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I joined the throng. Arriving finally at the head of the queue, one of her books in hand, I told the divine Julia it was the longest line I had been in since I had waited to view the Mona Lisa. "I'm not related to the Mona Lisa," she belted out in that voice with more dips and rises than a roller coaster. She clearly meant she was not so old as La Gioconda. "But she does have a good pedigree," I offered. She signed the book with a mysterious grin. At the other tables were writers of ethnic childhood memoirs centered on memorable meals; an author of a mystery novel in which a restaurant critic solves a heinous gastro-crime; and cookbooks ranging from Bulgarian cuisine to Italian vegetables. Waiting to pay for my cache, I encountered a product-development manager for a Pennsylvania nursing home who had just purchased six cookbooks for her new boyfriend, a rabbi. "If he asks me to cook for him from these books," she said, "I'll leave him; if he offers to cook for me, I'll marry him." On the other side of the black divider curtain, the information fair was in full swing. Exhibitors from all over America had come to hawk their wares. The theme of the weeklong meeting was "Taste and Technology: Food for the 21st Century." Cooking lessons on CD-ROM certainly fit, but I didn't expect to see a booth paying homage to that quintessential item of low-tech: the can. Yet there was a rep making an impassioned argument for canned beans, canned soup and canned corn. Had James Beard and Julia Child fought long and hard for fresh ingredients only to have the Canned Food Alliance take us back to the bad old days? But the rep, an elegant woman who clearly had never set foot on a farm or in a cannery, was undaunted: "Canned beans are far better than frozen or fresh," she insisted, and swore she knew a youngster who raised corn and was thrilled that his produce got into a can before it spoiled. "And that," the rep said definitively, "is the American canning story." The Jarlsberg booth featured a fellow drawing in the customers with a Swiss cowbell; the rival Wisconsin booth lured passersby with a huge assortment of cheeses. I wondered about the need for a Wisconsin cheese information booth; doesn't everyone already know about Wisconsin cheese? "How many folks know about Wisconsin brie?" the rep retorted. Across the way were the Mustard Association; the White Pekin Duckling Association (insisting that duck is low in fat); and "Lick Your Chops--the National Pork Produce Council" raffling a rack of pork and giving away free copies of The Kids' Pork Cookbook. Better than a Marlboro booth, I suppose. If you're an edible animal or plant and you don't have a council or an association fighting for your recognition, you might as well drop out of the food chain. The buffalo looked proud on the logo of the National Bison Association, where a man in a buckskin vest was sautéeing pungent slices and a significant crowd had gathered for a handout. "Why 'bison,'" I asked, "and not 'buffalo'?" "Because," he replied, "we don't want people to confuse our animals with water buffalo." After contemplating a sign asking us to "Behold the Power of Cheese," I was glad to see the unassuming style of the local: Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods displayed simply packaged grains. But around the corner the Jack Daniel's booth was doing a brisk business in samples, and I had to admit that even Bob's muffin mix can't hold its own to free bourbon. But my heart was really in the half-dozen booths promoting food tours to Europe. One woman showed photographs of her kitchen in Provence (in a farmhouse where the ubiquitous Julia Child once lived). Another had a video of extremely contented people dining aboard a barge that floated on the rivers of Gascogny. A third woman was showing off her new book: 82 Decadent Cooking Holidays in Italy. I could only dream about these vacations, but I was able to do a bit of hands-on work at the Ciao Ltd. booth, where I tried cutting up a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano with a specially designed almond knife. You always learn something more than you expect to from these folks; it turns out that nothing serves as well for instant protein as a good aged Parmigiano-Reggiano. It is light and long-lasting, so Italian mountain climbers take it with them in the Alps. No need for St. Bernards and brandy. I needed a chaser for my Jack Daniels, and the fair was wearing me down, so I headed to the San Pellegrino booth. The reps there poured me a generous glass, and I learned that they position their water in the "small bubble market." I was glad that someone, somewhere, was measuring bubbles, and even more pleased that the San Pellegrino people had found a niche of their own. Why dancing olive oil? Well, why not? |
