Foraging

If you like getting stuff for free, Berkeley is a great place to live. That statement will strike many as strange and dubitable; let me explain. Yes, the cost of living in the Bay Area is one of the highest in the country. Rent is ever-increasing, water bills are staggering, and parking tickets should make up a significant percentage of the budget of anyone silly enough to have a car. But at least those costs are slightly offset by the incredible opportunities for foraging!

I now laugh at my former New York-resident self, selecting a plastic package containing three sprigs of rosemary from a frosty supermarket shelf, shuffling up to the check out line to hand over $2.99 for permission to take it home and cook with it. With an average of about three large rosemary bushes per block, no one in their right mind would ever think of paying for it here. Same goes for fennel fronds and lavender.

A few weeks ago I wanted to find a use for the nasturtiums that also grow everywhere of their own volition, including the entirely untended flower beds in front of my house. I used to eat them as a kid because nothing was more exciting that the idea of flowers you could eat, but I knew that I would enjoy their strong peppery taste much more now. I found some recipes for nasturtium butter spreads, but decided instead to incorporate them into mayonnaise, since I wanted to try making it with my new blender stick.

The blender stick method worked much better than my previous food processor attempts, though my hand did get a little tired holding down the power button for so long (woe is me and my electrical kitchen devices). It produced a very thick mayonnaise, probably thanks to the fact that I was forced to be patient about adding the oil since the stick took up most of the opening of the jar, and because I used two egg yolks instead of one whole egg. The chopped nasturtium confetti contrasted beautifully with the creamy white, and added an interesting sharpness to the flavor.

The mayonnaise went perfectly with all of the components of my mother's Shrimp Boil Birthday Dinner: we smeared it on boiled red potatoes, corn, shrimp, and soft herbed bread. It's an impressive jar to bring to a party, being both visually pleasing and somewhat conceptually unusual. You'll seem very gourmet, even though the key ingredient was plucked off a sidewalk. Don't worry, I washed it first.

Nasturtium Mayonnaise

2 egg yolks

2 tbps lemon juice

pinch of salt

3/4 cup oil (I used 1/4 cup canola oil and 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil this time)

3-5 nasturtium flowers, finely chopped

Place first three ingredients in a jar with a mouth wide enough to fit the head of the blender stick. Blend until well combined. Then, while blending continuously, start drizzling in the oil, literally drop by drop at first, waiting to add more until everything is fully incorporated. After the first 1/4 cup or so you can start adding more in each go. The mixture will get thicker as you go on. When all the oil has been added, stir in the nasturtium. Refrigerate.

Necessary Stops

The flight from New York to California is between five and six hours long if you have a direct flight, seven or eight if you have a layover. Add two hours to that for the time it takes to get to the airport, either via the rickety C train to the slightly more reliable A train to the JFK AirTrain, or by the N/Q/R to a lonely corner in Astoria where a bus to Laguardia appears every once in while, in no connection to the posted schedule. At the other end, I usually face about a forty-five minute wait outside of baggage claim, since my mother generally has trouble realizing that it might take more than negative-ten minutes to get to the airport.

I spend most of this travel time looking forward to certain stops to be made on the way back from the airport. Only certain stops, because with my mother driving the ride home inevitably involves several. These might include but are not limited to: picking up mail from our old house, long discussions with four of the seven Balkan tenants about why they have to pay for the heat that only the Serbian woman requires and when they might be able to get a ride to Canned Foods, detours to houses in the hills where my mother can steal roses, lemons, and, once, a trash can (it looked like it was free). During these trips I try to use the volume and timbre of my voice to affect the car’s steering mechanisms, to make it veer away from garage sale signs and towards the places I’m more interested in. This has limited success.

The stops I want to make are, usually, Acme Bread Company, the Cheeseboard, and Monterey Market. These are the places from which separation is almost intolerable. These places provide things that, though in some ways luxurious, seem basic and necessary to humane life, yet are impossible to find elsewhere. Acme makes baguettes as good as what you find in France, huge slabs of spongy foccacia, and loaves in all shapes and colors, at prices that make it possible for normal people to exercise their basic right to good quality bread. The Cheeseboard is slightly fancier, and perhaps it’s understandable that creativity at their level isn’t ubiquitous, but they still go far with the simple principle that cheese is great, and need not be used sparingly.

While trips to Cheeseboard and Acme were exciting to me as a child, I didn’t fully realize what Monterey Market had to offer until I was a bit more grown up (or maybe it was the experience a few years of grocery shopping in Manhattan). In October, of course, Monterey Market was the most exciting place in the world, since it was home to a giant mountain of pumpkins that you could climb up to find the best one. But year-round, the market sells beautiful produce at prices that enable you to actually buy things, not just the basics you know will be delicious, but exotic new things from all over the world. Instead of just looking and oohing and ahhing, you can go home with some cherimoyas, purple kohlrabi, abalone mushrooms, turban squash, and all kinds of other knobbly and brightly colored plants that you can only assume are edible. These days, the internet can always tell you whether something should be peeled, chopped or grated, boiled or roasted, sweetened or seasoned.

This will be the last time I write about Berkeley establishments in the context of so much longing and complaint, since I just found out that I’ll be moving to the Bay Area in a few months. I had been back in New York for less than 24 hours, and had just started in on a personally imported Zampano roll from the Cheeseboard, when I got a call saying that the philosophy department had decided to offer admission. Chase, at the other end of the isle of Manhattan, was eating a cheese roll at the same precise moment, and I’d like to think that Professor Mancosu had just finished a Greek shepherd’s roll when he called.

The Greatest Possible Sandwich: A Parody of Seasoning

Proving the existence of God has proven tricky. Anselm’s proof is famous for not getting anywhere, but it is nevertheless taught in every intro to philosophy course, which probably has something to do with how funny it sounds.

His reasoning, known as the Ontological Argument, was basically along these lines:

1. God is a being that than which nothing can be greater.
2. Things can exist in the mind or in reality.
3. Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist only in the mind.
4. Therefore, God must exist in reality.

This is an abridged version, of course, and Anselm elaborates on the argument using the words “that than which” so many times that his writing leaves you feeling somewhat dizzy and not much closer to grasping the nature of God. But apparently it doesn’t really matter, because his argument has been refuted (and then subsequently ridiculed) by a parity of reasoning. If the above argument is valid, then the following must also be sound:

1. The greatest possible sandwich is a sandwich that than which nothing can be greater.
2. Things can exist in the mind or in reality.
   
3. Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist only in the mind.
   
4. Therefore, the greatest possible sandwich must exist in reality.

But of course, we’re told, there’s no such thing as greatest possible sandwich! So Anselm can’t have proven the existence of God. Right?

That’s the traditional response, but I think another reaction is possible. What if you had a particularly spiritual experience with a tri-tip sandwich from a shack in a parking lot on University and Oxford? What if its proprietor, dressed in white linen, glowing in the sun against the green and orange backdrop of his Brazilian flag-covered establishment, handed you a carton of soft bread filled with steak that than which nothing could be more tender, grilled onions that than which nothing could be more caramelized, and green cilantro dressing that than which nothing could be creamier? You might think that this man had just supplied you with the true Thatthanwich, the greatest possible sandwich, and thus restored the viability of Anselm’s proof of God’s real existence.

There’s a problem with this argument as well, however. The same Brazilian Café’s vegetarian sandwich, a precarious tower of avocado, shredded carrots, ricotta, corn, and other vegetables between two thick slices of sunflower seed bread dripping with cilantro dressing, might cast doubt on the ultimate status of the tri-tip sandwich. One might also recall the three-pork banh-mi at Nicky’s, the Montecristo on French toast at Trident, and the brie and roasted pepper baguette at the Musical Offering, and worry that we cannot, in fact, demonstrate the existence of the greatest possible sandwich, since any attempt to choose between these candidates would be unsuccessful, though enjoyable.

Still, there’s no reason to despair yet – the multitude of great sandwiches out there is an indication that we should be optimistic about the existence of God, after all. Furthermore, it gives us reason to turn to a more Spinozist conception – God can be found everywhere, since everything in existence makes up a part of him. Every tree, human, porpoise, and avocado is an element of the greatest possible being. I would argue, however, that the avocado is particularly essential.