NY Times Wining and Dining

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

See the below two food itake messages from the August 10, 2005 NY Wining and

Dining

section.

The first seems to be about promoting more caloric intake, whereas the second

appears to be about " promoting minimized caloric intake " .

August 10, 2005

He Would've Wanted Everyone to Eat

By ABE OPINCAR

VERTAMAE GROSVENOR said she always wondered why she and her relatives ate so

much

after funerals.

" Even people on diets just ate plate after plate, " Ms. Grosvenor, a cultural

correspondent for National Public Radio, said about postfuneral meals in South

Carolina, where she grew up. " My theory was, we ate so much because that's how

we

knew we were alive. "

Funeral meals have always meant to assuage grief and to honor the dead and their

beliefs about the hereafter. In America these meals also reflect ethnicity,

health

trends, state law and contemporary funeral practices.

But feeding the grieving also has a fundamental aim, said Dr. Holly Prigerson, a

bereavement specialist.

" You can't be noshing when something's chasing you, " said Dr. Prigerson,

director of

research at the Center for Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Care at the

Dana-Farber

Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School. She said C. S. was right when

he

wrote, " No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. "

She continued: " Grief triggers the fight-or-flight mechanism. Your body's in a

state

of alarm. It's like something's chasing you. When grieving people say they don't

feel like eating, that's because the body is prioritizing for survival.

" Postfuneral meals, the food brought by family and neighbors, offer emotional

support. But we do these things also out of a basic human sense that people who

have

survived the death of someone they love are going to need nourishment. They've

been

depleted by caregiving and bereavement. Grieving people must eat. "

So, friends take chicken, brisket, cakes and homemade cookies to the homes of

grieving relatives. In many states they take food to the funeral home. But not

in

New York.

LaVone Hazell, a family therapist who trains clergy in bereavement support and

advocacy, quotes the New York state law prohibiting the " preparation, sale,

service,

or distribution of food or beverages in any part of a funeral establishment to

or by

friends, relatives, mourners, family, visitors or next of kin of any deceased

person. "

Ms. Hazell said: " I've wanted to run a funeral home since I was 6 years old, but

not

in New York. The food issue upsets me. "

At the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service on West 54th

Street,

Ms. Hazell tries to instill a sense of cultural awareness in her lectures on

grief

psychology.

" Funeral meals, like the African-American repast, are so important to so many

ethnic

and religious communities, I could never run a funeral home that didn't

accommodate

them, " she said.

It is an imperative that ph Becker understands.

" Recently we had a lovely funeral dinner, " Mr. Becker said. " Catered. About $20

per

person. Beautiful china and linen. Fancy folded napkins. Sculpted butter. A

fabulous

display of hors d'oeuvres. Chicken on a skewer with a nice Greek dressing.

Stuffed

mushroom caps. Little Reuben sandwiches. It was better than most wedding dinners

I've been to. "

Mr. Becker owns Becker Ritter Funeral Homes of Brookfield, Wis. He is best known

in

the funeral industry as a pioneer in the use of video technology in memorial

services. In 1997 he added a 1,500-square-foot dining hall to Becker Ritter,

complete with an antique fireplace and fountain.

" Because of the growth in cremations, there's no need to go to the cemetery, " he

said. " I started looking down the road at the future. I wanted to offer

something of

value to the people we serve. Our community is mostly German, Irish and Polish.

Serving food after a funeral is a very good and needed part of our clients'

traditions.

" We work with the families and caterers to create a meal that reflects the

person

being remembered. We've done a replica of an English high tea, for example. We

had a

German oompah band the other day in the dining room. That was a baked chicken

dinner

with parsley boiled potatoes, green beans and relish trays. For a Norwegian lady

we

did everything in the colors of the Norwegian flag. Swedish meatballs were on

the

menu. "

Sometimes the signs of ethnicity are subtler. Gayden Metcalfe, co-author of

" Being

Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect

Funeral " (Hyperion, 2005), said white and black Southerners take different

approaches to the funeral meal.

" The African-American community does repasts beautifully, " she said. " They take

the

time to prepare wonderful food. We white Southerners kind of do it all in a

rush.

That's why our funeral foods are dishes like casseroles and Jell-O salads.

Things

you can put together real fast with ingredients you have on hand. I think that's

why

my mother always had a casserole in the freezer, just to have something ready in

case someone died. "

The funeral meal's most influential designer is religion, but there is room for

flexibility.

Rabbi Sholom Lipskar said that in his 36 years of being a rabbi, he has noted

changes in the food that friends and relatives take to mourners during shiva,

the

traditional seven-day period of mourning.

" Nowadays people are more health-conscious, " said Rabbi Lipskar of the Shul, a

Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Bal Harbour, Fla. " You're getting a lot more

vegetable

trays with dips and less of the fried, fatty foods you used to see in the past. "

He said that there were no rules for the food brought during shiva, but that

Jewish

law dictated the contents of the seudat havra'ah, or the meal that first-degree

relatives of the deceased must eat immediately after the funeral.

" We trace it back to the lentils prepared by , " he said. " Abraham, 's

grandfather, had died. was preparing the postfuneral meal, seudat

havra'ah,

for his father, Isaac. To this day, lentils are part of that postfuneral meal.

Lentils and hardboiled eggs. Round things that symbolize life's cyclical

nature. "

Hindus also use specific foods as markers of the different stages of mourning.

Pandit Krishna Samudrala, spiritual leader of Malibu Hindu Temple in Calabasas,

Calif., said desserts had a prominent place in the Hindu postfuneral meal.

" For the first 12 days the deceased's first-degree relatives are ritually

impure, "

he said. " On the 13th day relatives and friends are invited to a vegetarian meal

in

which no garlic or onion are used. In India we would hire a cook to come and

prepare

this meal. But in Los Angeles these cooks can't be found, so family and friends

help

out.

" It's a meal of curry and sambar, and of three traditional desserts: appam, a

rice-flour pancake; and vada, which is a kind of doughnut; and payasam, which is

a

rice pudding. Throughout India these dishes may be prepared a little

differently,

but the desserts are important because they have a special meaning for us.

Sweets

mean that people are carrying on with their lives. "

Pandit Krishna's wife, Srimathi, garnishes her payasam with cardamom powder, a

little saffron mixed in milk and cashews fried in clarified butter.

" But the pudding's real flavor should come from the milk, " she said. " You can

use

either condensed milk or fresh whole milk. Both give a good result. It's not

very

difficult to make. You just have to pay careful attention so that it doesn't

burn. "

Imam Mateen Siddiqui, vice president of the Supreme Islamic Council of America

in

Fenton, Mich., said that each Muslim country had its own tradition for funeral

meals.

" You'll usually find lamb, rice, bread, " he said. " The idea is that the meal is

a

form of charity for the friends and relatives who've come to the funeral. The

blessing from that charity goes to the deceased. The more that guests eat and

fill

themselves, the more of a blessing goes to him. "

When Neal Abunab, a Palestinian filmmaker, thinks of Muslim funeral meals, he

thinks

of one dish, mansaf.

" You can make mansaf for any festive occasion, but it's always served after

funerals, " said Mr. Abunab, a Dearborn, Mich., resident who came to this country

in

1979 when he was 16. " It's a way of cooking lamb in a sauce made with dried

yogurt.

The Palestinian way is to also add leben, which is like buttermilk. My mom's

secret

is to add a tiny bit of kusbara, or cilantro, to the sauce. My mom makes a mean

mansaf.

" On the mansaf plate, a big stainless steel tray, you put some flatbread and on

top

of that a layer of rice with some almonds and pine nuts fried in olive oil, and

then

the lamb. The idea is that you're eating communally. The idea is to eat a lot of

mansaf. "

Those in the funeral industry know that generous meals are a part of the

business.

Caldwell, supervisor of limousine drivers for March Funeral Home in

Baltimore, the largest black-owned funeral home in the country, said he had been

invited to hundreds and hundreds of repasts.

" Fried chicken, string beans, ham, potato salad, pig tails cooked with

sauerkraut, "

he said, listing the dishes he is usually served. " For dessert, chocolate sheet

cake, sweet potato pie and apple pie. It's good eating. "

He, too, has noticed changes.

" Folks always have the basics, but they've been adding things like crab cakes,

chitlins, seafood salads and pigs' feet, " he said. " There's a greater variety

now of

what you eat at a repast. "

In the South Carolina Lowcountry, where Vertamae Grosvenor grew up, repasts were

marked by culinary tension.

" The repast was when you showed off, " she said. " Maybe you didn't bring your

best to

a party, but to a repast you did. "

And because Lowcountry is rice country, she continued, " you show off with your

rice

dishes. "

She remembered the ones served after her mother's funeral 10 years ago.

" We had pans and pans of rice fixed every kind of way, " she said. " Plain rice to

go

next to your greens. Red rice with smoked sausage. Chicken purloo. Hoppin' .

Limpin' . Aunt Georgianne brought a big pan of her seasoned rice. It was

wonderful, but I still don't know what she had it in. I know it had black

pepper.

" People judged your worth by how well you made rice. If your rice wasn't proper,

my

God. "

She added with a laugh, " Gummy rice wasn't only unfit for a living person, it

was

unacceptable for a dead man. "

August 10, 2005

The Governor Who Put His State on a Diet

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

AMONG the best-selling items at the gift shop of the Statehouse Museum here is a

cookbook titled " Thirty Years at the Mansion, " a collection of recipes produced

and

compiled by Liza , who held the position of executive chef to seven

Arkansas

governors, ending with Bill Clinton in his second term. In it we learn that Gov.

Francis Cherry liked garlic grits; Dale Bumpers, pork chops and snickerdoodles;

and

the former president, presumably during periods of suppressed appetite, a Jell-O

salad formulated from 7-Up.

Don Bingham, who currently commands the mansion's kitchen, has had considerably

less

range of late serving Mike Huckabee, the jovial two-and-a-half-term Republican

governor who set out two years ago to reduce his size by a third.

" My scale stops at 280, " Governor Huckabee joked as he sat down to lunch at the

Capriccio Grill, a restaurant a few miles from the Capitol building. " So beyond

that

I'm not sure what I weighed. "

By the end of last year, Governor Huckabee, who is considering a bid for the

presidency in 2008, had achieved his goal, shedding more than 100 pounds, a

journey

he chronicled in his new 162-page memoir and lifestyle admonition, " Quit Digging

Your Grave With a Knife and a Fork " (Center Street, $19.95).

Now 177 pounds, the governor (who is 5 feet 11 inches) recounts with candor his

fraught psychological relationship with food and some of the embarrassing

episodes

to which it gave rise. Once, just as he was about to speak to 53 cabinet-level

agency directors at the State House he sat down, only to topple a circa 1900

chair

that had just been incorporated into the building's restoration.

The triumph is recounted as well. " Having the president of the United States

call me

'Skinny' in front of a large hometown crowd is nice enough, " he writes of a

November

2003 visit made by President Bush to Little Rock, " but having it written in the

state's largest newspaper is truly icing on the cake - even though I don't eat

cake

anymore! "

Among the other foods under his indictment are doughnuts, fried catfish,

biscuits -

indeed, most of the cooking that supplied his heritage.

Governor Huckabee is a native of Hope, Ark., where he did not know Bill Clinton,

but

he seems to share with him an identity forged from the mythology of small

pleasures

born of Southern deprivation.

The son of a fireman who spent his spare time working as an auto mechanic,

Governor

Huckabee grew up, as he tells it, in stultifying financial circumstances and

largely

on starch.

" When you don't have very much money, you're not going to be able to buy a movie

ticket or go to a Major League ballgame, but you can have a second helping of

potatoes, " he said, characterizing his childhood. " One acceptable way for a good

Christian kid to delve into a chemical addiction without being thought of as

inappropriate or evil is to go to the pizza buffet. Pizza, well, that's O.K. "

The governor was by his own admission a pudgy child, and struggled with

batter-coated food and a rising body-mass index through much of his adult life,

first as a Baptist preacher and then as a politician. He ran for the United

States

Senate and lost in 1992, but won an election for lieutenant governor the

following

year. Arkansas' chief office fell to him in 1996, when Jim Guy Tucker resigned

following a conviction in the Whitewater investigation. Last month Governor

Huckabee

was elected the chairman of the National Governors Association, a post also held

by

Bill Clinton.

The governor was motivated toward weight loss after a doctor's visit resulted in

a

harrowing prognosis.

" He said if I didn't change my habits, I'd die in 10 years, " he recalled. " I

thought, this is not the last chapter of my life's book. We can certainly

improve

the script here. " He soon took to eating six small meals a day, consisting

largely

of fruits, vegetables and lean proteins; riding a recumbent bicycle every day;

and

running four times a week. In March, he completed the Little Rock marathon in 4

hours 38 minutes, accompanied by his friend Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, who took

more

than five hours.

" It was one of the greatest days of my whole life, " Governor Huckabee said. " It

ranks right up there with the birth of my children and the day I was sworn in as

governor. "

The governor eats lunch most days at 11:30, by which time he has been up for

seven

hours, having scrambled his own eggs before dawn, occasionally including a slice

of

spelt toast when he is feeling indulgent. " I see no point in waking anyone up to

make me breakfast, " he said, not long after a waiter at the Capriccio arrived to

trumpet the afternoon's specials. " For our pasta today -- , " he said, then

paused to

consider his audience. " Well now, that's not going to interest you at all, is

it,

sir? " Rigatoni would have held no sway. Governor Huckabee ordered a Tuscan

chicken

salad (which in Arkansian translation seems to take shape as a Cobb salad from

which

only the bacon has been exiled). Oil and vinegar (on the side) were requested.

" I used to think of salad as something to justify drinking a bottle of ranch

dressing, " he said. " I've now become a huge fan of olive oil. "

His transformation led him to begin the Healthy Arkansas initiative in the

spring of

last year, the goal of which has been to persuade men, women and children of the

state to join him in his new embrace of healthful solvents and physical

exertion.

Two years ago he recently held a contest in his office in which his staff

members,

all given pedometers, competed for the highest number of steps taken in a month.

The

state's transportation policy analyst, Lucretia Norris, won, receiving the

coveted

but counterproductive prize of the chief of staff's parking space for 10

business

days. " It's a great spot, very close to the door, " the governor noted.

However, under the Healthy Arkansas program, she and all state employees are now

given 30 minutes a day for exercise.

" When smokers take a break they're on the clock, " the governor said, explaining

his

logic. " Even though it's a 15-minute break, you know they take longer, because

that's what smokers do. "

Another incentive he has offered is a point system that allows those working for

the

state to accrue days off when they lose weight, stop smoking or exhibit other

signs

of sound bodily stewardship.

" Someone calls in sick and you say, why are you sick? " the governor said. " Well,

'I'm 50 pounds overweight and don't get off my rear end and I'm sick' - that's

ridiculous! You get rewarded for being sick and the poor guy who is slugging

away

exercising gets to go to work. "

Administering to his citizenry and promoting minimized caloric intake, consume

him

only part of the time. A D.J. when he was in his teens, he plays bass guitar in

a

band called Capitol Offense, with whom he recently opened for REO Speedwagon in

Denver. " We don't try to play trendy stuff, " he said. " Nothing without a long

shelf

life. "

As for what you might eat, should you be invited to the governor's mansion, know

that dessert might very well come in the form of sugar-free ice cream. Or it

might

arrive as crème brûlée, the first word of which the governor, perhaps hoping to

avoid designation as a Francophile, pronounces " cream. "

He instructs the chef, Mr. Bingham, to make it with Splenda.

Al Pater, PhD; email: old542000@...

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