience, and profit. For bread baking, all the flour used would be complete with bran and hull milled in. In the introduction to the Bread Book, Robertson acknowledged that using whole-grain flour may make the job more difficult and, in fact, lead to unexpected surprises, but again, this would be a reflection of the uniqueness of the whole grain and the spontaneity of the craft process. Unlike white-flour baking, in which uniformity was the goal, Robertson’s “traditional” method of bread baking “expects, accommodates and even celebrates the variability of good whole wheat flour.”12 In Robertson’s eyes, teaching Carol Flinders bread making reconnected them both to an “ancient art” that “is in our very bones for it seems to be something we somehow remember rather than have to

1

McGrath  167

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

learn.”13 A certain innate woman’s wisdom would bubble to the surface, Robertson argued, as the women became more expert in the craft; this wisdom had been lost when machines started making bread. Moreover, once from-scratch cooking was tagged as unmodern, the nobility of the housewife was disestablished. For Flinders the obvious personal benefits of learning to bake her own bread—the pride of craft production—were just the beginning of a whole way of life that evolved out of her baking tutorial with Robertson. Flinders’s family seemed transformed by her new avocation. They were reluctant to leave the house when a loaf was in the oven, thus her baking acted as “a strong counterforce” to all outside draws that separated and isolated family members one from the other. Modern American culture had rendered home production unnecessary and thus, in Flinders’s mind, enfeebled the bonds of family. Bread baking resurrected these bonds, as her son could join in the kneading or mixing of the dough and meanwhile gain a new appreciation for the kitchen as “a place where unquestionably important things go on and where every one has a contribution to make.”14 It would be unnecessary for Flinders to lecture her son to respect women, because he would have practical experiences affirming the significance of women and their work. He might even become expert in bread baking himself. Flinders’s inclusion of her son illustrates a notable difference between the cookbooks in the first half of the twentieth century and those that appeared in 1970s and early 1980s natural-foods books. As part of the goal to reorder the norms of American society, countercultural women cooks such as Laurel Robertson reframed the use of the kitchen by encouraging male trespass into this historically female-exclusive realm. Men would participate more fully in women’s cooking and childrearing culture, and women would be privy as listeners and sometimes counselors in the trials of men’s work outside the home. These changes would reform the family model of previous decades in which, ideally, women and children were buffered from outside concerns and men were largely uninvolved in the household’s daily maintenance. This breakdown of boundaries could also infuse women’s work with broader social significance. With their hands stirring, kneading, and

f

168  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

slicing the family’s “Sour Corn-Rye” bread and “Vegetable Bean Noodle Bake,” women could gain mastery over their household’s health.15 Moreover, their home-based production would start a chain of sweeping transformation as neighborhoods engaged in bartering and kitchen-centered socializing. Finally, as more families adopted vegetarianism, the demand for meat and mass-produced foods would decline and more equitable worldwide food distribution would ensue. For the authors of Laurel’s Kitchen, the implications of natural-foods home cooking were at once family centered and far reaching, domestically based and a model for the reorganization of modern society.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

Eating Feminist: Vegetarianism and the Radical Lesbian Ethics of the Bloodroot Collective The women of the Bloodroot Collective, although far less saddened by the demise of the traditional family, echoed Laurel’s Kitchen’s call for a renaissance of women’s knowledge in their feminist vegetarian cookbooks, The Political Palate (1980) and The Second Political Palate (1984). Reflecting their self-identified radical lesbian feminist sensibilities, the collective argued in their cookbooks that a premodern, earth-loving women’s culture had been crushed by the rule of patriarchy. As women trapped within a misogynistic culture, the only viable choice was to establish separatist feminist businesses, which they did in 1977 with their Bloodroot restaurant and bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The choice to own and operate the Bloodroot communally seemed logical to Betsy Beaven, Selma Miriam, Noel Giordano (later identified as Noel Furie), and Pat Shea, since a collectivity disassociated their labors from the individualistic work world of patriarchal America. The Bloodroot restaurant collective established an idyllic feminist reserve for sympathetic customers to explore and enjoy a gynocentric world of music, literature, mythology, spirituality, and seasonal vegetarian foods. From the Bloodroot’s perspective, eating vegetarian was mandatory for feminists for several reasons. First and foremost, seasonal vegetarianism was feminist because it reestablished women’s innate but devalued

1

McGrath  169

r

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

connection to the earth. With “Harvest Vegetable Platter” in late autumn to replace the traditional Thanksgiving turkey feast or “Dandelion Salad” in early spring, the Bloodroot Collective retuned their eating with the cycles of the earth, rather than the patriarchal profit motive of supermarkets. To further demonstrate this feminist earth reverence, the seasonal calendar that ordered the recipes in The Political Palate was lunar and excluded Jewish and Christian holiday foods because these religions were deemed antiwoman. A recipe for “Witches Froth,” an apple and cream dessert, would ring in the pagan woman-honoring holiday Halloween. “Hot and Sour Soup with Wild Daylily Buds” would celebrate the summer solstice. And in December, when the world outside of the collective was engaged in “the obscenity of noise and false jollity” of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, the Bloodroot Collective would be enjoying a hot bowl of “Hupi Pollivka,” a traditional Slavic mushroom soup, for winter solstice.16 Vegetarianism was also feminist, the authors suggested, because it fully severed their restaurant from the larger carnivorous society. They felt that the meat-eating practices of America, especially since World War II, when meat consumption exploded, were but another example of how patriarchy established dominance over all beings on earth. In 1980 Bloodroot’s vegetarianism meant rejecting all flesh except for a few fish dishes, and in The Second Seasonal Political Palate (1984), even fish was off the table as the collective purified its commitment to “other species and the survival of the earth.” “Those who wanted fish,” they wrote, “would have to go elsewhere.”17 Like other separatist utopian experiments of the late 1970s, the Bloodroot Collective was less concerned with the direction that the outside world took than with the constancy of their own thinking and living.18 By 1984, with their radical vegetarian feminism well developed, they would bend neither to the market forces that made flesh-based dishes profitable nor to the ethical cloudiness of customers who chose not to see the connection between meat eating and women’s oppression. For all of these reasons, the food choices of the Bloodroot Collective confirmed and activated their radical lesbian feminism. Ethical vegetarianism, they believed, established a bright line between their restau-

f

170  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

rant and a starkly tyrannical meat-eating patriarchy lurking outside. It reassociated their eating with the seasonal cycles of the earth, reinvigorating the agricultural and cooking knowledge of ethnic women who were ignored by white, middle-class biases. It pushed them to support a local economy of regional farmers, since quality season-appropriate vegetables were less available in “the sterile world of pre-packaged supermarkets.”19 Finally, it moved them to devote every moment of their existence to the actualization of an ideologically consistent feminist vegetarian space. As they wrote, “We live our work and work our lives. Our rewards are daily because we live what we believe.”20 Although they were less successful when they tried to expand their utopian vision beyond their restaurant doors, the collective was able to maintain at the local level a business and lifestyle that upheld their radical lesbian feminist ethics.21

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

Zen and the Art of Natural Foods Cooking: Mindfulness in Edward Espe Brown’s Tassajara Cookbooks Like Laurel Robertson et al. and the Bloodroot Collective, Ed Brown, author of The Tassajara Bread Book (1970) and Tassajara Cooking (1973), took up vegetarianism and natural foods to carry out his vision of a better world and to live in accordance with a set of ideals. Yet, unlike these other natural-foods cookbook authors, Brown’s rejection of orthodox American eating was informed not by a political or cultural analysis but by his commitment to Zen Buddhism. Thus, his books fit into two popular literary genres of the 1970s: natural-foods cookbooks and Zen texts, such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert Pirsig and Zen and the Art of Archery (1953) by Eugen Herrigel, which used routine activities to enunciate the premises of this spiritual philosophy. For Brown and his readers, vegetarian natural-foods cooking acted as a means by which they could abide by their Buddhist beliefs. His cookbooks, Tassajara Bread Book and Tassajara Cooking, provided private instruction. To elucidate cooking as Buddhist training, Brown’s cookbooks spent a considerable amount of time discussing the tools and techniques of the trade. In Tassajara Cooking six pages went into precise details on

1

McGrath  171

r

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

types of knives and cutting methods. Not only styles of cutting but also the thoughtful maintenance of utensils garnered considerable attention. Brown compared the relationship between the chef and his or her tools to the interplay of caring between “good friends.” To be a good friend to the knives, “clean and replace them in the knife rack after use.” To be a good friend with the counter, “wipe it after use and scrub sometimes.”22 In each case, the utensil was given proper respect, as tools were seen as just as important to the success of food preparation as was the chef. In fact, as part of Zen consideration, Brown downplayed his role as expert in both books. Thus, he could demonstrate the Buddhist goal of humility. Simple recipes further encouraged the reader’s own discovery and exploration of cooking as Buddhist practice. A vegetable was introduced, cutting styles identified, and then cooking options offered. For example, in the case of celery, recipes followed for “Orange Celery Salad,” which called for three stalks of celery, two oranges, one apple, and salt. Or “Quick Fry Celery” called for oil and salt and then instructed: “Slice celery and stir-fry until tender. Sprinkle on some soy sauce if you like and so forth.”23 Brown believed that food should most often be eaten unadorned so that its “life-containing, life-giving quality” could surface.24 Even when it came to rotten vegetables, he saw the plant’s inner potential. Cut off the slimy parts of the zucchini and mash the rest into stewed beans, he advised. With honest concentration and modesty, a chef could transform even the most unappealing of foods into something enjoyable, bringing out their natural goodness. For Brown nature was a realm where humans could find both quiet for meditation and clues to assist satori (enlightenment). Wild nature, because it was unsocialized, was free from the false consciousness and humanly intentions of civilization. Similarly, whole foods, because they were minimally altered by humans, contained the basis of existence, “the germ of life.”25 And maybe, with their undomesticated truthfulness, they even reflected the transcendent. If Brown was a subtle advocate of all things natural, his cookbooks, like other popular Zen texts, were less directly optimistic or pessimistic on the health, economic, and political issues that moved other natural-

f

172  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

foods cookbook writers of the period. Brown identified whole grains as necessary ingredients in bread baking but then concluded, “Don’t let a lack of whole grain products keep you from making bread. Most of the recipes can be made with regular white flour, if necessary.” The ingredients that went into a chef ’s creations seemed less crucial to Brown than whole-hearted immersion in the act of cooking and appreciative delight in the final product. Even when he did betray his biases—for instance, when discussing the lamentable lack of natural whole foods “strikingly unavailable and/or outrageously expensive at most supermarkets”—this pragmatic Buddhist did not follow with a screed on consumer capitalism.26 Applying the fourth noble truth of Buddhism—the “Middle Path,” which warns against extremes in behavior and expectation—Brown assumed an accepting attitude toward all edibles, processed and “natural.”27 Given his nonjudgmental approach, why did he espouse a natural foods, vegetarian diet? Because for Brown this kind of cooking and eating seemed the best way to realize his goal of living in harmony with humanity, nature, and Buddhist wisdom. Knowing the circumstances of mass meat production, where animals lived and died under cruel conditions, Brown was compelled to become a vegetarian. Knowing how America’s capitalist profit motive invested food with commercial value at the expense of human health and welfare, a mindful monk could recommend no less than barring such products. Interestingly, of all the natural-foods cookbook authors discussed, Brown, along with Katzen and Thomas, seems to have made the most lasting impression on America’s cooking and eating habits. In 1979, after his sojourn at Tassajara and in consultation with the world-renowned chef and owner of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters, Brown helped establish the nationally acclaimed Greens restaurant in San Francisco with premier chef Deborah Madison. Madison and Brown went on to coauthor The Greens Cookbook in 1987. Thus, the self-effacing Buddhist monk, who used natural foods to articulate Zen practice at Tassajara in the 1970s, became a major player in developing sophisticated organic vegetarian cookery as the signature cuisine of the Bay area in the 1980s

1

McGrath  173

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

and 1990s—what came to be known nationally as California (or spa) cuisine. Brown’s Buddhist cooking philosophy and vegetarianism would not prohibit this kind of mainstream success because, as he unapologetically noted while considering his commercial and career accomplishments in his 1997 cookbook, Tomato Blessing and Radish Teachings, “Zen in America is not like Zen anywhere else in the world.”28 Developing a balanced, alert approach to cooking and eating, in himself and his students, was Brown’s goal for his cookery books and culinary arts classes. If the consequence of this Zen practice was an economically successful restaurant and cooking career, so be it. Worldly achievement wasn’t inherently bad, according to Brown’s Zen Buddhist doctrine, just an egoistic clinging to the rewards. More people had come in contact with the entirety of his Buddhist alternative worldview once he left the cloistered Tassajara Mountain retreat. And more people may have begun to eat mindfully, solemnly considering the source of the food on their plate and making the “right” decisions from this knowledge. There was something about Brown’s “Middle Path”—some would call it resignation, others peaceful acceptance, others enlightenment— that was appealing to a broad audience from the late 1970s on. Buddhism seemed to respond directly to countercultural charges that modern America was driven by superficial values. Moreover, with Zen meditation, or maybe just honed consciousness, an individual could find release from the treadmill of misspent cravings in the present, without necessarily confronting or changing the existing (and unsatisfying) social structure.

7

5

Creating Natural Foods Connoisseurs: Quality and Craft in Mollie Katzen’s and Anna Thomas’s Vegetarian Whole-Foods Cooking The goal of integrating one’s principles into everyday existence was a conviction shared by the aforementioned natural-foods cookbooks. For the Bloodroot Collective and the women of Laurel’s Kitchen, natural foods were important tools for forging a utopian future. For Mollie Katzen, author of Moosewood Cookbook, and Anna Thomas, author of

f

174  Recipes for a New World

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

The Vegetarian Epicure, by contrast, the pleasure and fulfillment of developing (and eating) first-rate vegetarian meals was the final objective. What they found most lacking in American cuisine was neither feminist consciousness nor family-sustaining values (although they were unequivocally sympathetic and referenced these critiques of modern America in their books), but any genuine appreciation of quality ingredients, any veneration of the pleasure and creativity gained in “from scratch” cooking. Perhaps Katzen’s and Thomas’s soft-pedaling of politics and doctrine was a function of their status as artists—Katzen, a painter, illustrator, and pianist, and Thomas, a documentary filmmaker. They were already predisposed to the idea that a good and rich life was tied to aesthetic gratification. Moreover, they assumed that if everyone engaged in such a life, priorities would be shifted away from empty materialism to the profound pleasures of self-creation through art and craft. Thus, they were more drawn to instant personal fulfillment than the long-term social reconstructions proposed in The Political Palate and Laurel’s Kitchen. They would create a substitute cuisine for those dissatisfied with both the typical American diet and the modern convenience ethic that inspired it. In the 1970s, when many families relied on frozen premade foods, the authors’ culinary refinement, adventurousness, and artisanship were quite nonconformist. The approval of individual creativity comes through noticeably in the most commercially successful natural-foods cookbook of this period, Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook.29 While the Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, New York, was collectively owned and operated, the Moosewood Cookbook was hand-lettered and illustrated by Katzen—very much a product of her own skills and imagination. This cookbook had two main characters: Katzen’s art and vegetarian natural foods. Reflecting on her own experiences at the Moosewood in a New York Times article in October 2002, Katzen considered her dilemma with the communal organization of the restaurant, which she had started with her brother and others in the early 1970s: “I was always in conflict with the counterculture, and I never fit into a collective. My heart was in the idea of sharing, but I found that a creative impulse was best. And that’s a

1

McGrath  175

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

very autocratic impulse, which is not about sharing.”30 Her cookbooks seemed to echo this individualism, as they did not pile too many aspirations onto natural-foods cookery besides aestheticism, culinary excellence, and gastronomic enjoyment. Believing in the good sense of her readers, she allowed the quality of the ingredients and her palpable enthusiasm for an ecologically friendly, plant-based diet to incite their “creative impulses” in cooking and eating vegetarian. Katzen’s love affair with vegetarianism was apparent throughout Moosewood and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (1982), as she waxed poetic on the exciting sensory world opened up by natural foods. Eating arugula was described as a “euphoria producing sensation.”31 A few whiffs of sesame oil made Katzen wonder how “anything can smell so exquisite.”32 Blintz soufflé came with a caution: “Be forewarned, hold on to your chair while consuming Blintz soufflé, or you may find your self transported out of this realm and into Blintz Heaven.”33 Katzen also enchanted readers with tales of what she believed to be the undeniable sensual, psychological, and cultural benefits of cooking from scratch. In the second edition of Moosewood, Katzen recounted the typical American meals of her 1950s childhood: “the minute rice, Campbell’s soups, Velveeta cheese,” and “salad [which] meant iceberg lettuce, hothouse tomatoes and mayonnaise.” Yet every Friday her mother’s kitchen would come alive with the kneading and baking of challah bread for Shabbat. On these days Katzen “was enthralled, and would come in from wherever [she] was playing just in time to help braid it.”34 The Friday challah convinced Katzen that there was something especially satisfying and enriching in baking and cooking from scratch and learning these skills from her mother—particularly when juxtaposed against the rest of the week’s lackluster convenience food preparations. If readers could not claim warm memories of a Jewish mother baking challah, they could gain entrée to this ethnic kitchen culture by following Katzen’s recipes, reading her anecdotes, and committing themselves to the art and craft of home cooking. While she took her craft ethic seriously, on the weighty philosophical questions earnestly pursued by other counterculturalists, Katzen was light and witty. Pondering the culinary synchronicity of noodle-type

f

176  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

doughs existing in nations scattered over the globe (Chinese wonton, Italian ravioli, Jewish kreplach), Katzen dryly commented, “Realizations of this sort can lead us to philosophical reveries about the connectedness of Us All. Or, they can simply lead us to conclude that a resounding majority of human beings just happen to love eating pastry.”35 This antidogmatic self-mockery, this humorous diminution of the gravity of vegetarianism and natural foods, along with flavorsome recipes and whimsical artistry, made Katzen’s books the most widely purchased and republished works within the genre. The Moosewood Cookbook is the only text among the 1970s natural-foods books that holds a position on the New York Times list of top ten best-selling cookbooks in American history, alongside greats such as The Joy of Cooking and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook.36 For Katzen, there was nothing wrong with indulgence, gratification, and consumption, but there was something wrong with the false pleasures of convenience, speed, premade modern cookery, and lifestyles sponsored by General Mills, Duncan Hines, and Swanson frozen foods. This made her critique of status quo food consistent with countercultural calls for more sincere and holistic living, but it also positioned her cookbooks and cuisine within an infant middle-class alternative-foods market that exploded in the 1980s—a far cry from the communal anticapitalism of the Moosewood Restaurant in the early 1970s and closer to Brown’s Greens restaurant in San Francisco. Perhaps Katzen’s departure from the Moosewood Collective, only five years after its opening in 1973, indicates the degree to which she, and others like her, chafed against the requirements of devoted countercultural existence.37 Instead, they traded in the long-term utopian promises of collective businesses and lifestyles for the in-the-moment contentment of self-realization, health, and the more-perfectible realm of sensual pleasure. If Katzen’s natural-foods cooking was only partially connected to leftist concerns with public policy and primarily focused on self-actualization and quality of life, Anna Thomas’s was even more so. After summarizing the health and political issues that motivated the 1970s vegetarian trend and her own plant-based diet, Thomas wrote, introducing The Vegetarian Epicure (1972), “This book is about joy, not pollution. I hope

1

McGrath  177

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

that even if you are still in the habit of eating meat and fish, you will try some of the different ways and means of cooking suggested here. You might find yourself gradually and happily seduced.”38 Reflecting on the impetus for her still very popular cookbooks in a 1996 interview with Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times, Thomas argued, “What I saw were cookbooks about vegetarianism. I didn’t want to write about any kind of ‘ism.’ There’s no percentage in trying to tell anyone how to eat. Everybody finds their own way. Live and let live. But you can offer them delightful choices.”39 And delightful choices she did offer in a vegetarian lifestyle suffused with sophistication and savoir faire. Her model for a “new style of eating” in her first cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure, came primarily from European dining and entertaining. Born in Germany to Polish parents who moved to the United States when she was an infant, Thomas grew up in a family where hosting and serving home-cooked delectables to friends and family were highly valued and regular events. In a move replicated in 1970s America by many young white ethnics and people of color, Thomas reclaimed her familial heritage from the erasure of post–World War II cultural standardization. Cooking, eating, and socializing in the European tradition, she would fashion a more enriching and agreeable cuisine and lifeway than the suburban barbecue and Minute Rice meals of mainstream America. Thomas’s Eurocentrism was abundantly apparent in her first cookery book. Recipes were always introduced as part of multicourse meals, including all the requisite features of French cuisine: an apéritif and hors d’oeuvre starter, a main course, a salad course, desserts, coffee, and an after-dessert fruit or cheese course. Her Europhilia also was exemplified in her fairly unabashed anti-Americanism. Discussing cheeses, Thomas exasperatedly instructed, “Try to know more about [cheese], for there’s a good chance, if you grew up in the average American household, that you have barely made its acquaintance,” having only come in contact with the lowly supermarket variety of “spreads,” “processed cheeses,” and “cheese foods.” In a baldly honest moment, Thomas confessed her outright disdain for the United States’ standard fare: “The sad truth is that America has never really developed a cuisine of her own.” Luck-

f

178  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ily, she believed that there was a “gastronomical movement” under way that would “abandon the often foul and always tedious world of ‘convenience’ preparations and return to the enjoyment of natural foods.”40 Interestingly, Thomas’s definition of natural foods had more to do with European and other non-American culinary traditions than with “mother earth.” “Natural” really meant premodern agrarian lifeways. Examples of this conflation of the premodern with the natural are abundant in The Vegetarian Epicure. The taste of true bread was lost to modern Americans. But “this wasn’t so in earlier times,” Thomas claimed, “when whole grains were coarsely ground between miller’s stones and baked regularly into large richly dark and crusty loaves; bread was still revered as the staff of life.”41 She had to concede that “old world” Europe was threatened and bending to modernization, but there was no country on earth in the 1970s that better represented the “villainy” of modernization than America. Thomas was not alone in her search for a gourmet alternative to the modern diet. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of an American haute cuisine with Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961); James Beard’s American Cookery (1972), named after its famous chefauthor; and periodicals such as Bon Appétit, appearing in 1975, and International Review of Food and Wine, appearing in 1978. Yet Thomas’s vegetarian epicureanism was not simply part of this elite cooking craze. Recipes for “Soybean Croquettes,” “Herbed Soybean Casseroles,” and whole-grain dishes like kasha positioned Thomas’s cooking more with the natural-foods movement (and the global ecological theories behind protein complementarity) than the goose-liver paté gastronomy of Julia Child.42 In addition, references to marijuana smoking, as an appetite enhancer before dinner and relaxant afterward, correlated her lifestyle with the counterculture rather than the high-society habits of James Beard.43 Finally, The Vegetarian Epicure and The Vegetarian Epicure: Book Two (1977), while less politically vocal than The Political Palate or Laurel’s Kitchen, were judgmental of the standard U.S. diet not only for its lack of style but also because America’s premade cuisine was a by-product of the nation’s blind embrace of modernity, efficiency, convenience, mechanization, and conformity.

1

McGrath  179

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

For her middle- and upper-middle-class audience, who had relative affluence and the desire to distinguish themselves from the “uncultivated” mainstream as well as the excesses of the elite, Thomas’s globetrotting cuisine presented a bohemian alternative, not of self-deprivation but of politically inflected vegetarian, natural-foods good living. This model would, like Katzen’s, have long-lasting effect on America’s culinary mores into the twenty-first century.

8

9

5

Ideal Eating: Sustaining Alternatives in Post-1960s Natural-Foods Cookbooks When Thomas and these other authors were publishing their genre-defining cookbooks, their generation’s faith in the ability of the dominant social and political structures to reinvent America had disintegrated. Furthermore, those more inclined to leftist mass politics had ruefully witnessed the 1960s “movement” and counterinstitutions implode. Searching for a speedier realization of their progressive aspirations, they turned to their personal conduct as a possible and legitimate frontier for social renovation and, in some cases, revolution. The ecological and political harmony that Frances Moore Lappé’s vegetarianism promised in Diet for a Small Planet was most certainly never realized. Moreover, the alternative worlds that these 1970s cookbook authors did construct (the radical lesbian enclave of the Bloodroot restaurant; the countercultural bread-baking revolution of Laurel’s Kitchen; the Zen consciousness raising of Brown’s Tassajara books; and most especially the craft and vegetarian gourmet niche of Katzen and Thomas) never presented a serious threat to the capitalist “technocracy” against which they were rebelling, as Warren Belasco has so persuasively argued.44 In fact, much of this movement’s criticism of the standard American diet was folded into organic consumerism, an elite nouvelle cuisine, and popular health consciousness from the 1980s to the present. Nevertheless, these cookbooks do certify how these authors, and their like-minded readers, sustained their countercultural idealism. Indeed, by buying and eating natural vegetarian foods, they endowed their daily consumer choices with spiritual, political, and cultural consequence.

f

180  Recipes for a New World

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Notes 1. The theory of protein complementarity, which was very popular in 1960s and 1970s natural-foods circles, asserts that grains combined with legumes, dairy, vegetables, and seeds yield high protein returns. 2. Francis Bello, “How Good Is Mr. Hurley’s Diet?” Fortune (December 1959): 130. 3. Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971), foreword. 4. For sales figures on each book, see the following: Diet for a Small Planet (sales statistics as found on cover of second edition of Diet for a Small Planet [New York: Ballantine Books, 1975]); Laurel’s Kitchen (Thom Leonard, “Inside Laurel’s Kitchen,” EastWest Journal [January 1986]: 48); Tassajara Bread Book (Barbara Stacy, “Tassajara Cooking,” EastWest Journal [April 1986]: 33); The Moosewood Cookbook (Alex Witchel, “Breakfast as the New Cure All,” New York Times, October 9, 2002, F10); The Vegetarian Epicure (“Books,” http://www.vegetarianepicure.com, [accessed July 27, 2003]). 5. Sherrie Inness, Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001) 12, 10. 6. And indeed, the culinary elite influenced an entire generation, as originally countercultural keywords such as “organic,” “natural,” and “healthy” would seep into the mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s, attached to everything from dishwashing detergent to potato chips. 7. Stephanie Hartman, “The Political Palate: Reading Commune Cookbooks,” Gastronomica 3, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 29. 8. Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition (Petaluma ca: Nilgiri Press, 1976), 61. 9. Laura Shapiro discusses the politicization of the kitchen and middle-class women’s cooking by nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century progressives in Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York: Modern Library Press, 2001), 41. 10. Lewis Mumford, “The Human Prospect” (1962), in Interpretations and Forecasts, 1922–1972 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1979), 463. 11. Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen, 23. 12. Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen, 10. 13. Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey, The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book (New York: Random House, 1984), 73. McGrath  181

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

5

14. Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, 23, 24. 15. Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen, 95, 245, 117. 16. The Bloodroot Collective, The Political Palate (Bridgeport ct: Sanguinaria Press, 1980), 17, 123, 224, 21, 188, xii, 36. 17. The Bloodroot Collective, Political Palate, i. 18. See Timothy Miller, The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1999); and Lucy Horton, Country Commune Cooking (New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1972). 19. The Bloodroot Collective, Political Palate, xii. 20. The Bloodroot Collective, The Second Seasonal Political Palate (Bridgeport ct: Sanguinaria Press, 1984), xix. 21. Noel Furie pondered this dilemma in an interview with Off Our Backs, stating, “I have come up against men who take my ideas and leave me in the dust. That happens a lot for women. I’m aware that in this women’s structure [the Bloodroot Collective], whatever I say is put on the table and it’s looked at by peers, judged by peers, gone over by peers, and so I get a sense of myself within this structure, within this community. It’s very different than the sense of oneself out in the community.” As quoted in Laura Butterbaugh, “OneStop Shopping: Food and Feminism at Bloodroot,” Off Our Backs, no. 11 (December 1997), 3. 22. Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (Berkeley ca: Shambhala Publications, 1973), 242. 23. Brown, Tassajara Cooking, 49. 24. Edward Espe Brown, The Tassajara Bread Book (Boulder co: Shambala Publications, 1970), 7. 25. Brown, Tassajara Bread Book, 6. 26. Brown, Tassajara Bread Book, 6, 11. 27. For more on the Buddhist “Middle Path,” see Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 45. 28. Edward Espe Brown, Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings: Recipes and Reflections (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), xxiii. 29. As of October 2002, Katzen’s cookbook sales with Ten Speed Press—three editions of Moosewood and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and two children’s and one other vegetarian cookbook—reached more than four million. These publishing statistics are derived from the author’s e-mail correspondence with Ten Speed Press publicity director Kristin Bryan on February 3, 2003, and do not take into account Katzen’s cookbooks published with Hyperion,

f

182  Recipes for a New World

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

which increase her total book sales, to date, to more than six million. See the dust jacket of Katzen’s Sunlight Café (New York: Hyperion, 2002) for more details. 30. Witchel, “Breakfast as the New Cure All,” F10. 31. Mollie Katzen, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Berkeley ca: Ten Speed Press, 1982), 80. 32. Mollie Katzen, Moosewood Cookbook, 2nd ed. (Berkeley ca: Ten Speed Press, 1992), xiv. 33. Katzen, Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 156. 34. Katzen, Moosewood Cookbook, 2nd ed., vi. 35. Katzen, Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 147. 36. “What Folks Are Saying about Mollie Katzen,” MollieKatzen.com, http://www. molliekatzen.com./presskit.php/, (accessed June 2, 2003). 37. The Moosewood Restaurant still exists but with no Katzens involved. 38. Anna Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 4. 39. Roger Ebert, “Confessions (with Recipes) of The Vegetarian Epicure,” Chicago Sun Times, July 24, 1996, 2. http://www.vegetarianepicure.com/about/ ebert.html (accessed October 16, 2002). 40. Thomas, Vegetarian Epicure, 195, 228. 41. Thomas, Vegetarian Epicure, 25. 42. Thomas, Vegetarian Epicure, 128, 130, 223. 43. Allusions to unorthodox lifeways faded in her second cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure: Book Two (1977), when the élan of Europe spoke to Thomas more than the “groovy” outsider status of 1960s subcultural America. 44. Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took On the Business Industry, 1966–1988 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989).

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

McGrath  183

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

iii: Strategic Utopias Cooking Up Values for a New World

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

}{

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

9. “This Fatal Cake” The Ideals and Realities of Republican Virtue in Eighteenth-Century America

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

Trudy Eden

1

1

1

1

1

Eighteenth-century America offered, perhaps, the largest and most ambitious American utopian effort of all—the Revolution. Although not usually regarded as such, it was an idealistic movement in which many British colonists sought to eliminate negative and destructive social aspects and legally and informally to mandate new forms of behavior to create a more perfect society. Consideration of the changes that made up what some historians call two revolutions, a political one and a social one, did not start with the French and Indian War, the Stamp Act, or the Declaration of Independence. Long before those events, British American men and women debated and formed opinions on republican ideology in their newspapers, homes, coffeehouses, and clubs.1 Some of the topics discussed in these venues could be targets for church or government censure. As a result, sometimes efforts were made either to conceal the identity of the speaker, as in letters to newspapers signed pseudonymously, or, as occurred in private clubs all over America, to put the controversial topic in a satirical conversational form that often seemed so silly it could not be seriously contested without risking ridicule.2 Many American men formed private clubs that met either in coffeehouses or in homes for social and intellectual purposes. As they sat at tables and shared food and drink, these men, like men

1

187

r

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

throughout the British empire who formed similar clubs, hoped to set a standard by which members could evaluate the temper of their larger society and the progress it had made. Some clubs sought utopian ends, and their members structured the groups like small political units designed to test the strategies for use by their larger society.3 One such society was the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, Maryland. Eight prominent men, four of whom were Scottish immigrants, started the club in 1745: John Bullen, commissioner of the Paper Currency Office; William Cumming Sr., a supporter of the ousted James II, sentenced to Maryland, where he became a lawyer and politician; the Reverend John Gordon; Robert Gordon, a merchant and judge of the Provincial Court; John Lomas, a local merchant; Witham Marshe, soon to become secretary for Indian affairs; William Rogers, chief clerk of the Prerogative Court; and Dr. Alexander Hamilton.4 Hamilton, a Scottish immigrant, served as secretary throughout the club’s existence. His notes of the actual meetings have been published as the Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 1745–56. In addition, Hamilton wrote a satirical version of club activities, The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club. In it he parodied the members’ efforts to work through one of the most pressing social issues of their era, the increasing materialism, referred to as “luxury,” brought about by the nearly rampant consumption of imported British goods.5 Ambitious men, they wished to discuss important events and ideas. They also wanted to eat refined foods and drink numerous liquors. Food and food habits were instrumental in the formulation of the Tuesday Club’s plan as well as in its utter failure in reaching its utopian goals.6 In their eating, drinking, and conversation, members played at republicanism, testing its adequacy for their private world as they created their own laws, elected their leaders, and tried to be the virtuous citizens so necessary to that form of government. Because of its strong connection to virtue, food played a crucial role in this effort to model a republican utopia. According to the scientific worldview of Hamilton’s generation, excessive eating and drinking and/or the consumption of rich foods was the first cause of physical and moral decay in individuals. Such personal corruption among the lead-

f

188  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ers and citizenry of a republic could lead only to political and social disintegration. It should not be surprising, then, that the Tuesday Club’s second law, after the one designating the time and frequency of meetings, strictly regulated the food the members were to eat. The rules the club imposed incorporated a utopian ideology that was set out in 1516 by Thomas More in Utopia and subsequently employed in fictional and nonfictional English literature, including dietaries and New World travel literature. The club members restricted their evening meals and eating habits by forbidding foods like soups, vegetables, pickles, conserves, and desserts. Instead, meetings were to convene on a rotating basis at each of the members’ houses, and the host, who doubled as the steward, was to provide to the members “a gammon of bacon [a ham] or any other dish of dressed vittles and not more.” He could serve liquor until 11 p.m. Hamilton described the first meetings as idyllic affairs where the members lounged freely in chairs or at the table while smoking, drinking, and talking. At some point in the evening, the gammon of bacon “appeared” on a sideboard with “some plates in a heap, knives and forks.” They needed nothing so formal or feminine as a tablecloth. Anyone could get up at his leisure without disturbing others and, with no heed to elaborate table manners, cut himself a slice of bacon to enjoy with his cup and his companions. “How charming, how regular, and how much like the Simple frugality of the Golden age was this,” wrote Hamilton, “and how different from that luxury and profuseness that prevails in most of our moderen Clubs, where, the whole apparatus of a formal table is Introduced.”7 In requiring simplicity of diet, the club employed several centuries of accumulated medical knowledge that tied lapsed morality to physical corruption. The eighteenth-century version of this theory was popularized by “the learned and Ingenious” George Cheyne,8 who presented to his readers a modern mechanical view of human physiology developed by scientists and physicians in the seventeenth century. Animal, including human, bodies, he declared, were simply conglomerations of pipes through which “juices” ran. Good health, of which virtue was the crucial consequence, came from the free flow of those juices promoted by

1

Eden  189

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

vigorous exercise and easily digested, good-quality foods. As Cheyne put it, “There is nothing more certain, than that the greater Superiority the concoctive [digestive] Powers have, over the Food, or the stronger the concoctive Powers are, in regard of the Things to be concocted; the finer the Chyle9 will be, the Circulation the more free, and the spirits more lightsome; that is, the better will the Health be.” This regimen kept the “pipes” firm and able to speed the flow of the juices through the body. Corruption occurred when the juices stagnated or stopped altogether, a result of the stomach’s inability to digest properly its contents because of the excessive quantity and/or the unsuitable quality of the foods it received.10 Although he described the digestive system as a plumber might, Cheyne remained well aware of at least one great difference between humans and hardware: their all-powerful appetites. Few people could have provided a more vivid example of the effects of wanton eating on the body, mind, and spirit than Cheyne did in his personal experience, an example that the members of the Tuesday Club clearly could not mimic if they wished their republican utopia to be successful. As a young man, Cheyne’s “club” met in coffeehouses, where he spent his days in idle and excessive behavior. He ate too many rich foods and drank too much wine. His morals failed, his value as a physician declined, and he gained so much weight (at one point it reached 448 pounds) that he could walk only a short distance before he had to sit down. The adoption of his spare diet worked a miracle and returned his virtue and his health. However, still a young man, he lapsed into his old habits and fell into his former state. Eventually, however, he found the courage and conviction to resume his regimen and regain his virtue once more.11 Declaring that he battled “the devil, the world and the flesh,” Cheyne characterized foods as either evil or good, characteristics that eaters readily assimilated. Malevolent foods caused problems because they sped up the circulation of the juices through the pipes to unnatural and dangerous rates. They were those foods that took the longest to mature, were larger, and “abound[ed] in oily, fat and glutinous substance.” They tasted strong, moved the body in irrepressible ways, and ruined one’s health. Red meats, like venison and beef; fruits and vegetables that re-

f

190  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

quired an entire growing season to mature, like apples, grapes, squash, and watermelon; potent dark wines; and all distilled liquors fell squarely within this group. Against these enemies to health, Cheyne lined up an impressive array of beneficents. He portrayed them as gastronomic angels, white, cooling, “mild, soft and sweet,” and capable of providing calming, cleansing relief. Vegetables and meats that matured early, preferably in the spring, comprised this coterie. Their tender white flesh smothered the body’s heat, reviving the tissues of the glutton and returning them to health. Lettuces, asparagus, parsnips, potatoes, veal, rabbit, and chicken, among other foods, sufficed for those whose conditions had not gotten too far out of hand. They were to be eaten plain, without salt, sauces, spices, or pickling, because, according to Cheyne, “Made Dishes, rich Soop, high Sauces, Baking, Smoaking, Salting, and Pickling are the Inventions of Luxury, to force an unnatural Appetite, and encrease the Load.”12 Cheyne’s heavy-handed infusion of food with morality was not novel. One constant throughout the history of nutrition in Western civilization was that physical, moral, and mental health depended on the balance of several factors, the most important of which was the quantity and quality of food with the expenditure of energy. No person should eat more food than he or she needed to perform one’s daily tasks; nor should he or she eat less. The quantity of food a person required depended on one’s age, sex, nature, and strength, where one lived, and particularly the amount of exercise one received. Cheyne suggested eight ounces of meat, twelve ounces of bread and vegetables combined, and about a pint of wine or other generous liquor per day for men of ordinary stature and activity living in northern climates. However, he cautioned, “Studious and Sedentary Men must of Necessity eat and drink a great deal less, if, in any wise, they indulge in Freedom of Living, their Juices must necessarily become viscid, and their Stomachs relaxed. He that would have a clear Head must have a clean Stomach.”13 Of course, the Tuesday Club’s founding members fit into the latter category. Not relying on their judicious control of their appetites, they limited the food and drink available to assure that none of them, at least at their weekly meetings, would follow in the footsteps of the young

1

Eden  191

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Cheyne to moral and physical decay. Such a decline could only destroy their fledgling utopian republic, because a society with morally corrupt individuals was bound to have social and political corruption as well. At the crux of physical, moral, social, and political corruption, then, was the stomach, conceived of as an apparatus that had to have enough food when necessary but never too much, and the appetite, one of the wiliest and most uncontrollable aspects of human nature. Corruption could be eliminated only if a balance could be struck between the two. Thomas More had solved the problem in Utopia with a communal food distribution system in which the commonwealth distributed foods to extended households in quantities large enough to meet their needs. Individual families within the household could eat privately, but common meals required much less labor and fewer resources to feed the same number of people. A “brazen trumpet” called everyone in Utopia to their meals, in which they received “enough” to eat. Although gluttony was then one of the seven deadly sins, More eliminated it in Utopia, showing great faith that Utopians would favor their good sense over their unruly appetites. When an incredulous traveler asked a resident of Utopia, “Howbeit, no man is prohibited or forbid, after the halls be served, to fetch home meat out of the market to his own house?” he received the reply, “For they know that no man will do it without a cause reasonable. For though no man be prohibited to dine at home, yet no man doth it willingly because it is counted a point of small honesty. And also it were a folly to take the pain to dress a bad dinner at home, when they may be welcome to good and fine fare so nigh at the hall.”14 In this detail, More relied on the dietary wisdom of his time, which guaranteed that anyone who ate the right foods in the proper quantities would attain virtue. Because Utopian authorities controlled the exercise and food intake of all of their residents, they could easily guide their citizens to virtue. Once there, no more controls were needed because, according to contemporary science, every virtuous person possessed a flawless appetite.15 More, following Plato, applied this dietary rule to the social body as well. Just as the key to a healthy body was a proper balance between exercise expended and food received, a healthy society needed a bal-

f

192  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ance between the labor individual citizens expended and the material goods they received. Utopians believed that numerous social ills arose from an unequal ratio of goods to labor. More used England as an example of how such an imbalance caused so many evils. England executed men for stealing, a punishment that far exceeded the crime. People stole because they had no other way to support themselves. The reason they could not do so stemmed from the disproportionate ratio of labor to property ownership. A small number of lords in England owned much of the available land. They themselves did not labor but, instead, employed numerous people to do it for them. When the landowners wanted more goods, they simply paid their laborers less or increased their amount of work. Furthermore, the lords provided for numerous supporters who also remained idle unless a war occurred. When their patron died, they found themselves without the skills to support themselves and became a drain on society.16 As stated by Frank and Fritzi Manuel, the key problem in any utopia is how to strike a balance between the true needs of a society and the amount of labor expended to supply those needs. More’s utopian society easily maintained the balance between exertion of labor and distribution of material goods, of which food was foremost. Showing an impressive command of mind over matter, members accepted their labor assignments and the foods they received cheerfully and would never violate that arrangement to satisfy any desire they may have for false pleasures.17 The Tuesday Club attempted to achieve the same balances in its domain. Acknowledging that their meetings would require little in the way of physical effort, they limited the amount and type of food they would receive to a ham or one simple meat dish. No one was to expend more labor than did his comembers in providing for the club, and, because the one ham had to be divided among many attendees, no one person would take (or, as in Utopia, would want to take) more than he needed. They dispensed with the time-consuming and work-intensive tablecloths, table manners, table settings, polite table talk, multicourse meals, and hostesses who provided the goods and enforced the rules. Their solution, then, was to eliminate as much labor as required and cut back the type and amount of food to an equilibrious minimum.

1

Eden  193

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Such simplicity did not please one of the club members, Charles Cole, whom Hamilton nicknamed Nasifer Jole. An English merchant, Jole’s golden rule was to buy cheap and sell at a 300 percent profit. A lifelong bachelor who showed no interest in women and lived with numerous cats, he cooked expertly and extravagantly and, unlike any other Tuesday Club members, displayed numerous feminine attributes. Jole knew “as well as any husiff [housewife], how to stew a frecassé or ragout, mix, compound, boil or bake a pudding, or raise a pasty.” Club members and others acknowledged his accomplishments in this area with high praise, which fed one of Jole’s weaknesses, his “luxuriant Slip of vanity.” According to Hamilton, although Jole remained “pritty tenacious” of most of his property (in other words, he was stingy), when it came to getting compliments about his cooking, “he would spare no expence in making a Show with such delicacies, and dainties, and any hungry fellow or abondon’d Epicure, might get a good meal out of him, as often as he pleased, by only praising his Cookery.” He also had “elegant taste” in all of the domestic arts, from interior decorating to cutting paper fly decoys, gardening and arranging nosegays, and designing and cutting out patterns for his clothes.18 The first time Jole served as steward, he openly violated the Tuesday Club’s second law by giving the members arrack, an expensive liquor distilled from rice, sugar, and coconut juice imported from the East Indies. After “bewitching” the members with it, he ushered them into a large room “elegantly spread, the cloth and napkins nicely pinched, and perfumed Sweetly with Lavander and roses, and several elegant dishes of meat, were curiously Ranged on this Table.” No one objected and everyone ate what Jole served. The next time he hosted the club, Jole added to the members’ meal an iced cake “curiously wrap’d up in clean white paper.” Hamilton believed that this cake, like the apple in Eden, was the Tuesday Club’s downfall. “This Cake, this fatal Cake,” lamented Hamilton, “Completed the Catastrophe of the Clubs liberty, and, as Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, for fair words and a mess of porridge, so this unhappy Club, bartered their Liberty to Nasifer Jole Esqr, for an old Song, Rack punch, plumb pudding, four pounds of Candles, and a Iced Cake!”19

f

194  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Within just a few months, however, the club rallied and exhibited what Hamilton called “an Instance of heroic temperance and moderation, much like that of a certain Roman General; who, when foreign ambassadors came to have audience of him, was busied in boiling a turnip for his own Dinner.” Some of the unmarried members other than Jole had difficulty in performing their steward’s duties because they had neither wives nor cooks nor even, in some cases, “[any]thing for Cooks to lick their fingers upon.” The members believed that these bachelors had to go to much more trouble to steward a meeting than did their married fellows. This extra labor meant that some in their community worked more than others, tilting the harmony the club thought it had achieved between exercise and food received and between labor expended and goods distributed. It portended corruption. To forestall decay and restore an even keel to their fledgling community, members allowed bachelors to provide a cheese instead of a “dish of dressed vittles.”20 This new rule displeased Nasifer Jole. In an attempt to show that simplicity and egality were not the same, Jole proposed that cheese be removed from the list of suitable supper items because cheese never had been, and never would be, considered equal to a dish of “dressed vittles.” Rather, it was usually eaten as a relish or a dessert. Because of this, Jole claimed, the original cheese law was void and “repugnant” to the “liberty” of the club. The members approved the new law and no one ever served cheese again. However, although they maintained a balance among their foods, members found themselves once again demanding more labor of their few bachelors than they did of the married members, because even acquiring a cheese was more energy than the married members, whose wives made all of the preparations for the club dinners, had to exert. To solve this dilemma, the men simply refused to allow any more new unmarried members into their club.21 Jole evoked his influence over the club a third time when members had to elect a new president. The selection of leaders in utopian communities, according to Manuel and Manuel, is based on the individual’s high degree of goodness and learning.22 The club had similar hopes for its leadership. However, when the time for the election arrived, the men hastily elected Jole their long-term president. Hamilton felt sure

1

Eden  195

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

that Jole won the position because of his skills in cookery and persuasion, although he did also concede that Jole was an intelligent, tolerant, and patient man. But with him as its leader, as Hamilton told it, the club sank deeper and deeper into luxury and consequently physical, moral, and political corruption. When he hosted meetings, the president continued to entertain lavishly. He coerced the members into buying luxurious, overpriced items from him. Other members attempted to duplicate or outdo his successes. They forgot the one-dish law and began to meet biweekly because the effort and expense of weekly meetings taxed them physically and financially, completely throwing askew their goals of simplicity and temperance.23 Yet some members did not thoroughly wallow in this puddle of corruption. On one evening the appointed steward, whom Hamilton nicknamed Quirpum Comic Esqr., served a modest dish of hominy grits, what early Americans simply called hominy. Immediately after the meal, another one of the members, Sir John, a knight and champion of the club, objected to the presentation of this Amerindian dish as substandard fare for gentlemen such as they. The “Orator” jumped to his feet, apologized to the steward for the insult, and pronounced hominy wholesome, simple, and easily digestible. He recalled the ancient days when men lived long, happy, and healthy lives because they ate plain food with “no high Spices, no devlish Caustic or Sophisticated Sauces [that] contaminated and Corrupted their Taste.” It was before “the monstrous and hellish compositions of moderen Cookery, had contaminated and polluted their kitchens before [the Devil] to[ok] it in his head to send cooks to poison [mankind].” He proclaimed hominy the dish of royalty, Indian royalty who resembled other monarchs around the world except in their distaste for luxury, ambition, and good food. Furthermore, the word hominy (spelled “homony” by Hamilton) derived from Latin words meaning “man” and “the only,” which indicated that it was the only food for man. Finally, the Orator stressed that simplicity of diet had long been believed by antediluvians to be the key to longevity. He urged his fellow members to have more respect for hominy, eat it, and live to be nine hundred or one thousand years old.24 The majority

f

196  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

of club members either slept through this passionate defense of hominy or forgot it along with the passing effects of their punch bowls. Although the Orator’s conclusion overstated the case, Anglo-Americans of all social levels in the mid-eighteenth-century Chesapeake did eat the highly processed maize dish. It required time-consuming preparation that greatly changed the taste and character of the Indian corn from which it was made. It was not simply cornmeal mush. Cooks shelled the corn and scalded it in water and wood ashes or lye to separate the hulls and to remove the germ, the live part of the kernel. They dried the kernels and boiled them a second time. Before serving it they ground the dried kernels, if they wanted hominy grits, and cooked them a third time.25 The end product resembled an English potage.26 Chesapeake colonists did not refer to it as corn, Indian corn, or cornmeal mush, only as hominy, suggesting that they considered it to be a different product. Of course, being hulled, degerminated, twice dried, and boiled, it was.27 As they began to create their own American identity during the mid-eighteenth century, colonists adopted the native food as symbolic of their identity as British Americans. Nothing states this better than the “ode” of the Homony Club, an Annapolis successor to the Tuesday Club, which pronounced hominy the ruler over luxury, gluttony, and Epicureanism.28 Hominy may have been acceptable to club members on six days of the week, but not on Tuesday, when they demanded the elaborate suppers to which Nasifer Jole had introduced them. Hamilton portrayed Jole as the old-fashioned temptress, the Eve in their paradise. He possessed all the skills and interests of the women in the Tuesday Club’s world, or perhaps it would be more precise to say the women behind the Tuesday Club’s world. He made delicious foods because he enjoyed cooking and then pressed them on right-minded men, leading them to sin and corruption just for the sake of his own pleasure and ravenous ego. In addition, in that new and rapidly changing age, Jole partook of luxury in every way he could. While he overfed his companions, he also prodigiously consumed material goods. Designing his own clothes required fabric, not simple homespun but more extravagant yardage to

1

Eden  197

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

create ensembles such as the one he wore shortly after being elected president. Wrote Hamilton,

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

[Jole] made his appearance, in a flaming Suit of Scarlet, a magnificent hat, bound round with massy Scolloped Silver lace, a fine large and full fair wig, white kid Gloves, with a gold headed cane, and I cannot be certain whether or not he had a Silver hilted Sword, with a beautiful Sword knot of Ribbons, white Silk Stockings rolld, large Shining Silver Shoe buckles, his coat and vest edged round with gold twist, the buttons gold & gilt spangles, the button holes trimmed with gold and several brilliant rings upon his fingers, his Shoes shining like a looking glass.29

3

5

To serve elaborate meals, Jole needed dishes, flatware, tablecloths, candlesticks, and numerous other paraphernalia, including cooking pots, bowls, and utensils. To decorate his house, he needed furniture, paint, wall coverings, draperies, bed linens, rugs, and wall decorations. And then there was his garden. One can only guess that his was not a simple vegetable garden but one comparable to the most beautifully designed and elaborately ornamented gardens in Annapolis.30 Jole seems to be the epitome of luxury, one who tipped the utopian golden balance. But is he really the corruption incarnate he appears to be, an Eve in the shape of a man? If he did all of the work—if he decorated his house, gardened, cooked for himself and the club, and cleaned up after them, including emptying the chamber pot they kept in the dining room so they wouldn’t have to go outside to relieve themselves— wouldn’t he be entitled to the reward? Otherwise, he would have been like a servant or slave who labored constantly with little or no compensation. If anything, Jole should be looked at as a sort of savior of the club because he introduced social competition, the very thing to keep the labor–material goods ratio balanced. Soon after he had entertained his fellow members in his lavish fashion, other members began to follow suit. Although they also consumed more, they worked more as well. As a result, what threatened to be corruption brought about by excessive consumption ended up being a homegrown corollary of Sir Bernard

f

198  “This Fatal Cake”

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Mandeville’s economic theory: free-flowing commerce, the circulation of goods, eliminated social and political corruption.31 In fact, the club did not go back to its simple ways. In his satire, Hamilton indicates it was an impossible task because of the nature of human beings. Hamilton believed that instead of food controlling the nature of the person upon ingestion, a person’s nature commanded what foods he ate. Therefore, one could identify the character of a person by studying his appetite. The variety of men, he claimed, was limited to two different kinds: those who believed in following a frugal life of simplicity and those who desired a more elaborate lifestyle. To him, biology determined preference. He relayed this belief through a story. In earlier times, the club had had two parties, the Royalists and the Levelers. The Royalists, supporters of “kingly government,” were “stout Toapers” who gave the crown of their kingdom to the man who could down a gallon of beer. They feared sudden changes in custom and intensely believed that perseverance produced results. They put their faith in ancient authorities who told of Persians who ate only once a week and men who “by force of custom” lived exclusively on cable ropes, candle ends, and flint stones, all without being hurt. The Levellers, who could not command such performances among their ranks, protested that men could not design their mouths, throats, or stomachs, and that the kingship should be held in turns by each member. That way, every member could eat and drink however much he wanted.32 Through their eating habits and food debates, the men of the Tuesday Club worked through two crucial aspects of the luxury issue of their age, one physiological and the other commercial. The first was the relationship between food and virtue. Did the consumption of excessively rich foods, Cheyne’s flesh inflamers, cause physical and moral corruption as Cheyne insisted, or did corruption arise only from the overconsumption of those foods or any foods? These same questions applied to the social body. Did the consumption of luxury items lead to social corruption, or was it simply overconsumption? Although Hamilton poked fun at those people who attached too many hopes to an overly simple diet, he did not dispense with the idea that overeating was the first step to physical, moral, and political cor-

1

Eden  199

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

ruption. Other members of the revolutionary generation, such as Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Jefferson, held such beliefs as well. To them, good health depended on a person’s mental condition, which could flourish only in an enduring, equable, and well-ordered political structure. Health, disease, political organization, and economic structure were inextricably linked. In Inquiry into the Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North America, Rush wrote that a free society remained a healthy society because freedom encouraged agriculture, which provided an abundance of proper nutrition. Diseases that disfigured and corrupted the body always appeared with political slavery. Civilization per se did not cause illnesses among men as many surmised. Rather, the combination of civilization and lack of civil liberty did. These men also endorsed Hamilton’s belief that men were biologically of two kinds, which explained the need for two political parties.33 Like Hamilton, they thought those two types of men could be identified by their eating habits. The word “utopia” means nowhere, a definition that the Tuesday Club had to learn through its experiences. In the elusive world of the club, members were able to learn lessons about the nature of a commonwealth and the virtuousness of its citizens. Not everyone could or would live a frugal, simple existence. Human appetite, no matter what Thomas More had hoped, would always succumb to temptation. But not all human appetites ran rampant. Some people just did not care for a luxurious diet or lifestyle and easily lived and ate sparingly. Although the Tuesday Club learned that the arrival of Tuesday did not guarantee a once-a-week utopia, the meetings did offer assurance that they and their young American society would survive the changing, at times threatening, world in which they lived.

9

0

1

Notes

5

1. Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge ma: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). 2. David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), xx, 177. 3. Robert Micklus, The Comic Genius of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (Knoxville:

f

200  “This Fatal Cake”

2

3

4

University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 24–25, 34; Shields, Civil Tongues, 181–82. 4. Dr. Alexander Hamilton, The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club, ed. Robert Micklus (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 1:xix. 5. Timothy H. Breed, “’Baubles of Britain’: The American Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 119 (1988): 73–104. See also John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (New York: Routledge, 1993). 6. Elaine G. Breslaw, ed., Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 1745–56 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); and Frank and Fritzi Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge ma: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979), 123. 7. Hamilton, History 1:125–27, 130–31. 8. Hamilton, History 1:35. 9. Chyle was the milky white product of digestion that the liver refined and sent through the veins to nourish all body parts. 10. George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life (London, 1724), 27, 19–20. 11. George Cheyne, An Essay on Regimen (London, 1740), ii. For a complete analysis of the life of Cheyne, see Anita Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000). 12. Cheyne, Essay of Health, v, 22–23, 26, 28–29, 30–31, 73. 13. Cheyne, Essay of Health, 33–34. 14. Susan Bruce, ed., Three Modern Utopias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 65. 15. Galen, Selected Works, trans. P. N. Singer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 85, 233, 292, 349. 16. Bruce, Three Modern Utopias, 19–24. 17. Manuel and Manuel, Utopian Thought, 129–30. 18. Hamilton, History 1:136–38. 19. Hamilton, History 1:173. 20. Hamilton, History 1:130. 21. Hamilton, History 1:150; Breslaw, Records, 13. 22. Manuel and Manuel, Utopian Thought, 124. 23. Hamilton, History 1:54, 171, 212.

1

Eden  201

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

24. Hamilton, History 2:207–8. 25. John F. Mariani, The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (New Haven ct: Ticknor and Fields, 1983), s.v. “hominy”; Audrey H. Ensminger et al., Foods and Nutrition Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Boca Raton fl: crc Press, 1994), s.v. “corn.” 26. C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1991), 210–15. 27. Because the colonists evaluated nutritiousness by taste and texture, they could have believed the process also increased the nutritive value as well. 28. “Ode to the Homony Club,” January 23, 1773, “Papers of the Homony Club,” Gilmore Papers, Maryland Historical Society ms 387.1, 1773. For creole populations to identify their new sense of nationality with a food was not unusual. See Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales!: Food and the Making of Mexican National Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). 29. Hamilton, History 1:190. 30. See Barbara Wells Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700– 1805 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 31. For another discussion of the subject of luxury and the Tuesday Club, see Robert Micklus, “‘The History of the Tuesday Club’: A Mock-Jeremiad of the Colonial South,” series 3, William and Mary Quarterly 40 (1983): 42–61. 32. Hamilton, History 1:88. 33. George Rosen, “Political Order and Human Health in Jeffersonian Thought,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26 (1952): 32–44. Rosen included Thomas Paine, Joel Barlow, and David Rittenhouse among the men in the Jeffersonian circle who endorsed this philosophy.

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

202  “This Fatal Cake”

1

2

10. “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl” The Evolution and Meaning of the “Spread” at Northern Women’s Colleges, 1870–1910 Priscilla J. Brewer

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

The utility and propriety of female higher education were vigorously debated in post–Civil War America. Proponents envisioned legions of enlightened women whose work, especially as teachers, mothers, and civic volunteers, would ameliorate the harsh social and economic conditions of the industrial age. “The Higher Education of Women,” announced Wellesley founder Henry Fowle Durant in 1875, “is one of the great world battle cries for Freedom, for right against might. . . . I believe God’s hand is in it; that it is one of the great ocean currents of Christian civilization.”1 The goal, as expressed by Smith’s president L. Clark Seelye, was “not . . . to fit woman for any particular sphere . . . but to develop . . . all her intellectual capacities, so that she may be a more perfect woman.”2 And all this, Vassar founder Matthew Vassar asserted, “may be fully accomplished within the rational limits of true womanliness.”3 Many of Durant, Seelye, and Vassar’s countrymen were skeptical, however, fearing that collegiate training would defeminize young women and weaken the family. “It is very well to talk of elevating the usefulness of woman,” one letter writer sniffed to the New York Times in 1871, “but the domestic duties must come as the foundation-stone to every

1

203

r

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

girl.”4 The editors of the paper concurred, sharing other concerns as well. “Woman’s career is not the same as man’s,” they opined. “Her physical powers are not equal to his, her inherited capacities are dissimilar, and possibly her mental bent is quite different.” They disliked the “boldness” and “want of refinement” supposedly evinced by female students and feared that “overcrowded,” “defectively planned” colleges such as Vassar “would wear off something of the grace and sweetness, the highest charm of women.” “It is very clear,” they concluded, “that our young women cannot safely do such work as is regularly required in our best colleges.”5 Rev. John Todd was even more worried. “Now that we have taken women in hand,” he warned in 1867, “we are in danger of educating her into the grave; taking her out of her own beautiful, honored sphere, and making her into an hermaphrodite, instead of what God made her to be.”6 Dr. Edward H. Clarke of Harvard shared Todd’s anxiety. In the widely read Sex in Education (1873), he asserted that the “educational methods of our schools and colleges for girls are, to a large extent, the cause of ‘the thousand ills’ that beset American women.” He identified many problems, among them “irrational cooking,” “indigestible diet,” and the girls’ own fondness for “unassimilable abominations.”7 Control a young woman’s food, he intimated, and you could protect her future, safeguarding her crucial contributions to both family and society. Although they vigorously disagreed with Clarke about the dangers of advanced education for young women, founders of northern women’s colleges typically shared his views about the necessity of supervising students’ diet. After all, they needed to prove that the rigors of college would enhance, not undermine, the health of the nation’s future mothers. Some students, too, agreed that strict regulation of foodstuffs was necessary. Others, however, objected to being treated like children and willfully violated the dietary rules. Soon students developed a new culinary tradition: the illicit “spread.”8 These after-hours feasts, typically comprised of cake, nuts, pickles, and a “main course” of Welsh rarebit or fudge prepared in a chafing dish, were a declaration of autonomy, but one carefully contained within the traditions of female domesticity. Thus, female collegians balanced competing challenges: they demon-

f

204  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

strated their independence without threatening conventional gender roles. Food proved contentious at women’s colleges from the beginning. In 1877 Wellesley officials observed that “the prevailing delicacy of health in American girls excites just alarm” and promised reforms, including “simple and nourishing food at regular hours.”9 To that end, students were “pledged in honor neither to buy, receive nor appropriate in any manner whatever, any confectionery or eatables of any kind not provided for them by the College at regular meals.”10 Those who violated the ban faced serious consequences. In 1877, for example, Alice Gould was suspended, in part for walking to a neighboring town and buying a pound of candy.11 Five years later Maud Dean was “publicly censured . . . for general non-conformance to rules,” including the prohibition against “having eatibles [sic] in her room.”12 Wellesley students were divided over the wisdom of the restrictions. Louise Edwards reported to her family in 1877 that “so much has been said on the subject of eating between meals that most of the girls would as soon almost take poison as to do it.”13 In 1879 one anonymous student, who had received some fudge as a present, kept it in her trunk in the attic until the end of the term.14 The next year the freshman Helen Barrett dutifully handed over to her corridor teachers some apples her father had sent her.15 Sometimes, however, temptation proved too strong to resist. Elizabeth Wallace of the class of 1886 recalled the glee with which she and her friends began devouring a Thanksgiving feast that had been sent to her roommate in a box “under the slight camouflage” of a layer of underwear. Halfway through, they realized the enormity of what they were doing, so several of them snuck outdoors under cover of darkness to bury the leftovers.16 Less scrupulous students sought ways to circumvent the rules. In 1883 the Wellesley freshman Clara Capron complained of persistent headaches to the college physician, who had the authority to sanction eating fruit between meals. With the permission granted, Capron planned to buy a pound of grapes to keep in her room. “Do not be alarmed,” she wrote home. “I have not had any more headaches than usual, but I did not think a little fruit would hurt me, so I thought I

1

Brewer  205

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

would work on her sympathies.”17 Hattie Savage, a student at Mount Holyoke (which had similar regulations), was more bold. In 1876 she decided not to turn in a box of cake, cookies, and raisins sent to her by her sister because, technically, the treats had not come from her home.18 The Wellesley sophomore Frances Robinson did not even bother to rationalize her misconduct. “Mr. Durant said that if a girl ate any fruit in her room they would expel her,” she informed her mother in 1879. “I have some grapes, peaches and pears in my room and what is more I’m going to eat them,” she announced defiantly.19 A few months later, after her father had visited and left her some illegal chocolate creams, she reiterated her contempt for the rules. Her roommate worried that they would be suspended if they were caught eating in their room, but Frances replied, “Dear me, I don’t care. I look out and keep them in a safe place and deliberately devour at my pleasure.”20 Robinson’s cavalier attitude was more common at Vassar, which had more liberal regulations. It seems likely, in fact, that it was Vassar students who “invented” the “college girl spread,” a function characterized by a more elaborate menu and a larger number of guests than the impromptu fruit and candy snacking described above. In 1870 an anonymous student cheerfully reported in a letter home that she and her friends had had what she called a “blow-out” the previous Saturday night. “We scoured the wash-bowl to hold the lemonade,” she explained. “Etta took my pearl-handled pen knife and with the soap dish for a mallet cut a hole in a can of sardines, then we washed out the soap dish and made it the receptacle of lemon juice and the fish.”21 “Don’t think we eat too much,” she noted reassuringly in another letter home. “I ought to be more careful to explain about our spreads perhaps,” she continued, “but there are so many of us, none gets overcharged.”22 By the 1880s the spread had become an institution at northern women’s colleges, one that students felt comfortable about publicizing despite its often illicit character. In 1887, for example, the Vassar senior Louise Smith wrote a lively description of collegiate social life for Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. “Dearer to the heart of college students than all public occasions . . . are the cosey [sic] private spreads,” she reported. She then went on to describe what had by then become con-

f

206  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ventions. First, the ideal spread had to be after lights-out to give it an air of mystery, “with blinds shut and curtains drawn, and a gossamer water-proof draped carefully over the transom.” Second, the equipment and bill of fare were a “medley” of contributions from the different participants. Using a “miscellaneous collection of plates, saucers, glasses, [and] a cup or two,” the girls in Smith’s account consumed “a loaf of bread, a bag of crackers, pots of deviled ham and jelly, [and] a bottle of olives.” The centerpiece was an oyster soup cooked in a tin basin over the gas flame of a dormitory drop-light. The excitement came from the food, the fellowship, and the possibility of being caught by the authorities. After exchanging college news and “harrowing ghost-stories,” the friends departed “with a reckless declaration that they have had enough fun to pay for a whole week’s flunks.”23 Three years later the Wellesley senior Theodora Kyle published a short story with a similar theme in the Wellesley Prelude. Her two heroines, who “habitually” break rules, are visited by an “eerie, black-draped ghost who quotes the rule book to them and scares them into reforming.” What “wicked” things had they done? “They did not, I blush to say, at ten o’clock promptly extinguish their lights and retire. On the contrary, they had the pernicious practise [sic] of draping their transoms with sombre [sic] gossamers, hermetically sealing their blinds and studying. . . . And worse than that—wait! I’ll whisper it—it is rumored that they used to have high feasting and revelry besides, and even went as far as to devour crackers!—and olives!—and jam!!!”24 Kyle’s tone is irreverent, even a bit confrontational, suggesting growing student dissatisfaction with rules increasingly seen as more suited to a boarding school than to a women’s college. The next year the editors of the Prelude called for more, not less, collegiate social life. Although they did not mention spreads by name, they believed that “a good time to look forward to and to look back upon” was necessary for “relieving the monotony” of academic work. “To the social and intellectual development, such relaxation is valuable,” they insisted.25 Records of student expenses demonstrate the growing incidence of food purchases at Wellesley in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1884–85, for example, the freshman Elizabeth Peckham bought candy, ice cream, and

1

Brewer  207

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

a lemon.26 Three years later the junior Ruth Abbott purchased candy, apples, a lemon, and jelly.27 But it is the accounts kept by Louise McDowell of the class of 1898 that most fully document the growing popularity of the full-fledged spread. During her senior year, McDowell bought crackers and candy on several occasions, but other entries point to more elaborate festivities. She twice bought “alcohol” for her chafing dish, and she regularly purchased chocolate, butter, nuts, and condensed milk, presumably ingredients for fudge. One entry, for May 6, 1898, even noted ten cents contributed for a spread.28 As spreads became more complex, the equipment needed for student rooms grew more sophisticated. In 1893 Lida Rose McCabe noted that “an indispensable adjunct of every [college] girl’s room . . . is the dainty tea-table with swinging kettle, snowy dimity, aesthetic china and souvenir spoons. To entertain,” McCabe explained, “is the ambition of every girl.”29 By 1909 according to Martha Cutler, who gave readers of Harper’s Bazaar advice on “how to furnish a college room,” facilities for in-room festivities had become even more elaborate. “If the room is to be made attractive and livable,” she remarked, “it means bringing from home or buying . . . a tea-table [and] a small stand with cupboards for holding the inevitable chafing-dish and acting as the larder.”30 The transformation of female students’ entertainment habits was in tune with a significant shift in American culinary practice, what Harvey Levenstein has called a “new fascination with sophisticated food.” After 1880, “armed with new technology, the middle classes were able to use their kitchens and dining rooms in the never-ending struggle to secure or elevate their . . . status.”31 As Laura Shapiro has noted, the turn-ofthe-century period saw a proliferation of “cooking magazines, cooking columns in newspapers, cooking clubs, cooking schools, training programs for cooking teachers, [and] cookbooks of every size and style.” What Shapiro calls “decorative cooking” was particularly in vogue, in which hostesses awed their guests with elaborately prepared dainties often organized around a single theme or color scheme. The hallmark of “aesthetically correct cookery” was the chafing dish, which made cooking a “tidy and refined” art suitable for ladies instead of dirty drudgery previously consigned to a domestic servant.32

f

208  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Female college students fully sympathized with this change in American cooking. Their letters home often included requests for items to be used for entertaining. In 1898, for example, the Wellesley freshman Elizabeth Manwaring asked her parents for a chafing dish. “The . . . [one] Mae Rice has is a three pint one,” she added, “and I think that is the best size. It is nickel plated, I suppose. I have seen no agate ones here . . . , but have read in Mrs. Rorer or somewhere that they were best. It doesn’t matter in particular; the nickel ones are prettier.” Manwaring went on to ask if a tea table could be sent to her from home or whether she should buy a bamboo one in Boston. “They are only a dollar and a half,” she concluded.33 The Vassar freshman Mildred Allen also made sure her room was properly outfitted. In September 1912 she delightedly wrote her father about the new furniture she had just bought. She admired the “lovely brand new desk” and the practical “brown screen,” but she was particularly pleased with the “cunning little tea table,” which, she gushed, “gives the final touch of style to my room.” 34 As the year progressed she identified other needs. In January she wrote her mother, “There is one thing which almost seems necessary to me for my table, and that is something to hold my tea ball. For if I have two kinds of crackers, fudge, orange peel, lemon, and five guests I have nothing to put my tea ball on when I have finished serving.” “Some of the girls have a glass thing, on the order of an egg cup without handles,” she went on. “If thee could get me something like that, for a dollar or a dollar and a half, I would be very glad.”35 Louise Pierce of the Wellesley class of 1900 was equally specific about what she wanted in her dorm room. Within days of her arrival at college, she wrote home to ask her parents to send her three cups and saucers and three spoons she had left behind.36 But she had bigger dreams. She appended to another letter written a few days later this postscript: “We’ve just been in one of the girl’s rooms to cocoa. I do wish I had my kettle and chocolate.”37 When she returned to campus after the Christmas vacation, Louise brought the desired device along, informing her parents in January 1897 that she looked forward to making hot chocolate on her “little arrangement.”38

1

Brewer  209

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

Pierce’s subsequent letters reveal the challenges students faced when they tried to use this kind of equipment to produce more elaborate spreads. Until the 1890s spreads had usually involved little or no cooking, as the comestibles were either prepared foods such as olives and candy or items sent from home. But Pierce and her contemporaries aimed for something more elegant. In January 1897 she informed her parents, “The girls made a rarebit in Sylvia’s new chafing dish. It wasn’t good, all stringey [sic] and tough, so Lena traipses downtown to get some more cheese. They made another mess, but that was also stringey [sic]. It’s awfully funny when it acts like that,” she continued. “It’s like chewing twine. . . . You could have fastened a horse with it.”39 Several days after this debacle, the students set their sights on something simpler. “This afternoon we each contributed five cents . . . [for] a dozen eggs which Sylvia proceeded to scramble in the chafing dish. They were nice too,” Pierce reported. “Don’t be afraid we shall hurt our digestion with any of these things for there isn’t much apiece,” she added reassuringly.40 Despite her friends’ culinary misadventures, Pierce had set her heart on hosting what she called a “swell spread” a few weeks later. Her solution was to ask her family to supply most of the menu items. In late January she asked her mother to send her a box containing a stuffed chicken, a walnut cake, crumpets, tarts, grape jelly, and salad dressing, as well as a can of condensed milk and a cake of chocolate so she could make fudge. She planned to buy lobster locally to make the salad. By scheduling her party for a Sunday morning, she also made a distinction between the planned festivity and the traditional after-hours spread,41 a sign that such formal entertainments were becoming acceptable and uncontroversial. At Mount Holyoke, too, the late-night spread was being transformed. Beginning in the 1890s, under the leadership of the president Elizabeth Storrs Mead, regulations governing student life were liberalized and authorities increasingly turned a blind eye to conduct that in earlier years would have led to suspension or expulsion. As the college historian Arthur Cole explained, “When the telltale aroma of fudge or hot chocolate betrayed [students’] illicit feasts, teachers were often human enough to

f

210  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

be leniently affected by the delectable odors.”42 So relaxed had the climate become that students even began to “swipe” spread ingredients such as milk from dormitory kitchens.43 As was the case at Wellesley, spreads at Mount Holyoke were becoming an increasingly visible feature of collegiate life. The diary and letters of Dorothy Firman of the class of 1906 amply demonstrate this phenomenon. In fact, as she wrote home, “a girl might as well not come to college if she hasn’t a good digestion. She can’t have any fun.”44 During her freshman year Firman hosted or attended at least twenty-five spreads or fudge parties, an average of about three a month. Her letters also reveal how the spread was evolving into various related forms. Four of the festivities she attended that year were given to celebrate fellow students’ birthdays, two were held in honor of visiting friends or relatives, two others were held in dormitory dining rooms during dinner to mark special events (Valentine’s Day and the class election), and one was a simple meal cooked by two or three students so they could avoid whatever was on the college menu that day.45 By this time the skills necessary for giving a successful spread conferred valuable status. In December 1902 Firman informed her mother that “we are all noted for something. Primrose is the shark, Ruth and Grace shine in society the most, Sarah has the most boxes from home, Lottie is the most capable, Mabel the prettiest, Elinor the best actress, and I can make the best rarebit.”46 Firman rarely discussed the details of the spreads in which she participated, but the letters of Amy Roberts of the class of 1900 testify to the growing complexity and elegance demanded of such entertainments. In February 1899, for example, Roberts and her friends enjoyed a threecourse meal composed of sandwiches, chicken, jelly, oranges, bananas, coffee, and “angel cake.” “The girls went crazy,” she reported gleefully.47 Her efforts were outclassed, however, by several even more elaborate spreads. In November 1898 she was a guest at “the most scrumptious spread I think I ever went to.” “I don’t know whether I had better tell you the menu or not,” she teased her parents, “but I guess I will. First we had deviled ham sandwiches, coffee with whipped cream, and olives; then sardines with lemon and saltines, then beautiful great pears and

1

Brewer  211

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

white grapes, then snow apples and all kinds of nuts, then a 5 lb. basket made of red, white & blue wicker filled with elegant figs.”48 Even grander was the “swell spread” given in honor of the engagement of Roberts’s roommate, Carrie Blanchard, to the Dartmouth student Charles Everett Carr. “The room was all decorated in Dartmouth green and white. . . . The frappe cups were all tied with green and white ribbon and the tables with white covers and little green ivy. For refreshments, walnut sandwiches, lobster and chicken salad, olives, lemonade with several kinds of wafers, strawberries and whipped cream, ice cream and angel cake.”49 At Wellesley, too, students were enjoying increasingly elegant spreads, often at breakfast time. In 1898, for example, the seniors Clara Brown and Mary Spink served their friends a breakfast of “lamb chops, scrambled eggs, bananas and cream, wheat cakes, coffee and hot rolls.”50 Several days later their efforts were surpassed by the sophomore Agnes Ketcham, who entertained a group of her friends at a sit-down breakfast at which the guests took turns serving as “maid.” Mabel Lovett Bishop, who attended, sent her mother this enthusiastic description: “At each place were carefully laid out three spoons, a fork and a knife comme il faut. First we had delicious oranges and white grapes. Next came shredded wheat with lots of real cream. Third course was creamed oysters on saltines. Next came chicken salad, veal loaf, bread sandwiches with and without chopped nuts and mayonnaise dressing. With this course also came the jelly, olives, pickles, and delicious chocolate with whipped cream. Fifth course [was] delicious wine jelly with oranges, bananas, grapes and nuts in it served frozen in bowls of orange peel with whipped cream. Salted nuts and chocolate and white peppermints tied up with gay colored ribbons completed the repast,” which was indeed, as Bishop noted, “a swell affair.”51 By the turn of the twentieth century, then, the spread had evolved from a spontaneous, often surreptitious get-together with a simple menu to a carefully planned, multicourse festivity sanctioned, or at least tolerated, by college authorities. However, as spreads became more common and more elegant, some opposition arose. In 1901, for example, Wellesley president Caroline Hazard addressed her charges on the “dangers

f

212  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

of student life,” singling out “entertainments in rooms” as a growing problem. “When one is away from home, nothing is pleasanter than to gather a few friends about the tea-kettle, or . . . chafing-dish,” she acknowledged. “The danger,” she thought, lay in “overdoing it.” “When girls not only offer the entertainment, but have to put their rooms in order again, and clean their chafing-dishes,” she went on, “it all takes time, and the . . . question arises, as to the right one has to use time in this way and then hurry to the necessary duties.” Too many students, she implied, were neglecting their studies and wasting too much of their “nervous strength” on frivolous “entertainments.”52 Students, too, were becoming concerned about spreads. Mount Holyoke’s Amy Roberts recognized that her busy social schedule had the potential to disrupt her academic work. “This afternoon we had our usual Sunday afternoon tea,” she wrote home in 1898. “This evening we are invited to a ‘Rabbit’ in Alice Davis’s room. Tues. Evening to a ‘Rabbit’ at North Hall. Wed. P.M. a tea at Rockefeller. This is about the way it is all the time,” she explained. “Carrie and I are beginning to think that our social duties are quite oppressive (?). . . . We could get along quite nicely if it wasn’t for our studying.”53 Of course, Roberts was joking, but Wellesley’s Zella Wentz encountered the same problem. With midyear exams looming, she wrote home in 1902, “I am going to stop going to fudge parties, spreads and such things and dig.”54 Students also began to wonder whether the proliferation of spreads and similar entertainments was not undermining their health. In 1898 Mount Holyoke’s Amy Roberts reported with dismay that a freshman named Edith Bryant had just died of appendicitis. “She wasn’t well when she came here and had to live on Malted Milk,” Roberts noted. Seemingly, the temptations of college life had contributed to Bryant’s death. “She wasn’t careful and ate everything,” Roberts continued; “the last thing she went to was a fudge party, the next day she was taken sick.”55 Student journalists also began to condemn the ubiquitous spread. In 1901 the editors of the Mount Holyoke observed with dismay that, according to a “leading newspaper,” half of female college graduates were “physical wrecks.” “We know from personal experience that some

1

Brewer  213

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

such statement is justifiable,” they admitted, blaming lack of exercise and “the omnipresent fudge.” “In a college like Mount Holyoke,” they explained, “’spreads’ and fudge parties become the rule rather than the exception, and the average girl fails to realize . . . the sure effect of all this upon her health. . . . She needs to realize that a brain cleared by a tramp through [the] woods . . . can accomplish twice the work of a sluggish and fudge-clogged mind.”56 But there was another reason why female college students were starting to criticize the spread. In 1887 the Vassar senior Louise Smith decried the popular stereotypes of frivolous “college girls,” which, she felt, focused too narrowly on student social life. In an article in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, she pointed out that outsiders had limited sources of information. “They receive letters bright with descriptions of spreads and plays and rides,” she observed. “It never occurs to them that all this is the mere setting of real college life. If the girls filled their letters with recitals of monotonous days of steady severe study . . . those who read would be bored. . . . It is in the nature of things,” Smith concluded, “that the outside world should hear of our gay social life, and we . . . should not be surprised that it is inclined to believe this is all.”57 The Mount Holyoke junior Mary Hall was equally concerned that outsiders were failing to take female college students seriously. Disturbed by a spate of newspaper articles that she considered unfair, she complained in 1897, “Prominence is given not to the culture and broad training which [the college girl] acquires, but to her accomplishments in the line of slang and midnight spreads. To a girl with true love for her Alma Mater,” Hall continued, “such a disparagement of the real value of college training seems far from desirable.”58 Had Smith and Hall been able to see into the future, they would have been disappointed by the spread’s increasingly prominent place in the representation of collegiate life in popular culture. By the first decade of the twentieth century, it was seemingly impossible to describe life at a woman’s college without highlighting the spread. In 1901, for example, Lavinia Hart gave Cosmopolitan readers an inside look at “a girl’s college life,” contrasting its “distinctly feminine tone” with the rough-

f

214  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

and-tumble hazing and vandalism associated with male collegians. She was especially taken with the various informal “eating clubs,” where “Nibblers,” “Munchers,” and “Gobblers” did “wonderful things with spirit-lamps and chafing-dishes, accomplishing results delicious, savory, and more or less digestible.” “The haphazard knowledge [they] derived from poring over cook-books . . . in some measure compensates for the lack of this practical branch in the female college curriculum,” she concluded approvingly.59 Three years later Woman’s Home Companion similarly applauded the “young collegiate hostess,” “picturesquely Oriental in her flowing kimono,” as she entertained her guests with “scintillating sallies” and “savory concoctions.”60 In Betty Wales Freshman, a novel published the same year, the main characters indulge their appetites with a spread featuring tea, cheese crackers, and “plowed field” (a type of fudge) in a room daintily decorated with floor cushions, candlesticks, and borrowed cups and saucers. While the guests wait for the fudge to be ready, one of them entertains the others by impersonating a “gypsy street singer.”61 The Ladies’ Home Journal was particularly intrigued by the social aspects of life at women’s colleges, publishing frequent reports on the “madcap frolics” that ensued “when college girls make merry.” In these accounts, students debate the merits of Vassar fudge and Smith pinoche and swap recipes for a “dandy new Welsh rarebit.” More ambitious cooks even tackle “toasting sausages” and baking “apples . . . toothsomely stuffed with nuts” at an open hearth.62 Invariably, the young women portrayed in these articles and books are ornaments to society, not threats to prevailing gender ideology. Why did the spread become such a common symbol of life at women’s colleges? Part of the explanation lies with the students themselves, of course. They liked spreads and did often write home about them, strengthening outsiders’ impressions that the spread was a critical component of their lives. But most of the responsibility lies with what you might call “boosters,” apologists of higher education for women who were themselves often graduates of women’s colleges. Beginning in the

1

Brewer  215

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

1890s, in novels, short stories, and magazine articles, they sought to portray female collegiate life as cultivated and benign. As part of this effort, they co-opted the spread to emphasize the domestic skills and elegant accomplishments it fostered. Why choose such a strategy? A kimono-clad hostess presiding over a cheerfully bubbling chafing dish was a soothing image at a time when increasing numbers of women were attending college, many of whom hoped to pursue careers and, perhaps, vote. The strategy was intended to allay the fears of critics who worried that women with college degrees would reject traditional domesticity for the public sphere. Thus, to students a spread was one of the pleasurable but not fundamental features of college life, one that gave them the chance to exercise ingenuity and autonomy. Outsiders, however, interpreted it as a sign of the students’ commitment to the conventions of feminine behavior. This dual meaning typifies the ambivalence with which educated women were regarded in early-twentieth-century America. Women with college degrees were changing the world, in education and social service particularly, a process Rosalind Rosenberg has called “domesticating the state.”63 The intellectual training they received at institutions such as Vassar and Wellesley was not, however, widely understood or appreciated, and the stereotype of the nervous, overstrained, unhealthy female collegian persisted. Thus, it was comforting to learn that students cooked charming spreads for their select friends. As the Ladies’ Home Journal editor Edward Bok explained, “It makes no difference how scholastic the average girl may be upon her graduation day . . . if she is lacking in the womanly instinct that makes for a just appreciation of domestic science. If she has not been taught or is blind to the real intellectual, physical, social and moral advantages and value of culinary science, her education is incomplete, and she stands before the world as a woman without the real knowledge that every normal woman should possess.”64 But a “college girl” wise to the ways of the chafing dish and the spread, Bok intimated, demonstrated praiseworthy dedication to “womanly instinct[s]” and proved an embodiment of L. Clark Seelye’s stated objective: the creation of “a more perfect woman.”

f

216  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Notes 1. Quoted by Margaret E. Taylor and Jean Glasscock, “The Founders and the Early Presidents,” in Glasscock, ed., Wellesley College, 1875–1975: A Century of Women (Wellesley ma: Wellesley College, 1975), 1. 2. Quoted by Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1985), 49. 3. Quoted by James Monroe Taylor and Elizabeth Hazelton Haight, Vassar (New York: Oxford University Press, 1915), 24. 4. “A Sensible View of Female Education,” New York Times, July 2, 1871, 3. 5. “Higher Education for Women,” New York Times, November 20, 1876, 4. 6. John Todd, Woman’s Rights (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867), 25. Quoted by Sue Zschoche, “‘Preserving Eden’: Higher Education, Woman’s Sphere, and the First Generation of College Women, 1870–1910” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1984), 38. 7. Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education; Or, A Fair Chance for Girls (1873; repr., Boston: James R. Osgood, 1874), 22–23. 8. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “spread” had become a common colloquial term for a banquet or feast by about 1825; its origins are unknown (http://dictionary.oed.com [accessed August 26, 2003]). 9. Wellesley College Calendar (Wellesley ma: printed for the college, 1877), 49. 10. Wellesley College Regulations, 1879–80 (Wellesley ma: printed for the college, 1879), 6. 11. Frances Robinson (class of 1879) to her mother, October 7, 1877. Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley ma (hereafter wca). 12. Florence Floyd (class of 1885) to her mother, November 19, 1882 (wca). 13. Louise M. Edwards (class of 1881) to her family, February 10, 1877, “Wellesley College Sixty Years Ago” (wca). 14. Lucia Grieve (class of 1883), Diary [Reminiscence], 1877–83, vol. 1, January 12–18, 1879 (wca). 15. Helen Barrett to her parents, undated but fall 1880, in Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1940), 43–44. 16. Elizabeth Wallace, The Unending Journey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1952), 55–56. 17. Clara D. Capron (class of 1887) to her family, October 28, 1883 (wca). 18. Hattie Savage to R. A. Savage, December 2, 1876. In Arthur C. Cole, A HunBrewer  217

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

5

dred Years of Mount Holyoke College: The Evolution of an Educational Ideal (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1940), 173. 19. Robinson to her mother, September 17, 1876 (wca). 20. Robinson to her mother, November 18, 1876 (wca). 21. Letters from Old-Time Vassar Written by a Student in 1869–70 (Poughkeepsie ny: Vassar College, 1915), February 1870, 63. 22. Letters from Old-Time Vassar, November 30, 1869, 30. 23. L. R. Smith, “Social Life at Vassar,” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 39 (January–June 1887), 847–48. 24. Thedora Kyle (class of 1890), “A True Story with a Moral, Wellesley Prelude 1 (June 7, 1890), 463–66. 25. Editorial, Wellesley Prelude 2 (February 14, 1891), 252. 26. Elizabeth B. Peckham (class of 1888), “Private Account, 1882–1884” in her scrapbook (wca). 27. Ruth Abbott (class of 1889), Account Book (wca). 28. Louise McDowell (class of 1898), Account Book (wca). 29. Lida Rose McCabe, The American Girl at College (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1893), 51. 30. Martha Cutler, “How to Furnish a College Room,” Harper’s Bazaar 43 (August 1909), 792. 31. Harvey Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 17, 19. 32. Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad, 71, 84, 103–4. 33. Elizabeth Wheeler Manwaring (class of 1902) to her parents, October 24, 1898 (wca). 34. Mildred Allen (class of 1916) to her father, September 21, 1912. Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley ma (hereafter mhcasc). 35. Allen to her mother, undated but ca. January 3, 1913 (mhcasc). 36. Louise Pierce (class of 1900) to her parents, September 19, 1896 (wca). 37. Pierce to her parents, September 22, 1896 (wca). 38. Pierce to her parents, January 16, 1897 (wca). 39. Pierce to her parents, January 16, 1897 (wca). 40. Pierce to her parents, January 23 [?], 1897 (wca). 41. Pierce to her parents, January 31, 1897 (wca). 42. Cole, Hundred Years, 209. 43. Roberts to her parents, September 22, 1898, and March 5, 1899 (mhcasc).

f

218  “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl”

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

44. Dorothy Firman (class of 1906) to her mother, December 7, 1902. Author’s collection. 45. Firman, letters to her family, September 1902–June 1903; Firman, diary, January 1–June 24, 1903. Author’s collection. 46. Firman to her mother, December 7, 1902. Author’s collection. 47. Roberts to her parents, February 19, 1899 (mhcasc). 48. Roberts to her parents, November 20, 1898 (mhcasc). 49. Roberts to her parents, May 4, 1898 (mhcasc). 50. Mary Barnett Gilson (class of 1899) to her mother, February 7, 1898 (wca). 51. Mabel Lovett Bishop (class of 1899) to her mother, February 13, 1898 (wca). 52. Caroline Hazard, “Some Dangers of Student Life” (1901), quoted in Hazard, From College Gates (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 287–88. 53. Roberts to her parents, February 6, 1898 (mhcasc). 54. Zella Wentz (class of 1905) to her mother, January 8, 1902 (wca). 55. Roberts to her parents, October 16, 1898 (mhcasc). 56. Editorial, Mount Holyoke 11 (December 1901), 204. 57. L. R. Smith, “Social Life at Vassar,” 841. 58. Mary Hall (class of 1898), “Opinion” contribution, Mount Holyoke 7 (June 1897), 27. 59. Lavinia Hart, “A Girl’s College Life,” Cosmopolitan 31 (June 1901), 189, 193. 60. Martha Cobb Sanford, “The Chafing Dish and the College Girl,” Woman’s Home Companion (April 1904). Online at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/ ~dalbino/books/whc.html (accessed September 30, 2002). 61. Edith Kellogg Dunton [Margaret Warde, pseud.], Betty Wales Freshman (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing, 1904), 95–97. 62. “Madcap Frolics of College Girls,” Ladies’ Home Journal 22 (October 1905), 17, 62–63; “When College Girls Makes Merry,” Ladies’ Home Journal 25 (November 1908), 34; “When College Girls Make Merry,” Ladies’ Home Journal 26 (February 1909), 22; “When College Girls Make Merry,” Ladies’ Home Journal 26 (November 1909), 34. 63. Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 36. 64. Edward Bok, “The College and the Stove,” Ladies’ Home Journal 20 (April 1903), 16.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Brewer  219

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

11. Revolution in a Can Food, Class, and Radicalism in the Minneapolis Co-op Wars of the 1970s

0

1

2

Mary Rizzo

3

4

5

6

7

8

Do we give people what they want to eat or do we give them what’s good for them? That’s the central contradiction in the co-ops. betsy raasch-gilman, A History of North Country Co-op

9

5

In 1974 a war broke out in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its battlefields were the dozens of food cooperatives that had sprouted in this progressive region in the preceding four years, and the combatants were the friends, lovers, and family members who had built the co-ops into thriving utopian enterprises. Known as the “Co-op Wars,” this conflict was summarized best by Dean Zimmerman, one of the cooperative movement’s founders, in the above quote. Should the co-ops sell only “whole foods,” organic groceries, and “untainted” products, or should they stock Coca-Cola and Hamburger Helper? Should they continue to be a place where middle-class counterculturalists and liberals shopped, or should they strive to include the working class? As this last question suggests, the Co-op Wars raised critical questions regarding the intersections among social class, food, radical politics, and identity in the 1970s. Although both factions shared certain overarching goals, each had a different vision of exactly how their idealistic revolution should be conducted and by whom, making the Co-op Wars an

f

220

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

important glimpse into the complicated process of utopia building in the late twentieth century. The conflict began with the formation of a Marxist reading group in 1974 by a mostly young, white, middle-class, educated group of Minneapolis co-op members. Feeling that the co-ops, which included grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants, had lost their impetus for social change with the end of the Vietnam War and had become insular havens for ex-hippies, the reading group named itself the Co-op Organization (co). With its explicitly Marxist-Leninist ideology, the co felt it was imperative to woo the working class into the co-ops and thereby politicize them. Only the working class could lead the coming revolution, with help from the intelligentsia as represented by the co. The other co-op members, a loose collection of mainly white, middle-class counterculturalists, anarchists, and liberals,1 disagreed, seeing all political doctrines—especially one as seemingly dogmatic as Marxism-Leninism—as anathema. To the counterculture, the co could be seen only as advocating “a hierarchical store structure, democratic centralism . . . party-line political analysis and . . . intolerance for any other political point of view.”2 Instead the counterculture advocated cultural revolution and individual change as a means of destroying racism, war, imperialism, and capitalism. Over the course of several months, the co distributed position papers advocating a dramatic reorganization of the co-ops, which met with staunch resistance. Even though the co successfully reorganized a failing co-op, the Beanery, the real battle was for control of the oldest and largest cooperative, North Country Co-op. In May 1975 the co forced a confrontation by violently taking over the People’s Warehouse, a central repository that supplied much of the food that area co-ops sold, making it the hub for the entire co-op system. Control of the People’s Warehouse considerably increased the power of the co in shaping the co-ops and caused a great deal of animosity and confusion among the counterculturalists. After several weeks the countercultural faction formed a new warehouse and used police and legal pressure to oust the co, which lost most of its support by the next year.3 While the co-ops

1

Rizzo  221

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

withstood this internecine conflict, other, larger leftist organizations in this era crumbled irrevocably into rival radical blocs.4 Each faction in the Co-op Wars and in national disputes among leftist groups created symbols that represented their goals, suggesting that a key part of these ideological struggles occurred in the realm of the imaginary. Since both groups hoped to foment a revolution, it was critical for each to imagine collectively answers to questions such as Who would create and lead this revolution? Who would participate? How would it be accomplished? And who would the enemy be? Disputes over the answers to these questions have tended to prohibit the maintenance of a cohesive Left in the United States. While this point is important in itself, I look at another aspect of this trend. The dispute in the Co-op Wars was ideological, but the factions argued in concrete terms that ultimately crystallized around the issue of what foods the co-ops should sell. The debate centered on whether the co-ops should focus exclusively on whole and organic foods (the countercultural position) or if they should also include mass-produced, name-brand food items as well (the co’s position). As a North Country Co-op cartoon humorously put it, would the co-ops sell tofu, bee pollen, and raw wheat germ or Wonder Bread, Fruit Loops, and Doritos? These issues, seemingly benign, explosively divided the co-ops’ members and pointed to issues at stake in national struggles over politics and culture in the 1970s. Food, this essay demonstrates, served as a symbol of class, politics, and habitus in the Co-op Wars. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu uses the term habitus to describe the constellation of attitudes, beliefs, likes, and dislikes that implicitly display an individual’s class identity. As Bourdieu writes, “Taste classifies and it classifies the classifier,” an essential concept in the Co-op Wars’ battles over taste and proper consumption.5 Both sides of the Co-op Wars saw food as a pedagogical tool and as a metonym for ideological positions. While the ideological differences between the countercultural faction and the co were many, their essential disagreement concerned social class and the potential (or lack thereof) of the working class to become politically radical. For the counterculture and New Left members of the co-ops, the organized working

f

222  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

class could never be entirely suitable for radical politics, since “both union leaders and many of the rank and file colluded with corporate liberalism.”6 For the Marxist-Leninist co, however, the American working class, increasingly alienated by politics and economics in the 1970s, represented a long tradition of political radicalism dating back to the 1930s.7 In a position paper distributed with a survey about North Country Co-op, two members, Lisa Dickman and Dave Jordan, offered their interpretation of the Co-op Wars. They wrote, “Will we broaden the coops [sic] stock in order to serve a larger group of people (the community as a whole)—or—will we leave the co-ops ‘pure’?”8 This question, with its implication of superior knowledge and morality, offers an insight into the counterculture’s view of food as a method of bodily discipline. It also points to the tension in the co-ops about the links between food and community. This tension, which flared in the Co-op Wars, existed throughout the development of the cooperative movement in Minneapolis. While cooperation has long roots in Minnesota, dating back to Iron Range miners at the turn of the twentieth century and New Deal coops in the 1930s, the countercultural cooperative movement began in Minneapolis in two separate locations at nearly the same time in 1970.9 True Grits, founded by Tom Quinn and Roman Iwachiw near downtown Minneapolis, was envisioned as a place where working-class people could buy common food items at cheaper prices, especially important in this era of stagflation. Across town, the five Shroyer sisters, all of whom had been involved in various countercultural activities, including communal living, handmade crafts sales, and underground publishing, opened a co-op with a slightly different focus. Their venture, called People’s Pantry, began as a buying club. The sisters purchased organic and whole foods, like whole wheat, molasses, soybeans, raisins, and peanuts, in bulk and sold them from a friend’s porch in barrels. While this allowed the sisters to charge less, the goal was not simply economics, as demonstrated by their adherence to selling only whole foods. As the local underground newspaper Hundred Flowers exclaimed in announcing the opening of the store, “now—good food for strong

1

Rizzo  223

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

revolutionary bodies.”10 Economic considerations merged with countercultural ideology to lay the groundwork for the success of People’s Pantry, which soon became a focal point for counterculturalists looking to find like-minded others and a space to create a utopian enterprise. As People’s Pantry grew, it moved off the porch and into a space at the Cedar Riverside People’s Cooperative Center. However, the Minneapolis Health Department closed People’s Pantry, forcing the sisters to find a suitable storefront. At this time Quinn and Iwachiw decided to join with the Shroyers in their enterprise and gave their cooperative, True Grits, to the neighborhood. In 1971 North Country Co-op, the most successful co-op in the Twin Cities, opened. While the Shroyers represented a more anarchic, countercultural position than did Quinn and Iwachiw, the sisters convinced them to make the store “community owned” (True Grits had been owned by Quinn and Iwachiw) and to stock the store with “pure food,” such as bulk nuts and grains, whole wheat flour, and honey. As important as what they would stock was what they would not, which included white flour and sugar, all processed foods, and cigarettes. There was immediate interest in North Country—at the first community meeting, two hundred people bought two-dollar shares in the utopian venture. These early co-op members rationalized their refusal to sell common food items because the co-ops were too small to compete with supermarket prices. However, according to Betsy Raasch-Gilman, author of A History of North Country Co-op, “Soon sentiment grew against canned goods on political and nutritious grounds as well: they became symbols of the exploitative corporate system which cared so little about the health of consumers or the well-being of workers.”11 The Shroyer sisters’ interest in selling only whole and organic foods grew out of the counterculture’s obsession with the politics of food in the postwar period. As Warren Belasco argues in Appetite for Change, after World War II the explosion of convenience foods radically changed the American diet. Huge companies incorporated more technology into food production, symbolizing the vast industrial might of the United States. Increasingly they used advertising to convince the public that these practices did not affect the food’s nutritional value or “natural-

f

224  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ness” and that these products were as good as, if not better than, homemade.12 Food technology was further hailed as the solution to world hunger. Yet at the same time as the U.S. government and the corporate giants of food production were touting the utopian possibilities of food technology came disturbing reports of poverty and starving in Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1962). The question of how hunger could exist in the richest nation in the world and the center of mass food production dealt a stunning blow to the belief that the postwar economic boom had uplifted everyone into the secure middle class. At this point it became impossible for many Americans, especially welleducated middle-class youth, who were increasingly critical of the government and the media, to envision the postwar United States as the Eden promised during World War II. Two other books also weighed in on the consequences of the American way of life. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and, later, Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (1971) both suggested that the U.S. diet and lifestyle were fundamentally detrimental to the environment. These issues were immediately seized by the counterculture as proof of American culture’s hazardous nature. An ad for the underground newspaper Good Times listed white bread as a “dangerous drug”—along with work, property, television, and money.13 Food became a visceral means of taking a political stand. If America’s technological superiority and wealth was symbolized by finely milled, massproduced, white Wonder Bread, than eating coarse, homemade, dark bread was a simple but powerful way for the counterculture to make a statement against the prepackaged, rationalized consumerism of Cold War America by returning symbolically to a simpler and purer era before industrialization and capitalism. In these early days North Country, according to Craig Cox, was “dirty, the goods poorly labeled, and service nonexistent, but no amount of discouragement would keep the throngs away.”14 North Country’s rapid success—it achieved its target sales for the year, $50,000, in its first month—encouraged the opening of other co-ops, which all shared a commitment to a radically democratic structure. While North Country’s growth induced the hiring of coordinators and managers, every-

1

Rizzo  225

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

one, regardless of seniority or experience, was paid at the same low rate to ensure that their commitment to the co-op was politically, not economically, motivated. Shopping at North Country was entirely different from shopping at a supermarket, a fact that did not encourage the participation of the many working-class people who were unfamiliar with this style of enterprise but who lived near North Country. To enter North Country meant potentially participating in the running of the store. Betsy Raasch-Gilman recounted how at the end of the day when the store was closing, shoppers would be recruited to help mop the floor. One coordinator was known for announcing, “Ten minutes until closing time! That means in ten minutes North Country shoppers become North Country moppers!”15 For people who were used to strict boundaries between their identities as consumers and their identities at workers, this practice may have seemed like an intolerable intrusion on their leisure. Even more intimidating was the fact that every shopper or worker, no matter how inexperienced, could also be a decision maker. A legend from the early days of North Country tells how one day the cash registers were turned around so that shoppers could ring up their own purchases. Although North Country lost money on this venture, it demonstrated its philosophical commitment to individual decision making and community control. To the co-op’s creators, the lack of centralized decision making and hierarchical organization was a means of educating shoppers about the power of participatory democracy. For shoppers who were not already knowledgeable about participatory democracy, however, the co-ops could seem merely disorganized and difficult to navigate. Nonetheless, for the true believers the success of the co-op in these early days suggested that the members were at the vanguard of a radical reprimand to consumer capitalism, eventually spelling its downfall. With the combination of a physical storefront and a growing and enthusiastic group of participants, North Country became the ideal center for a countercultural community. While other countercultural communities organized around the Vietnam War, civil rights, and other issues of the era, those at North Country focused their energy on food, which

f

226  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

became both an important topic of conversation and a source of group cohesion. Countercultural eating habits, which eschewed the common foods of postwar America, were, in Michel Foucault’s term, “technologies of the self.” Counterculturalists disciplined their bodies and tamed their food desires in order to conform to their ideological and philosophical goals. Importantly, these technologies of the self were not practiced in isolation but were linked to the larger countercultural community at North Country. As Foucault has written, “Around the care of the self, there developed an entire activity of speaking and writing in which the work of oneself on oneself and communication with others were linked together . . . it constituted, not an exercise in solitude but a true social practice.”16 This social practice also meant group pressure to conform to certain ways of eating in order to be part of the North Country community. Many co-op members were vegetarian, for example, and those who were not felt immense tension and condescension about their carnivorous ways.17 Counterculturalists believed that controlling food intake by ingesting only pure and whole food led directly to bodily and spiritual improvement, a theory that could be traced back to vegetarians of the nineteenth century, such as Sylvester Graham and William Kellogg. Proscriptions on eating literally became an exercise that would lead to a new self. The discipline of the body would bring about a change of mind about politics, ideology, and culture that members would practice both individually and within their group of true believers, the countercultural co-op members.18 Yet the counterculture’s vision of what constituted “proper” eating habits was directly related to its class habitus. While the co-op members thought they were simply advocating for everyone to eat more healthfully and in socially mindful ways, they did not acknowledge how their relationship to food was affected by their own middle-class backgrounds and education. According to Bourdieu, a central aspect of the middleclass habitus is a willingness to try new foods, to enact the “taste of freedom” through cosmopolitan eating. Bourdieu argues that, in distinguishing between class-based tastes, working-class eating practices are defined by a focus on quantity, bodily satisfaction (excess, by mid-

1

Rizzo  227

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

dle-class standards), and indulgence in cheap foods that, to the middle class, seem coarse and fattening.19 For the middle class, food consumption is always something to be approached with a clear sense of restrained desire. While the counterculturalists were breaking with their habitus in certain ways, such as by eating dark bread and other “peasant food,” they were following their habitus by experimenting with food, by using food as an aesthetic and political commentary, and by controlling what and how much they ate. These practices unwittingly reproduced their class position and widened the gulf between the counterculture and working class, since the working-class habitus encouraged a different view of acceptable eating habits that the counterculture deemed impure.20 The countercultural vision of healthy eating as practiced at North Country and in the majority of Minneapolis co-ops was based on an imagined rural model. For example, when Lucy Horton gathered commune recipes for a cookbook, she visited only rural communes, disregarding thousands of urban communes, which Timothy Miller demonstrates represented the largest percentage of communes in the country. Horton’s end product, published in 1971 as Country Commune Cooking, offered tips on how to use hand mills to grind flour and advice on heating wood stoves—things that would hardly interest urban working people.21 Instead, the information appealed to the population of the rural communes: middle-class youth with the privilege to drop out of society. But hand mills and wood stoves also represented something more: an ideal and a symbol of a simpler and preindustrial way of life. For example, the illustrations used in A History of North Country Co-op, the history of an urban co-op, are all of talking fruits and vegetables espousing folksy wisdom. As Harvey Levenstein argues in Paradox of Plenty, the counterculture heartily condemned the urban and industrial, replacing these terms with the natural and the rural. For the Minneapolis co-op members, the rural took on such psychological importance that it became the only appropriate symbol for the revolution they were trying to achieve, even though that revolution was taking place in a major city. For the counterculture, making food by hand meant that they were

f

228  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

removing technology and making something, hearkening back to the Jeffersonian ideal of the producer democracy and the yeoman farmer myth, which existed in the countercultural imagination as a utopian moment of freedom and independence. As Richard Hofstadter has argued, the “agrarian myth” has been intricately intertwined with American culture since the Revolutionary War, which “appeared to many Americans as the victory of a band of embattled farmers over an empire.”22 These farmers embodied self-sufficiency and were honest, noncommercial, and uninterested in money, qualities adopted by the counterculture. As Aggie Fletcher wrote in an article in Communities magazine, “Independence and individualism are valued here in the North Country.”23 The rural commune was the goal: tilling the soil, producing just enough, and living disconnected from a profit-motivated, capitalist marketplace. At the same time, the counterculture, while vociferously advocating individual choices and “do your own thing,” felt a need to proselytize about food. North Country and other co-ops were formed as an “alternative to the capitalist system” that could “provide many foods to people more cheaply than a supermarket does.” Importantly, though, the real difference between a co-op and a supermarket was that “we try to learn about the foods we sell and we try to share our knowledge about the nutritional value of those foods.”24 However, that knowledge could be disseminated only to the people who came into the co-ops, who were, by all accounts, people very much like those who ran it—white, middle class, educated, and leftist. According to some reports, when members of the working class did enter the co-ops, they were berated by the hippie co-op members, who saw them as bargain hunters who privileged economic concerns over political commitments. These working-class shoppers did not understand the store’s political purpose and, even more damning, did not volunteer at the store. By 1972, just a year after the opening of North Country, some cooperative members were recognizing the class divide that existed in the co-ops. A growing faction publicly criticized the co-ops’ structures and food policies. This faction, which would become the co, began to organize around Marxism-Leninism and the issue of how to increase working-class influence in the co-ops. co members saw the success of the co-

1

Rizzo  229

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

operative movement as an ideal springboard from which to enact truly radical social change by making connections with working-class individuals and families who lived near North Country and other co-ops. Food was also important to the co, though they opposed the counterculture’s view of the role of food in the co-ops. For the countercultural faction, the fundamental argument against selling prepared, frozen, or canned food, seen as the food of the working class, was that the counterculture felt it would be sullying itself and supporting an immoral capitalist system by doing so, two equally unethical positions. When Dean Zimmerman asked whether the co-ops should “give people what they want” or “what’s good for them,” he was expressing the countercultural ideology, whose proponents felt that they had superior knowledge and true clairvoyance. Only they could see through the tangles of corporate lies and understand the links between food and morality. By comparison, the working-class man or woman who happily consumed Twinkies was ignorant, crude, and definitively impure, no matter what his or her political leanings. Or, as an article in the College Press Service explained, working-class people “could learn to prepare and enjoy foods that are unprocessed and the goal of the co-ops should be to re-educate them to appreciate simpler, healthier foods.”25 To suggest reeducation was to say that the counterculture was entirely correct in its ideas about food and that it was imperative for working-class people to change their diet before they could achieve radical political consciousness. For the co it was first necessary to alter the mind, then a bodily change could be effected. The co saw the co-ops, along with other political projects, “as serious efforts to redefine individual and minority group identities, to teach cooperative work, and to demonstrate concretely that ‘bosses’ are superfluous.”26 According to the co, the counterculturalists and anarchists were “petty bourgeois elements” who “practice economic self-exploitation, that is, working for low wages not to make the boss rich but to perpetuate their idealist revolution by furnishing an undefined community with natural and organic foods.”27 The focus on individual bodily discipline as a political model seemed entirely useless to the materialist co. This way of thinking had caused the co-ops to devolve into hippie havens, where the educated middle

f

230  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

class socialized but did not bring about social change. The working class, however, could become the vanguard of the revolution. As the co wrote in “The Beanery Paper,” its first public document, “because of the high inflation rate, recession and the gathering depression, we are optimistic that the hard-core working class will continue to bring us their mandate—away with class snobbishness, cultism, food purists and on with stocking the type of food that is nutritional and cheap.”28 The politicization of the working class could happen once it was drawn into the co-ops, which would be made possible only by changing two central characteristics of the co-ops: the consensus decisionmaking process, which took enormous amounts of time, and the products the co-ops stocked, which needed to be more common foods. As an unnamed person wrote on the minutes of a co-op meeting, “The ‘Progressives’ [the co] have lead [sic] me to believe that they were really interested in community control, but every action the last two months has been saying the community is too dumb to make decisions for itself. . . . The Progressives have alienated me from the products of my labor. They have taken away my rights of self-determination around food issues.”29 The co determined that only by reasserting working-class people’s self-determination by offering them greater decision-making authority through providing more food options—not by disciplining their unruly bodies—could the co-ops become truly revolutionary.30 While the countercultural faction used the yeoman farmer as an ideal, the co raised the urban working class as a model. Instead of folk wisdom and talking vegetables, the co made its symbol a partially filled shopping cart, which evokes both the urban and the use of money. While the counterculture felt that money and profit were “evil,” the co thought that money was not immoral but simply improperly distributed.31 As workers at the co-controlled Our Daily Bread Bakery wrote, “We produce the goods that people ask for, we don’t chase people away from the ideas of cooperation by demanding that they change their diet.” The authors continued by forefronting economic issues: “Most people have worse problems in capitalist society than sugar and white flour. Cheap food, not pure food is important to most people because they get systematically robbed under capitalism.”32 While the

1

Rizzo  231

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

counterculture linked food with morality and bodily cleanliness, the co saw food as a political tool that could be used to engage people to critique larger economic issues of poverty and exploitation. Moreover, the co was less interested in bodily changes and dietary practices and more interested in wooing working-class people into the stores. Selling the foods that the working class supposedly ate, like frozen fish sticks, sweetened breakfast cereals, and Wonder Bread, was a means of introducing them to the co-ops, where, importantly, they would be politicized. The co-op would be a pedagogical environment, educating shoppers explicitly on social relations and food issues. The process of politicization was to happen on many levels. For example, customers would be immediately confronted with bulletin boards in the co-ops that sought to educate “the unemployed and working masses on the politics of food.” As well, “all shoppers [would be] urged to illustrate these economic concepts and to share their rich, working-class experience by illustrating these concepts.”33 Quite literally, the space of the co-ops was made political through the use of text and images. Surrounding working-class shoppers with the co’s spin on economics and politics was a way to confront them with less-than-subtle propaganda. The hope was that shoppers would not only read the message but also link it to their experiences and embody its meanings. Working-class shoppers were encouraged to reexamine their assumptions about politics and economics—which included an assumption by the co that these concepts had not previously been considered—from the co’s viewpoint. What did it mean for the co, a group of white, middle-class, educated leftists, to forefront the “rich, working class experience”? For the co, the working class represented an authentic way of life. One co supporter complained that the “co-op leadership tries to force the priorities of changing . . . diet and spending more time in the kitchen. . . . Do working class mothers and fathers have two or three more hours to devote to cooking after work?”34 The question commends the working class, which is under immense pressure and must struggle to survive within the market. The counterculturalists were painted as lazy and idealistic, while the co and the working class were “doers and not receivers,

f

232  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

selfless and not selfish, open and not closed, altruistic and not egotistical.”35 For the co, the working class’s reliance on quick and convenient foods meant that it was “real.” While the counterculture idealized the yeoman farmer’s independence and self-sufficiency, the co idealized the worker’s ability to produce goods and strongly felt that the working class was the only productive class in society. In a paper titled “Who Does the Beanery Serve?” the co argued that the Beanery “is the product of thousands of hours of working people’s labor. This includes workers that built the building . . . farmers . . . drivers . . . factory workers that can and process the food, clerical workers, and people who work and volunteer in the store. The people that do this labor are from the working class.” In this statement, the co argues that only working-class productivity created the co-ops. Even though many middle-class leftists, including the authors of the Beanery Paper and other members of the co, were integral to the building of the co-op movement, only the working class can be called productive. In another position paper, the co compared the idealistic hippies to capitalist bosses: “They do not want to work for change, yet they want to make the decisions. . . . Just like a boss—no work, yet calling all the shots.”36 Clearly, the co ascribed a variety of positive qualities to the working class. Yet throughout the co’s voluminous documents, the voices of actual working-class people are notoriously absent; the middle-class co leaders speak in their stead. While the co seemed willing to break with their own middle-class habitus to embrace the working class, in reality they were ascribing particular needs and positions to this group without consulting it, as far as the records and reports that are available show. Indeed, it is difficult from the co’s rhetoric to know what they felt defined the working class. Was it a person’s current occupation or the occupation of his or her parents? Was it the level of education? Was it an ideological position? Or was it some combination of these? While the co suggested that the category “working class” was a known entity that clearly included certain people and not others, their slippery use of the term demonstrates its use by the co as a tool to identify friends and malign enemies.

1

Rizzo  233

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

The members of the countercultural faction were perplexed by the co’s “fanatical worship of the working class.” They noted that “most of [our opponents] are former students, anti-war activists, co-op organizers and workers. All told, they’re not so different from the people they were fighting.”37 Yet the co, like the counterculture, was searching for an appropriate symbol on which to base their revolution. While the counterculture chose the yeoman farmer, with its long American history, the co used the working man, an image that had lost resonance in the postwar period but seemed an untried possibility in the 1970s, especially after the many failures of the 1960s. As Michael Kazin writes, a strong question at this time was whether the working class was “tending more to the Right—part of the backlash against black power and antiwar protests—or possessed of a new, anti-authoritarian, leftist spirit demonstrated in a wave of wildcat strikes, consumer boycotts, and the pervasive mockery of higher-ups in business as well as the state.”38 In the Minneapolis Co-op Wars, the countercultural faction inclined toward the former, while the Marxist-Leninist co favored the latter. In spite of all this interest in the working class, very little actually changed. What the working class meant to American politics was bandied about in the co-ops; in local, state, and national politics; and in culture, but it was imagined by those with authority—by politicians and, in the Minneapolis co-op movement, by the educated white middle class. Having lost a great deal of its voice during World War II and the Cold War, the working class found it difficult to enter the public debate about how it would be viewed and what it would mean. Instead, it was talked about and talked to, but not often asked for a public response. While leftist groups broke into warring factions, as in the Co-op Wars, the Nixon administration came to the fore with fiery political rhetoric that captured the public ear, beginning the conservative turn the United States took into the 1990s. Although the Co-op Wars lasted only a short time, they were representative of many of the major issues of the tumultuous 1970s, particularly the connections between radical politics and social class. Both the counterculturalists and the co strove to create a utopian alternative to American capitalism, but their methods and their images of who would lead their idealistic revolution dif-

f

234  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

fered greatly. While the co heralded socialism and the newly rediscovered working class, the counterculture focused on an idealized vision of a preindustrial American Eden. The battles of the Co-op Wars revolved around the most mundane of objects, food. Not merely nourishment, food became a metonym for highly divisive issues of politics and class habitus, serving as easy shorthand for whole ideologies and entire social classes. Tofu and bean sprouts equaled the anarchic counterculture and its belief system, while canned soups and boxed cereals signaled the Marxist-Leninist co. In these ways, food became a highly mutable and incredibly provocative symbol. Perhaps it is unsurprising that the counterculture, with its cultural capital and focus on the familiar yeoman myth of the American past, emerged as the victor in the Co-op Wars. The co disappeared from the Twin Cities soon after the aborted warehouse takeover, and the co-ops kept their pure-food line. By the 1980s, however, they were being squeezed by supermarkets that increasingly stocked organic and whole foods. Suddenly, middle-class dietary concerns had made it viable to place foods that were once considered “fringe,” like brown rice and miso soup, on the same shelves as foods considered common. In order to remain competitive, the co-ops broadened the types of food they sold, selling meat, for example, and items that contained white sugar. While the co-ops retained other, important characteristics, including member-workers and democratic decision making, the leaders realized, only a decade after the Co-op Wars, the necessity of adapting their utopian goals to the exigencies of the day. In theory utopia may be “no place,” but in reality it always exists in the spaces between conflicting social and political visions.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

Notes Published by the Minnesota Historical Society, North Country Co-op Records (hereafter mhs, ncc) 1994, 6. 1. Although problematic, I will use these terms interchangeably to describe the co’s opposition, which espoused a variety of philosophical positions. By referring to this group with several terms I hope to show the multiple political ideas represented and not to suggest they were equivalent. Rizzo  235

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

5

2. Aggie Fletcher, letter and position paper, mhs, ncc. 3. For an extremely detailed journalistic account of all the events of the Co-op Wars, consult Craig Cox, Storefront Revolution: Food Co-ops and the Counterculture (New Brunswick nj: Rutgers University Press, 1994). 4. Students for a Democratic Society, for example, self-destructed after it split into the Progressive Labor Party and the Weathermen in 1969. For more on sds, see Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987). Another excellent example is the Liberation News Service’s dissolution into what Raymond Mungo called “Vulgar Marxists” and the “Virtuous Caucus” (Raymond Mungo, Total Loss Farm: A Year in the Life [New York: Dutton, 1970]). 5. Pierre Bourdieu developed the concept of habitus as a means of understanding the reproduction of class identities, especially through consumption and taste. See Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1984), 6. 6. Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 1998), 199. The New Left in the early 1960s did attempt connections with labor. One of the Free Speech Movement’s first acts was a demonstration in support of striking hotel workers. Links between antiwar protesters and soldiers were also important. See Christian Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 7. Certainly, looking at the working class from the point of view of two middleclass leftist groups does not tell us what the working class was actually doing and thinking at this time. However, considering their symbolic and metonymic uses of food provides insights into how middle-class radicals used their cultural capital to produce an image of the working class according to their particular ideological lenses. Additionally, I recognize that the term “working class” is problematic; I use it as the Co-op War participants did—as shorthand. There was not, and is not, one entity known as the working class. 8. Letter, survey, and three position papers, mhs, ncc, unpag. 9. A co-op that primarily served a predominantly African American neighborhood opened in 1969 but closed due to arson. 10. Cox, Storefront Revolution, 33. 11. Raasch-Gilman, History of North Country Coop, 4. 12. Warren J. Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 1993).

f

236  Revolution in a Can

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

13. Belasco, Appetite for Change, 49. 14. Cox, Storefront Revolution, 38. 15. Interview with Betsy Raasch-Gilman, August 21, 2004. 16. Quotation is from The Care of the Self, quoted in Margaret A. McLaren, “Foucault and the Subject of Feminism,” Social Theory and Practice 23, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 109–29. 17. Cox, Storefront Revolution, 49. 18. Michel Foucault, “My Body, This Paper, This Fire,” in Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, ed. James D. Faubion and Paul Rabinow (London: Allen Lane, 1998), 406. 19. Supposedly, the working class eats what is necessitated by their limited economic position. In Distinction, Bourdieu criticizes this logic by showing that even when working-class people earn middle-class salaries, they do not eat like the bourgeois. Their “taste of necessity” is not economically motivated but is ingrained as a preference, as is the bourgeois “taste of freedom.” 20. Bourdieu, Distinction, 194–99. For a contemporary look at class and food, see the documentary People Like Us: Social Class in America. 21. See Timothy Miller, The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1999); and Lucy Horton, Country Commune Cooking (New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 1972). 22. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955), 28. 23. “Where Does a Warehouse Come From? Where Does a Warehouse Go?” Communities, March 1975, 37. 24. “Tapping the Roots,” mhs Labor and Radical Ephemera (hereafter lre), 7. 25. “Revolutionary Food Freaks,” College Press Service, February 5, 1976 (emphasis added). 26. “Read This Paper!” mhs, ncc. 27. “Coop Organization Proposal,” mhs, ncc, 2. 28. “The Beanery Paper,” mhs, lre, unpag. 29. Minutes of ncc, mhs. 30. For more on food and discipline, see Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). She examines how women and the lower class are seen as bodies that need to be tamed. 31. For example, in 1973 Roman Iwachiw and three other co-op workers confessed to selling five hundred pounds of flour to a local chain of health food

1

Rizzo  237

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

stores. Each of the conspirators was expelled from the co-ops for making a seven-dollar profit on the sale. Cox, Storefront Revolution, 51. 32. “Down but Not Out,” mhs, ncc, unpag. 33. “The People’s Coop Movement,” mhs, lre, 8. 34. “Coop Organization Proposal,” mhs, ncc, 4. 35. “3 Requests to Mr. Oscar A. Anderson, the President of Augsburg College,” mhs, ncc, April 6, 1976. 36. “Make Powderhorn a Working People’s Co-op,” mhs, lre, unpag. 37. “Crises in the North Country,” New Harbinger 3, no. 1 (January 1976): 40. 38. Kazin, Populist Persuasion, 223.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

238  Revolution in a Can

1

2

12. Veggieburger in Paradise

3

Food as World Transformer in Contemporary American Buddhism and Judaism

5

4

6

7

8

9

1

Ellen Posman

1

1

1

1

1

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on earth?” george bernard shaw

1

1

1

Along the dirt paths of Dharamsala, India—home to the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan refugees—lie numerous Tibetan restaurants with large signs advertising vegetarian cuisine. Why? Because Tibetan Buddhists are vegetarian? Hardly. In fact, Tibetan Buddhists are one of the most carnivorous groups known to humankind. However, Western converts to Tibetan Buddhism remain unaware of this. Western pilgrims to Dharamsala are mostly vegetarian; hence, the vegetarian restaurants dotting the landscape are a sign of good business sense rather than religious conviction. In fact, although most Asian Buddhists eat meat, most Western converts to Buddhism associate their vegetarianism with their religious ideology. How can we explain this seemingly contradictory understanding? Surprisingly, delving into a recent movement within Judaism can help decipher this situation. Like Buddhism, Judaism is not historically vegetarian. A peek into any Jewish deli confirms this; corned beef and pastrami are staples within Jewish cuisine, and many Jews will say that no Shabbat dinner or Passover seder is complete without a meat dish. Re-

1

239

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

cently, however, more and more American Jews have become vegetarians; moreover, they associate their vegetarian diet with Jewish tenets. One finds these Jews especially within the newer denomination of Reconstructionism and within havurot (small worship communities) associated with the late-twentieth-century movement known as Jewish Renewal. While these trends toward vegetarianism within American Buddhism and some forms of American Judaism do not coincide theologically, they overlap significantly along socioeconomic and political lines. These vegetarian Jews and Buddhists tend to be white, upper middle class, politically liberal, and well educated. In both cases their organizational structure is amorphous, but groups exist largely on the coasts and in urban areas. In fact, both Western Buddhism and the Jewish Renewal movement trace their roots to small communities in the San Francisco Bay area in the mid- to late twentieth century.1 While some individual practitioners may belong to a synagogue, meditation center, or havurah, many others do not self-identify as members of a particular organization but read similar literature and periodically attend events, such as retreats, festivals, or lectures. Overall, their political outlook includes pacifism, redistribution of wealth, and environmental activism. In this regard, they belong to a larger non-faith-based social community that sees vegetarianism and ecologically oriented food practices as a way to rejuvenate the earth’s resources, feed the hungry, and establish world peace. Generally, they do not eat any animals; those who do, eat animals raised on small, free-range farms. As for produce, they choose organic products, again grown locally on small farms and free of pesticides. The idea is one of balance with the earth and the food chain. While fruitarians are a part of this larger, secular community, few are found among the Jewish and Buddhist groups. Secular vegetarians often justify their food practices based on a political agenda related to utopia, but the Jews and Buddhists within this community do so theologically. This is particularly interesting, given that both religions traditionally permit meat eating. Nevertheless, the two groups use the same three levels of theological discourse to explain their rationales. At the surface level is a legalistic ethic (i.e., the desire to

f

240  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

obey a commandment or precept) of not killing, and beneath that is an abstracted notion of compassion for living things. Deeper still is a discourse of paradise in the form of reproducing an ideal world: for Jews, re-creating Eden or forecasting the ideal messianic age to come, or for Buddhists, engendering a Pure Land. While this discourse of utopia in relation to vegetarianism has previously appeared at the margins of Buddhism and Judaism, in recent American forms of these traditions, especially forms related to environmental activism, this discourse has become the explicit reason behind religious vegetarianism. The individuated nature of the American religious context is conducive to the emergence of new religious movements centered on particularized communities, ideologies, and practices. Individuation, according to Stephen Batchelor, “is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.”2 Batchelor here refers to the ways in which Western Buddhists break from Buddhist tradition, but the process is widely documented within mainstream American religions in their combination of individualism and voluntarism, and scholars have deemed it especially prominent in the late twentieth century. For example, Wilfred Cantwell Smith understood individuation as the difference between the cumulative tradition (e.g., Christianity) and individual belief (i.e., one’s personal understanding of Christianity, which is unlike that of any other Christian).3 Within traditional religions, such individual disparities in interpretation are bound to occur, but people who disagree with the tradition on certain issues can nevertheless remain members of the religious group. A Catholic who uses birth control, for example, is nevertheless Catholic. However, scholars have documented that in America many do choose to leave and follow their own individual systems, which Robert Bellah dubbed “Sheila-ism.”4 Moreover, others have noted that capitalist consumerist understandings have led to a valuing of individual choice among religions in America, termed voluntarism, which has turned religion itself into a marketplace.5 When one leaves a tradition based on ideological differences, one may start one’s own subgroup; at the same time, one seeking a religious group looks for an exact match with one’s own individualized understandings. Much like Starbucks’s success in

1

Posman  241

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

individualizing coffee drinks, the American religious marketplace offers a multitude of groups that cater to individuals’ specific religious preferences. In the cases discussed here, upper-middle-class, politically liberal environmental activists are able to form religious groupings in which their religion—Judaism or Buddhism—serves to justify their vegetarian practices in relation to their transformative political agenda. Religiously speaking, such groups represent a rather uniquely universalistic understanding of food practices. Traditionally, religious food practices, including feasting, fasting, and dietary restrictions, have served to bring the individual closer to the divine. Although these practices may take place in a communal setting and may even act to separate one’s community from other communities (e.g., a Jew who is strictly kosher cannot eat in the home of someone who does not keep kosher), they constitute a mode of self-discipline that confers individual holiness on a person. One who fasts religiously, for example, is attempting to create an individual bond with the divine or is spiritually cleansing oneself. While individual spiritual practice is at work in Buddhist and Jewish vegetarianism, the current world-transforming aspect suggests that food practices also can reflect a universalistic ideology that goes beyond the individual. More important than spiritually purifying oneself is that one is purifying the world and bringing salvation to all. In fact, viewing religious vegetarianism as world transforming is unusual, for scholars and practitioners generally have connected religious vegetarianism to legal issues, such as following commandments. Such scholars are partially extrapolating from the reasons behind Jain and Hindu vegetarianism, most notably a prescription of ahimsa, or nonviolence. In Buddhism, which stems from Hinduism, the issue of ahimsa certainly applies. The first ethical precept for Buddhists—both ordained and lay—is not to kill or cause another to kill, and in the Lankavatara Sutra, the Buddha gives a direct command to abstain from eating meat: “The Blessed One said this to him: For innumerable reasons, Mahamati, the Bodhisattva, whose nature is compassion, is not to eat any meat.”6 The Buddha goes on to state that if meat is not eaten, there will be no destruction of life, an allusion to the first precept. Moreover, he explains that vegetarianism will bring rewards and a good rebirth, while

f

242  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

meat eating will bring detrimental effects and a poor rebirth. In addition to arguments against killing and violence, the Lankavatara Sutra sets up a law of cause and effect, or karma, to dictate that eating meat is morally wrong, thus breaking the moral rules of Buddhism. This discourse of ahimsa appears within an American Buddhist justification of vegetarianism as well. Although doctrines of karma and rebirth are downplayed by American Buddhists, some maintain that a willingness to eat meat despite a precept of not killing or causing to kill is hypocritical. They say that eating meat causes others to kill and violates the first precept of not killing.7 For example, at the Library of Works and Archives in Dharamsala, in a philosophy class populated almost entirely by Western Buddhist converts, the American students at one point brought up the issue of vegetarianism. The instructor—Geshe Sonam Rinchen8—agreed to an in-class debate. Citing scripture, the Geshe maintained that meat eating is permitted under certain circumstances: as long as one does not see or hear the animal killed and as long as it is not killed particularly for one’s benefit, one may eat it.9 As for the aforementioned passage in which the Buddha preached vegetarianism in the Lankavatara Sutra, the Geshe dismissed the citation as an incident of “skillful means”; in that instance, he claimed, the Buddha was preaching to cannibals, so by forbidding meat he was also preventing cannibalism. The Western students did not accept the instructor’s answers, however, as they argued that buying meat forces the seller to order more meat, which in turn leads the butcher to slaughter more animals. The chain reaction, according to their logic, is that whenever one eats or, even more so, purchases meat, one causes another person to kill or creates a system in which an animal is killed specifically for—or because of—oneself; he or she thus violates the first precept of not killing or causing to kill. The Western Buddhist argument, though basically a legalistic one of breaking rules, also contains a seed of the world-transformative aspect: if people do not eat meat, no one will slaughter animals, creating a less violent society. Judaism too contains a prescription not to kill, most famously the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”10 Some Jewish vegetarians and scholars have pointed to this as a proof text for the practice of vegetar-

1

Posman  243

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ianism. In fact, the first book about Jewish vegetarianism was Aaron Frankel’s Thou Shalt Not Kill; or, The Torah of Vegetarianism, published in New York in 1896. Others point to Genesis 1:29 as a commandment to be vegetarian: “I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.”11 Some interpret these primordial instructions regarding diet, given prior to those allowing meat, as God’s preferred diet; God relented later upon seeing the weaknesses of humanity, but vegetarianism is ideally prescribed.12 According to Michael Lerner, the recent American movement of Jewish Renewal certainly sees the laws of kashrut in this way: “Jewish renewal circles tend to see the kosher laws as a compromise with vegetarianism. The original injunctions to Adam and Eve prohibited the eating of meat. It was only after God’s disillusionment with humans reached the level where S/He wanted to destroy almost the entire population, in the age of Noah, that God allowed humans to eat animal flesh.”13 Here, too, the argument is primarily legalistic: God commanded vegetarianism. A note of utopia is present as well: the assumption is that vegetarianism will bring a return to Eden. However, while many proponents employ logical argumentation to say that meat eating is killing and thus violates fundamental laws of Buddhism or Judaism, others claim that consuming is not killing and that meat eating is not expressly prohibited in these religions. Thus, while some religious vegetarians ground their food practices in prohibitions against killing, other religious discourses apply as well and can be more convincing. Of these, perhaps the most common is an idea abstracted from not killing: reverence for all life, or compassion. Paired with wisdom, compassion is one of the two highest values in Buddhism, generally understood to be compassion for all sentient beings. Despite the fact that many Buddhist communities are carnivorous, the logical outgrowth of the principle of compassion is vegetarianism. This discourse of compassion is primary in American Zen communi-

f

244  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

ties, which take their lead from the American Zen master Philip Kapleau’s To Cherish All Life:

1

2

3

The first precept of not killing is really a call to life and creation even as it is a condemnation of death and destruction. Deliberately to shoot, knife, strangle, drown, crush, poison, burn, electrocute, or otherwise intentionally take the life of a living being or to purposefully inflict pain on a human being or animal—these are not the only ways to defile this precept. . . . Thus to put the flesh of an animal into one’s belly makes one an accessory after the fact of its slaughter, simply because if cows, pigs, sheep, fowl, and fish, to mention the most common, were not eaten they would not be killed. . . . Thus we have the fundamental Buddhist teaching that all life, human and non-human, is sacred. . . . The rights of non-humans are not [to be] ignored or trampled upon.14

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

On the one hand, Kapleau promotes the idea that eating meat is an indirect act of killing, but on the other, he has moved from the precept of not killing to the value of compassion. One is compassionate toward all beings, concerned for their welfare. One refrains from meat eating not simply as ahimsa but because one recognizes the harmful consequences meat eating causes other beings. Again, the Lankavatara Sutra perhaps says it best: “Wherever there is the evolution of living beings, let people cherish the thought of kinship with them, and thinking that all beings are to be loved as if they were an only child, let them refrain from eating meat.”15 In other words, vegetarianism, whether specifically prescribed or not, is ultimately the compassionate thing to do. One could add that the practice thus would create a more loving, compassionate society. This discourse of compassion is apparent among Jewish vegetarians as well in that Judaism, too, speaks of reverence for all life. The basis of that reverence is different, however, in that it is theistic; one must revere all life because all life is God’s creation. Like Master Philip Kapleau, Rabbi Arthur Green abstracts ideas of not killing to ideas of preserving

1

Posman  245

r

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

all life: “If Jews have to be associated with killing at all in our time, let it be only for the defense of human life. Life has become too precious in this era for us to be involved in the shedding of blood, even that of animals, when we can survive without it. This is not an ascetic choice, we should note, but a life affirming one. A vegetarian Judaism would be more whole in its ability to embrace the presence of God in all creation.”16 The argument is connected to the idea of law, but beyond laws to a general value of preserving life and compassion for all creatures. This general value itself is attested to in the Bible. Richard H. Schwartz has noted,

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

There are many Biblical laws involving compassion to animals. An ox was not to be muzzled when threshing a field of corn (Deut. 25:4). A farmer was not to plow with an ox and an ass together so that the weaker animal would not suffer pain in trying to keep up with the stronger one (Deut. 22:10). Animals, as well as people, were to be permitted to rest on the Sabbath day (Exod. 20:8-10; 23:12). . . . Moses and King David were deemed worthy to be leaders of the Jewish people because they showed compassion to animals while working as shepherds. Rebecca was judged suitable to be Isaac’s wife because of the kindness she showed to the camels of Eleazar, Abraham’s servant.17

4

5

Indeed, it is a small step to extrapolate from biblical passages about compassion toward animals to a practice of Jewish vegetarianism, and this rationale explicitly appears within the Jewish Renewal movement: “Whatever God’s intent, it has become standard practice that in Jewish-renewal communal events the food is vegetarian. . . . The pain and cruelty inflicted on animals grown for slaughter can be ignored only by massive denial. . . . Participating in the process that led to the animal’s being treated in a painful and cruel way is difficult for many renewalists to justify.”18 Similarly, the Jewish Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ideas follow not only from biblical pronouncements to act compassionately but

f

246  Veggieburger in Paradise

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

also from the desire to imitate God in the aspect of divine compassion. He writes, “The longer I am vegetarian the more I feel how wrong it is to kill animals and eat them. I think that eating meat or fish is a denial of all ideals, even of all religions. How can we pray to God for mercy, if we ourselves have no mercy?” Singer’s words bring us from the abstract value of compassion to the next level of discourse in religious vegetarianism, an explicit connection to utopia. For he continues, “As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.”19 Beyond the rationales of moral laws such as “Thou shalt not kill,” and beyond the value of compassion, which entails cherishing all life, lies a mytho-historical image of a paradise of peace, liberty, harmony, and justice. The ideal society, whether the original paradise of Eden, the messianic age to come, a future ideal society, or a Pure Land on earth, is consistently vegetarian in these Jewish and Buddhist traditions. Just as Singer suggests that slaughter and justice cannot dwell together, so do these traditions, especially in their recently developed American forms, suggest that slaughter or meat eating cannot exist in a utopian world. The discourse of utopia that applies in the American Jewish and American Buddhist vegetarian contexts is not one of the individual attaining heaven or a better rebirth through vegetarianism, but of precreating, re-creating, or engendering utopia for all. In the Jewish case one finds the discourses of re-creating the Garden of Eden or prefiguring the messianic age, while in the Buddhist case the discourse revolves around the idea of actively constructing a Pure Land on earth. Herein lies a traditional difference between the two. Judaism, which places its emphasis on God in a theistic and specifically monotheistic manner, attempts to reflect God’s paradises: Eden and Olam Haba (the world to come). Meanwhile, Buddhism, which considers itself atheistic and, especially in the West, places emphasis on the practitioner’s own actions, seeks to create utopia rather than reflect or imitate it. This last Buddhist understanding, however, also exists in the more modernized or secularized forms of American Judaism. Many American Jewish vegetarians follow the ideas of Rabbi Abra-

1

Posman  247

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

ham Isaac Kook, who, although not American (he was born in Latvia and eventually became the chief rabbi in Israel), explicitly connected vegetarianism to both the paradisiacal Eden and the messianic age. He argued that God has allowed Jews to consume meat in the intermediate period, between the ideal past and the ideal future, as a concession to immoral desires, namely killing. While those who cannot live up to the ideal of vegetarianism may sublimate their instincts to kill other humans by ritually slaughtering and consuming animals, those of ideal morality are vegetarian. Kook suggested that the intermediate age is already coming to a close, and he forecasted the messianic age partially because of the rise of vegetarianism.20 His view suggests that following a vegetarian diet will help to bring about the messianic age. Kook, among others, points to passages in the Bible that suggest that the messianic age will in fact be vegetarian. The most frequently cited passage in this regard is Isaiah 11:6-7: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, The leopard lie down with the kid; The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together, With a little boy to herd them. The cow and the bear shall graze, Their young shall lie down together; And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.” This image of the messianic age teems with vegetarian imagery: even the most carnivorous of animals no longer hunt prey and instead eat straw. A second passage often cited is Hosea 2:20: “In that day, I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; I will also banish bow, sword, and war from the land. Thus I will let them lie down in safety.” Both these passages suggest a nonviolent, vegetarian messianic age. Vegetarianism now, therefore, represents a foretaste of the world to come and perhaps even will quicken the arrival of that age. One (Mahayana) Buddhist equivalent of an Eden or a messianic paradise is known as a Pure Land; Pure Lands are recognized not only by Pure Land Buddhists but also by Zen and Tibetan Buddhists. Traditionally, Pure Land Buddhism advocates a type of salvation by faith, a doctrine that devotion can lead to rebirth in the Western Paradise, the Buddha Amitabha’s Pure Land known as Sukhavati. In addition, the Lotus Sutra pronounces the planet Earth to be the Pure Land of Shaky-

f

248  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

amuni. Zen, Tibetan, and Pure Land groups, drawing on the notions of emptiness, malleability, and the importance of perception, have adopted the idea that this world can be a Pure Land. Mahayana Buddhism maintains that nothing has inherent existence independent of its relationship to other things. In other words, everything is empty of inherent existence. Thus, this world does not automatically exist in a certain way but is dependent on our perceptions of it and interactions with it. In some respects this implies a malleability of all things, and any land thus has the potential to be a Pure Land. In Taiwan, Master Hsing Yun, founder of Fo Kuang Buddhism, has accepted such notions. While Fo Kuang Buddhism is headquartered in Taiwan, it also has numerous temples and associations in the United States, including Hsi Lai Temple in southern California, the largest Buddhist temple in America. Stuart Chandler explains the Fo Kuang Buddhist view: “Whether by maintaining a vegetarian diet, freeing animals, providing disaster relief and medical care, distributing Buddhist literature, or chanting for the benefit of others, the activities of Chinese [and Chinese American] Buddhists are geared to improve the conditions of this world so that all people can attain enlightenment. Ideally, these compassionate acts will make this world a Pure Land and obviate the need for rebirth in Chile Shih-chieh [Amitabha’s Pure Land].”21 Here, in the school of Buddhism to which the largest American temple belongs, vegetarianism is one means of transforming this world into paradise. Although Hsi Lai Temple’s members are mainly Chinese Americans, the notion of Pure Lands—and the idea of transforming this world into a Pure Land or creating one’s own Pure Land—has seeped into American Buddhism not only in its immigrant Chinese form but in a variety of other forms. Geshe Michael Roach, a teacher popular among American converts to Tibetan Buddhism, uses such terminology, and the discourse of Pure Lands increasingly permeates American Zen literature as well. The idea of creating utopia, however, runs deeper within the American Buddhist movement than superficial buzzwords of Pure Lands. The individuation of Buddhism in America, combined with the demographics of American converts to Buddhism—namely white, upper-middleclass liberals—has connected American Buddhism with environmental

1

Posman  249

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

activism. Kristen Steele and Stephanie Kaza recently conducted a survey of Western Buddhists (76 percent of whom reside in the United States) in which 50 percent labeled themselves vegetarians, while less than 5 percent of all Americans were vegetarian at the time. The study demonstrates that Western Buddhists often connect Buddhist values to both vegetarianism and the environment: “Several respondents brought up the issue of eating meat and how this contributes to global hunger, pollution, erosion and other ecological problems.”22 Their vegetarianism, which provides a means to eliminate current global problems, will thereby bring about an ideal world. The survey shows that Buddhism plays a part in other food choices as well, including the use of organic foods and locally grown foods. Such food habits imply the positive ideal of creating a better world. Steele and Kaza seem puzzled that vegetarian habits of the people surveyed did not reflect the literature on the subject.23 The literature suggests that Chinese Buddhists and Zen Buddhists are vegetarian, while Theravada and Tibetan Buddhists are not. Steele and Kaza found that in addition to Zen vegetarians, significant numbers of Western Tibetan and Theravada Buddhists are vegetarian (31 percent and 63 percent, respectively), and they note that all meals at the Insight Meditation Center—a noted Theravada center in Barre, Massachusetts, whose clientele is largely non-Asian—are vegetarian. However, there is no reason for confusion here, as Western Buddhists do not share cultural norms with their Asian coreligionists. Steele and Kaza make no mention of the ethnicities of their respondents or whether they were raised Buddhist or converted. Western converts, again demographically upper middle class, white, and politically liberal,24 are more likely to be vegetarian than are their Asian counterparts, and they take their foodways with them on their travels to Asia, which brings us back to the Tibetan Buddhist restaurants in Dharamsala. The Tibetan Buddhist owners of one strictly vegetarian restaurant laughed when asked if they were vegetarian. They of course eat meat, they replied, but they noted that the Western tourists who practice Buddhism want vegetarian restaurants. Similarly, on Antioch University’s Education Abroad program in Buddhist Studies, the American students, who reside in a Burmese monastery in

f

250  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

India, eat vegetarian meals, while the Burmese monks in residence dine on meat. Long before Steele and Kaza’s survey, a discourse of environmentalism had been touted in American Buddhism, perhaps most famously by Gary Snyder in the 1970s and 1980s.25 While himself not an advocate of strict vegetarianism,26 Snyder’s ideas led to a practice of vegetarianism in Western Buddhist communities: “In earlier days, when vegetarianism was not such a popular and commercially viable choice, most Buddhist centers went against the social grain by refraining from meat-eating, often with an awareness of the associated environmental problems.”27 Currently, one finds the ubiquitous “vegetarian meals provided” on Web sites and brochures for American Buddhist centers and retreats,28 and the motivation behind this includes a combination of the precept not to kill and the idea of transforming the world through environmental activism. Interestingly, the Jewish Renewal movement has a demographic similar to Western Buddhism and the same tie to environmental activism. This overlap suggests that American socioeconomic class affiliation fosters vegetarianism as much as religion does. Nevertheless, these groups of American vegetarians, needing their religions to conform to their ideals, reinterpret their traditions to match their socioeconomic ideology. Like American Buddhist vegetarians, who connect Buddhist ideals and environmental activism to compassion and utopia, Jewish Renewalists do so in much the same way but in Jewish terms, based on what some call an “eco-kosher ideology.” As Michael Lerner notes, breeding animals for food not only kills animals but also uses enough grain to feed millions of starving humans and encourages poorer countries to destroy rainforests to make room for cattle ranches. He explains eco-kosher ideology as one “that questions whether food was grown in ecologically destructive ways, or food that has been harvested by underpaid farmers, or food that has been produced by companies that are exploiting their workers or by companies that are destroying the environment, can really be considered kosher.”29 The centrality of tikkun olam—repair of the world—to Jewish Renewal dictates a vegetarian diet to eliminate the problems meat eating causes in order to transform this world into

1

Posman  251

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

a perfect one. Others, too, have indicated that Jews become vegetarian as a mode of tikkun olam. Roberta Kalechofsky writes, “The lesson of that interesting qualifier, ‘righteous in his generation’ is that the ‘exact “medicine” for world repair is subtly unique for each generation.’ The medicine for our generation is vegetarianism. . . . Now is the time to heal and build up. History has prepared the Jew for vegetarianism and the arguments for it today are imperative. If not now, then when?”30 It is in America, and especially in the Jewish Renewal movement, that vegetarianism has not only been theologically prescribed but also related to a discourse of utopia. The individuation of Judaism in America makes this a possibility, just as the individuation of Buddhism in America creates the same opportunity. In a society with a true religious marketplace, and a strong history of individualism and voluntarism, one can find or even create a religion that caters to one’s own individual needs, in this case environmental activism and social justice within a vision of effecting a paradise on earth. As individuation occurs, one’s own ideals color one’s own interpretation of religion; it is in America, in particular, that one can find or create that subgroup of a religion that will interpret the tradition in the desired way. For example, in Israel, and even in Europe, Jews are generally Orthodox. They may also be vegetarian, but they will not find a separate denomination or movement that connects Judaism to their vegetarian practices. In the Asian Buddhist world, Chinese Buddhist monks and nuns are expected to be vegetarian; otherwise, vegetarianism is an individual choice, but again, one will not find a movement within the religion that reinterprets Buddhism to match followers’ own practices and ideologies. A spiritual marketplace, which caters interpretations of traditions to socioeconomic or politically oriented niches within the community, seems peculiarly American. Food is often the symbol of cultural norms, and its ability to act as a sign is well established, especially within religious groups; here it is no different.31 The religious vegetarianism of select American Buddhist and Jewish communities connotes a shared socioeconomic status as well as a shared ideology of transforming this world into a utopia. Furthermore, the vegetarian trends within American Jewish and Buddhist groups bring to the forefront the issue of food limitations as related to

f

252  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

socioeconomic status. Traditionally, vegetarianism has been symbolic of the have-nots: “The rich buy steak and the poor get cheese.” This is still the case today, as poor cultures around the world subsist mainly on starches with little or no meat in their diets.32 The upper-middleclass vegetarian groups examined here, however, are consciously inverting the traditional associations. This inversion is not unprecedented: during the middle ages, there was a refinement of appetite among the wealthy that included eating less—previously a sign of the poor—and was regulated by means of religious as well as societal control.33 In addition, within the Hindu tradition, more restrictions regarding food indicate a higher rather than lower social status.34 In the contemporary Buddhist and Jewish cases, as well, more restrictions connote higher status. Rather than abundance as a sign of divine or karmic blessing, higher social and spiritual status results from regulating one’s food consumption in order to participate in creating a new world. Ascetic practices that include fasting or otherwise limiting one’s food intake often have acted as symbols of self-discipline as well as holiness and have suggested aspects of individual religiosity and concern.35 These new brands of American religious vegetarianism, by contrast, connote communal and even universalistic religious issues, not only expressing individual discipline and holiness and one’s identity as politically liberal, upper middle class, and Buddhist or Jewish, but also presenting a consciously political and even messianic agenda of bringing about a global paradise through one’s food practices. It is no accident that the same trend of combining environmental activism, universal salvation, religious ideology, and vegetarian practices has emerged within two traditionally different groups in America. Since environmental activism has become central to the liberal sector of America, and since American soil is so conducive to new religions as well as new branches of religions, we can expect vegetarianism to appear in other American religious groups as well, most likely with the same rationales of nonviolence, reverence for life, and world transformation. The differences among them will simply be the means by which theologians match such practices and rationales to their own scriptural and theological traditions.

1

Posman  253

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

Interestingly, the similar goals and practices of these two groups—and perhaps similar groups within other religions—create a bond that links them more to each other than to other groups within the same religious tradition. American Buddhist vegetarian social and environmental activists are more likely to know a Jew with those same attributes than a Buddhist without them. Because of their similar political goals, socioeconomic status, regional location, and food practices, these communities have much in common, and members are likely to encounter one another at political rallies, community lectures, or local co-ops or organic farms. In fact, the number of Jewish converts to Buddhism accounts for up to 30 percent of American converts to Buddhism, whereas Jews constitute less than 3 percent of Americans.36 These converts often call themselves “jubus,” and while some of them have renounced their Judaism to become Buddhists, many self-identify as both Buddhist and Jewish. Meanwhile, Jewish Renewal is avowedly open to learning spiritual practices and ideas from other traditions. One logical outcome is that some of the Buddhist vegetarians and some of the Jewish vegetarians are the very same people. How much do these communities’ food practices actually further utopia? Presumably, vegetarian and eco-kosher practices of avoiding meat and consuming locally grown and organic produce do not further destroy the environment or take sentient life. But since they are practiced on such a small scale—these circles are contained within the 5 percent of Americans who self-identify as vegetarian—they cannot possibly prevent the continuation of slaughterhouses or farms that mass-produce chemically treated products and/or mistreat animals. Undoubtedly, the members of these religious groups realize that their efforts are a mere drop in the bucket, for now. However, they see their actions as preventing unnecessary harm, adding some benefit to the world, and prescribing a model for others. Utopia will not come about tomorrow by giving up meat; nevertheless, vegetarianism may be a step in the right direction.

1

2

3

4

5

f

Notes 1. In particular, the San Francisco Zen Center and the B’nai Or Religious Fellowship were instrumental in the growth of Buddhism and Jewish Renewal in America. 254  Veggieburger in Paradise

2. Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997), 111. 3. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). 4. Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper and Row, 1986). 5. See, for example, Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 1988); or Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 1999). 6. The Lankavatara Sutra, trans. D. T. Suzuki (New York: Kegan Paul, 2000), 212. 7. Kristen Steele and Stephanie Kaza, “Buddhist Food Practices and Attitudes among Contemporary Western Practitioners,” Ecotheology 9 (July 2000): 51. 8. The title of Geshe is given to advanced scholars of Tibetan Buddhism: Geshe Sonam Rinchen received a degree of Geshe Lharampa, the highest Geshe degree one can attain. 9. These principles are contained in the Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 2:368–71. See n. 1. 10. This commandment appears in both versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17. The Hebrew root ratzach, which is used in both instances of the Decalogue, is not the commonly used root for kill, which is harag. Thus “Thou shalt not kill” is better translated as “Thou shalt not murder,” implying premeditation or the taking of innocent life. The distinction is negligible in our case of vegetarianism. 11. All biblical translations come from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). 12. Richard Schwartz, Judaism and Vegetarianism (Smithtown ny: Exposition Press, 1982), 1–3. 13. Michael Lerner, Jewish Renewal (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), 339–40. 14. Philip Kapleau, To Cherish All Life (Rochester ny: The Zen Center, 1986), 19–20. 15. Lankavatare Sutra, in Religious Vegetarianism: From Hesiod to the Dalai Lama, ed. Kerry Walters and Lisa Portmess (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 67. 16. Rabbi Arthur Green, “Vegetarianism: A Kashrut for Our Age,” in This Sa-

1

Posman  255

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

cred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996), 302. 17. Richard H. Schwartz, “Judaism, Animal Rights, and Vegetarianism,” in The Challenge of Shalom: The Jewish Tradition of Peace and Justice, ed. Murray Polner and Naomi Goodman (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1994), 133. 18. Lerner, Jewish Renewal, 340. 19. Cited in Schwartz in Challenge of Shalom, 136. 20. Cited in Schwartz in Challenge of Shalom, 9. 21. Stuart Chandler, “Chinese Buddhism in America: Identity and Practice,” in The Faces of Buddhism in America, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Kenneth K. Tanaka (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 21–22. 22. Steele and Kaza, “Buddhist Food Practices,” 57, 63. 23. Steele and Kaza, “Buddhist Food Practices,” 64–66. 24. Steele and Kaza interviewed Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhists. In the West, these three sects are largely well educated, upper middle class, white, and disproportionately female. They did not interview Chinese Buddhists, Shin Buddhists, or Soka Gakkais, which may have produced different results. The added factor of convert Buddhist or ethnic Buddhist might have affected the results as well. 25. Stephanie Kaza, “To Save All Beings,” in Engaged Buddhism in the West, ed. Christopher S. Queen (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 161–62. 26. Gary Snyder criticized some meat-eating cultures but not all. For more on Snyder’s environmental ethic as well as his comments on the issue of the food chain, see Charles R. Strain, “The Pacific Buddha’s Wild Practice: Gary Snyder’s Environmental Ethic,” in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, ed. Duncan Ryuken Williams and Christopher S. Queen (Surrey, England: Curzon, 1999). 27. Kaza, “To Save All Beings,” 163. 28. See, for example, the Web sites or brochures for Green Gulch Farms, Zen Mountain Monastery, San Francisco Zen Center, Dharma Sound Zen Center, or Minnesota Zen Center, among others. 29. Lerner, Jewish Renewal, 340–41. 30. Roberta Kalechofsky, “Kashrut: A Provegetarian Bias in Torah,” in Walters and Portmess, Religious Vegetarianism, 103. 31. See articles by Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Mary Douglas in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture. See also Gillian Feely-Harnik,

f

256  Veggieburger in Paradise

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

“Religion and Food: An Anthropological Perspective,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (1995): 565–82. 32. Janet M. Fitchen, “Hunger, Malnutrition, and Poverty in the Contemporary United States,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture, 399, 390. 33. See Stephen Mennell, “On the Civilizing of Appetite,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture. Mennell deals extensively with Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, vol. 1, The History of Manners (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), and vol. 2, State Formation and Civilization (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982). 34. See, for example, Kathryn McClymond’s essay in this volume. 35. See especially the works of Carolyn Walker Bynum, including Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991). 36. Roger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994), 7.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Posman  257

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

13. The Pixel Chef pbs Television Cooking Shows and Sensorial Utopias Monica Mak

1

2

3

5

Halfway through the television cooking show Baking with Julia, the guest pastry maker Michel Richard approaches the minced garlic sautéing in a buttered frying pan, inhales deeply, and emits a light, satisfied grunt.1 Turning to the show’s hostess, the late Julia Child, he then mumbles, “It’s too bad we don’t have smell on tv.” Catching a whiff of the same flavoring, Child replies jokingly, “Yes, that’ll all finish when we get smellovision.”2 Through his comment, Richard indirectly broaches the concept of television as an anaesthetic medium. Such a concept suggests that tv deadens its viewers’ senses by encouraging them to watch its programs in a stupefied, numb state.3 However, Richard overlooks the fact that Child’s baking show, like other cooking programs televised on the American public-funded Public Broadcasting Service (pbs) network, is, within tv’s anaesthetically pixellated world, trying to function as a synaesthetic submedium. pbs culinary shows are synaesthetic since they desire to forge a relationship among all five of the tv viewer’s perceptual senses and the main subject of these programs’ diegesis, or televised environment: food. Since tv is ontologically limited to an audiovisual existence, these cooking shows employ sight and sound to stimulate their audience’s olfactory, gustatory, and tactile senses. By trying to evoke and unify the five human senses, such programs are attempting to inspire in their audience a type of culinary Gesamtkunstwerk, or total

f

258

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

sensorial experience, based on food making.4 The goal is to encourage their viewers to experience sensorial utopia. Caused by the stimulation of the five senses during the preparation of the on-screen dish, sensorial utopia constitutes a state of mind marked by ineffable euphoria.

1

2

3

4

5

Bestowing Scent on the Scentless Covering several Saturday morning tv cooking shows broadcast on pbs between 1994 and 1999 throughout North America, this essay examines them in relation to seven topics relevant to Gesamtkunstwerk, or sensorial utopia: (1) the concept of affect; (2) audiovisual stimuli and the affects of taste and smell; (3) audiovisual stimuli and the affect of touch vis-à-vis one type of anti-Cartesian food-making philosophy; (4) two incarnations of culinary phantasmagoria—cooking show gimmicks based on technological manipulation or unseen labor; (5) tv as a barrier to the sensorial utopia; (6) the cooking programs’ indirect instigation of genuine Gesamtkunstwerk; and (7) the link between sensorial utopia and a culinary hierarchy privileging an idealized food-making culture over a perceived real-life culture of “bad” food and food preparation. This analysis draws televisual examples from the shows Yan Can Cook: The Best of China, Cucina Amore, Baking with Julia, Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine, and the Wild Harvest series. Before one proceeds with an exploration of the aforementioned themes, it is worthwhile to compare pbs with the Food Network, a specialty channel devoted entirely to food making. A common trait between the two stations is that both feature culinary programming bent on producing a total sensorial experience in their viewers. However, a major difference between the two networks is that the latter features numerous shows whose primary purpose is to entertain rather than to offer viewers proper instructions on how to improve their own culinary skills. A notable example is the popular Japanese import The Iron Chef. Structured as a cook-off between two master chefs, The Iron Chef functions primarily as a comedy whose appeal derives from its campy voice-over dubbings in English, its chefs’ over-the-top concoctions, and their rapid cooking styles. Other examples include Oliver’s Twist and The Essence of Emeril. Although these two programs technically fall un-

6

Mak  259

r

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

der the rubric of cooking show, each one’s emphasis is on enthralling viewers with the quirky personality of its celebrity chef—hyperactive Jamie Oliver and brash Emeril Lagasse, respectively—to the extent that he, rather than his dish, ends up as the show’s highlight. As a for-profit station, the Food Network may feel compelled to broadcast these types of commercial fare in order to attract the largest possible audience base from the general masses and, in this way, satisfy advertisers, its main sponsors. In other words, it may be relying on lighthearted, entertainment-oriented cooking programs to entice as many different people to tune in and so maintain advertising sponsorship. In contrast, although pbs cooking shows can be audiovisually enjoyable, they essentially serve as serious instructional shows on cooking. One probable reason for pbs’s exclusion of shows like The Iron Chef, Oliver’s Twist, and The Essence of Emeril from its lineup is that, as a public-sponsored station, pbs may feel obliged to provide “quality” programming to sate what it perceives to be the elite tastes of its main sponsors, its regular viewers. Catering to the nobler, more genteel sensibilities of this select crowd, pbs may be offering cooking shows that it deems more refined, substantial, and educational than those commonly found on the Food Network. Absent from pbs’s roster are the comedic chefs whose personas overshadow their delectable platters. Present, instead, are no-nonsense professionals, such as Julia Child, Martin Yan, Nick Stellino, Jacques Pépin, and Nick Nairn, whose fundamental objective is to show viewers how to cook their recipes rather than to amuse the audience. Therefore, the aim of this essay is to illustrate how—and ultimately why—pbs’s relatively “high brow” cooking shows want to satisfy the audience by leading it to a state of sensorial utopia. A key feature behind the creation of this utopian sensorial state or culinary Gesamtkunstwerk is affect, one’s precritical or precognitive experience in the presence of food. For several cultural theorists, affect functions as a prelinguistic state that, by being less structured and reactionary than emotions, privileges passion over meaning and is grounded in embodied experience.5 According to the food theorist Deane Curtin, “The ‘knowledge’ one comes to have through authentic presence to food is bodily and experiential. This is not conceptual knowledge

f

260  The Pixel Chef

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

that comes to be for, and speaks authoritatively only to, the person or persons shaped definitively by a particular kind of experience.”6 By “authentic presence,” Curtin is referring to the human-food relationship wherein individuals in the process of preparing food experience or sense it at an affective level. pbs tv cooking shows rely on a combination of representational (visual) and nonrepresentational (aural) codes to spur their audiences in the United States and Canada to develop affect in the authentic presence of food. Such affective signs demonstrate how pbs tv chefs actually or purportedly undergo an aesthetically precognitive “high” when they are smelling, tasting, or touching their dishes. These culinary experts’ precritical ecstatic responses to their individual cooking, be it a genuine or feigned response, stem from their wishes to include viewers in the supposed exhilaration of the food-making experience, itself associated with the taste, smell, and touch of their concoctions. As viewers are unable to taste, smell, and touch televised objects, the shows are consequently trying to prompt them, via visual and aural stimuli, to engage with their other senses during the tv-watching process. In other words, the hosts are encouraging viewers to imagine that the shows can activate audiovisually, all at once or individually, their olfactory, tactile, and gustatory senses. Subsequently, the producers wish for viewers to savor the affective moments of indescribable bliss triggered by the various convergences of the first two senses with the other three, or by the reunification of all five at once. To inspire viewers to succumb to the affect of taste, pbs tv cooking programs depend on representational visual signs such as the tv chef ’s body language and facial expressions, and/or camera close-ups on the food, in conjunction with nonrepresentational aural signs such as the tv chef ’s voice and/or postproduction music. Significantly, the chefs’ acts of sampling their food frequently render many of them speechless or inarticulate. Either reaction, in turn, accentuates the prelinguistic nature of gustation. The Roast Scallops and Couscous with Shellfish and Tomato Sauce episode of the bbc-produced Wild Harvest series is a perfect example of this precognitive aesthetic experience.7 In the first segment the camera, in a medium shot, focuses on the Wild Har-

1

Mak  261

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

vest host, the Scottish chef Nick Nairn, stirring couscous in a saucepan of tomato broth. He then scoops up a spoonful of broth and sips it noisily. As Nairn swallows, he begins to react with stifled passion. He strikes his stirring spoon in the air and gasps, and his face contorts while he searches desperately for words to explain this apparently dumbfounding experience. Managing to control his excitement, Nairn finally mutters, “Ah! It’s just brilliant . . . umm . . . I don’t have words for this.” The camera finally cuts to an overhead close-up of the simmering brew. Throughout the segment, the Wild Harvest episode aspires to induce gustatory affect. The hand gestures and facial reactions, in the shot where Nairn tests his broth, and the appealing colors of the broth, in the successive shot, all function as representational signs. These signs work in relation with nonrepresentational signs such as Nairn’s slurping noise, ecstatic tone of voice, and phatic utterances of “ah” or “umm,” utterances that, for Michel de Certeau, would function as aural markers of the chef ’s prelinguistic state.8 Collectively these visual and aural codes try to arouse in viewers the sensation that this dish must indeed be delicious. To instigate the affect of smell among their viewers, pbs cooking shows depend on simulation. Constance Classen notes that when smells cannot be preserved, they can be simulated through the creation of an olfactory product without the use of the original scent.9 The televisual simulation of scent therefore represents the imagined smells of real food that these programs impel their audience to create through the affect of aroma (such as their ability to sense the smell of garlic without access to the actual clove). In their attempts to incite viewers to respond to an imagined scent, such culinary programs disseminate two types of affective signs: visual codes of noticeably or unnoticeably vaporous dishes and aural codes of the chef ’s verbal conviction of the smell’s gloriousness. The latter signs take the form of cognitive remarks and/or precritical phatic utterances, or vocal sounds expressing the prelinguistic aesthetic experience that tv chefs feel via smell. To promote olfactory affect, the Yan Can Cook: The Best of China and Cucina Amore series offer similar examples of visibly vaporous signs in partnership with verbal outbursts. In the first segment of the Blue

f

262  The Pixel Chef

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

Shell Crab in Wine Sauce episode of Yan Can Cook, which specializes in East and Southeast Asian cuisine, Chef Martin Yan demonstrates how to stir-fry crab.10 From a medium shot of Yan at his wok, the camera switches to an overhead shot offering a bird’s-eye view of the crab pieces steaming up the wok. As an unseen Yan stirs, the vapors from the sautéing crustacean continue to rise, and off screen the chef exclaims, “Oh! This is marvelous. It smells so good!” A similar pattern exists in Cucina Amore, a series devoted to Italian cuisine. In the Steak in Red Wine Sauce episode, the camera begins with a close-up of two chunks of thick red steak sizzling in a frying pan, then cuts to a medium shot of the host, Chef Nick Stellino, flipping them.11 The latter shot allows viewers to notice the fumes rising from the meat and hitting Stellino’s face. Just as Stellino is about to elaborate on a cooking tip, the steak’s scent makes him lose his train of thought: “So [pause]—umm! The aroma that is coming out [whistle] spectacular!” In this episode, as well as in the Blue Shell Crab episode, the vapors captured on camera function as visual indicators of aroma emitted by the dish. Furthermore, Stellino’s phatic “umm” and whistle, like Yan’s phatic “oh,” combine with actual remarks to serve as aural markers attesting to the dish’s splendid smell. Working together, these representational and nonrepresentational signs encourage viewers to imagine the pleasant smells of crab and steak being cooked. The Eastern Mediterranean Lamb and Tomato Bread episode of Baking with Julia, a series on bread and pastries, illustrates how an invisibly vaporous dish must be coupled with the tv gourmet’s voice to instigate olfactory affect.12 Midway through the episode’s second segment, the camera cuts from a close-up on bread pockets baking in the oven to a medium shot of Julia Child’s guest bread maker Naomi Duquid removing them. As Duquid holds on to the bread tray, Child, standing by her, inhales the food and coos, “Umm.” The guest responds, “Umm. You can catch a whiff of them.” Since the lamb and tomato bread’s steam is transparent, viewers are unable to sense its aroma based on visual stimuli alone. They must perceive these invisibly vaporous visual signs in relation to Child’s phatic utterance and Duquid’s verbal remark in order to experience the savory smell of scrumptious bread.

1

Mak  263

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

By encouraging the affect of touch among viewers, pbs cooking shows, in the process, reject one type of Cartesian food-making philosophy. Rooted in Plato’s philosophy that privileges head work or mental activity over hand work or manual activity, this mode of thought associates cooking with manual labor. It therefore views food preparation as an intellectually inferior practice, deserving little attention and respect. Opponents of this philosophy, such as the culinary theorists Deane W. Curtin, Marlene H. Hughes, and Lisa Heldke, argue that, in food making, a separation between mind and body does not exist; they thus endorse the concept of “bodily knowledge.”13 For them, this theoretical construct is based on the principle that food-making knowledge fuses mental reason with bodily or sensorial instinct. Heldke neatly sums up the ethos of this construct: “The knowledge in making a cake is ‘contained’ not simply ‘in my head’ but in my hands, my wrists, my eyes and nose as well. The phrase ‘bodily knowledge’ is not a metaphor. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that I know things literally with my body, that I ‘as’ my hands know when the bread dough is sufficiently kneaded, and I ‘as’ my nose know when the pie is done.”14 Baking with Julia’s Eastern Mediterranean Lamb and Tomato Bread episode illustrates one way that pbs tv chefs espouse bodily knowledge in relation to the tactile sensation of dough. On the show, Jeffrey Alford, another guest bread maker, kneads pita dough under Julia Child’s observing eye. From a left-angled close-up on Alford’s hands massaging the doughy blob, the camera cuts to a frontal medium shot of Alford and Child by the counter. As Alford talks, the dough is in a pasty state and flour residue smudges the kneading board:

8

9

0

1

2

a l f o r d: Just like all doughs, it needs to be kneaded. It’s still quite rough. c h i l d: And sticky. a l f o r d: And sticky.

3

5

The camera cuts back to the close-up on Alford’s hands kneading the bread.

f

264  The Pixel Chef

4

a l f o r d: We [he and wife Naomi Duquid] are often talking to people who’d say, “You know, bread making it’s too tricky, it’s not for me.” And then we’d realize that it’s kneading that people are not necessarily comfortable with. I think one of the most important things is to be comfortable with kneading.

1

2

3

4

5

6

The camera cuts back to the frontal shot of Alford and Child.

7

8

a l f o r d: And to knead with your body and not with your arms.

9

1

Alford and Child briefly joke about how kneading serves as good exercise. The camera cuts back to the close-up on Alford’s hands on pasty dough. Then to save time, an audiovisual edit dissolve pushes the segment forward to Alford’s hands on taut dough. All the flour on the kneading board has, during the time leap, supposedly been integrated into the firm ball.

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

a l f o r d: And I think it’s just about a well-kneaded dough.

1

1

The camera returns to the frontal shot.

2

2

c h i l d: This is certainly good. a l f o r d: Smooth on the surface.

2

2

2

Child pats the dough; the action produces a thud. She then lifts the dough; at this point, the camera cuts to a close-up on Child’s hands squeezing the bread mixture.

2

2

2

2

c h i l d: It feels awfully good.

2

3

Within this segment audiovisual codes exist to inspire viewers to relinquish themselves to the affect of touch. Representational signs include close-up visual imagery of Alford’s hands kneading the dough and Child’s hands groping the dough ball. These visual codes pair off with nonrepresentational signs such as tactile commentary (“smooth

3

Mak  265

r

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

on the surface”; “feels very good”) and the dull sound of Child’s hand slamming the ball, in order to make viewers think that they are feeling the dough’s soft, thick, and smooth texture. Equally telling is Alford’s televised advice to “be comfortable with kneading” and to “knead with your body not with your arms,” advice reinforced by his ability to sense, via touch, when his bread dough is “well kneaded.” More than a mere tip on better baking, Alford’s suggestion is indicative of anti-Cartesian philosophy since it reminds viewers that they should learn to trust their cooking instincts and to permit such sensorial intuition, which combines rational thought with the perceptive senses, to lead them on the path to culinary success. His words are as relevant for their relationship with touch as for their bond with the four other senses.

3

5

Culinary Phantasmagoria Apart from employing audiovisual stimuli to incite the affects of taste, smell, and touch in their audience, pbs tv cooking shows depend on phantasmagoria to enable them to sustain such precognitive senses. Referring to gimmicks based on technological manipulation or unseen labor, phantasmagoria was what the composer Richard Wagner used to produce the illusion of Gesamtkunstwerk in his operas.15 In similar manner, these shows rely on two forms of phantasmagoria to achieve a partial or complete culinary Gesamtkunstwerk: postproduction editing and hidden labor. While the first form technologically manipulates sight and sound to stimulate the viewers’ sense of touch, the second one, coupled with audiovisual signs, incites their perception of taste, smell, and touch. In cooking shows, the real time that a dish actually takes to be cooked or baked is not as significant as the time created to fit two or three recipes into each episode’s allotted thirty-minute block. For brevity, tv news programs often condense news reports through straight edit cuts between stories. pbs tv cooking shows instead rely on audiovisual edit dissolves to secure the promotion of affective touch against viewer tedium and technically opaque disruption. Furthermore, in the world of such shows, hidden labor, as the preprepared dish, is the most ostensible display of phantasmagoria. The preprepared dish is a conventional gimmick that all pbs chefs have used at least once to spur on

f

266  The Pixel Chef

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

the audience’s construction of gustatory, olfactory, and tactile affect. Baking with Julia’s bread-kneading segment provides an example of the technical manipulation of sight and sound through edit dissolves. Between the time viewers notice how pasty Alford’s pita dough is and listen to Alford’s and Child’s comments about the dough’s stickiness and the time they notice the dough’s firmness and aurally retain Alford’s “I think it’s just about a well-kneaded dough” statement, an audiovisual edit dissolve exists. Through the dissolve, a long kneading process is deliberately completed in less than two minutes. On the one hand, were one to watch the whole, unedited ten- or fifteen-minute procedure, one’s imagined sense of touch might wane or dissipate from boredom. On the other hand, a straight audiovisual edit cut would make the transition from pasty dough to firm dough appear abrupt, and the before-and-after commentary sound temporally absurd. The dissolve thus slowly melts the image of half-kneaded dough into that of well-kneaded dough and gradually blends together each image’s subtle sounds of white noise (i.e., ambient sound). By so doing, the postproduction technique speeds up the passage of time in a subtle, unnoticeable manner and prevents viewers from becoming bored. Since boredom could disrupt the audience’s relationship to the affect of touch, Baking with Julia, for this reason, employs this editing device on a regular basis. Like postproduction editing, the preprepared dish, having been cooked or baked ahead of taping time, functions as a product of hidden labor performed by the tv chefs or by their unseen kitchen assistants. The preprepared dish is, as an object for viewers to look at, the visual component of the phantasmagorical effect. Nevertheless, these chefs need to combine this visual code with its aural counterpart—their brief on-air remarks. Invariably, their comments try to convince viewers that the preprepared dish is ultimately what the food being cooked will look like once completed. Within pbs tv cooking narratives, the preprepared dish ploy can assume several forms, such as the precooked, preplated, and prebaked platters. The precooked and preplated dish strategies are present in Yan Can Cook’s Blue Shell Crab episode. In the last segment Yan instructs viewers on how to prepare steamed pears in wine. When he

1

Mak  267

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

reaches the recipe’s penultimate step, which involves steaming the pears in sugarplum wine glaze, Yan does not wait for them to finish cooking. Instead, he takes the lid off another pot on the stove, reveals a batch of presteamed pears, and praises this new batch’s beautifully cooked state. Although he then scoops out one of the precooked pears and, with his cleaver, shapes it into a fan, he does not bother doing the same with the others. Rather, he retrieves, from behind the counter, ready-to-serve, fan-shaped candied pears, notes that they have already been attractively laid out on a plate, and extols their delightful appearance. For a prebaked example, one can turn to the Baked Mackerel Marie-Louise episode of Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine, a show specializing in home-style French cuisine.16 In the second segment Chef Jacques Pépin shows viewers how to prepare the episode’s title dish. Consisting of baked mackerel, mashed potatoes, and tomato slices, the recipe requires that the potatoes and tomatoes be prebaked before the addition of the fish. Although he lays out the potatoes and tomatoes on a baking pan and instructs his daughter Claudine to place it in the oven, Pépin does not wait for this base to finish baking. Rather, he asks Claudine to pull out a prebaked version of the mixture from another oven and spreads out his mackerel pieces on it. Pépin explains that the preprepared substance has taken an hour to bake. Poking the base with a fork, he then comments on its tenderness. On both cooking shows, the tv chef first admits that he has preprepared a portion of the dish and follows that admission with a statement alluding to the successful state of the preprepared food. Whereas Yan comments twice on his dessert’s attractiveness, Pépin remarks once on his main course’s tenderness. In either chef ’s case, the implicit objective of the “twopart” commentary is the same: even though he has not guided viewers through the entire recipe in real time, they must take for granted the idea that he has led them through his entire cooking experience. Many pbs tv cooking shows employ the preprepared dish gimmick because it, like the audiovisual edit dissolve, can save time and prevent audience boredom, as well as conceal cooking blunders. As a result, such culinary programs’ precooked, preplated, and prebaked devices help to sustain viewers’ relationship to the affect of taste, smell, and

f

268  The Pixel Chef

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

touch. By prebaking Baked Mackerel Marie-Louise’s base ahead of taping time, Pépin spares the audience of waiting for it to be done. Were Pépin to make them sit through the whole one-hour process, whatever imagined sense of taste, smell, and touch they may have developed earlier may, by the time the base is ready, have weakened or been annihilated by tedium. By steaming a batch of candied pears ahead of time, Yan can, during the show’s taping, avoid the misfortune of overcooking the pears or slicing them crookedly. Such potential mishaps may not only disrupt one’s affect-building process but also tarnish a host’s reputation as a professional chef. A major negative effect that audience boredom and on-air blunders could have on Yan Can Cook, Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen, and any other pbs tv cooking program is financially related. At the end of every pbs tv cooking show, an ad promoting the host’s cookbook, which includes recipes from the episode, is broadcast. Such a consistent phenomenon suggests that there exists a market of the show’s fans for the chef ’s recipes. The ability of phantasmagorical preprepared devices to sustain an audience’s gustatory, olfactory, and tactile senses therefore has a pecuniary payoff. The use of hidden labor secures the viewers’ desire to taste, smell, and touch a dish that televisually seems so quick and flawless to prepare, even if it really is not. By tempting viewers to have step-by-step written instructions on how to prepare the televised recipe, the network hopes that their cravings might impel them to buy the cookbook. Every cookbook sold adds to the tv chef ’s fame and financial prosperity in the same way that lifestyle magazines have been known to cultivate the stardom of certain chefs and their restaurants.17

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

Experiencing Sensorial Utopia Understanding the possible motive underlying pbs tv cooking programs’ desire to draw viewers into a sensorial utopia, via phantasmagorical techniques and audiovisual strategies, necessitates a brief foray into the subject of a culinary hierarchy. For the food theorists Carole Counihan and Kathleen LeBesco and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, individuals within Western culture have a tendency to turn certain foods into metaphors for particular social classes.18 For instance, as LeBesco

2

Mak  269

r

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

points out, caviar, for many North Americans, symbolizes genteel high society, while Jell-O, for some, represents a “hick” or “gauche” subgroup of the working class.19 Given these scholars’ arguments for food as a class distinction marker within the United States and Canada, food preparation can also sustain a hierarchy privileging an idealized domestic food-making culture over an assumed real-life culture of convenience foods. Implicitly extolled by “taste elites” (e.g., chefs and gastronomes) and the general public alike, this romanticized foodie culture connotes home-cooked meals boasting fresh, wholesome ingredients and involving time, skill, and patience to create from scratch. What renders this culture “ideal” is the process of creating these dishes, which presumably signifies a broad scope of all that is desired and right in home cookery and dining. This spectrum includes notions of quality food production, correct food preparation skills, proper and healthy eating, and cuisine fit for nourishing families physically and emotionally. Such positive traits run counter to those relegated to the envisioned culture of convenience foods—fast, processed, canned, instant, and frozen meals— supposedly forming the bulk of North Americans’ daily diets. Assigned to this debased culture is an array of negative attributes, including notions of bad food, unhealthy dining, laziness in the kitchen, poor culinary skills, and grub unfit for feeding loved ones. As the audiovisual embodiment of an idealized food-making culture, pbs tv cooking shows wish to persuade viewers, via the televised dissemination of an imaginary culinary Gesamtkunstwerk, to venture into their kitchens. This factor raises several questions about viewership. For instance, who, quite simply, are these viewers? In other words, who exactly are those individuals in North America who watch tv cooking shows, much less shows broadcast on pbs? Who, among them, are easily impelled by affect to dash to their kitchen and prepare Jacques Pépin’s banquet for four—or, more simply, Nick Stellino’s single gourmet sandwich? Who, in contrast, choose to remain staunch couch potatoes? Although the specific demographics or identities of an audience call for additional quantifiable research, it is reasonable to assume that regular followers of pbs tv cooking shows, individuals who associate such programs with ideal food practices, regard themselves as members

f

270  The Pixel Chef

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

of a diffused albeit loyal viewing community of serious food connoisseurs. It is therefore probable that at least two types of viewing patterns exist among them. Those who adopt the intended viewing style, the type of viewing intended by the producers and chefs of such shows, are unaware that such programs are trying to incite affect in them, in relation to the televised food preparation process. In contrast, those who adopt a critical viewing style enter a liminal state of being. On the one hand, they are aware of the audiovisual strategies and phantasmagorical gimmicks deliberately employed by the cooking shows to generate affect in them; on the other hand, they willingly suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy the illusion of being immersed in a total sensorial experience. By steering the audience toward a utopian sensorial state, such viewing patterns inadvertently help pbs tv cooking shows to perpetuate the ethos of an idealized culinary culture. By equating sensorial utopia with the preparation and implied consumption of their televised dishes, these programs aspire to realize a collective goal: to promote the sensorial benefits inherent in this glorified community. By linking their food preparation processes and prepared dishes to their chefs’ feelings of indescribable ecstasy, these shows insinuate that only viewers’ emulation of such techniques and re-creation of such platters of delectable foods could generate the same state of inexplicable wonder. Consequently, the assumption, whether accurate or not, is that one could not acquire the same sensation by “nuking” a tv dinner or peeling the wrapper off a Big Mac at suppertime. In this way such programs want to sustain the idea that an ideal culinary world exists to reign supreme over its convenience food counterpart. Simultaneously, they wish to persuade viewers to become or remain loyal citizens of such a world in at least three ways: by watching the shows regularly, by heading into the kitchen to reproduce the masterpieces whose preparation they have just viewed, and by purchasing chefs’ cookbooks. pbs tv cooking shows most effectively promote an idealized foodmaking culture during the moments when they can successfully inspire viewers to undergo a culinary Gesamtkunstwerk. These moments consist of the portions of the shows dealing with the actual process of food preparation, or featuring the tv chef tasting, smelling, and touching his

1

Mak  271

r

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

5

or her creations. However, for the audience, such utopian moments generated by tv’s convergence with the affects of smell, taste, and touch are likely to rupture at two points: at the end of each of the cooking show’s two or three segments and at the actual end of the show. Both circumstances are affectively disrupting because they sever the pseudototal-sensorial relationship viewers may have formed with a segment’s particular dish. In both cases viewers become aware that the tv screen is a gustatory, tactile, and olfactory barrier to the object of their affection, the dish in the tv chef ’s studio. Although they may be able to see the dish and listen to what is said about it, they are ultimately unable to taste, touch, or smell it, except through vicarious association with the host. As a result, these moments of disruption may cause one to question the tv chef ’s honesty and expertise. In tv news reports the prime referential proof of a news broadcast’s validity is the news photograph that provides visual evidence matching the reported event.20 However, such proof is insufficient to judge a tv chef ’s skill and credibility. For viewers to know that a cake is delicious, it is neither enough for them to look at the pastry nor to listen to the host’s praise of it. One must be able to smell the dessert to judge if it is fragrant, press its surface with a fork or one’s finger to see if it is moist, and taste it to know if it is truly savory. In the end, such acts are impossible to accomplish due to the tv screen’s glassy barrier that spatially and temporally separates the audience from the food. If pbs tv cooking shows, in the long run, are unable to incite genuine culinary Gesamtkunstwerk within their viewers, these programs nonetheless can function as indirect conduits to the real thing. Susan Leonardi states that a cookbook’s recipe encourages its hearers-readers-receivers to reproduce it and, by so doing, make it their own.21 In the sense that recipes form the base of the total sensorial unification that cooking can provide, these programs, more than anything, can serve as catalysts. Through audiovisual codes, postproduction edit dissolves, and preprepared dishes, these shows can encourage—but not force— viewers to get off the couch and, by replicating the televised recipe, realize the real, total sensorial experience that the cooking segments,

f

272  The Pixel Chef

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

like Wagner’s operas, are ultimately incapable of achieving. Certainly such shows may not sway some viewers to leave their divans to prepare beef stroganoff or fettuccine alfredo. However, they may be successful in stimulating others to do so and, in this way, partake in an idealized food-making community.

1

Notes

6

1. Baking with Julia (1996–97 tv series), “Tourte Milanese,” episode with Michel Richard, hosted by Julia Child, produced by A La Carte Communications, Maryland Public tv (mpt) for pbs. 2. Although the late tv icon’s surname is sometimes spelled “Childs,” both pbs and Baking with Julia’s tv production company, À La Carte Communications, refer to her as Julia Child. 3. Lynne Joyrich, “Going through the Emotions: Gender, Postmodernism, and Affect in Television Studies,” Discourse 14, no. 1 (Winter 1991–92): 26. 4. Susan Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered,” October 62 (Fall 1992): 24. 5. Lawrence Grossberg, “Mapping Popular Culture,” in We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 82. 6. Deane W. Curtin, “Recipes for Value,” in Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, ed. Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 128. 7. Wild Harvest (1996 tv series), “Roasted Scallops and Couscous with Shellfish and Tomato Sauce” episode, hosted by Nick Nairn, produced by bbc. 8. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 99. 9. Classen, Aroma (London: Routledge, 1994), 204. 10. Yan Can Cook: The Best of China (1994 tv series), “Blue Shell Crab in Wine Sauce” episode, hosted by Martin Yan, coproduced by kqed tv (San Francisco) and Yan Can Cook Inc. 11. Cucina Amore (1995–98 tv series), “Steak in Red Wine Sauce” episode, no. 310, hosted by Nick Stellino, produced by kcts Channel 9 (Seattle) and West 175 Enterprises. 12. Baking with Julia, “Eastern Mediterranean Lamb and Tomato Bread” episode with Jeff Alford and Naomi Duquid. 13. See Curtin, “Recipes for Value,” 125–28; and Marlene H. Hughes, “Soul,

7

Mak  273

r

2

3

4

5

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

Black Women, and Food,” in Counihan and Van Esterik, Food and Culture, 273. 14. Lisa M. Heldke, “Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice,” in Curtin and Heldke, Cooking, Eating, Thinking, 218. 15. Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics,” 23. 16. Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine (1998 tv series), hosted by Jacques Pépin, produced by kqed tv (San Francisco). 17. Priscilla P. Ferguson and Sharon Zukin, “The Careers of Chefs,” in Eating Culture, ed. Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz (Albany: suny Press, 1998), 93. 18. Carole Counihan, The Anthropology of Food and Body (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 8; Kathleen LeBesco, “Jell-O, Gender, and Social Class,” in Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food, ed. Sherrie A. Inness (Cumner Hill, uk: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 134; Bourdieu, Distinction, 21. 19. LeBesco, “Jell-O,” 140. 20. Margaret Morse, “The Television News Personality and Credibility: Reflections on the News in Transition,” in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, ed. Tania Modleski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 63. 21. Susan J. Leonardi, “Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie,” Publications of Modern Language Association of America (pmla) 104, no. 3 (May 1989): 344.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

274  The Pixel Chef

1

2

Contributors

3

4

5

6

7

Jonathan G. Andelson, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Prairie Studies at Grinnell College, received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1974. Andelson’s interests include ecology, religion, intentional communities, and, most recently, agriculture and local food systems. Since 1971 Andelson has studied the Amana Colonies and published articles on many aspects of them. He is at work on a book-length study of Amana. Priscilla J. Brewer earned her PhD in American civilization from Brown University in 1987. She is professor of American studies at the University of South Florida. The author of Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives (University Press of New England, 1986) and From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America (Syracuse University Press 2000), Brewer is working on a book about student life at American women’s colleges.

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

Wendy E. Chmielewski is the George Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Coeditor of Women in Spiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States (Syracuse University Press, 1993), she also has published on women in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century peace movement. Trudy Eden received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University and is assistant professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa. She is the author of a book manuscript, “Equal Fare: Food, Identity and Society,” as well as several articles on the history of food in the Atlantic world.

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

Martha L. Finch received her PhD in American religious history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2000 and is an associate professor of religious studies at Missouri State University. A visiting research fellow in the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University (2004–5), she has authored articles on human embodiment in American religion and a book manuscript, “Corporeal Saints: Religion and the Body in Plymouth Colony,” for Columbia University Press.

3

275

r

3

3

3

3

3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Etta M. Madden, author of Bodies of Life: Shaker Literature and Literacies (Greenwood, 1998), also has written articles on Puritans, Quakers, and Shakers and on science and literature of the early republic, published in Early American Literature, Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and Communal Societies. A professor of English and on the gender studies faculty at Missouri State University, she serves as a consultant for Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and as a reader for lit: Literature, Interpretation, Theory. Monica Mak is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. The author of articles published in Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies and Yi Shu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, she received the De Grandpré essay prize for “The Pixel Chef: pbs Television Cooking Shows and the Human Sensorium.” Mak is also a documentary filmmaker and has (co)directed and edited several documentaries, including Canadian Pie: Boys Dressing for the Prom, the awardwinning Unwanted Images: Gender-Based Violence in the New South Africa, and Women Educating for Peace.

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Kathryn McClymond received her ba from Harvard University and her PhD in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. An assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department at Georgia State University, McClymond primarily focuses her studies on Hindu and Jewish ritual traditions, including brahmanical Hindu and biblical and rabbinic Jewish sacrifice. Her recent articles include “Differing Intentions in Vedic and Jewish Sacrifice,” “The Nature and Elements of Sacrifice,” and “Death Be Not Proud: Reevaluating the Role of Killing in Sacrifice.”

5

Maria McGrath is a visiting assistant professor in history at Allegheny College. Her dissertation, “Food for Dissent: A History of Natural and Health Food Politics and Culture since the 1960s,” examines the historical and cultural trajectory of the natural-foods movement from its origins in the 1960s counterculture to its incorporation into early-twenty-first-century mainstream consumer culture. McGrath’s “‘That’s Capitalism, Not a Co-op’: Countercultural Idealism and Business Realism in 1970s U.S. Food Co-ops” appears in Business and Economic History On-Line (2004 edition), and her “Spiritual Talk: The Oprah Winfrey Show and the Popularization of the New Age” is forthcoming in the anthology “I’m Every Woman: The Phenomenon of Oprah.”

f

276  Contributors

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

1

Ellen Posman is assistant professor of religion at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where she teaches courses on Judaism, Buddhism, and comparative religion. She specializes in the comparative study of Judaism and Buddhism, particularly on issues of exile and diaspora. She received her ba from Stanford University, her mts from Harvard University, and her PhD in 2004 from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz received her PhD from Indiana University in 2003. She is assistant professor of history at College Misericordia, Dallas, Pennsylvania, where she also teaches a course on food and American society. Recipient of the Upton Prize in Shaker Studies, she is working on a book manuscript titled “‘For the Good of the Whole’: Vegetarianism in the United States, 1817–1918.”

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

Mary Rizzo received her PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota in 2005 with her dissertation titled “Consuming Class, Buying Identity: Middle-Class Youth Culture, ‘Lower Class’ Style and Consumer Culture, 1945– 2000.” She teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the College of New Jersey and is working on a book-length study of urban consumer cooperatives in the United States. Phillip H. Round is associate professor of English and American Indian and Native studies at the University of Iowa, where he coordinates the American Indian and Native Studies Program. He is the author of By Nature and By Custom Cursed: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production, 1620–1660 (University Press of New England, 1999).

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

Debra Shostak is professor of English, College of Wooster, and the author of Philip Roth—Countertexts, Counterlives (University of South Carolina Press, 2004). Additionally, she has written numerous articles on contemporary American novelists that have appeared in journals such as Shofar, Twentieth Century Literature, Arizona Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, and Modern Fiction Studies.

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Contributors  277

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

1

2

Index

3

4

5

6

7

Abbott, Ruth, 208 abundance: in Amana Society, 158; United States as symbol, 4–7, 24, 75, 84–85 affect: creation, 260–61; sensorial utopia, 271–72; smell, 262–63; taste, 261–62; touch, 264–69 agrarian ideal: in Amana Society, 21, 145–46, 151; of health, 228; history of, 6, 16, 229 ahimsa, 242–43 alcohol: in Amana Society, 146, 152, 155; in Anza expedition, 58–63; Cheyne on, 191; in Oneida Community, 129, 130, 132, 141n27; and Shakers, 13, 110; at spreads, 208 Alcott, William, 128 Alford, Jeffrey, 264, 267 Allen, Mildred, 209 Amana Barn Restaurant, 153 Amana Church Society, 150 Amana Colonies, 152, 159 Amana Heritage Society, 155 Amana Society: and culinary tourism, 152–55; and food production, 145–47, 155–56; history of, 143–44; ideals of, 21; mealtimes in, 147–49, 150–51, 156–57; shift to capitalism in, 144, 149–52, 157–60; woolen mills of, 155 American Cookery (Beard), 179

American Pastoral (Roth), 78; assimilation in, 84–87 American Revolution, 187 Andelson, Jonathan G., 21 Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities, 9 Anderson, Martha J., 120 Antin, Mary, 75, 81 Antioch University, 250–51 Anza, Juan Baptista de: and alcohol, 58–63; Font’s criticisms of, 19, 57–58, 71; at Monterey, 69; overview of expeditions of, 55–56; and provisions, 58–59; at Santa Rosa Mountains, 67–68 Appadurai, Arjun, 93 Appetite for Change (Belasco), 224 Ark of Taste, 2 assimilation: of Indian Americans, 20; of Jewish Americans, 76–87 Atlanta Union Mission, 99

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

bakeries, Amana, 151, 152, 154 Baking with Julia, 258, 259, 263, 264, 267 Barlow, Joel, 202n33 Barnstable, 46, 47 Barrett, Helen, 205 Barthes, Roland: Empire of Signs, 14 Batchelor, Stephen, 241 Beanery, 221, 233 279

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

“The Beanery Paper,” 231, 233 Beard, James: American Cookery, 179 Beaven, Betsy, 169 Belasco, Warren, 180; Appetite for Change, 224 Bell, David, 15 Bellah, Robert, 241 Betty Wales Freshman, 215 bhumi-puja, 101–2 Biale, David, 82, 83 Bible, 244, 246–48 Bible Communism, 125, 126, 127 Bishop, Mabel Lovett, 212 Blanchard, Carrie, 212 Bloodroot Collective, 163, 165, 166, 169–71, 180, 182n21; The Political Palate, 163, 169, 170; The Second Political Palate, 169, 170 B’nai Or Religious Fellowship, 254n1 bodily knowledge, 260, 264–66 Bok, Edward, 216 Bolton, Herbert, 56, 63–64 Bourdieu, Pierre, 12–13, 38, 227, 236n5, 269 Bownde, Nicholas, 41, 43–44; Holy Exercise of Fasting, 39 Boyer, Paul S., 11 Bradford, William, 5, 45–46, 50; History of Plimouth Plantation, 54 brahmins, 96, 98 bread, white, 225 bread baking, 167–68, 173, 176, 179 Brewer, Priscilla, 22 Brick Haus Restaurant, 153 Brown, Clara, 212 Brown, Edward Espe, 163–66, 171– 74, 180; Tassajara Cooking, 163,

171–74, 180; The Greens Cookbook, 173; The Tassajara Bread Book, 171–174, 180; Tomato Blessing and Radish Teachings, 174 Bryant, Edith, 213 Bryant, Hannah, 115 Bucareli (viceroy of New Spain), 55–56 Buddhism: attitude toward cooking and eating, 164, 165, 171–74; and vegetarianism, 239–54; Western, 239–40, 249–51, 254n1, 256n24 Bullen, John, 188 Cabet, Ètienne: Voyage to Icaria, 8 California, 68–69, 71, 173–74 Californios, 55 canned goods, 224 Canterbury village, 115 capitalism: and Amana Society, 144, 149–52, 157–60; reaction against, 225–26, 229–32, 234–35; and religion, 241–42. See also socioeconomic status Capron, Clara, 205 Carr, Charles Everett, 212 Carson, Rachel: Silent Spring, 225 caste distinctions, 91, 96–98 Cedar Riverside People’s Cooperative Center, 224 Certeau, Michel de, 262 chafing dishes, 204, 208, 209 challah, 176 Chandler, Stuart, 249 cheese, 178, 195 cheeseburgers, 77 Cheyne, George, 189–92 Child, Julia: and affect of scent, 263; and affect of touch, 264–67; Mas-

280  Index

tering the Art of French Cooking, 31n57, 179; objective of, 260; television show, 258 Chinese Buddhists, 250, 252 Chmielewski, Wendy, 21 chocolate, 58–59 Chumash women, 69 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 10–11, 29n36 chyle, 190, 201n9 Clarke, Edward H.: Sex in Education, 204 Classen, Constance, 262 Cobbett, William, 6 coffee, 118, 130, 132, 141n27, 147 Cole, Arthur, 210 Cole, Charles. See Jole, Nasifer Colony Inn, 153 Colony Market Place, 153 commensality: and Amana Society, 149, 157–58; function of, 15–16; and Puritans, 38–39, 43–44, 47–50 communities: cooking, 115; definition of, 9; dynamics of Hindu, 91, 101–3; food distribution system in, 192; foodways of, 3–4, 7–8, 12–18, 23–24; Hindu feeding, 99–100 Community of True Inspiration, 143 consumption: excessive, 188–93, 196–200; of Jewish Americans, 76–82, 84, 86–87 convenience: connotations of, 270, 271; reaction against, 175–77, 179, 224–25 convivia groups, 1–2 cookbooks: agrarian ideal, 228; cooking shows and, 269; natural-foods movement, 162–66, 180; Oneida Community, 132, 139n7;

popularity of, 208; sales of, 177, 182n29; sensorial utopia, 272; sharing foodways, 16; of utopian communities, 10, 21; vegetarian, 15. See also specific titles Cook, Elisha, 48–49 cooking: Buddhism, 172–73; and class distinction, 270–72; Hindu Temple of Atlanta and, 93–94, 96–97, 105n7; popularity of, 208; Shaker, 114–15, 123n19 cooking shows: cookbooks and, 269; nature of pbs, 258; phantasmagoria of, 266–69; preprepared dish gimmick on, 267–69; and scent, 259–63; sensorial utopia of, 269–73; and sharing foodways, 16 Co-op Organization (co): goal of, 234–35; political ideology of, 221, 229–33 Co-op Wars: beginning of, 221–22; and class divide, 220–22, 229–30, 234; description of, 220–23; and foods sold, 22–23, 222, 224, 230– 32; as representation of 1970s issues, 234–35 corn, 58, 197 Cosmopolitan, 214–15 Cotton, John, Jr., 40–41 Counihan, Carole M., 134–35, 269 counterculturalism: American diet and, 225; eating habits of, 227–30; goal of co-ops, 220–24, 234–35; history in Minneapolis, 223, 226– 27; and vocabulary, 181n6 Country Commune Cooking (Horton), 228 Cox, Craig, 225 Craigin, Mr., 137

Index  281

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

Crévecoeur, Hector St. John de, 6 Criollos, 58, 72n10 Croly, Jane Cunningham, 132, 141n28; Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 132 Cucina Amore, 259, 262–63 culinary tourism, 152–55 Cumming, William, Sr., 188 Curtin, Deane W., 13, 260–61, 264 Cushman, Robert, 42–43 Cutler, Martha, 208

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

dairy products, 145–46 Davis, Alice, 213 Dean, Maud, 205 deities, 91–92, 98 Dickman, Lisa, 223 dietary restrictions, 91. See also kosher laws; vegetarianism Diet for a Small Planet (Lappé), 162–63, 180, 225 Diner, Hasia, 6, 16–17, 74–75, 81 Douglas, Mary: Amana foodways, 144, 155; and cultural meanings, 158; and social order, 14–15, 38, 57 Dugout Restaurant, 153 Dumont, Louis, 90, 91, 96 Duquid, Naomi, 263 Durant, Henry Fowle, 203

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

Ebert, Roger, 178 economy: of Amana Society, 145–47, 149–52; and counterculturalism, 228–30; of Oneida Community, 126, 127, 132–34; vegetarianism and, 113–14, 116, 162–63, 165, 173, 174. See also socioeconomic status Eden, 86, 241, 244, 247–48 Eden, Trudy, 22

Empire of Signs (Barthes), 14 The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Katzen), 176, 182n29 Enlightenment, 11 environmentalism: American diet and, 225; religion and, 240, 241; vegetarianism and, 162–63, 249–51, 253–54 Era of Manifestations, 118 The Essence of Emeril, 259–60 ethnicity, 18–19. See also immigrants Eurocentrism, 178–79, 183n43 Evans, William, 115 The Facts (Roth), 76–77 the Fall, 81, 85 families, 163–64, 168–69 family-style meals, 154, 157, 158 fandangos, 19, 57, 58, 67, 71 farming. See agrarian ideal fast-food culture, 1, 4 Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Schlosser), 4 fasting: historical record of, 35–38; Oneida Community and, 129, 141n27; Puritan model of, 38–43, 47; rain after, 50n1; religion and, 242; symbolism of, 253 feasts: 46, 242. See also thanksgiving feminists, 163–64, 166, 169–71 Fenton, John Y., 97, 101–2 Finch, Martha L., 19 Firman, Dorothy, 211 flatulence, 57, 63–65 Fletcher, Aggie, 229 Flinders, Carol: Laurel’s Kitchen, 163, 166–69; The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, 167

282  Index

flourmill, Amana, 151 Fogarty, Robert S., 11 Fo Kuang Buddhism, 249 Font, Father Pedro: on alcohol, 63; anxieties of, 70–71; on California, 68–69, 71; complaints about Native Americans, 19; diary of, 56–58; provisions of, 59; at Santa Rosa Mountains, 67–68; on Yuma people, 61–66 food cooperatives. See Co-op Wars Food Network, 259–60 foodways: Amana Society and, 144, 150–52, 155, 157–58; definition of, 3–4; functions, 14–18; historical studies of, 20–21; immigrants and, 16–20, 54–55; New Spain, 58; Puritan, 19, 37–38; social order and, 14–15, 38, 164, 165; and socioeconomic status, 18–19, 22–23, 237n19; utopianism and communities, 3–4, 7–8, 12–18, 23–24 Foucault, Michel, 12–13, 227 Fowler, O. S., 128 Frankel, Aaron: Thou Shalt Not Kill; or, The Torah of Vegetarianism, 244 Franklin, Benjamin, 200 fruit: Amana Society and, 146; in American Pastoral, 84; Cheyne on, 190–91; in Goodbye, Columbus, 79–81; Hindu deities and, 92; Oneida Community and, 131–34; at Wellesley College, 205–6 fudge, 204, 210, 214–15 Furie, Noel. See Giordano, Noel Gabbacia, Donna R., 17, 88n19 Garces, Father, 66

gardens, 146, 152 Gesamtkunstwerk: audience demographics of, 270–72; creation of, 260–61; definition of, 258–59; and phantasmagoria, 266 Gila River people, 61 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 24 Giordano, Noel, 169, 182n21 glocalization, 10, 29n37 God, Christopher, 5 Godfrey, Bronwen: Laurel’s Kitchen, 163, 166–69; The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, 167 Goodbye, Columbus (Roth), 78–81 Good Times, 225 Gordon, John, 188 Gordon, Robert, 188 Gould, Alice, 205 Graham, Sylvester, 110, 128–29 grain, 145, 167, 173, 179 Green, Arthur, 245–46 The Greens Cookbook (Madison and Brown), 173 Greens restaurant, 173, 177

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

habitus, 222, 227–28, 235. See also socioeconomic status Haldy, Lanny, 160n8 Hall, Mary, 214 Hamilton, Alexander, 188, 189, 194– 97, 199–200; The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club, 188 Harper’s Bazaar, 208 Harrington, Michael: The Other America, 225 Hart, Lavinia, 214–15 Hartman, Stephanie, 166

Index  283

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

Harvard School of Health, Department of Nutrition, 162 harvest festivals, 52n27, 54. See also thanksgiving Hazard, Caroline, 212–13 health: Cheyne on, 189–91; of female students, 204–5; and North Country Co-op, 227–28; and Oneida Community, 130; and politics, 200; and Shakers, 112–14, 116–18; and vegetarianism, 162 Heldke, Lisa, 264 Herland (Gilman), 24 Hinduism, 100–103, 242. See also Hindu Temple of Atlanta Hindu Temple of Atlanta: and American culture, 20; anniversary celebration of, 89; calendar of celebrations of, 94–95; food bank participation by, 99–100; food guidelines of, 96–98; food preparation at, 93–94, 96–97, 105n7; food transactions at, 90; foundation of, 91; staff of, 92–93, 105n8 Hindu temples, 97 A History of North Country Co-op (Raasch-Gilman), 224, 228 History of Plimouth Plantation (Bradford), 54 The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club (Hamilton), 188 Hobomok, 36 Hofstadter, Richard, 229 Hold Office of the Inquisition, 59 Holy Exercise of Fasting (Bownde), 39 hominy, 196–97 Homony Club, 197

Horton, Lucy, Country Commune Cooking, 228 Hsi Lai Temple, 249 Hsing Yun, 249 Hughes, Marlene H., 264 Hull, John, 43 Hundred Flowers, 223–24 hunger, 225, 250 Icarian communities, 8 ideals: desire to share, 21–22; variations of, 23–24 Imagined Communities (Anderson), 9 immigrants: and American abundance, 75, 84–85; Asian, 89–91, 106n25; identity of, through foodways, 16–20, 54–55; and thanksgiving, 88n19. See also Hindu Temple of Atlanta; Indian Americans; Jews Immigration Reform Act (1965), 91 Indian Americans, 17, 20, 89–90, 101–3, 106n25 individuation, 241–42, 252 Inness, Sherrie, 165 Inquiry into the Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North America (Rush), 200 Insight Mediation Center, 250 Inspirationist life, 157 International Farmer’s Market (Atlanta), 93 Internet, 16 The Iron Chef, 259 Iwachiw, Roman, 223, 224, 237n31 Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine, 259, 268–69

284  Index

Japanese foodways, 14 Jefferson, Thomas, 6, 200 Jennie June’s American Cookery Book (Croly), 132 Jewish Renewal, 240, 246, 251–52, 254, 254n1 Jews: and American culture, 19–20; and consumption , 76–82, 84, 86– 87; immigrant dream of, 6, 81; and Orthodox foodways, 15; and renunciation, 82–84, 87; significance of food to, 74–75, 78, 85; and vegetarianism, 239–54 Johnny Appleseed, 84–85 Jole, Nasifer, 194–98 Jordan, Dave, 223 Joselit, Jenna Weissman, 79 jubus, 254 “Julie/Julia Project,” 16, 31n57 Kalechofsky, Roberta, 252 Kapleau, Philip: To Cherish All Life, 245 kashrut, 15, 75, 244. See also kosher laws Katzen, Mollie, 163–66, 174–80; Moosewood Cookbook, 163, 174–77, 182n29; The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 176, 182n29 Kaza, Stephanie, 250 Kazin, Michael, 234 Ketcham, Agnes, 212 Khare, R. S., 90, 100 Kinsley, Jessie, 133, 137–38 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, 16 kitchens, 136–38, 147–51, 157–59, 168–69 “kitchen sisters,” 114–16, 119–20 knives, 172

Kook, Rabbi Abraham Isaac, 247–48 kosher laws, 15, 75, 242, 244, 251, 254 ks.atriyas, 96 Kumayaays, 69 Kyle, Theodora, 207

1

Ladies’ Home Journal, 215 ladus, 94 Lagasse, Emeril, 260 Lankavatara Sutra, 242–43, 245 Lappé, Frances Moore: Diet for a Small Planet, 162–63, 180, 225 Laudan, Rachel, 16, 26n10 Laurel’s Kitchen (Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey), 163, 166– 69, 180 The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book (Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey), 167 LeBesco, Kathleen, 269–70 Lee, Ann, 109 Leonard, Charlotte, 126, 129, 140n22 Leonardi, Susan, 272 Lerner, Michael, 251 Levelers, 199 Levenstein, Harvey, 7, 208; Paradox of Plenty, 228 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 2 Liberation News Service, 236n4 Lincoln, Bruce, 17 Lindsay, Bertha, 114 Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, 206–7, 214 lobster, 35, 83 Lomas, John, 188 Long, Lucy, 3, 152, 153 Lotus Sutra, 248–49 Lower Colorado Desert, 66–67, 69–70

6

Index  285

2

3

4

5

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

Madison, Deborah: The Greens Cookbook, 173 Mahamati, 242 Mahayana Buddhism, 248–49 maize, 58, 197 Mak, Monica, 23 male continence, 129, 140n14 Mandeville, Sir Bernard, 198–99 Mannheim, Karl, 11 Manuel, Frank, 193, 195 Manuel, Fritzi, 193, 195 Manwaring, Elizabeth, 209 Marriott, McKim, 90, 97 Marshe, Witham, 188 Marxism-Leninism, 221 Mass, 56, 60, 69–70 Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Child), 31n57, 179 Mather, Increase, 41 Mayflower, 44–45 McCabe, Lida Rose, 208 McClymond, Kathryn, 20 McDonald’s restaurant, 1, 2 McDowell, Louise, 208 McGrath, Maria, 21 Mead, Elizabeth Storrs, 210 meat: Amana Society and, 145, 151–54, 160n7; and health, 112–13, 190–91; Hindus and, 96; Oneida Community and, 130, 131, 140n23, 141n27; in Portnoy’s Complaint, 82–83; symbolism of, 109. See also pork; vegetarianism Meigs, Anna, 15, 38, 144–45, 155, 158 men, 129, 133–38, 168 Mennell, Stephen, 38 mesquite pods, 61 middle class, 225, 227–28 Millennial Laws (1821), 111, 123n16

Miller, Timothy, 228 Miller, Tirzah, 141n28 Minneapolis, 22–23, 220, 223, 226–27 Mintz, Sidney, 54, 59, 64 Miriam, Selma, 169 Mission San Luis, 69 mnemonical function, 14, 16–17 Monterey ca: arrival at, 69–71; founding of, 55; length of journey to, 67–68 Moosewood Collective, 177 Moosewood Cookbook (Katzen), 163, 174–77, 182n29 Moosewood Restaurant, 21, 175 morality: Cheyne on, 191, 192; fasting and, 38–43; Shakers and, 110, 112–13, 121; vegetarianism and, 248 More, Thomas, 7–9, 12, 189, 192–93 Moreno, Manuel, 99 Mormons, 10–11, 29n36 Mount Holyoke College, 206, 210– 11, 213–14 Mount Signal, 66 Mumford, Lewis, 167 murtis, 91–94 Nairn, Nick, 260, 262 Native Americans: and Catholic ritual, 60–61; celebrations, 19; Christian conversion of, 58; and “First Thanksgiving,” 45–46; and flatulence, 57; Font on suffering of, 69; and use of resources, 5 natural-foods movement: cookbooks of, 162–66, 180; goals of, 165–66; and homemaking, 166–69 Navadhanyam, 95

286  Index

New England: 20–21, 35–38. See also Plymouth New Left, 163, 222–23, 236n6 New Spain, 55–60 New York, 143–44 Nordhoff, Charles, 133 North American Phalanx, 133 North Country Co-op: battle for control of, 221; foods sold at, 222; and health, 227–28; model, 228– 29; opening of, 224; success of, 225–26; survey about, 223 North family, 120 Norton, Furaha, 12 Noyes, John Humphrey, 125–29, 138, 141n28 olive oil, 58, 59 Oliver, Jamie, 260 Oliver’s Twist, 259–60 Olsen, Theodore, 100 Oneida Community: business, 132– 35; diet, 129–32; and fasting, 129, 141n27; foodways, 21; foundation of, 125; mealtimes, 131, 137– 38, 140n22; sexual practices, 21, 126–29 organic consumerism, 180 The Other America (Harrington), 225 Our Daily Bread Bakery, 231 Ox Yoke Inn, 153 Paine, Thomas, 202n33 Panisse, Chez, 173 Paradox of Plenty (Levenstein), 228 Paterna, Father, 68 The Pearl of Great Price (Smith), 10 Peckham, Elizabeth, 207–8

People’s Pantry, 223–24 People’s Warehouse, 221 Pépin, Claudine, 268 Pépin, Jacques, 260, 268–69 Petrini, Carlo, 1, 3 phantasmagoria, culinary, 266–69 Pierce, Louise, 209–10 Pilcher, Jeffrey, 58–59 Plymouth, 35–37, 40–42, 44–45, 54. See also Puritans political consciousness: American, 187–88; Co-op Wars and, 220–22, 227–30, 232, 234–35; excessive consumption and, 192, 199–200; vegetarianism and, 162–65, 179– 80, 240, 253 The Political Palate (Bloodroot Collective), 163, 169, 170 pork, 109, 112–18 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth), 78, 81–84 Posman, Ellen, 23 potato fields, Amana, 152, 160n8 potluck, 17 Potter, David M., 6–7, 11–12 Powell, Julie, 31n57 Pradesh, Andhra, 91 prasad, 20, 93–94, 98 Prentiss, Ephraim, 109, 116–18, 123n26 Probyn, Elspeth, 29n37, 126 Promised Land, 86 protein complementarity, 181n1 Protestant Reformation, 11 Public Broadcasting Service (pbs), 258–66. See also cooking shows puja, 91–92, 94–95, 101–2 Pure Land, 241, 248–49

Index  287

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Puritans: and fasting, 38–43, 47; identity of, through foodways, 19, 37–38, 78; and thanksgiving, 43– 45, 47–50; and utopia, 9 Puskar-Pasewicz, Margaret, 21 Pyong Gap Min, 90 Quinn, Tom, 223, 224 Quirpum Comic Esqr., 196

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

Raasch-Gilman, Betsy, 224, 226; A History of North Country Co-op, 224, 228 Rangachari, 92–94, 97–98 raw foods, 97 recipes, 272 Reconstructionism, 240 Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 1745–56, 188 religion: Amana Society and, 143, 149, 157; and food and sex, 126–29; and identity through foodways, 18–19; and individual food practices, 242; in New England, 35–38; New Spain and, 59–60; vegetarianism and, 23, 239–54. See also Buddhism; Hinduism; Shakers; spirituality Renaissance, 11 restaurants, 152–54, 157–59, 169–71 Richard, Michel, 258 Rinchen, Geshe Sonam, 243 Rittenhouse, David, 202n33 Rizzo, Mary, 22–23 Roach, Michael, 249 Roberts, Amy, 211–13 Robertson, Laurel, 21; Laurel’s Kitchen, 163, 165–69; The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, 167

Robinson, Frances, 206 Robinson, John, 37 Rockefeller Institute, 162 Rogers, William, 188 Ronneburg Restaurant, 153 Rosenberg, Rosalind, 216 Roth, Philip, 19–20, 75–81; American Pastoral, 78; Goodbye, Columbus, 78–81; Portnoy’s Complaint, 78, 81–84; The Facts, 76–78 Rothstein, Edward J., 25 Round, Phillip H., 19 Royalists, 199 Rush, Benjamin: Inquiry into the Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North America, 200 Sahagún, Father, 58, 61 Sam’s Club, 93 San Diego mission, 55 San Francisco, 173–74, 240 San Francisco Zen Center, 254n1 San Miguel, 71 Santa Rosa Mountains, 67–68 Sarma, Seshu, 98 satori (enlightenment), 172 Savage, Hattie, 206 Schlosser, Eric: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Diet, 4 Schwartz, Richard H., 246 Scituate, 46, 47 The Second Political Palate (Bloodroot Collective), 169, 170 seder, 85–86 Seelye, L. Clark, 203, 216 Sellick, Harriet, 115 Serra, Father Junípero, 55–56

288  Index

Sewall, Samuel, 43, 48 sex, 21, 75–76, 82–83, 126–29 Sex in Education (Clarke), 204 Shakers: and food preparation, 114– 15, 123n19; and foodways, 21; and music, 30n47; and vegetarianism, 13, 109–21; and youth, 116–18 Shamblin, Gwen, 9–10 Shapiro, Laura, 208 Shea, Pat, 169 “Sheila-ism,” 241 Shostak, Debra, 19 Shroyer sisters, 223–24 Silent Spring (Carson), 225 Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 246–47 sleep, 39 Slow Food Manifesto, 2 Slow Food movement, 1–4, 7, 16 Slow Food USA, 1–2, 9 Smith, Brian K., 96 Smith, Captain John, 5 Smith, Joseph, 10–11, 29n36; The Pearl of Great Price, 10 Smith, Louise, 206–7, 214 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 241 Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, 129 Smokehouse Restaurant, 153 Snyder, Gary, 251 social order: Amana Society, 144–45, 155–57, 159; American, 187–88; and excessive consumption, 192– 93; and foodways, 14–15, 38, 164, 165; and natural-foods movement, 180; of New Spain, 57, 59–60; of Oneida Community, 126, 129, 135. See also caste distinctions socioeconomic status: and Co-op Wars, 220–22, 229–30, 234; and food preparation, 269–72; iden-

tity of, through foodways, 18–19, 22–23, 237n19; and vegetarianism, 240, 252–54. See also caste distinctions; middle class; working class Southworth, Alice, 46 spices, 132 Spink, Mary, 212 spirituality, 111–14, 116–19, 121, 227. See also religion spreads: condemnation of, 213–14; cost and complexity of, 207–13; development of, 204, 206; gender and liberal ideals and, 22; public knowledge of, 206–7, 210–11; representation of collegiate life in, 214–16 Sri Venkateswara temple, 91 starving times, 44–45, 54, 56 Steele, Kristen, 250 Stellino, Nick, 260, 263 strawberries and cream festivals, 125–27 Stubbes, Philip, 41 Students for a Democratic Society, 236n4 sugar, 58–59, 147 Sukhavati, 248

1

The Tassajara Bread Book (Brown), 171–74, 180 Tassajara Cooking (Brown), 163, 171–74, 180 tea, 118, 130, 132, 141n27, 147 tea tables, 208, 209 technology, 224–25 television, 16, 23, 272. See also cooking shows Ten Commandments, 243–44, 255n10

2

Index  289

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

r

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Thacher, Thomas, 39, 40 thanksgiving: American culture and, 85, 88n19; first, 45–46, 52n27; history of, 35–39, 54; Oneida Community and, 131; Puritan ritual of, 43–45, 47–50; at Wellesley College, 205 Theravada Buddhists, 250, 256n24 Thomas, Anna, 163–66, 174–75, 177– 80; The Vegetarian Epicure, 163, 175, 177–80 Thou Shalt Not Kill; or, The Torah of Vegetarianism (Frankel), 244 Tibetan Buddhism, 239, 248–50, 256n24 tikkun olam, 251–52 To Cherish All Life (Kapleau), 245 Todd, Rev. John, 204 Tomato Blessing and Radish Teachings (Brown), 174 True Grits, 223, 224 Tubutama mission, 57, 70 Tuesday Club: Cheyne’s influence on, 191–92; consumption and corruption in, 199–200; ideals, 22, 188; More’s influence on, 9; needs and labor balance of, 193–95; rules of, 189; selection of leaders in, 195–96 Turner, Bryan S., 41

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

rf

United Society of Believers. See Shakers United States: and Asian immigrants, 89–91; culture of, 19–20, 85, 88n19; diet of, 225; foodways of, 18; Jews in, 75; as symbolism of abundance, 4–7, 24, 75, 84–85; and utopianism, 5, 11–12, 24, 187

U.S. Public Health Service, 162 utensils, 172 utopia: communal, 8–11, 20–21, 24; deferred, 89–90; definition of, 7– 8, 12; fictional, 8–10, 24; and foodways, 12–15, 23–24; Hindu, 100, 102–3; local and global, 9–10, 24– 25; religious vegetarianism and, 247; republican model of, 188–92; sensorial, 259, 269–73; Spanish Catholic, 56; types of, 8–9 Utopia (More), 7–8, 189, 192–93 utopianism: achievement of, 12–18; in American, 5, 11–12, 187, 242; communities and foodways, 3–4, 7–8, 12–18, 23–24 Valentine, Gill, 15 varn.as, 96 Vassar, Matthew, 203 Vassar College, 203–4, 206, 209 Vedic tradition, 91–92, 96 vegetables, 131–34, 141n26, 190–91. See also vegetarianism The Vegetarian Epicure (Thomas), 163, 175, 177–80 vegetarianism: aesthetics of, 175–80; and compassion, 242, 244–47, 251; and economy, 113–14, 116, 162–63, 165, 173, 174; and feminism, 169– 71; functions of, 15; Hindu, 97–98; historical studies of, 21; North Country Co-op and, 227; Oneida Community and, 129; percentage of Buddhists practicing, 250; rationale, 162–63, 242; and religion, 23, 239–54; Shakers and, 13, 109–21; utopian communities and, 10, 111; world transformation and,

290  Index

243, 249, 251–52. See also naturalfoods movement; vegetables Virgin of Guadalupe, 69–70 Voyage to Icaria (Cabet), 8 Wagner, Richard, 266 Wallace, Elizabeth, 205 Waters, Alice, 2, 173 Watervliet, 113, 116–18 Weigh Down Workshop, 9–10 Wellesley College, 203, 205–9, 212–14 Wellesley Prelude, 207 Wells, Freegift, 109, 116–17, 119, 123n26 Wells, Seth, 110 Welsh rarebit, 204, 210, 211 Wentz, Zella, 213 wheat, 58, 60 White, Anna, 120 Wigglesworth, Michael, 40 Wild Harvest series, 259, 261–62 Willard, Frances, 166 wine: Amana Society and, 146, 152, 155; Anza expedition and, 58, 59, 60; Cheyne on, 191 Winslow, Edward, 45, 52n27 Winthrop, John, 37, 41–43, 48

Woman’s Home Companion, 215 women: Amana Society, 147, 158–59; and control of diets, 204–5; food practices of, at college, 17, 22; and higher education, 203–4, 214–16; modern American, 164–66, 168– 69; Oneida Community, 133–38, 139n14; and vegetarianism, 163– 64. See also feminists; “kitchen sisters” Wonder Bread, 225 woolen mills, Amana, 155 Worden, Cornelia, 129, 141n27 “Word of Wisdom,” 29n36 working class: in co-op stores, 229– 30; definition of, 233–34, 236n7; eating habits of, 227–28, 237n19; leaders of revolution, 221–23 Wright, Lucy, 111, 119

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Yan, Martin, 260, 263 Yan Can Cook: The Best of China, 259, 262–63, 267–69 “you are what you eat,” 103n Yumas (Quechan), 60, 61–66

1

Zimmerman, Dean, 220, 230 Zuber, Bill, 153

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

Index  291

r

1

i n t h e at table series

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias Edited by Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch Recovering Our Ancestors’ Gardens Indigenous Recipes and Guide to Diet and Fitness Devon Abbott Mihesuah A Taste of Heritage Crow Indian Recipes and Herbal Medicines Alma Hogan Snell Edited by Lisa Castle

Available in Bison Books Editions The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe Lesley Chamberlain With a new introduction by the author The Food and Cooking of Russia Lesley Chamberlain With a new introduction by the author Masters of American Cookery M. F. K. Fisher, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, Julia Child Betty Fussell With a preface by the author

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

0

1

2

3

4

5

f

Good Eating Jane Grigson Dining with Marcel Proust A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Epoque Shirley King Foreword by James Beard Pampille’s Table Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside from Marthe Daudet’s Les Bons Plats de France Translated and adapted by Shirley King