 Arild Vågen [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Today: Hamilton Nolan, author of the newsletter How Things Work, and the book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor; and Laurie Woolever, author of Appetites, World Travel, and Bourdain: the Definitive Oral Biography.
Issue No. 174If I Was in the Woods
Hamilton Nolan Party All the Time Sandwiches
Laurie Woolever
If I Was in the WoodsThe biggest mistake that a lot of people make in the woods is to panic. If I was in the woods, I wouldn’t do that. I would remain calm. If I was in the woods, I wouldn’t view it as a “scary” or threatening experience. Instead I would see it as a chance to commune with nature. In a sense, nature is my church, and a tree is my cathedral, and a bird is my preacher, and the dirt are my pews. If I was in the woods, the first thing I would do would be to build a shelter. It would have a gracious anteroom opening into a cozy living area with a fireplace made of stones and dried mud. Upon my hearth would sit a bubbling cooking pot full of stew that tasted of the forest’s bounty. An impregnable thatched roof would keep me safe from storms. If anyone lost in the woods wandered to my door, I would give them shelter. But if they tried to enter by force, I would kill them. If I was in the woods, I would use my skills to survive. The first step is to be honest about my strengths and weaknesses. What skills do I lack? Shelter building, foraging, fishing, hunting, finding water, knowing plants, how to make weapons. What skills do I possess? I’m good at skipping rocks and if the water is nice and flat I can often skip them six or even eight times. Out in the woods, I would use the barter system to obtain the things I need. One day, I would trade a rock skipping lesson for a hut. The next day, I would trade a rock skipping lesson for a fish, and part of the deal would be they would gut the fish and cook it, because I’m not good at that. The next day I would trade a rock skipping lesson for a crude but effective bow and arrow. Once I had that I could use it to steal whatever else I need. If I was in the woods, I wouldn’t sever an artery by chopping my hand with an axe when I was trying to split firewood. I would put safety first. If I was in the woods I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get back to “civilization.” Are people who live in sterile little boxes and drive their little cars to a soulless office every day really more “civilized” than people like me who live in the woods? It’s a good question. While the policeman thinks about it, I toss some sand into his eyes and flee back into the brush. If I was in the woods I would take it easy. We hear a lot about how hard ancient people worked–spending all day gathering firewood, hunting game, and tending crops. Today most of us don’t do any of that stuff and yet we have a higher standard of living. I could teach the ancient people a thing or two. If I was in the woods, I would recline on a soft bed of moss and gaze contentedly at the pastoral landscape as I smoked a pipe fashioned from an old deer bone. I would whittle a flute out of a stick and play a little tune as the sun slipped down below the horizon. I would weave a net from wild grasses and cast it into the pond where it would collect my supper. I would beckon the baby animals to entertain me with their charming antics. I would make my bed upon a sloping hill in a beautiful valley where the pace of life played out according to the sun and moon. I would form a band of raffish wanderers who knew no god and bathed in the blood of their enemies. I would study the calls of various birds. If I was in the woods, I doubt you’d even hear from me again. I would be too busy living life the way it’s supposed to be lived. Far from the hue and cry of urbanity, I would stretch out in repose and wonder why I ever thought I even needed to “answer the phone” over and over again or carry out the foolish charade of talking to bill collectors, the county court, or that bounty hunter. Out in the woods, all those everyday things fade into absurdity. As a matter of fact, please stop calling me. And don’t come looking for me, either. And if you do, well, sorry, it’s a big world, and I doubt you’ll be able to find me. But sure, go ahead and waste your time trying. Just don’t come looking in the woods.
MY MUGA Flaming Hydra FEATURETTEWe've asked Hydra authors
to share stories of their mugs.Luke O’Neil I don’t have A Mug as I don’t really drink out of mugs. I am from Massachusetts so I drink ice coffee year round and then use the emptied large Dunkies (milk one sugar) as an ashtray until it gets disgusting enough that even I can’t look at it anymore. This mug here though I have had for something like 25 years. I finally broke it the other day unloading the dishwasher (which I do by the way). My mother gave it to me all those years ago so I texted her to tell her it had broken and she said this. Classic ma. “The first time you had me over, maybe the first time we ‘made out,’ you made me tea in that mug” Michelle just told me. I do not remember this. The tea part I mean. “You probably only had the one cup.” This I find believable. Seven people in an Allston band house. Empty pizza boxes stacked and leaning like the actual Tower of Pisa. Brown standing water in the tub. Maggots in the pantry. Everyone smoking inside 24 hours a day. A phone line internet cord 50 yards long we each had to share and fight over and drag from room to room when it was our turn to… I don’t know… read Salon.com (?) “I thought you were going to be the type of guy that made herbal tea all the time but you tricked me,” she said just now. lol got her ass. Not long after my roommate her brother my best friend had a girlfriend coming around who was a Y2k artsy hipster type which I suppose we all were and she said it looked like a Starbucks mug one time in a sort of shitty way. Maybe it was? I don’t even know. Anyway Michelle and I have called it the Starbucks mug since then. Now it’s dead and soon the rest of all of us will be.
Party All the Time Sandwiches Puerto Rican Party Sandwiches, from Latin-ish by Marisel Salazar Back when I was a problem drinker and pothead, I loved parties, which offered a chance to drink a lot for free and messily eat ill-advised quantities of crispy, fatty, salty and / or sugary foods. Now, sober, I spend the days before a party in a state of lazy anxiety, wondering whether I can credibly tell the host that I might have Covid so that I can stay home and watch awful people at parties on TV. A few weeks ago, I overcame my lassitude to attend a party for Marisel Salazar’s debut cookbook, Latin-ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines. Salazar’s heritage is Cuban, Peruvian, and Panamanian. She was born in Panama and then, as part of a military family, she lived in Hawaii, Japan, Virginia, New York, and Madrid, all before the age of 21. Moving between cultures, re-imagining family recipes using creative substitutes, and tasting new things in new places gave Salazar a particularly broad perspective on American, Latin American, and American Latino cooking. An encounter with a food snob who denigrated Tex-Mex cuisine as “inauthentic” was the jumping-off point for the book, in which she gently, joyfully dismantles the notion of “authenticity” as applied to cuisines that have been shaped by centuries of war, diaspora, colonialism, immigration, and innovation. From the book’s introduction: It can feel tempting to romanticize the past, to embrace the belief that older or more traditional means better or more authentic. Some of us fantasize about how our ancestors or predecessors ate, ignoring or repressing that, over time, food changes for lots of reasons ... recipes change because, over time, locations, circumstances, ingredients and people change. That's how food culture evolves, and I love it.
After Marisel’s party, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Puerto Rican Party Sandwiches, the recipe for which is in her book. I spotted them right away, parked myself in a comfortable seat next to them, and stopped myself after eating three. The little dog who belonged to the host wanted one, too, and it was hard not to give in to his sad eyes, but I know better than to give a little dog a rich mixture of Spam and two kinds of processed cheese and pimiento peppers on soft triangles of white bread.  Ack, and also Yum (image courtesy of the author) Puerto Rican Party Sandwiches, also known as sandwiches de mezcla, are (spoiler alert) good to have for parties, and also good for days when there are no parties, when you feel, as I do, existentially down, because of all the terrible fucking shit going on in the world: war in the Middle East and climate collapse in the South and New York’s clown mayor taking a page from the Cohn/Trump playbook, and also this fucking guy, and this one, and this one, just sucking up oxygen and being the absolute shittiest. These sandwiches are a soft blanket, a restorative nap, a big fingerful of buttercream icing from the mixing bowl, only they are salty and tangy and vaguely, yet satisfyingly, meaty. Across the world there exist variations on pâté-based sandwiches: chopped liver in Eastern Europe and New York, the great range of meat pâté on bread in traditional French cuisine, which in turn influenced the Vietnamese banh mi. There are the herring paste sandwiches of northern Europe, whitefish salad spreads anywhere there’s a bagel to be had, and the garbanzo and sesame-based hummus of the Middle East. The closest relative of the sandwich de mezcla is the Cuban bocadito, whose filling is made from deviled ham, cream cheese and pimientos, which is typically spread on small rolls or potato buns. Both the Puerto Rican and Cuban variations stand apart from aforementioned pâté sandwiches in that they’re truly party food, being too rich and treat-like to be served as a regular meal. Who invented the sandwich de mezcla, you may ask, and why? This sandwich blogger offers a smart but inconclusive timeline, starting with the Treaty of Paris and ending with the advent of Cheez-Whiz. Puerto Rican Party Sandwiches, do not appear in Carmen Aboy Valldejuli’s Puerto Rican Cookery, the English translation of Cocina Criolla, long considered the gold standard of Puerto Rican home cooking. Valldejuli does, however, include a recipe for Pimiento and Velveeta Cheese Sandwiches, in which butter, hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise stand in for the rich heft of a 12-ounce block of Spam. Given that the basis of her culinary repertoire was formed in the 1940s, and the fact that Spam only went mainstream after World War II, it seems possible that Valldejuli’s egg and butter sandwiches walked so that the meaty Mezclas could run.
Puerto Rican Party Sandwiches Adapted from Latin-ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines by Marisel Salazar Yields 40 sandwich triangles Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes 12 ounces lunch meat such as Jamonilla or Spam brand
1 cup jarred cheese dip such as Cheez Whiz or Velveeta brand, at room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (optional, for a thicker spread)
4 ounces canned diced pimientos or jarred red bell peppers including juice
40 slices white bread (2 loaves)
Grape or cherry tomatoes for garnish (optional)
1. Cube the lunch meat.
2. In a food processor, process the cheese dip, cream cheese (if using), pimientos, and lunch meat until well combined and smooth.
3. On 1 slice of bread, spread 2 tablespoons of the processed mixture. Top with another slice of bread, trim the crusts, and halve into triangles.
4. Repeat with the remaining spread and bread.
5. Garnish with halved grape or cherry tomatoes, if desired.
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