It starts on Wednesday, when Paul and Valeria work out some numbers. How many musicians? How many helpers? What sort of margin for error? How’s the salad patch looking? Then it’s off for eggplants and supplies for Thursday night’s communal supper. Are we OK for beer and wine, tea and coffee? Is anyone lactose or gluten-intolerant?

On Thursday, work starts early. Bread dough is mixed, kneaded and left to prove. It’s a 50/50 mix of wholemeal and strong white flour, and that’s Paul’s responsibility. So is the main course, Paul’s eggplant parmesan. Eggplants are breaded and deep-fried – note that some purists insist on shallow frying, but phooey to that – and layered with Valeria’s genuine homemade Napolitano tomato sauce and parmesan, ready for the oven. By six o’clock, Paul has knocked the dough back for the last time and formed it into rolls ready to share space in the oven.

It’s always the same meal. Paul cooks. Valeria fixes the salads. It’s a key part of the evening, the bonding event around which the night pivots. And it is hugely appreciated by the guests. A three-month season of live shows means 13 weeks of eggplant parmesan, salad and bread rolls. And as the season progresses, Paul’s eggplant dish just gets better and better.

The meal is central to Songwriter’s Café evenings. This is a Birmingham institution run by Paul Murphy with Valeria Rispo. It’s very typical of Birmingham: Paul is from Belfast, and Valeria from Naples, and neither of them has lost their accent. In fact, the whole night is a melting pot of accents and cultures, stories and ideas from different places to share and inspire.

Paul hosts live; Valeria hosts online. Paul, a veteran singer-songwriter, believes passionately that performers should be heard properly and sympathetically. Finding such a performance concept difficult to create in regular venues, Paul hit on the idea of first totally managing such nights, and then actually creating his own venue. It’s under a tree house in his back garden and holds 50 people at a squeeze. It is a magical performance space, lovingly developed by Paul and Valeria.

Valeria mixing salad at Songwriter’s Café

It’s late afternoon now. The night’s helpers start to arrive, to man the door, make tea and coffee, dispense drinks, sell artists’ merchandise, light the fires, sweep out and tidy up the performance area, fix any last minute snags in the building… and help with the artists…

From half past six, artists and friends start to drift in. It’s time for greetings, hugs, catch-ups and gossip, time to settle people down in the green room area, to show them around the performance space, to let them get a feel for the acoustics, to make (more) cups of tea for everyone. Paul and Valeria are working flat out.

Dinner in The Treehouse at Songwriter’s Café

I’m one of the helpers, and it’s a privilege to be here. Right now, I’m recording interviews with all the artists about their ways to write songs. We do that early, to get that part of the night’s work polished off before suppertime.

The finished dish

Now it’s 7:30. Food and drink come out of the kitchen, ferried up to the decking area outside the Café. Everybody settles down around two huge tables for a communal meal – musicians and helpers who might never otherwise meet, talk, exchange ideas, and break bread together before the night’s concert. The fires are burning brightly now, and the evening gently shifts into a relaxed, magical performance mode.

Supper over, there’s one last burst of activity, clearing the tables after supper, back down to the kitchen where helpers wash up. Outside, we’re setting up the bar and lighting tea lights. The Songwriters Café is ready to open its doors to its invited audience.

At 8.30, Paul is meeting and greeting, Valeria is rigging up the mixing desk, and putting the stream up. I’m hooking my kit up the mixer, ready to capture output and play out songs from previous weeks as we warm up to go live.

It’s 8.45. We’re about to go online…

The 2012 season of Songwriters Café runs until 26 July, at 9pm UK time (4pm ET), streamed live at www.songwriterscsafe.co.uk.

Paul Murphy extemporising an ode to aubergines

Paul Murphy’s impromptu Ode to Aubergines [Editor’s note: This was brilliant! I was chopping onions in the kitchen for my dinner when this streamed into my kitchen, so I was truly in tears on hearing this live! Thanks for this, Paul!]

Songwriter’s Café 2012 line up

Documentary on music at The Treehouse, by Robin Valk

Culture Dash:

Known as parmigiana di melanzane or eggplant/aubergine parmesan, the derivation of the name for this famous Italian dish is vigorously debated. The common theory outside of Italy is that it derives from the region of Parma in northern Italy and the use of Parmesan cheese. However, the dish and its name have a strong history in southern Italy and in Sicilian cookbooks. Traditionally known as parmiciana, this Sicilian word means “shutter”. The overlapping eggplant slices resembled the pattern of slats aligned in a wooden shutter.

CDs and Teas at Songwriter’s Café

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

What started in 1996 at a local tavern as an open venue for musicians and poets to come together has morphed into a small, exclusive venue where artists share conversation over a home-cooked meal while music and performances are shared…over the internet.  Each session of this fascinating event is streamed live during the season.  The web site describes the venue well: “The intimate space crackles with firelight, conviviality and creativity.  An invited audience for the live narrowcast savour a rich serving of songwriters, poets, musicians and wordsmiths.  Online friends eavesdrop, send greetings and wish they could be there.”  How true!

Valeria & Paul online at Songwriter’s Café

Paul Murphy prepping dinner rolls

My friend Robin Valk of Radio To Go turned me on to Songwriter’s Café when he began recording interviews with the artists as a part of a documentary project on the Birmingham music scene.  Robin is helping to archive the sessions  at The Treehouse where Paul Murphy hosts Songwriter’s Café.  He is an expert on Birmingham music history and my favorite radio guru: During his work at the Birmingham radio station BRMB, Robin helped launch the recording sessions that introduced the world to my favorite Birmingham band, UB40 (eternal gratitude, dear friend!).

Robin will be my first guest author at A Dash of Culture with a post on how the kitchen-side logistics are managed each week for Songwriter’s Café.  I queried him on this after listening to a recent session in which Paul ruminated over the sheer quantity of aubergines that have gone into the all the homemade dinners this season.  Robin had this to say about it:

“He cooks the same meal each week – Eggplant Parmesan, home-baked bread rolls, and salad from his garden, and feeds all the artist and helpers before the concert starts.  A communal thing; it’s lovely.  Valeria his trusty sidekick…is from Napoli and makes authentic tomato sauce that goes in the Eggplant Parm…”  Talk about a nice gig.

Eggplant parmesan at Songwriter’s Café

Dinner at The Treehouse, Songwriter’s Café

Here’s the transcript from Paul Murphy’s aubergine considerations from Songwriter’s Café:

“…We are going to finish off now, and I can hardly believe that this is the end of week nine…week ten?  It’s not week ten?  [...]  It’s week eleven!  So, I kinda worked out…I was trying to work out how many aubergines, at the rate of an average of twelve aubergines per week, cut into approximately 6 slices each, put in flour, and then dipped in egg, and then deep fried…over thirteen weeks, I was figuring, how many pieces of aubergine?  How much of my life has gone now in aubergine dip?… [asides and internet acknowledgement]…So, if anybody’s mathematically inclined…you can work out that and send it to me on a postcard, you will get a great reward…”

Of course, I felt compelled to do the math and send the postcard off to Great Britain:

12 aubergines X 13 weeks = 156 aubergines

12 aubergine X 6 slices = 72 slices per week

72 slices per week X 13 weeks = 936 slices of aubergine, dipped and deep fried lovingly by Paul and friends for the artists at the Songwriter’s Café this season.  That’s quite a production line!  I wonder what the “great reward” will be… Check back for Robin Valk’s post on dinner prep at Songwriter’s Café!

Hannah is ready to serve when she’s not singing at Songwriter’s Café

Culture Dash:

The earliest written record of aubergines dates from 59 BC (96 BCE).  It was briefly mentioned in the Chinese text Tong Yue (An Indentured Servant’s Contract), by Wang Bao.

Aubergine (Solanum melongena), also known as eggplant or brinjal, is in the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family, along with tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes.  These are pollinated most efficiently through buzz pollination by bumblebees, not honeybees.  The pollen-bearing anthers of solanaceous flowers are tubular and hold the pollen inside.  Bumblebees grasp the anthers with their legs, and then ‘buzz’ to shake the pollen free and onto their bodies, where they then scrape the pollen from to store in sacs on their legs.  Honeybees do not buzz very much when foraging.

Aubergine has a strange etymology that jumped plant families as we know them today.  It is a diminutive form of the French word “auberge”, meaning “a kind of peach”.  This was derived from the Spanish alberchigo “apricot”, which has a long, fuzzy history from its Indo-European root form pek(w)-, to cook, ripen.  It shares this root with precocious, which speaks to the antiquated belief that apricots were a variety of peach that ripened earlier than other peaches.  Smaller, rounder, lighter-colored varieties of Solanum melongena may have been available throughout ancient trade routes on the way from its Southeast Asian origins to ancient Mediterranean countries, contributing to the odd fruit designations.  Perhaps its American English name is a clue to this puzzling jump:  Eggplant gained use in the United States in the 1800s based on the colors of lighter yellow and white heirloom varieties that were smaller and rounder than their purple oblong cousins and resembled chicken eggs.

The Traps at Songwriter’s Café

Michael Weston King at Songwriter’s Café

More Links, Related and Tangential:

Newest release by The Destroyers, A Hole in the Universe (Click the main video link on their home page…And, yes, they use the word googolplex…)

I especially love their raucous tune, Red Tape.

Fun write-up on Paul Murphy on Facebook

Robin Valk’s 3-part documentary on Songwriter’s Café at The Treehouse

Solanum melongena (aubergine), The Natural History Museum, London

Ancient Chinese Literature Reveals Pathways of Eggplant Domestication, by Wang, Jin-Xiu; Gao, Tian-Gang; Knapp, Sandra; Annals of Botany (2008) 102 (6): 891-897.  (Retrieved July 15, 2012)

Another interesting reference to the text Tong Yue at Google Books: The General History of Drugs, By Antonio Escohotado.  (Retrieved July 15, 2012)

Eggplant is used in an interesting manner along with many foods and natural elements in the poems of Arthur Sze:

The Redshifting Web, by Arthur Sze

Before Completion, By Arthur Sze

Odes to an Aubergine: Tom Payne reviews New Selected Poems by Douglas Dunn (from The Telegraph.  Retrieved July 15, 2012)

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

Food is often used in song as a poetic device to create a strong visual image, often through metaphor or simile.  It’s also useful in sharing a simple story that resonates with each of us.  After all, food is a major part of our daily lives that carries emotional responses both subtle and profound.  It’s only natural that since Elvis Costello has written hundreds of songs, food references have found their way into a few of his lyrics.  Here is a list of some of those titles, including a couple from the playlist that we, the audience, helped orchestrate with the help of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook (I spun the wheel, woo-hoo!):

I Hope You’re Happy Now (from Blood and Chocolate): This was the first song in the Durham show after the Overture.  Aside from the apparent food reference in the album title, “frozen food” is used in this song’s lyrics as simile.  And then there is, well, an urban colloquialism…

Alison (from My Aim Is True): This one was played as a request from striking a carnival bell with The Hammer of Songs – what a hoot!  If you’ve read this far, you’re a fan, anyway, so you should know already the food reference in this most recognizable Elvis Costello song…

Sulphur To Sugarcane (from Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane): Dripping with wild romance, drinks, and more nefarious activities, one might ponder whether the order of ingredients should be reversed.  This is one song I really wanted to hear, but they didn’t play it; the other one being “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” – drats!

Sour Milk-Cow Blues (from Goodbye Cruel World): Coffee and tea, anyone?

Sweet Pear (from Mighty Like a Rose): This one’s obvious.

So Like Candy (from Extreme Honey): Looks like simile, acts like metaphor, honey.  Bittersweet metaphor…

Monkey to Man (from The Delivery Man): “Food” is used to “link” the metaphor – a clever use of wordplay in this song…

The Revolver Tour, Elvis Costello & The Imposters

Culture Dash:

Sulphur to Sugarcane is more than a song title with obvious undertones composed by my favorite troubadour.  Sugarcane production requires sulfur as part of the fertilizer mix to increase cane yield.  It also affects the sucrose levels and quality of sugarcane juice.  During the refinement process that turns pressed cane juice into sugar, sulfur dioxide is added as a bleaching agent.

The Actual Revolver Playlist Durham, NC, April 29th, 2012
by Elvis Costello & The Imposters [and the DPAC audience]:

Overture
I Hope You’re Happy Now
Heart Of The City
Mystery Dance
Radio Radio

The Spectacular Spinning Songbook
No Particular Place To Go – Spin 1
“Happy” Jackpot – Spin 2
I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down
High Fidelity
Possession
Temptation – IMPROMPTU
Veronica – Spinner’s Request
Bedlam – Spin 3
Country Darkness – Spin 4
Payday – IMPROMPTU
“Cash” – Spin 5
Cry Cry Cry
Oliver’s Army – Spin 6
Watching The Detectives/Help Me

The Hammer Of Songs
My Funny Valentine – (acapella) – Strike One
Alison – Strike Two
Everyday I Write The Book – Strike Three

Interlude
A Slow Drag With Josephine – Napoleon Solo
Jimmie Standing In The Rain – Napoleon Solo
(Who’s The Meanest Gal In Town) Josephine -  Napoleon “Ukulele” Solo
Indoor Fireworks – IMPROMPTU
New Lace Sleeves – Request

“Time” Jackpot – Spin 7
Crying Time
Strict Time
Night Time
Out Of Time

“Girl” – Jackpot – Spin 8
Girls Talk
This Year’s Girl
Beyond Belief – IMPROMPTU
National Ransom No.9 – IMPROMPTU
Clubland – Spin 9

Finale
Peace, Love And Understanding
Pump It Up
Please Please Me

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

Sea salt harvest in Ile de Ré, France

Eventually, salt brought wealth to regions where it was bountiful, and it became a significant cultural symbol, used in religious ceremonies, medicine and cooking.  It was even used in warfare to prevent re-occupation of conquered lands by “salting the earth” to prevent crops from growing.   As you might imagine, the rise in cultural significance gave rise to its importance as a source of revenue for rulers and governments.  Salt taxes have been imposed in many countries throughout the ages, causing controversy and unrest, such as the Moscow Uprising of 1648, also known as the The Salt Riot.  The French maintained a salt tax known as a gabelle for centuries before it was finally abolished in the early 1900s.

One of the most well known salt taxes in recent history was the British salt tax in India.  While salt in India had been taxed in some manner dating back to the 4^th century BC, this escalated after the British East India Company began controlling ownership of salt lands and revenues in the 1750s.  After transferring regulation of salt taxes back and forth between the Company and the British government, the ultimate shift of control to British authorities for salt collection, manufacturing and sales came under the India Salt Act of 1882.   This monopoly persisted for almost half a century until Mahatma Gandhi chose to defy the law in 1930.  He began what was called The Salt March, or Salt Satyagraha (Dharasana Satyagraha), a nonviolent protest campaign against the salt law and in support of the Indian declaration of independence that he helped initiate earlier that year.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Gandhi led a 24-day, 240-mile march to the coastal town of Dandi.  He departed on March 12, 1930 from Sabarmati Ashram, a town near the city of Ahmedabad, and arrived at the coast on April 5.  The next morning, he ceremoniously walked to the sea, collected a handful of salty mud, and boiled it in seawater to make his own salt in violation of the salt law and in protest of the British Raj.  This symbolic gesture spurred a massive civil disobedience movement with many other Indians making their own salt in protest, as well.  The Salt Satyagraha marked a turning point in the Indian sentiment toward the British Raj and began a series of events that supported the broader independence movement to end British rule in India.

Culture Dash:

The distribution of salt to areas where it was unavailable was one of the earliest motivations for trade routes.  Salt roads began appearing in the Bronze Age in Europe, with a number of famous ancient routes surviving through modern times, including the Via Salaria in Italy.  This route eventually spread throughout all of Italy in Roman times, but the architectural relics remained for millenia.  In fact, the gate to Via Salaria was demolished in 1821.  Salt was used as trade currency, and was the motivation behind Roman soldier’s salary, from L. salarium “salary, stipend”, from L. salarius “of or pertaining to salt”, which is from PIE *sal- “salt”.  Oddly, the term “worth one’s weight in salt” does not appear until the 1830s, so I’d love to hear from an expert on the evolution of this phrase.

Salt curing food as a method of preservation goes back to at least 3,000 BC.  The Romans learned the process from the Greeks, who may have learned it from the Egyptians.  Written records from that period list cured hams and other meats, as well as plants like olives and capers.  Not only does salt dry the food, but it prevents spoilage and the spread of disease, such as botulism.  Dehydration was probably an earlier form of food preservation, but it does not prevent bacterial growth.

More Links:

Footage from Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha

-Oldest salt extraction sites:

The Earliest Salt Production Center in Europe, by Vassil Nikolov (2006) [Dating back to c. 5400 BC.]

The earliest salt production in the world: an early Neolithic exploitation in Poiana Slatinei-Lunca, Romania, by Olivier Weller & Gheorghe Dumitroaia.  From Antiquity Vol 79 No 306 December 2005.  [Dating back to c. 6050 BC-5500 BC.]

-Salt Cod recipe from Carolina Sauce Company: Bacalao a la Vizcaina

-Good Eats: Alton Brown on salt flavor, a caramel recipe, and gourmet finishing salts:

Alton Brown Ballad of Salty and Sweet 1

Alton Brown’s Ballad of Salty and Sweet 2

-Salt in song:

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Old Salty Dog Blues

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

Oregano, chives, and parsley overwinter here very well, and my plants have been ready to harvest for a month now.  The first chamomile came to bloom last week, too.  These early sightings are due to the warmer weather, but just as much blame goes to the sheer volume of rain that fell in March. In fact, the term “rainy season” has taken on a completely new meaning for me this year.  For weeks, a completely saturating shower has fallen every few days.  A continuous seep now runs down the ridge from the woods behind my house, turning a short walk to the compost bin into a complex trail of mud dappled with grass islands, footprints, and small pools of mosquito larva…joy.  To keep things in perspective, I have taken to humming Águas de Março each time I head out to the garden.  Try it.  Seriously.  It’s catchy, and you can’t help but feel good about this song.  It was written for the rainiest month in Brazil, and it’s not hard to imagine Antonio Jobim watching the streets of Rio de Janeiro flooded by showers with a constant stream of items washing through the city, then slowing to a trickle before the last drop falls from the skies.  My backyard has certainly looked like this since at least February, so it is fitting to have this song stuck in my head each time new rivulets flow past the vegetable bed and deck.

Antonio Carlos Jobim

To celebrate a break in the rains, I have been out weeding every chance I could this past week, taking down the last of the winter veggies and moving chickweed out of the way, which is all you do with it, anyway, since it just comes back no matter how far you move it.  This year, I plan to set as much Swiss chard as possible in the vegetable garden, and even other landscape beds to see how it fares.  I think I spent more money at farmer’s markets last year on Swiss chard than anything else, so I hope to have a steady supply this year with three heirloom varieties across the color spectrum.  The row that overwintered is only coming on now because the neighbor’s house got in the way of the low winter sun (oops!), so the waters of March have mixed with the new daylight hours to bring those seeds on strong the last few weeks.  I have my fingers crossed that this is simply an extended spring, and that summer will wait to show up in full force for at least another 60 days.

Since it was First Sunday, we decided to celebrate April 1st with a walk into town for the monthly street fair in between weeding sessions.  Foolishly, we walked out of the house without eating lunch first, so, of course, we had to buy some goodies while we were out.  A new food truck showed up this month, baguettaboutit, with a variety of, you guessed it, baguette sandwiches.  I recently discovered pimento cheese, a southern cheese spread with diced red peppers, and I just had to try their version – pretty good.  I would have liked it with slices of roasted red pepper, too, but that’s my thing.  The baguette itself was really good with proper crust and structure, which is surprisingly hard to come by down here for some reason.  As it turns out, they source their baguettes from a French bakery in Rhode Island because there were no local bakeries that could promise the volume they needed.  But, hey, it works.  Besides, baguettaboutit makes their own sauces, and they have a good local source for their sausages: the famous Giacomo’s in Greensboro.  What a nice addition to the local food truck scene.

baguetteaboutit menu

And how better to follow up lunch at a street fair in spring than with a chocolate waffle cone?  Maple View Farm is a local dairy that has amazing ice cream.  As a matter of fact, it was the first place I went sightseeing on my first trip to North Carolina over 20 years ago.  Now that they have expanded from their on-farm store into the rest of the Triangle, I don’t have to drive 30-odd miles for their chocolate ice cream.  However, I do have to make sure I walk into town from now on if they are going to be here each month for First Sundays – unless it’s raining, of course…

Maple View Farm Chocolate Waffle Cone

Culture Dash:

The song Águas de Março (Waters of March) has the distinction of being voted the best Brazilian song of all time.  It is a cultural treasure, too, in no small part due to the celebrity and talent of renowned composer Antonio Jobim.  Known also as Tom Jobim, he is the most recognized ambassador of bossa nova around the world.  Águas de Março includes a number of references that are distinctly Brazilian, such as garrafa de cana, a liquor made from sugarcane; festa da cumeeira (Feast of the Ridge), a celebration on the completion of a home or building; and peroba do campo, the common name for at least two different species of trees native to Brazil, Paratecoma peroba and Aspidosperma macrocarpon.  Written originally in 1972, Jobim recorded the definitive version of Águas de Março in 1974 on the album Tom and Elis with Elis Regina, another cultural treasure from Brazil.

More Links:

Portuguese and English Lyrics to Águas de Março

A different version of Águas de Março, Elis Regina solo

The Birth of Bossa Nova on NPR

April Rain Song, By Langston Hughes

Bloomberg: USDA ‘Plant Hardiness’ Map Shifts Temperature Zones North

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

I love that the itinerary features state forests because the scenery in western North Carolina is spectacular.  More importantly, the restaurants in the itinerary have piqued my interest, especially Amélie’s French Bakery in Charlotte.  I have a weakness for croissants, and they have a Twice-Baked Croissant in chocolate and almond that sounds intriguing.  Since one of the characters in “The Hunger Games” is the son of a baker, I put this place at the top of my list of movie-related eateries to visit.  Next month, I will be heading up to the mountains for a road trip to visit some pottery studios, so I will try to swing by Amélie’s for some of those croissants.  In the meantime, I look forward to seeing the movie on the big screen once the crowds die down after the blockbuster weekend!

Culture Dash:

The lead character in “The Hunger Games” was based on a story of Theseus, the founder-king of Athens.  The city of Athens had to pay a debt for the assassination of Androgeos, son of Minos, the king of Crete.  The retribution was harsh: Seven youths and seven maidens had to be sent to Crete every seven to nine years (depending on the story version), where they were thrown into the Labyrinth to be devoured by the Minotaur.  After three of these cycles, Theseus volunteered to go Crete to slay the Minotaur.  He did so with the help of Daedalus, the creator of the Labyrinth, and Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos.

Classic myths are retold throughout the ages in various forms, influencing even modern writers.  My favorite story of the Minotaur is in the short story, The House of Asterion, by Jorge Luis Borges, one of my favorite poets.

Theseus and Minotaur

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

And a small road trip it was: we went right down the road to Small B&B Café.  This is a new restaurant in town – a much-needed addition to the small café culture in a community rich in arts and local food ways.

Small B&B Cafe Breakfast Menu

The Small B&B Café is in a colorfully refurbished Victorian.  Open Wednesday through Sunday, they serve breakfast and lunch made from a wide variety locally sourced ingredients, a commitment that they take seriously: about 60% of their recipes are made with local products.  This morning, they had local duck eggs, which made for a very bright egg sandwich and plate.  The super large yolks of duck eggs definitely added a richer color and flavor to breakfast.

Small B&B Cafe-Duck Egg Sandwich

Another colorful dish was the outstanding Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes, which had a very cheerful yellow hue, as you might have guessed.  The flavor was quite lively, as well, with the right amount of lemon for a bright note on top of the fresh taste of the ricotta.  The floral scent of the Magnolia Oolong tea was a lovely match for this plate.  A wonderfully bright way to start the day, indeed.

Small B&B Cafe-Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes

The morning continued to provide me with small wonders in little yellow packages.  All around town, the daffodils are still in bloom, and forsythia has come on strong this last week.  In my garden, yellow is starting to peek out around the different beds: Golden ragwort (Packera aurea) and Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) are budding, and even the Green-and-Gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) is threatening to pop.  Yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima) is blooming, too, with tiny purplish-brown flowers and bright yellow-green bracts (the roots really are the most yellow part, practically neon, but I wasn’t going to dig them up today just for a picture).

Golden ragwort

Yellowroot

These were the very first specimens I acquired for my native plant garden, and each year they bring in the spring with quiet joy.  As these are coming to bloom, the winter vegetable garden is coming to an end with a cheerful nod of yellow from the mustard greens – an early treat for the pollinators.

Honeybee on mustard flower

Since yellow is the color of hope, I truly hope today was a look at the small wonders to come in my garden this spring.  I just have to remember not to miss another hour!  Which brings me to my next favorite thought of early spring and the color yellow – the classic poem of impermanence by Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay (retrieved from Poets.org, 3/11/2012):

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Culture Dash:

The color yellow has had many different cultural meanings throughout the ages.  Yellow is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ghel-, which has several meanings, including to shine, to call or shout (as in Kalends, calendar), and, of course, yellow.  It is not hard to imagine why early spring is linked to bright yellow and gold, as well as symbols of energy and new beginnings.  Hope has a long-standing association with the color yellow, a history that is carried over from early Christian symbolism for light, purity, and renewal.  In Hindu tradition, yellow is related to the third chakra Manipura, which is the chakra of the solar plexus, signifying vitality, energy, and achievement.  In ancient Egypt, yellow represented eternity and Ra, the sun god.  Dyes for yellow have been made since ancient times from minerals like ochre, an iron ore also known as limonite, as well as plant sources like turmeric, saffron, and weld or dyer’s broom (Reseda luteola).

Small B&B Cafe Spoonman

More Links, Relative and Tangential:

Robert Frost reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay” [Ignore the video and just listen to the poet reading his own work – it’s the only hit I could find with the poet’s actual voice.]

The Voice of the Poet: Robert Frost (audio book)

in time of daffodils(who know, by e.e. cummings [One of my favorite of all times]

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, by William Wordsworth [Also known simply as “Daffodils”]

Yellow Days, from Tony Bennett’s album “Something” [Frank Sinatra made “Yellow Days” popular back in the day, but I like Tony Bennett’s version much better, just couldn’t find a video for it.]

Mellow Yellow, by Donovan [Can’t talk about yellow and add randomly related songs without including this one.]

In A Mellow Tone, Count Basie [Rhymes with “yellow”, definitely upbeat and cheerful for a “mellow” title, but Duke Ellington wrote it, so it has to swing:-)]

Spoonman, by Audio Slave [I couldn’t resist – the little spoon dude at Small Café has had me singing this song all day!  It’s an official band video link, so you just have to suck up the few seconds of commercial.]

Spoon!  Battle Cry of The Tick [I couldn’t resist this tangential association, either!]

Bizarre weather phenomenon in Cape Cod: “The Great Yellow Day”

Oldest discovery of dye-making site (100,000 years BCE – and that’s just a site confirmed for making dyes.)

Golden Ragwort: Packera aurea (formerly Senecio aureus)

Golden Alexanders: Zizia aurea

Green and Gold: Chrysogonum virginianum

Yellowroot: Xanthorhiza simplicissima

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

3rd Earl of Bute, by Sir Joshua Reynolds

The Earl of Bute is also remembered for his extreme interest in botany.  On his retirement from politics, he spent the rest of his life studying botany and supporting the arts and botanical interests, including the establishment of the renowned Kew Gardens.  He published a botanical reference in 1785 called Botanical Tables, containing the different families of British plants.  His interest in botany was quite notable beyond Britain, drawing the interest of Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy.  Linnaeus named a genus of flowering plants after John Stuart, Stewartia, also known as Stuartia.  Later on, the genus Butea was also named for him, first by William Roxburgh in 1795, and then by Carl Ludwig Willdenow in 1802.  It is this fact that caught my attention for this post in the first place, especially for the plant Butea monosperma, The Flame of the Forest.  This colorful tropical tree has traditional ethnobotanical uses as a dye in The Holi Festival, or Festival of Colors, and as an Ayurvedic medicinal for diabetes and intestinal ailments.  Butea monosperma is currently being researched for its flavonoids and antimicrobial qualities. It is also a host plant for Lac insects, from which lacquer is traditionally made.

Butea monosperma, Flame of the Forest

Culture Dash:

There is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding the etymology of the name.  This is a great example of the need to be wary of what you read on the internet.  Numerous hits show “Bute” as a derivative of the Gaelic word “Bhòid” for “beacon” or “fire”, and the Norse word “Bót”, which is quoted as meaning “fire”, and as “compensation”.  Quite a difference, ach?  This is how folk etymologies are created and perpetuated.  After a few more hits, you could wind up with a completely unrelated result such as “Bót”, from the Hungarian for “shop” or “store”.  Know your resources.

The web etymologies for “Bute” that tout the Norse meaning of “Bót” as “compensation”, “remedy”, or “help” are correct.  It is along the lines of Old English “booty”, a compensation of sorts from war, which makes sense in the context of battles as from the Viking era in the Scottish Isles.  However, language has a habit of adopting words simply based on sound.  The Gaelic word “Bhòid” (“beacon” or “fire”) is also cited as being in place when the Norse speakers arrived; thus, the Norse possibly adapted this phoneme to their needs.  I’ll wager a guess that they perceived this island as an acquisition during an exploration or invasion, depending on the perspective of the winners and losers.  A few minutes with the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots produced the following results – take them as you will:

bha- = To shine. Contracted from *bha?-. [Note: This has many derivations pertaining to beacon, identify, and bring to light];

bhad- = Good. 1. Germanic *batizo in Old English betera, better… 3. Germanic noun *boto in Old English bot, remedy, aid [Note: Per the Norse Bót for "compensation" or "remedy"];

bheudh-. To be aware, to make aware. 1…a. Old English beodan, to proclaim: BID; … 2. Germanic *budon- in Old English boda, messenger, hence bodian, to announce: BODE. [Note: How far is it from "beacon" to "announce" and "proclaim"].

I will stop here with the uber-geeking.  If you are interested in historical perspectives and linguistics, I recommend honest attempts at fact checking instead of simply copying the first hit found on the web.  This source is an example of such an attempt for the etymology of “Bute”:

Sketches of the coasts and islands of Scotland, and of the Isle of Man…, Volume 1, By Charles John Shore Teignmouth, London, 1836.

More links:

The origin of the Earls of Bute date back to the Viking era in Scotland, as told in The Orkneyingers Saga.

The Isle of Bute is home to a popular jazz festival: Isle of Bute Silver Jubilee, May 2012

And an interesting one-man industry: Sea vegetable harvesting: Just Seaweed

Trip Advisor reviews of Isle of Bute

The official page for the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew.

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

Holi, The Festival of Colors

One of the earliest written references to the Holi Festival is from the 7^th century Sanskrit drama ‘Ratnavali’.  However, many older traditions come together in the Holi Festival.  Numerous annual rites relating to the end of winter, beginning of spring, the harvest of different crops, and stories of Lord Krishna have blended together throughout the centuries into the modern Holi customs across the different regions of India.  In fact, the application of color to the skin is from a story about Lord Krishna and his eternal love, Radha.  It is said that he asked his mother why he was dark and Radha was light, and his mother said to apply color to Radha’s skin to see how it would change her complexion.

Radha and Krishna, and sakhis playing Holi, 19th c.

Holi celebrations vary from 2 days up to 2 weeks, but almost all start with a bonfire to burn the effigy of the demon Holika to rid people of the past and look forward to the new life brought by spring.  Each region also holds different events, from traditional social dances with folk songs to mock battle re-enactments.

Communal events mark all festivities in all regions, and food is a large part of these events.  I can’t even begin to list the different culinary traditions since there are so many from each region in India and Bangladesh.  Even a brief roundup of Holi recipes could easily fill an entire cookbook!  For a quick look, there is a great list of recipes for the Holi Festival from Times of India.

Culture Dash:

Turmeric and rose water are popular food items used for colored dyes and scent in skin pastes for the Holi Festival.  For a deep saffron-colored solution, flowers of the ‘Flame of the forest’ tree, Butea monosperma, also known as Tesu, are traditionally used to represent joyousness and optimism.  There a numerous references to stories of Lord Krishna using Tesu during Holi, most likely due to the red flowers and his representation as the god of desire.  Tesu flowers are dried and mixed into pastes with culinary flours such as besan or gram, which is made from chickpeas.  Many Indian blogs recommend boiling the flowers or soaking them overnight to extract a brighter saffron color.  Sandalwood powder is often mixed with the Tesu extract for added scent to complement the celebration.   In addition to its ancient use as a Holi dye, Butea monosperma is important in Ayurvedic medicine for its antimicrobial properties and for treating intestinal ailments and diabetes.

More Links on Holi, The Festival of Colors:

Origins of Holi, The Festival of Colors, at BBC

Documentary in 3 parts [about 10 minuts each]:

The Colours of Spring; A Documentary on HOLI; Part 1

The Colours of Spring; A Documentary on HOLI; Part 2

The Colours of Spring; A Documentary on HOLI; Part 3

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™

The Prohibition years in the United States may have tried to stop one industry, but it resulted in a boon for others, like cruise lines to countries without bans on the sale of alcohol.  Cruise ship routes to Britain and the Continent were popular during this era, quite resplendent with fine dining rooms as well as fine wines and drinks.  At this time, a number of Americans sought brighter shores elsewhere, including a bartender named Harry Craddock.  He went to London to continue in his noble profession, landing at the American Bar in the famous Savoy Hotel.  Mr. Craddock went on to make The Savoy even more famous for its drinks among those in the know during this golden age of elegance and Art Deco.  He invented a number of new recipes, including the Leap Year Cocktail, which was released on February 29, 1928.  In 1930, Harry Craddock compiled The Savoy Cocktail Book, a cookbook of his recipes and other drinks that he helped to popularize at this historic establishment.  I recommend adding The Savoy Cocktail Book to your collection for the historic value as a recipe book as well as a reference book for the culture of this period.  To understand why, read the full title description from the original 1930 version, listed below:

“THE SAVOY COCKTAIL BOOK : BEING IN THE MAIN A COMPLETE COMPENDIUM OF THE COCKTAILS, RICKEYS, DAISIES, SLINGS, SHRUBS, SMASHES, FIZZES, JULEPS, COBBLERS, FIXES, AND OTHER DRINKS, KNOWN AND VASTLY APPRECIATED IN THIS YEAR OF GRACE 1930, WITH SUNDRY Notes of Amusement and Interest Concerning Them, Together with Subtle Observations Upon Wines and Their Special Occasions Being in the Particular an Elucidation of the Manners and Customs of People of Quality in a Period of Some Equality.” (Retrieved from Amazon, 2/29/2012)

I don’t have a copy of the original recipe for the Leap Year Cocktail yet (I did only just learn about this drink today), but here are two adaptations I was able to find in a hurry.  Each is placed in a cocktail shaker with ice and poured into a proper cocktail glass with the lemon twist as garnish:

 Leap Year Cocktail, from The joy of mixology, By Gary Regan

2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
1/4 oz. fresh lemon juice
1 lemon twist

***

Leap Year, from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Bartending, 2nd Edition, By Amy Zavatto

1-1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. Grand Marnier
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
1 T. lemon juice
1 lemon twist

Obviously, some people like more gin in their sours than others.  If someone has the original proportions, drop a comment.  If you make one at home tonight, come back and let me know how it turns out!

Here is a history of The Savoy Hotel, London, and a recipe for The Savoy Cocktail, from LeNell It All on SlashFood.

“The Savoy” was a popular name for hotel and entertainment establishments in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The Savoy Hotel of London fame should not be confused with another famous establishment from this era, The Savoy Ballroom in Chicago.  This American namesake is memorialized in the Benny Goodman song Stompin’ At The Savoy.

The name Savoy comes from Savoie, a department in southeast France.  This was an important duchy on the border of Switzerland and Italy.  The etymology of the name is unknown, but it has lent itself to the Savoy cabbage (Brassica oleracea capitata), notable for the bountiful curly ridges in its leaves.  From this, we use the term savoy to describe any deeply ridged culinary green, e.g. savoyed-leaf spinach.

In the spirit of Leap Year (the original thought where this post began), the beloved composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born on February 29, 1792.  He composed many operas, including The Barber of Seville and William Tell (Guillaume Tell), which features the famous William Tell Overture.  How about a Leap Year toast to the maestro?  Here are two of the famous pieces we all recognize:

The Overture ‘William Tell’ Part 2, performed here by the Halle Orchestra

The Barber of Seville – Figaro’s Aria [a modern performance with English subtitles]

And another version of Figaro’s famous aria sung by Luciano Pavarotti (he gets drawn at the same time)

***

Culture Dash:

As we all know, a leap year happens every 4 years on February 29^th in the current calendar system.  For millennia, people have tried to resolve the subtle shift in astronomical time that occurs roughly every 365 days to keep in step with our perception of lunar and seasonal cycles.  Our current calendar system is a compilation of calendar tradition and modern science.  Leap seconds figure regularly into adjustments of modern time standards, governed in the US by Time and Frequency Division of The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

But what is there to celebrate?  Well, the first day of the lunar month was known throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean regions as Kalends, which was the day that priests called out the first sighting of the waxing lunar crescent in the new moon phase.  From the earliest of recorded times, this was already established as an important and solemn ceremony.  In fact, the Lascaux Cave paintings contain a representation of the lunar cycle.  The word ‘calendar’ is derived from Kalends, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kele-, to shout, claim.

More links:

National Geographic article on Leap Year

History of Time at NIST

– A Dash of Culture
Where Every Story Has Food and Every Food Has a Story.™