March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: The Importance of Ritual - #113

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

But when these ceremonies arrived in America, they started to change. No longer controlled by convention these ancient celebrations began to evolve. They had gotten their first Taste of Freedom and they would never be the same.

THANKSGIVING

BURT WOLF: Our present Thanksgiving Day celebration is clearly a day for giving thanks, but it’s also a harvest festival. During their first winter in Massachusetts, half the colonists that reached North America on the Mayflower died. When spring arrived the survivors planted corn, peas, and barley and in the fall of 1621, there was a harvest and a crop to live on. The fifty-two people who survived from the original hundred and sixteen decided to have a harvest feast. But the event was not of historical importance until the middle of the 1800s when millions of immigrants arrived in America.

ANDY SMITH ON CAMERA: And part of the problem was how do you explain America to the groups of people that would have had no American history and would have little understanding of what America was all about. So it was an origin myth that America began with the pilgrims in Plimouth, Massachusetts. Now of course the first English Colony that was successful was Jamestown. And it was founded in 1607, almost 14 years before Plimouth. But the problem with Jamestown as a place of origin was slavery. And, slavery began in Jamestown in 1619 and after the Civil War, you couldn't trace the origin of a country back to where slavery began so the Massachusetts and other New Englanders decided that what we really need to do is have Plimouth as the first real founding fathers of America and Thanksgiving holiday was part of that. That's why the first Thanksgiving is supposedly in Plimouth. There were many days of Thanksgiving in Jamestown prior to that. But they're not looked on as the first Thanksgiving because we have our origin of our nation, and our origin of our nation goes back to the pilgrims, who are an interesting lot. Good group of people.

CHRISTMAS

BURT WOLF: The unofficial beginning of Christmas is the unveiling of the holiday displays in the department store windows. Every year they try to outdo the windows of the past year. The tradition got started at Lord & Taylor in 1938. They were the first department store to devote prime retail space to the celebration of the Christmas season rather than their merchandise. Manoel Renha is Lord & Taylor’s creative director.

MANOEL RENHA ON CAMERA: I'm an architect. That's my background. So, I have the technical background to develop the sketches. And I usually do a lot of set designing. So, when you see our windows, you can tell, they are nothing less than a Broadway production. Maybe in a smaller version, but, where the, the actors or the characters are, are little figurines.

BURT WOLF: These Lord & Taylor windows interpret the story of the Nutcracker.

MANOEL RENHA ON CAMERA: The first one is, is, is kind of creating the atmosphere of what should expect, is the Christmas Eve, where you have the guests arriving, to the mansion, the celebrating the Christmas Eve party, and then, one of the things we did, that we thought would be very interesting, was to, to give a twist to the story, and treat it more, almost like a story board, so we are zooming in from the first scene to the next scene, where you see the inside of the mansion, in right there, we create this split level, with this giant Christmas tree, with the, the main characters, where Drosselmeier is presenting Clara with her Christmas gift, then the Nutcracker, and right underneath, we have a second level, the mice world, and the mouse king is taking a bath while the other little mouse are spying and seeing what's happening in the upper level. In, in each window, we are very particular with the detailing. So make sure you, you analyze, and you really take the time to see every single window.

Well, the mouse king is taking a bath, in his copper pan, having a drink, holding with his tail and moving around, he's relaxing. You can see his stomach going up and down. And, before he decides to take his bath, he made sure he took his fake teeth, and put it off to the side.

People always asking me, what do you like the most about your job? I always say, when everything is done, when the windows are complete, and I finally have the chance to go upstairs and just kind of mingle with the crowd, and, and hear the comments, and then listen to the oohs, and aaahs. That's a great feeling, and that pays off all the long hours and the hard work.

KWANZAA

BURT WOLF: Kwanzaa runs from December 26th to January 1st. It’s not a religious holiday. It’s a holiday of reflection--an opportunity for African-Americans to celebrate their African roots. Kwanzaa is a Swahili word and it means “first fruits of the harvest”. It was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a leader of the Black Cultural Movement and chairman of the black studies department at California State University in Long Beach.

The festival revolves around the number seven. It lasts seven days and there are seven principles and seven symbols that must be observed. You can celebrate the holiday along the lines Dr. Karenga laid out in his book or you can create your own traditions. Every year Marie Booker and her daughter Kathleen invite their family and friends to celebrate Kwanzaa — an evening of drumming, eating and ceremony.

KATHLEEN BOOKER ON CAMERA: It's a bonding time for my mother and I, first and foremost, cause this is a tradition that she and I have started and even though we work very hard, it really is a time that it just shows our love for one another, and especially I hope it shows my love for my mother. And we're both very giving, nurturing people and community minded, and it's a way to share not only it's a way to share what we have with each other with others, and to invite the community at large to open up their hearts, their souls, their minds, and go out and touch someone else. I come, I touch you. You go, you touch someone else. It's a ripple effect.

MARIE BOOKER ON CAMERA: What we do to celebrate. We have friends over, and we have the drumming. I find the drumming is the thing that sort of gets you prepared for the following year. There's something very spiritual about drumming. And we have our Indian friend to come over, and do a ceremony. So for me, it's a renewal and a preparation for the coming year. But Kwanzaa, we started Kwanzaa I think because the children were all grown, out of the house, and you get sort of tired of the mundane shopping and spending money. And this was about community efforts and coming together, and all of the principles of Kwanzaa that go into when you're older, make you a better human being.

NEW YEAR’S

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: New Year’s is about beginnings. And every beginning has to start somewhere. I know that every time I go on a diet, I always have to wonder when I'm going to begin it. Am I going to begin it, the next Monday, after the weekend? Am I going to begin it in two weeks when I know I'm not going on some cruise or a lecture tour. When do we start? When do we open up the cycle? Our opening of the cycle stems from the Roman Empire, which used to be the first day of spring. Rather an appropriate time to start a beginning because in Ancient Rome, that's about the start of the planting season. And, so our original new year, in which the year was only 120 days long, by the way, only the four months during which we planted, was March the 21st, the equinox. It was a Roman emperor around the third century A.D. who actually back shifted the first day of the year from March the 21st back to January 1st. Now this is a Christian transformation, because we want to start our year when Christ brings new light into the world. And that happens right after the 12 days of Christmas. So January the 1st is indeed a late addition to the year. And the calendar that we developed is fairly unique because people all over the world have different starting dates.

BURT WOLF: These days, an effort is made to make the New Year’s celebration distinctly different from Christmas. Christmas is for families and particularly for children. New Year’s on the other hand is for adults. The parties are public and held late at night after the children are in bed.

CHINESE NEW YEAR

BURT WOLF: Almost every major celebration has its origin in something that is happening in nature either on earth or in the heavens. In China, the most important celebration of the year is the one that takes place on the first day of the first lunar month—it’s Chinese New Year, and it usually starts at about the same time as the western month of February.

One place where Chinese traditions in America are still very strong is the kitchen. Michael Tong was born in mainland China in 1944, went to high school in Hong Kong and then on to the United States where he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. Today he’s the owner of three of the most important Chinese restaurants in New York City, Shun Lee West, Shun Lee Café and Shun Lee Palace.

MICHAEL TONG ON CAMERA: The chef is making boiled dumpling has a filling of chive and meat and roll over a dough, make the shape like a treasury shape of the ancient Chinese dollar. Now the chef is making a different shape of dumpling. This is the we usually call a panfried dumpling so the boiled dumpling and the panfried dumpling come into different shape. But in Chinese New Year the meaning is the same is for prosperity. In Chinese New Year we serve whole duck, a whole chicken referred as Phoenix. Phoenix in Chinese means wealth and I mean prosperity and this is why we serve duck in the Chinese New Year as a celebration when we are celebrating Chinese New Year, so we got to have a duck. Chinese do have greens for New Year’s Eve dinner or New Year’s dinner. Greens means health. Greens means forever young so bok choy is one of our very light vegetables. Here we have the chef cook for you sauté the bok choy with ginger. Fish is one of the most important ingredients for Chinese New Year dinner. Fish means abundance, plentiful so for surplus business I mean saving, fish is the most important that we wish for the coming year. Here we have a steamed fish with ginger, scallion, and Chinese pickle.

VALENTINE’S DAY

BURT WOLF: February 14th is designated as St. Valentine’s Day and on that day Americans turn to thoughts of love—thoughts that are expressed by giving heart shaped boxes of chocolate, red roses, and greeting cards with messages of love.

Chocolate is especially important on St. Valentine’s Day because it contains a chemical that has been called “the love molecule”. The physical changes in a body’s chemistry that are associated with being in love are caused by the release of this chemical into the brain.

DIANE ACKERMAN ON CAMERA: Throughout the ages, people have believed in aphrodisiacs of all sorts. But of course, the truth is that whatever you think is going to be an aphrodisiac will be one. Most of the time, people have chosen foods that have certain kinds of chemicals and nutrition that were missing from their everyday life, and so, the healthier they felt, well the sexier they felt too. A key exception to this, of course, is chocolate. Chocolate is a serious mind-altering drug. It contains over 300 different chemical compounds, all sorts of nervous system stimulants, caffeine, phenyl ethylamine, which is a chemical that we feel when we fall in love and it's been used as a prelude to lovemaking and also something to soothe us if we've been jilted. Also a kind of bribe that a suitor arrives with. Throughout the ages, chocolate has been part of the love exchange.

PASSOVER

BURT WOLF: The holiday that was and still is observed by more American Jews than any other is Passover. The celebration commemorates the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. It’s an opportunity for families to pass on the story of the Exodus from Egypt and to embrace their freedom.

At the moment the Hebrews got word that it was time to begin their escape from Egypt they were in the process of baking bread but they didn’t have time to let the dough rise so they took their unleavened bread and raced into the desert.

The food that replaces the bread is matzos. The people who have the most traditional approach to the making of matzos are in the Hasidic community of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York. Beryl Epstein is a rabbi who takes visitors on a tour of the Shmurah bakery.

RABBI EPSTEIN ON CAMERA: Shmurah means "guarded." And it's guarded from the time the wheat is harvested from moisture. See, that which a Jewish person is forbidden to eat on Passover is flour and water mixed together with no other ingredients will become bread in after eighteen minutes.

The process of making matzos at the matzos bakery is that first flour is poured into the mixing bowl, then the well water is poured into the mixing bowl. And they are mixed as fast as possible. Once he's finished mixing it thoroughly, it is now taken to a table where it's handed out to women all around a table who are eagerly awaiting that matzos to roll it out as thin as they can similar to a pancake. It will come out to about twelve or fourteen inches round. It's then hung on a long rod about eight feet long. And then taken into the matzos oven, where it is laid flat and cooked on both sides at one time, at about thirty seconds, and then taken out of the oven.

They're very strict about every aspect of the matzos bakery. Every tablecloth, which is brown paper, the mixing bowl also is changed. So, it’s every eighteen minutes, it’s a new matzos bakery because anything from the previous eighteen-minute matzos would contaminate the next eighteen-minute matzos.

EASTER

Christians saw life breaking out of an egg as the perfect symbol for Christ breaking out of his tomb and eggs became a central element in the celebration of Easter. The decorating of Easter eggs is part of the culture of Northern and Eastern Europe and dates back for thousands of years.

The ultimate Easter Eggs are probably those that were created by Peter Carl Faberge, a master jeweler who lived in Russia during the second half of the 1800s. In 1965, Malcolm Forbes, who at the time was the owner and editor of Forbes Magazine, purchased one of the eggs and soon after became a serious collector of the works of Faberge. His collection is on display to the public in the Forbes Building in New York City. Malcolm’s son Kip took me on a tour.

The ultimate prize was this egg here, the so-called coronation Egg which was a gift from Nicholas to Alexandra on the Easter after their coronation. You open the egg, which is decorated with the traditional motifs of the Romanoff Eagle and the same gold sort of almost fabric that the coronation robes are made of. You open it up and inside is a perfectly detailed replica of the coronation coach, the coach that Alexandra rode to the cathedral for her coronation in. In fact the detail is so good on this that when the actual coach was restored with the help from Ford Motor Company by the Hermitage Museum, they used this as a points of reference because some of the detailing is on this was missing on the actual coach. So the little door knob actually works. You open the door, the little step folds out. I mean everything was absolutely perfect. This fits inside the egg and it was a perfect surprise for the Czarina, her first Easter as Czarina.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

BURT WOLF: Every year on the Fourth of July the United States of America celebrates Independence Day. Communities from coast to coast commemorate the day in 1776 when the Continental Congress proclaimed America’s freedom from British rule.

BURT WOLF: These days, Boston’s Fourth of July celebration is probably the top Independence Day extravaganza in the nation. And the man primarily responsible for it is David Mugar.

DAVID MUGAR ON CAMERA: The Fourth of July in Boston started by Arthur Fiedler in 1929. They were the first free outdoor symphony concerts in the history of the world, and they were of moderate popularity, and sort of declining in popularity, to where Fiedler was conducting only the July Fourth concert every year, and maybe three or four thousand people would show up. I said "Look, if you'll play the 1812 Overture at the next July Fourth concert when you're conducting, I'll try to find some howitzers, some live church bells and fireworks, but I don't know how to conduct music, so you're going to have to help me," and he said "Don't worry about it, just let all hell break loose at the end of the piece." And so that's what we did the first year, not knowing what would happen. Fifty thousand people showed up.

I funded the event personally for the first 27 years, and the number got to be an astronomical number, into the millions of dollars, because of all the logistics required to care for the public safety of the people, so I sought out corporate funding, which has become so popular in society now also in recent years, and we approached Fidelity Investments, and God love them, they stepped right up to the plate.

The event's free. I've never allowed a V.I.P. section down front. The poorest little family from anywhere in this country can travel to Boston, and if they're first in line, in the front row down front.

BURT WOLF: For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Ramadan - #112

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

RAMADAN

BURT WOLF: Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar and it is during this month that Muslims observe the fast of Ramadan. They fast during the day and at night; they eat small meals and visit with friends and family. It is a month of worship and contemplation. A time to strengthen family and community ties.

The first Muslim to arrive in the Americas that we know about was a Spanish explorer who showed up in 1527. He was part of a commission sent by the King of Spain with instructions to colonize Florida. He traveled throughout the southern part of the United States and was probably the first European to see the territory that is now the state of New Mexico.

Today Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. There are over twelve hundred mosques in the U.S. and more than half of them were built in the last twenty years. Over five million Americans worship in these mosques.

FAWAZ GERGES ON CAMERA: Islam and Muslims believe in the people of the book in Judaism, as the first, you might say, word of God, and then, Christianity as a follow-up. But to them, Islam is the, although it's really, you might say, an extension, that it's the most correct, the final word of all prophecies.

According to Muslims, Islam is the religion accepted by Allah, God. And it has five pillars. First, to witness that Allah is one, that is, Islam is a unitary religion, and Muhammad is messenger. To pray five times a day. To fast in Ramadan. To give and to go on el hajj, the pilgrimage. These are the five pillars of Islam.

THE MOSQUE

BURT WOLF: During Ramadan, the entire Koran is read, one-thirtieth each night. Mosques are designed to produce an environment that is conducive to reading, prayer, introspection and learning. Very often, you will find people sitting in quiet spots and just reading.

JOSEPH LUMBARD ON CAMERA: There are a lot of challenges right now but America is a crucible for Islam. That is to say all Muslims come from around the world and they bring their cultural traditions but here they all come together and they start to realize that their cultural traditions are not Islam. And so they come, when they see an Arab, when an Indonesian sees an Arab or a Chinese sees an Arab or vice versa they start to realize that many of the things that at home they had associated with Islam are actually not part of the faith and so in a sense we burn all of those cultural creations away in the process of getting down to the roots of the religion and also creating a new mode of living Islam which is culturally relevant for people who are born in this country.

SHAMSI ALI ON CAMERA: Islam is a universal religion. Though Islam appreciates the cultural disparities. Whenever Islam comes to certain places Islam tends not to demolish the culture, but Islam is universal teachings. But Islam at the same time wants the Muslims to understand the realities where they live in. So that's why when the Muslims, for instance, coming from different parts of the world and they are here in the United States, it is very important that the Muslims understand the realities where they live in. For instance, the Asian people, they have their own dress. The Arab people, they have their own, and even Islamically speaking, it is not really desired when you dress strangely and you consider it to be Islamically. You know, coming to the, to New York City, for instance, you dress Arabic dresses and then you say that these are Islamic dresses. That's really undesirable in Islam, because Islam doesn't want you to be distinctive and make the people strange. We are not living in the camel era anymore. We are in the global world. We are in the modern world, and I think we need to modernize our minds as Muslims in understanding our religion.

BURT WOLF: At the Islamic Center in Washington D.C., over sixty-five different nationalities come to pray. Dr. Abdullah Khouj is the executive director of the center and its mosque was dedicated in 1957.

DR. ABDULLAH KHOUJ ON CAMERA: It took ten years to complete all this architecture you see, now, you see this around you, are the Turkish tiles, which were handmade in Turkey, and the gentleman who made them, came himself here and installed them. And then we have this chandelier over here; it weighs a ton and half. It came from Egypt, and it's actually from the Fatima design. It's made out of copper.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Was she the daughter of Muhammad?

DR. ABDULLAH KHOUJ ON CAMERA: Fatima is the daughter of Muhammad. And all these calligraphy you see, they are Arabic calligraphy, and they are verses from the Koran. Starting from here, it goes this side, “God is the light of heaven and earth, the example of His light is like a candle in a chandelier, to light over the world”.

A mosque should be plain and that is to concentrate on prayers and your relationship with God. This is why it's prohibited, totally, to have any kind of pictures or animals or human beings, statues, at all, in the mosque. Even this one, too much decoration should be plain. This is the Mihrab. It is a destination to Mecca. And the verse here it says, we see your face turning to the sky and we’ll forward you to the destination that you accept.

THE FAST OF RAMADAN

BURT WOLF: The fast of Ramadan is a time of worship and contemplation when Muslims say “no” to the desires of the flesh and “yes” to the word of God. It is a time to learn about self control, not unlike the opportunities offered during the Christian period of lent or the Jewish holiday of Passover.

SHAMSI ALI ON CAMERA: According to Islam, human desires are natural, and they are not supposed to be killed, but they are supposed to be controlled, so we are the masters of our own desires. We are supposed to have control over them. So we use our desire in a way that God pleases with. We have desire to eat, to drink and to have relationship with our opposite sex, with our wives or husbands. But Islam teaches that you have to have control over these desires, so that's why for one full month, Muslims are training themselves not to eat, not to drink, not to have that relationship during the day time, in order to train themselves. And also fasting teaches the Muslim to be more kind to others, because by abstaining from food you can feel what the unfortunate people feel, so that's why Prophet Muhammad even called this month as the month of charity.

BURT WOLF: The daily fast is usually broken by eating three dates and taking a sip of water, which is how Muhammad broke his fast during the time he retreated to meditate.

The date may be the world's oldest cultivated fruit. There are seven-thousand-year-old sculptures that clearly show the date palm. The date's been a basic part of Middle Eastern agriculture for centuries. The Arabs brought the date to Spain and the Spanish missionaries brought them to California. As a matter of fact, the first date planted in California, was planted in a town called Mecca. Dates are often called nature's candy because of their sweet taste and caramel flavor.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: During Ramadan breakfast must be eaten before the day begins. The ancient test for that is your ability to distinguish between a white thread and a black thread using only natural light. If you can tell the difference the day has begun and so has your fast.

BURT WOLF: Dedicated Muslims come to prayer five times each day.

SHAMSI ALI: Why Muslim pray five times a day? Why is not only three times, or two times or let's say once in a week? We start our day by praying to God, by having connection with God. Noon prayer is considered to be the busiest kettle of any human beings. But still you have to find some time to pray to God. Afternoon prayer. You need to end your daily activities with a prayer, by having connection with God. And sunset prayer, it is considered to be the end of your day, so you need to have a spiritual connection with God, so you pray to him. And the last one is before bedtime prayer, it is also, as we started our day with a prayer, we end our daily life with a prayer before we go to the bed. There is no space in our life except that we have connection with God, and this what Islam wants us to be.

SHAMSI ALI ON CAMERA: In other words, I would like to say that Islam wants us to have our feet in the earth, but have our head in the heaven.

THE ANCIENT ART OF HENNA

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The 27th day of Ramadan has a special evening known as “The Night of the Decree”. It marks the night when Muhammad received the first revelation of the Koran. Tradition says that on that night any prayer or good deed will be rewarded many times over. It’s also used to mark the passage of young girls into adulthood.

BURT WOLF: The passage is also often marked with henna.

STEPHANIE RUDLOE ON CAMERA: Henna is a natural dye, and it comes from the henna plant, which grows in very hot dry climates. It is believed to originate in India, in Persia and Egypt. It has been used for centuries as a dye for the skin, hair and also for cloth.

STEPHANIE RUDLOE: People paint themselves with henna for adornment and for celebration, and in particular in Morocco it is done because they believe that henna contains this quality called botika, which is having magical healing properties and positive energy. And this presence of botika is believed to infuse the henna plant and the women in Morocco who are nagotha henna artists, they also bring that energy of the botika, that positive energy and the blessing on to the person that they're painting. So one of the reasons why they will do henna or is around celebrations or life passages that they believe someone could be susceptible or vulnerable to the evil eye.

When I paint someone with henna, I begin by cleansing their skin with orange blossom water, which is a traditional thing that is done in Morocco to greet and bless your guests. And then after that I always look at someone's hand to just kind of get a feeling as to where the henna would be the most beautiful. I approach the henna as jewelry. Traditionally in Morocco, henna is always done up to the wrist bone, covering the entire surface of the whole hand. When I paint people here, I work in a much more minimalistic motif, maybe doing something in the center of the palm or the top of the hand or rings on the finger, or some kind of a diagonal.

And what is interesting about this is in fact, for the Ramadan henna designs, this is very similar to how they paint the young girls in Morocco. They don't usually do a whole thing on their entire hand, like a bride. They may simulate the bridal ceremony, but usually it will just be something that is like a diagonal starting from the wrist bone across the fingers, and then maybe a diagonal on the palm or a central design on the palm of the hand, to ward off the evil eye.

STEPHANIE RUDLOE ON CAMERA: There are several very common motifs that you see in Moroccan henna patterns. Most of the marks are repeat geometrical patterns that are all based on pretty much about protection from the evil eye. A very typical Moroccan design is to see a diamond motif with a literal eye in the center of it. Another very typical Moroccan design is to see the diamond motif with a floral design in the center of it. And the floral designs are a traditional design for bringing fertility and abundance to the wearer. And these are all designs that are meant to deflect the evil eye and to protect your love and to protect the wearer from covetedness or jealousy or any kinds of negative energy.

FOODS OF RAMADAN

BURT WOLF: What you eat each night to break the fast of Ramadan depends on where you come from. Muslims from the Middle East serve spicy pastries filled with vegetables or meat or a loaf of flat bread sprinkled with black cumin seeds. North African Muslims tend to eat a protein-enriched soup in order to energize their bodies after the long fast.

Hamid Idrissi was born in Morocco. Today he is the co-owner and chef of Tagine, a Moroccan restaurant in New York City. As a middle child, he was assigned the task of helping the family cook. He spent hours watching and learning the delicate and complex techniques of the Moroccan kitchen. Quite often his family would host meals for more than a hundred relatives, friends and neighbors.

HAMID IDRISSI ON CAMERA: My father was sort of Imam, so he has lot of people come to, kind of he was the leader of the town and my mother always constantly cooking and a lot of people come and help her cook and also in the kitchen. And I found a lot of fun to see how much like activities in the kitchen and how many things they are doing. And when I came to United States, it's too hard for me to adjust to American taste. So I would just get the ingredients and make Moroccan cuisine for myself.

BURT WOLF: The dish that is most commonly served at Ramadan in Moroccan homes is harrira. Hamid serves his version at Tagine. It’s a soup made from chickpeas, caramelized onions, lentils, and an assortment of vegetables, tomatoes and spices.

HAMID IDRISSI ON CAMERA: There's a lot of different ways to make harrira. Harrira is every family does it its own special way. But there is one common way of they all do it the same, is the way when they boil tomato into broth before they mush it up with flour and they mix it with flour, to kind of add the mixture of tomatoes and flour to the broth back and stir it before they serve it.

BURT WOLF: Along with the soup, Moroccans break the fast with dried fruits, coffee, tea, salads of roasted peppers, spinach, spicy carrots and eggplant, Morocco’s national dish, couscous, and a variety of sweets including a specialty of Hamid’s.

HAMID IDRISSI: Shebekia is made from semolina flour, sesame seeds, and it's rolled and cut into special shape to look like a little nest.

BURT WOLF: The meal also includes tagine. The word tagine refers to both a dish and a pot for making it, like the word casserole. The dish is a savory stew native to North Africa. For Ramadan, Hamid makes a lamb tagine with prunes.

HAMID IDRISSI: The way I make the lamb tagine, I get the best part of lamb, baby lamb. And you put onion in the bottom and you place it like a pyramid way, leaving if you can little air in between. Then you top it with some prunes and you mix all the spices in little water. You pour it in about cup of water. And you start on low heat. And you keep raising it to less than the medium.

BURT WOLF: At the pre-dawn meal, Moroccans typically eat soup and a crepe that’s served with butter and honey.

HAMID IDRISSI: In the morning, before the fast began, we eat melwi. Melwi is a semolina bread, which is pan-fried and it's kneaded for a long time, so it will be served with honey, with butter. And some people like to have like protein. They eat some leftover from tagines, or so whatever you can eat. But usually they don't eat fruits, like raw fruit at that time. They eat something they can go back to sleep. So most likely is melwi. It will fill up your stomach and give you energy for long time.

BURT WOLF: At Hamid’s restaurant, you can get a taste of true Moroccan food and experience Moroccan culture.

ISLAM AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS

BURT WOLF: One of the fastest growing segments of the Islamic community in the United States is made up of African-Americans. Yusuf Saleem is the Imam at mosque Muhammad in Washington D.C. He believes that African-Americans are attracted to Islam because within Islamic tradition the black community is fully accepted.

YUSUF SALEEM ON CAMERA: I think what happens is, I'm not going to say racism is prevalent, but that we cannot doubt the subtlety and existence of racism. And I think in coming into Islam, your identity is equal. Equal. In other words, the Koran says that God has honored all the children of Adam. So that means you're on equal par with everybody. And the exterior has no meaning, importance, except to identify. So you look a certain way because if you looked just like me, I wouldn't know you. So you look a certain way, so I am aware of you. And I say I look a certain way. But this is just a shell. Just a vessel to carry the real spirit and nature of me. I think that's a tune that is attractive to many African Americans. We feel a certain sense of equality and we feel a certain amount of being legitimatised. That we're a human being of self worth. And we can achieve just like any other ethnic group.

BURT WOLF: Every evening at sunset during Ramadan mosques throughout the world serve meals to the hungry. They are following a commandment from god to give to the needy.

WOMAN SERVING FOOD ON CAMERA: I comes early so I can make them a good meal, you know, cause when you comes off a fast. That’s my blessing. I get blessings for coming feeding all the hungry people that have fasted so that’s why I push myself and I’m here everyday, see that they get a good meal. We’re having turkey, string beans, potato fluff, fish and tossed salad and cabbage. And my sisters they all come in and we help. And we fasting too. But we have to cook the food without tasting so we just pray and hope that the food tastes good because we can’t taste it.

ENDING THE FAST

BURT WOLF: The Night of the Decree celebrates the moment when Muhammad received the first revelation of the Koran. Joyous festivities begin that night and build for three days until the last night of the month. The next day, which is the first day of the new month, is known as Eid. It is a time to wear new clothes, eat big meals with lots of sweets, and pass the day with your family and friends. It’s also a day when you’re asked to donate a portion of your wealth to the needy.

SHAMSI ALI ON CAMERA: Our nature is to know our God, to be more close to God, to be a more righteous person. This is natural, this is the human nature, you know, to be kind to God, to be kind to other people, to be kind to our fellow human beings. So, the Eid Al Fitr actually is the day of victory for the Muslims, because they consider this to be a victorious day over their human desires.

BURT WOLF: Because the Koran has not changed since the time of the prophet, much of Ramadan’s celebration has remained the same. But it is almost impossible to come to the United States and not be influenced by America’s popular culture. The giant fairs that are held to celebrate the end of Ramadan often illustrate that point.

FAWAZ GERGES: Like other people all over the world, I think Muslims immigrate to America to improve, to seek a better life for themselves and their children. America in the eyes of many Muslims and many people in the world including myself, provides an economic opportunity, you might say, an access to climb the social ladder. But also, I would argue that unlike other people in the world, Muslims come to America to seek freedom.

FAWAZ GERGES ON CAMERA: There is considerable political oppression in most Muslim countries and contrary to the conventional wisdom, the majority of Muslims are attracted to and fascinated with the American idea. The American dream. The notion of freedom. Of an open society.

BURT WOLF: Ramadan begins with the sighting of the new moon. In the United States, most Muslim communities follow the dictates of the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Indiana. Four officials confirm the sighting and its scientific base and they must do this within four hours after sunset on the East Coast. One result of this approach is that you are not sure when Ramadan will begin or end until one or two days before the event. If nothing else, the process reminds you that life is controlled by nature, and flexibility and faith are essential. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Independence Day - #111

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Virtually every community in the country has some kind of celebration, but there is no city in the United States that has a closer association with the birth of our nation’s freedom than Boston, Massachusetts. It was the colonists of Boston and the surrounding towns who began America’s War of Independence. Independence Day in Boston starts with the raising our nation’s flag and saluting our troops—both past and present.

The British even sent a contingent from her Majesty’s ship The Scott to join the march and show there are no hard feelings.

The troops march down to the Old Granary Burial Grounds and place wreaths on the gravesites of three men who signed the Declaration of Independence —

John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Robert Paine. Then the company proceeds to the Old State House where the Commanding Captain reads the Declaration of Independence to the citizens assembled below.

CAPTAIN GEORGE M. MORRISON ON CAMERA: We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

BURT WOLF: After the colonists won the Revolutionary War and felt somewhat secure that there actually might be a United States of America, they made the Fourth of July an official holiday. But amazing as it may seem, Congress did not declare it a federal holiday until 1941.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It’s not that the Federal Government was so busy they didn’t have time to declare the Fourth of July a federal holiday. It’s the fact that when they declare any day a federal holiday, millions of people who work for the government get the full day off at full pay. The Federal Government wanted to wave the flag—they just didn’t want to pay for it.

LEN TRAVERS ON CAMERA: The earliest celebrations were almost like pick up games. In Boston for instance there was a mock battle that was held on Boston Common. There were fireworks that evening that were put on by the local militia company. So there was a kind of parade. There was some impromptu feasting. And these elements of course, have remained with us right to the present day.

I WANT YOU

BURT WOLF (AS UNCLE SAM) ON CAMERA: Every year on Independence Day somebody feels the need to get dressed up as Uncle Sam. It all goes back to the 1700s when a guy by the name of Samuel Wilson started supplying meat to our newly formed U.S. Army. He used to stamp his crates “U.S.” and somebody who worked for him or worked for the Federal Government decided that “U.S.” stood for “Uncle Sam”. And since then it has become a symbol of our federal government.

LEN TRAVERS ON CAMERA: The origins of Uncle Sam probably go back to the image of a character known as Brother Jonathan. You find him personalized as early as the American Revolution, but certainly by the War of 1812. Brother Jonathan is the concoction of mostly British cartoonists who are looking for a way to symbolize America. And as time went on, and the United States began to mature, you notice that Brother Jonathan starts to mature as well, at least in his age. He's still held up as this rather kind of ruffian looking fellow. It's not until the 1830s, 1840s I think that the image of Uncle Sam turns that image into a somewhat more favorable for Americans.

BURT WOLF: The image of Uncle Sam that we are familiar with was created by a political cartoonist who lived in New York City during the mid-1800s. His name was Thomas Nast and not only did he give us our red, white and blue-suited icon of America, he was also responsible for our bearded Santa Claus, Santa’s home in the North Pole, the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party and the donkey as the symbol of the Democrats. He gained most of his fame during the years that he worked for Harper’s Weekly Magazine and he’s often thought of as America’s first great cartoonist.

LEN TRAVERS: The political image of Uncle Sam has changed pretty often with the times. In wartime for instance American recruitment posters and political cartoons will often depict him as a viral 50 year old rolling up his sleeves preparing for battle. Venerable but still very tough. However if people want to take sport with the American Nation United States Government in an embarrassing situation, it's very easy to make a rather goofy looking Uncle Sam as well. He has been made a rather corpulent fellow in the 1890s and the early 1900s to signify for instance what was happening to America at the time becoming wealthier and more complacent.

BURT WOLF: The most recognizable image of Uncle Sam however is in the character of America’s parental authority on a World War I recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg with the caption “I WANT YOU FOR THE U.S. ARMY!”

NIGHT AND DAY

BURT WOLF: Traditionally our Fourth of July celebration is divided into two parts. Part one takes place during the day. It’s made up of rather orderly activities—parades, picnics, patriotic speeches and trooping of the colors. The second half takes place at night and is usually marked by fireworks, bonfires, loud music and the over consumption of fermented and distilled beverages.

The daytime festivities usually start with a parade that shows off whatever people want to show off. After all what’s the point of being free and independent if you can’t show off your stuff. This parade is taking place in Gloucester, Massachusetts and what they want to show off is their Horribles. In Gloucester, a Horrible is a costume or skit made by anyone for the purpose of having fun.

Actually, the original idea behind a parade was to show off your military stuff. The word ‘parade” comes from an old Spanish word that means “the stopping point” and it describes the time when a foreign army occupied a town. The soldiers would march through the streets with their weapons on display in order to show their strength to the locals. The military aspects of our Fourth of July parades remind Americans that it was the Revolutionary War that won our nation’s independence.

LEN TRAVERS: Probably the most recognizable symbol of Independence Day is the American Flag. The red represented the blood shed in the Revolution to bring this new nation into being. The red from the white indicated separation from the mother country. The blue field was the color of the celestial of the heavens. And each of the stars of course was to represent one of the States of the Union. The original plan was to keep the flag that way with its thirteen stars, no matter how big the Union got. But by the time of the War of 1812, they realized that the idea of adding Stars to the flag helped to confirm the idea of an ever-expandable Federal Republic.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

BURT WOLF: Another daytime element in our Fourth of July celebration involves playing or watching a baseball game—which usually starts with the playing of our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

During World War I, President Wilson declared “The Star Spangled Banner” our unofficial national anthem. It was a time of intense public patriotism and the song was played on many public occasions. Harry Frazee, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, brought in a band and started playing the song at the start of each game, and during the 1930s it became our official national anthem. Every baseball club in the country started playing our song.

It’s not quite the same as singing the national anthem but eating a hot dog at a baseball game represents a certain level of patriotic behavior, and in fact it was at a baseball game that the simple frankfurter became the hot dog.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: In 1901, The San Francisco Giants were the New York Giants and they played in Manhattan. It was a particularly cold April and the ice cream vendors were not doing particularly well with their ice cream, so they began to sell a hot German sausage. The shape of the sausage reminded people of the dachshund dog and so they were called “dachshund sausages”. One day a cartoonist for a New York newspaper saw them, liked them, and drew a cartoon which showed a dachshund dog in a roll in his newspaper. He wasn’t quite sure how to spell “dachshund” and so he labeled it “hot dog”. And that is how the hot dog got its name. Eventually, the hot dog escaped from the ballpark and became a basic part of the American barbeque, especially on the Fourth of July. Who wants a hotdog?

BURT WOLF: For many people, however, a hot dog without mustard is considered “nude”. And even on the Fourth of July with all its emphasis on freedom, public nudity is unacceptable. People have been making mustard for over 5,000 years and its history in North America goes back at least to the early 1700s, when Spanish priests began settling along the coast of California. As they traveled north they would indicate their path by planting mustard seeds—the bright yellow flowers that came up marked the trail for other missionaries that followed.

The mustard seed itself is tasteless and odorless, but when its mixed with a liquid the intense flavors that we associate with mustard are released. And when mustard is slathered onto a hot dog your taste buds end up playing the Star Spangled Banner for your mouth.

Like most of our gatherings and celebrations, barbeques illustrate our desire to bring together the opposites in our lives. We like the idea of leaving the structured environment of our homes and cooking outdoors. The barbeque allows us to feel free and adventurous while at the same time maintaining a nice, safe structure in which we feel secure.

IT’S NO PICNIC

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Barbeques are traditional for the Fourth of July but because the Fourth of July celebration is all about independence and freedom so are picnics. Because picnics are about independence and freedom from the traditional dining room.

BURT WOLF: But it’s not total freedom. Though you may not see it during the picnic a great deal of work and organization goes in to its preparation. Ed Gannon is the Executive Chef at The Four Seasons Hotel in Boston and for years he has been preparing picnics for his guests.

The main course for today’s picnic is Cobb salad made with New England lobster, roasted corn and herb dressing. He starts with a reduction of shallots, tarragon, champagne vinegar and white wine which he blends with a little buttermilk. Mayonnaise and sour cream are whisked in. Fresh chervil and tarragon are chopped and added. A little pepper and salt. And that’s the dressing.

ED GANNON ON CAMERA: Right on. It’s good. It’s important in the Cobb Salad is that everything is chopped somewhat small so it can all be mixed together and that’s going to enable you to get what we call “The Perfect Bite.”

BURT WOLF: The salad consists of lettuce, chopped egg yolks, chopped egg whites, sliced onion, corn, chopped tomato, pieces of lobster, bacon bits, chopped avocado, scallions and sprigs of dill. Finally, the whole lobster claws.

Along with the salad, Ed made marinated asparagus with roasted shallots and truffle oil and marinated olives.

Directly in front of The Four Seasons Hotel is Boston’s public garden. It opened in 1837 and was the first public garden in our country—24 acres of green in the middle of downtown - a perfect spot for a picnic.

We think we are escaping to a more natural state, but in fact we are very careful when we select a site for a picnic. We like the sense of being in the wild but we want control of what’s going on. Nobody goes into a jungle for a picnic. We do not enjoy a meal if there are real dangers nearby.

What we’re really doing is exchanging the discomfort of a more structured indoor dining area for the discomfort of spiky grass, pointed stones, flying insects and unpredictable weather.

And even if we get out into a natural setting, the first thing we do is mark off our territory with a cloth and add insult to injury by holding down the edges with boundary stones. We draw an imaginary line in the grass and announce, “nature stops here”. Sometimes we keep nature at an even greater distance by setting up a table and chairs. We like being close to the earth, but not too close.

THE COOL TASTE OF FREEDOM

BURT WOLF: Ice Cream is also an essential part of Independence Day and we have been making it in America since the early 1700’s. Our first ice cream parlor opened in 1776, which just happens to be the year the colonies declared independence.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Mere coincidence - I don’t think so. Whenever I eat ice cream I have a great sense of freedom, independence, power. I think our early Colonial ice cream parlors were a hot bed of political descent. But most important they were safe. The British troops never never thought to look in ice cream parlors for revolutionaries.

BURT WOLF: And the place to celebrate the coolness of independence in Boston is Emack & Bolio’s.

BOB ROOK ON CAMERA: Well back in 1975 I was a music attorney representing a bunch of rock groups. And Boston closed down really early, closed down at twelve o’clock. And after a gig we had no place to go to mellow out. So I opened a little ice cream shop where we made our own ice cream. And we’d come down after the gigs and we’d hang out and make ice cream, eat ice cream, play a little guitar and have a good time. After a couple months of laying out money for rent and electric and all of that. It dawned on me – as brilliant as I am – that maybe I should sell this ice cream.

We try to make new flavors all the time and come up with really outrageous combinations. And most of the time it’s ok. Sometimes you hit big, and sometimes you fail miserably. And I’ve failed miserably on a few occasions.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: A great story: weird, exciting and different. That was my dating pattern for years. And I would fail miserably.

BOB ROOK ON CAMERA: So the first thing I want you to try is this Twisted DEE-light. Cause it’s really great. It’s chocolate ice cream, fudge chunks, and chocolate chips. Devised by my friend Dee Snider from Twisted Sister – check it out.

BOB ROOK ON CAMERA: Here’s Deep Purple. Named after my buddy Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple.

BURT WOLF: Now how come it comes in a cup?

BOB ROOK ON CAMERA: Well, that’s cause we’re trying to get the name Emack & Bolio’s on TV.

BURT WOLF: Oh okay.

BOB ROOK: So that’s an all-fruit sorbet.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The man was a record promoter; of course he’d want the label out front.

BOB ROOK: Rock and Roll Baby. Everybody got ice cream?

THE SOUND OF FREEDOM

BURT WOLF: These days, Boston’s Fourth of July celebration is probably the top Independence Day extravaganza in the nation. And the man primarily responsible for it is David Mugar.

BURT WOLF: When citizens of the newly formed United States of America celebrated the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, fireworks were used to mark the event and ever since fireworks have been part of the Fourth of July.

Fireworks rely on gunpowder. Gunpowder was invented in Asia about a thousand years ago and in the beginning it was used only for fireworks. The sound of the exploding powder was so loud that people were convinced it would drive off evil spirits. Fireworks became part of any event that needed a celebration—births, weddings, coronations, the beginning of a New Year, my cousin Dudley picking up a check —all fitting occasions for fireworks. We even had fireworks at George Washington’s inauguration.

Boston’s fireworks are launched from three barges anchored in the Charles River. The barges are twice the length of a football field. Eric Tucker is the brains behind the pyrotechnics.

ERIC TUCKER ON CAMERA: This shell is a brocade waterfall. It'll generally be everybody's favorite shell. It comes out and it breaks and it pours like a pitcher in gold and just sort of falls like a cascade. It’s absolutely gorgeous. In a standard shell you have a lift charge, which is a black-powder lift charge, and you've got an electronic igniter, which is a very small pyrotechnic charge on the end of a nichrome wire. We apply power to it, in our case 24 volts, and it'll go "snap" and make some heat. That heat sets off the black powder, which does two things: it pushes it out of the mortar, throws it up in the air, and the heat from that is then transferred through it to a pyrotechnic timer, which is a small tube filled with pressed black powder and a few other things, which burns at a very precise level. As the shells flying through the air, this burns up and hits another break charge, which then cracks the shell open and the heat from that break charge then ignites stars, which are round pellets or comets are pressed, which are inside this. Those fly out from there on fire and that's the effect you see.

Once the music is set, that's what drives 100 percent of the choreography. Nothing on this barge happens without a musical reason. If you watch it without the music, it would certainly be an interesting show. It's certainly big enough. But with the music it has soul.

BURT WOLF: In 1776, Thomas Paine, writing about the crisis in America at the time of the Declaration of Independence said that “these are the times that try men’s souls and the price of freedom is high.” And that’s as true today as it was over 200 years ago.

The price of freedom is still high but worth paying.

Happy Birthday America. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Easter - #110

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

BURT WOLF: Easter is thought of primarily as a religious occasion but originally it was a festival that celebrated events that were taking place in nature. It marked the arrival of the light and warmth of spring after the cold darkness of winter.

EASTER

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Easter, like most festivals is a rite of passage. It marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. And all spring festivals have a similar message—death is merely a passage into new life. And because food is so important to life, all spring festivals that deal with rebirth or the return of the growing season use food as a powerful symbol.

BURT WOLF: The Easter festival runs for four days. Thursday marks the evening of the Last Supper. Good Friday is the day of the Crucifixion. Holy Saturday was the day Christ lay in his tomb and Easter Sunday recalls his resurrection. On Thursday, there is a Mass, a procession to remove the bread and wine of the Eucharist to a separate place, stripping of the altar and private prayer either until midnight or through the night into the dawn.

In many Christian churches there is a pre-Mass Seder feast, often held with Jewish groups in remembrance of the fact that Christ’s Last Supper was actually a Seder.

Traditionally, the Easter Vigil which can begin at any time after sundown on Saturday was considered the high point of the four days of Easter, but in the United States many churches now consider Easter Sunday as the most significant element in the celebration.

In many churches, the primary visual element of the Easter Vigil is the Paschal candle. It’s a symbol of Christ himself, rising from the dead and shining the True Light. Customarily, the candle is made of beeswax, which is a symbol of purity. And over the centuries, the bee itself has become a symbol of the Resurrection. The light given off by the Paschal candle is a reference to Jesus calling himself “the light of the world” and saying, “he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Light symbolizes the resurrection of Christ and the hope that God brought to the world through that resurrection. It also celebrates the idea that new beginnings can come from old endings.

BURT WOLF: The church is suddenly ablaze with light, and the bells begin to ring. In some places the bells ring from every church in the city. The altar is draped with white, which is the color of Easter. Flowers have been brought in and the priest appears in his finest white vestments. The Mass will include the baptism of adult converts, who have been receiving instructions during Lent. Christian baptism involves the idea of drowning in the waters, and rising out of them again into a new life: each baptism is a mini Easter.

REV. CHARLES NOTABARTOLO ON CAMERA: In the Scriptures, Jesus said that fasting adds power to our prayer. And the fasting that we're talking about, it could be a variety of things. It could be people refraining from food all day or missing just one meal as a way of worshipping God. It could be candy, alcohol, their favorite food. They could be fasting from watching TV or something like that. The reason for it is to bring discipline to our lives. We really do need to discipline ourselves and, at least in Lent, at least that one time of year where we really try to get back to disciplining ourselves to remove sin from our life and to get closer to God.

We all come here as sinners and we are all in need of renewal and this is our opportunity for renewal.

REV. CHARLES NOTABARTOLO: Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel. Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.

BURT WOLF: Lent runs for forty days, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. The forty days is a reference to the forty days that Christ, Elijah, and Moses fasted in the desert. The foods of Lent should be lean and practicing Christians often give up meat, sweets, alcohol, butter, milk, coffee or tea. One of my friends gives up lunch and donates her lunch money to charity.

THE FOODS OF EASTER

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: One of the ways to understand the message of this celebration is to take a look at the simple acts of eating and drinking. We must eat and drink in order to stay alive. The food exists outside us. We must find it and bring it inside. It’s a very simple way of learning that there are things outside ourselves that we must discover and bring inside in order to survive. And that is one of the central messages of the Eucharist, the communion. God becomes food. We eat the food and become one with God. Because bread and wine are used in the communion, they are the most important foods at the meal. But there are other foods on the Easter table that also have the sense of the holiday.

BURT WOLF: One of the best places to take a look at the foods of Easter is Italy. This is the kitchen of the Villa di Capezzana, a wine and olive estate just outside of Florence. It’s the home of Count Ugo Contini Bonacossi and his family. Countess Lisa and her chef are preparing their traditional Easter dinner.

The Easter lamb is a very important element in the meal. It recalls the Passover lamb, which was originally the animal sacrificed in the Temple of Jerusalem. The lamb is also a reference to Christ, who was the “Lamb of God” and Himself became the sacrifice, in order to take away the sins of the world. Lamb will often come to the Easter table in the form of a roast. It is the main course of the meal and it can be very elaborate -- or very simple -- in its presentation.

In the Bonacossi kitchen, a leg of lamb, which has been cut into chunks, is dredged in flour. It goes into a roasting pan with a little oil, slices of leek and garlic, and sprigs of fresh rosemary. A little seasoning. The lamb gets browned on all sides. And a cup of white wine is added. Then into a 450-degree oven for an hour. Along with the lamb comes a dish that is made by sautéing some pancetta, which is a form of Italian bacon, with fresh garlic and peas. After about five minutes of cooking, a cup of chicken broth is added. The cover goes on for ten more minutes of cooking. The peas are a local sign that spring has arrived.

The main course of the meal is served to Count Ugo and his family from a single dish, as opposed to having individual plates brought to each place. It symbolizes the unity of the family, from which each individual person is derived and—especially during Easter—the unity of each person with God.

The dessert at Villa Capezzana is La Colomba, a sweetened bread presented in the shape of a dove. For tens of thousands of years the dove has been a symbol of the return of spring and for almost two thousand years, a sign of the Holy Spirit of Christianity. In Italy, La Colomba has became an almost essential part of the foods of Easter.

Pan de Ramerino is also part of the Easter table. It’s Italy’s Hot Cross Bun. Originally a Florentine specialty, it was made on Holy Thursday and eaten on Good Friday. It’s baked with raisins and rosemary, and has a shiny top, which is sometimes marked with a cross. Rosemary is a sign of spring and sacred to the Virgin Mary. Rosemary is also a symbol of remembrance. The bun says, “Remember the meaning of Easter”.

A favorite Easter cake in Mediterranean countries is in the shape of a lamb with intricate curly “wool”, and bearing a flag. The cake represents Christ with the flag of victory over death—the Old Testament’s Suffering Servant, the Messiah who went “as a sheep to the slaughter and dumb as a lamb before his sheerer”.

One of the gastronomic responsibilities of a festival is to produce a series of foods that are associated with that specific celebration and underline the symbols of that particular festival. Ideally, they should be unlike anything you are going to eat or even see during the rest of the year. At Easter time there are a series of breads enclosing whole colored eggs. The breads may be shaped into a basket with eggs inside, or a heart with eggs underneath, or a cross.

Festival foods help us remember the festivals of previous years and make us feel that we belong, body as well as soul, to our culture.

THE RABBIT IN THE MOON

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: What's interesting about that Easter bunny is he's ubiquitous. He is Hindu. He is Maya. He is Korean and he is also very American, that bunny. Where does that bunny come from? Well, the there's an interesting Hindu tale about the rabbit and how he got to be in the moon. It is said that the rabbit was traveling together with a duck, a monkey and a fox. And they were all hermits, going along the highway, when a god, a Hindu god materialized from heaven, to test their faith. And he asked them, pretending to be a beggar; won't you make a sacrifice to me? The fox immediately went off and brought back a pail of milk. The monkey went up the tree and grabbed some mangoes. The duck, being an inhabitant of a lake, brought the gift of a fish. And when the rabbit was confronted by the deity, he said, “All I eat is grass. I don't know what I can give you, but my flesh.” He offers his flesh. The Hindu deity says, "Well, I'm going to put this fire with a cauldron on it. And you can jump off your rock into that fire and I'll eat your flesh." And sure enough, the rabbit went to the top of the rock and jumped. And at that moment, the Hindu deity had such admiration and compassion for him that he cradled, caught the rabbit, cradled him in his arms and threw him up to the moon, where his countenance still exists, as a sign that we should all maybe behave more like the rabbit, and give something that comes from the heart. And if you look at the moon, you will see that rabbit.

BURT WOLF: Rabbits reproduce at extraordinary rates and accordingly have often been one of the fertility symbols of spring. They express the ability of life to keep returning, like the moon. At Easter we see chocolate rabbits carrying eggs. The egg is a symbol of birth and because it contains a bright yellow yolk, it is also a sign of the sun. Like most holidays, Easter tries to combine opposites—life and death, darkness and light, moon and sun.

EGGED ON

BURT WOLF: Christians saw life breaking out of an egg as the perfect symbol for Christ breaking out of his tomb and eggs became a central element in the celebration of Easter. The decorating of Easter Eggs is part of the culture of Northern and Eastern Europe and dates back for thousands of years.

LUBOW WOLYNETZ ON CAMERA: Egg decorating traditions in Ukraine began a long, long time ago in the pre-Christian days, in the Pagan days. When Ukrainian society, being an agrarian society, was always mindful of the cyclical movements of the sun and the different seasons. For them, the power of the sun was very important and they wanted to harness this power somehow. But the sun was far away and they tried to look around it to see if somehow, they might find an element that would be like the sun and would have some of the life giving power like the sun. And they found it in the form of a chicken egg. If you break the egg open, the shape and color of the egg yolk is like the sun. And sometimes life springs up from the egg when a hen sits on it, you have a little chick, or sometimes you might have a rooster. And for ancient society, not only in Ukraine, but all over the world, they believed that the rooster was the sunbird. And that the sun came out because the rooster was crowing in the morning. The most important pattern or symbol that is applied upon the decorated egg is the sun motif. It can be in the shape of a star, in the shape of a square cross, in the shape of a four-pedaled flower. It is a hidden symbolic secret language.

THE CZAR AND THE GOLDEN EGG

BURT WOLF: The ultimate Easter eggs are probably those that were created by Peter Carl Faberge, a master jeweler who lived in Russia during the second half of the 1800s. In 1965, Malcolm Forbes, who at the time was the owner and editor of Forbes Magazine, purchased one of the eggs and soon after became a serious collector of the works of Faberge. His collection is on display to the public in the Forbes Building in New York City. Malcolm’s son Kip took me on a tour.

KIP FORBES ON CAMERA: Eggs as you know are part of the traditional symbolism of Easter and my father was a great believer if you're going to have eggs, you might as well have the ultimate eggs. So, so he decided to go to Mr. Peter Karl Faberge, who every Easter made incredible eggs for the last two Czars of Russia. And this is a particular favorite. As you know, Russia has particularly severe winters and so this wonderful one with the lilies of the valley motif was given by Nicholas II to his wife, Alexandra, celebrating the birth of their second daughter. If you turn that tiny little knob on the side there, those miniatures are paintings of the Czar and his two daughters, actually rise out of the egg and open up. They blossom almost like a flower. You turn it again, and they sink back into the egg so you just have a little crown sitting on the top. This egg, and the egg in the next case, were two that my father negotiated almost over twenty years to purchase. In fact, the negotiations with the Russians over missile treaties looked easy compared to negotiating for these two eggs. The ultimate prize was this egg here, the so-called coronation Egg which was a gift from Nicholas to Alexandra on the Easter after their coronation. You open the egg, which is decorated with the traditional motifs of the Romanoff Eagle and the same gold sort of almost fabric that the coronation robes are made of. You open it up and inside is a perfectly detailed replica of the coronation coach, the coach that Alexandra rode to the cathedral for her coronation in. In fact the detail is so good on this that when the actual coach was restored with the help from Ford Motor Company by the Hermitage Museum, they used this as points of reference because some of the detailing is on this was missing on the actual coach. So the little doorknob actually works. You open the door, the little step folds out. I mean everything was absolutely perfect. This fits inside the egg and it was a perfect surprise for the Czarina, her first Easter as Czarina. The egg, which is perhaps the epitome of Faberge's and also the link with the Romanoff’s, is the so-called Fifteenth Anniversary Egg, which was given by Nicholas to Alexandra on their fifteenth anniversary. This is my late father's favorite piece and it's a favorite of mine. It has incredible miniatures of the Czar, Czarina and all of the children as well as tiny little paintings of all the major events of the reign. So you see this incredibly attractive family and knowing what we know in hindsight, what's their brutal fate, it's probably the most poignant of all the eggs. And again, the craftsmanship is stunning.

BURT WOLF: Today Americans celebrate the Easter season with Easter egg hunts and egg rolls. The hunt theory is based on the idea that the Easter bunny hid a bunch of eggs while the kids were asleep. On Easter morning, the children search out the eggs and win prizes in accordance with their hunting skills. Sometimes the event is held for the public. In New York, the city government organizes an Eggstravaganza in Central Park. Perhaps the most famous egg roll not including the ones in my local Chinese restaurant takes place on the White House lawn.

The original site of the Easter Monday egg roll was on the grounds of the United States Capitol and by the mid-1870s it was a major event. However, congress was already over budget for landscaping and cancelled it. In 1878, President Hayes was questioned by a group of children as to why Congress had put an end to the egg roll; the president invited the future voters to roll their eggs on his lawn. Yet again, an example of a president trying to thwart the intentions of Congress. And to this day, the White House egg roll continues.

THE WINES OF EASTER

BURT WOLF: Of all the celebrations in the Christian calendar, none is more clearly associated with wine than Easter. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples that the wine they were drinking was his blood, and the bread they were eating his body. And in so doing, he made wine an essential element in the future rituals of the church.

Early Romans developed vineyards throughout Western Europe, so it was not difficult for early Christians to find wine for their services. But with the fall of Rome in the 400s, the cultivation of many of the vineyards became the responsibility of the Church. The monasteries of the Dark Ages acquired large properties, kept winemaking skills alive and in many areas developed new technology for the craft.

During the Middle Ages, the church played an important role in the feudal system and used its extensive land holdings to consolidate its power. Like other feudal landlords, the Church collected rent from people who lived on its land, and often the rent was paid in the form of wine. Unlike most agricultural products, wine lasts a long time and, in some cases, even improves with age which made wine a favorite form of rent.

The monks loved to stockpile this drinkable form of currency and taught the people who lived on monastery lands how to grow grapes and make wine. The monks would take a portion for themselves from each vintage.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: They also had one of the all-time great real estate acquisition programs. If you were an aristocrat and somewhat concerned about your morals and how you would be, or not be received in heaven, you could take a really nice hunk of one of your vineyards and donate it to the monks in exchange for which they would put in a good word for you upstairs.

THE AMERICANIZATION OF EASTER

BURT WOLF: Easter was not a holiday of particular importance in America until the large-scale immigration of Episcopalians and Roman Catholics that began during the middle of the 1800s. During the twentieth century, giving flowers, buying new clothing, especially women’s hats, and displaying your new attire by parading along your city’s major thoroughfare became important activities. We also invented the Easter Card. I never underestimate our ability to translate our emotional needs into “stuff”.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: Our holidays are fixed and our holidays float. And the two floaters in our American calendar are Thanksgiving, and the worst one of all, Easter, which floats all around the place. And though we've tried to pin it down, and there have been attempts to make it, fix it at the third Sunday in April, it still remains a floating holiday. Now this raises havoc with the consumer, with the shopkeeper, with the marketer, because after all, we want to have our Easter finery laid out. And sometimes in the cold northern climes, March the 22nd is pretty early. On the other hand, April the 25th can be pretty late, if we want to start selling Easter bonnets, because it begins to get too warm as you start to move into May. Why haven't we changed and fixed Easter? We've managed to fix George and Abe's birthday as a single date in February. Why can't we do it with Easter? Well, intriguingly enough, in a poll that was taken by Business World magazine in 1972, fifty-two percent of Americans favored pinning Easter down to a specific Sunday, the third Sunday in April, fifty-two percent. This never went to Congress. It was never it never came; it's rather like metric. I think we had a lot of wonderful ideas in the 70s that we were gonna, put into play, but never got into play. And so Easter has remained that bugaboo of all holidays, which floats around. And every year, we have to say, let's see now when's Easter? One commentator said that, we may be able to fix Lincoln and Washington's Birthday, but we're never going to fix the Resurrection of Christ.

BURT WOLF: Of all the holidays and celebrations in the Christian calendar, none is more directly involved with the taste of freedom than Easter. The theme of Easter is liberation —liberation from time, liberation from sin and liberation from death. Easter celebrates the arrival of spring, which deals with liberation in the past and the present, but it also promises liberation in the future.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The message that comes with the arrival of spring is very precise: life, in one form or another, will always have the capacity to renew itself. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Passover - #109

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

PASSOVER

BURT WOLF: During the forty years from 1880 to 1920, three and a half million Jews passed through Ellis Island in New York Harbor. Almost half came from Eastern Europe where Jews were being suppressed. They found asylum in America and for most of them it was their first taste of freedom—the first time that they could openly celebrate their religious holidays without fear of oppression. And the holiday that was and still is observed by more American Jews than any other is Passover—the celebration commemorates the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. It’s an opportunity for families to pass on the story of the Exodus from Egypt and to embrace their freedom.

RABBI WOLK ON CAMERA: Passover is the story of a journey. It is a journey from slavery into freedom, a journey from Egypt to Canaan, to what became the Promised Land. The story begins approximately 3,000 years ago when the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, and a man by the name of Moses, out walking in the desert one day heard the voice of God, or assumed he heard the voice of God, and God said, “Moses, I want you to go to Egypt, go see the Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh, let my people go”. Rather presumptuous, Moses hesitated but then he did it, and went to Egypt, went and saw Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s reaction was what you would expect. “Sorry, Moses, not a chance. Those people are my slaves. I need them. They’re my workers”. As a result, Moses brought a series of plagues, ten plagues against the Egyptians. The plagues can be considered as miracles. The plagues can also be explained scientifically. For instance, the first plague, the Nile turns to blood. What was this? Perhaps a bacteria, the red tide, but that then caused another plague in which the frogs that obviously were no longer happy living in the Nile, because who wants to swim in polluted waters, went on to the land and began to die and then were attacked by the gnats and by the flies and this created disease.

And so there was a causal aspect to all of these plagues. Well, Pharaoh still wouldn’t let the children of Israel go until the tenth and final plague, the plague in which the first born Egyptian sons died. And this began with the Hebrews placing some of the blood from a lamb on their door posts. And God then went over, or passed over the Hebrews’ homes, which is where the name Passover comes from, and smote the Egyptians. When Pharaoh’s son died in the process, Pharaoh then said to Moses, “you can go”.

BURT WOLF: And they did ---as fast as they could.

THE PASSOVER SEDER

BURT WOLF: On the first night of Passover, Jews hold a Seder. Seder is a Hebrew word meaning “structured or ordered”. Families gather at the Seder meal and retell the story of Passover.

Hanna Levy is an Israeli-born composer who began her career when she served as a performer in the Israeli army. Her parents were from Holland and moved to Israel in 1940. Her husband, Benjamin is an artist from Yemen. They raised their four children in this apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.

The story of Passover is read from a book called a Haggadah, which means “book of legends”. Haggadahs can be a work of art. Each country has its own approach to the Haggadah.

HANNA LEVY ON CAMERA: Our particular Seder, we do a lot of music. Since I'm a musician, I sit at the piano. We have our traditional songs that we all grew up on in Israel. And, of course, we taught to our children and we do some of it, of course, in English, too, because we always have non-speaking Hebrew guests at the table. What really is important about Passover, aside from the fact that it brings the family always together and it's a strong tradition, and strong traditions is what keeps families together, is to remember that whatever happened then, is something that is always relevant and they say in every generation a person is supposed to see himself as he personally left Egypt.

RABBI WOLK ON CAMERA: The Seder really is told through visual effects, and we have a Seder plate that is in front of everybody that has certain symbols. Each symbol represents one aspect of the Passover story. For instance, there are three matzos. The matzos is the unleavened bread that did not have time to rise because the Hebrews left in haste. Then there's a shank bone, which was the sacrifice, the Pascal sacrifice of thanksgiving for freedom. There is moror, which is a bitter herb, it's usually horseradish, and that represents the bitterness of slavery. There's a little bit of parsley, which represents springtime, but the parsley is dipped into salt water, and those are the tears of oppression. There's an egg, which is the symbol of mourning. It's a roasted egg and that's placed on the plate as well. And then there's haroset. It symbolizes the mud brick that the Hebrews used when they had to build buildings and were slaves to Pharaoh.

BURT WOLF: During the evening four cups of wine are poured for each person. They represent four divine promises: freedom, deliverance, redemption and release. Christ’s Last Supper was a Passover Seder and the central messages of Easter are the same as the promises of Passover.

In the center of the table is a special cloth that holds three pieces of dry flat bread called matzos. At one point in the ceremony a piece of the matzos is removed from the cloth and broken in half—one half remains on the table, the other, known as the Afikomen, is hidden somewhere in the house while the seder continues.

RABBI WOLK ON CAMERA: Afikomen is a Greek word. It means dessert. It might also mean I've had enough food. That is a possible interpretation, since it comes at the end of the meal and you've been eating for hours. Or it might mean, I want to go to sleep, which after you've eaten a lot of food is a normal response. It could be any of those roots, but it is a Greek word. The Afikomen is half of a matzos that's been hidden; children go to find the Afikomen. Whoever finds it has a little prize. One of the pragmatics of the hiding of the matzos is that the children stay awake, because no one wants to sleep through the meal and through the service if they have an opportunity to have a prize, and so this is a little bit of baiting is that the children stay awake. But there is another aspect to the Afikomen. We break the Afikomen, and that perhaps says to us that our world is still broken. Our world is not whole, and it’s little children that will put it together again.

BURT WOLF: The Seder table has a large cup of wine set aside for the prophet Elijah, who is expected to appear on Passover night and announce the arrival of the Messiah, who will bring peace to the world. At the end of the service, the door to the house is opened, allowing the spirit of the Prophet to enter and take a sip of wine.

THE JOURNEY

RABBI WOLK ON CAMERA: The major dietary rules concern themselves with avoiding any food items that might ferment; in other words, food items that have yeast in it. You would stay away from bread, you would stay away from cake, you would stay away from many grains. You can't drink beer at Passover, because that's a fermented liquor.

BURT WOLF: The food that replaces the bread is the matzos, which symbolizes the “bread of affliction”—the unleavened dough that the Jews brought into the desert as they left Egypt. The people who have the most traditional approach to the making of matzos are in the Hasidic community of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York. Beryl Epstein is a rabbi who takes visitors on a tour of the area.

RABBI BERYL EPSTEIN ON CAMERA: I like to say that I've become the visitor's representative to really see what's going on inside the community. There's been so many movies about Hasidim, Yentl, Chosen, a Stranger Among Us, Fiddler on the Roof, that depict Hasidic life from the outside. But they don't really give, let's say, the real story, what's going on inside the Hasidic community.

You have to understand that the main place in Jewish life is not the synagogue. It is the home. The home is where the education takes place. Home is where the couple, husband and wife, strive for peace, in their home. And the woman is called the Akeres Habayis, the foundation of the home. So really the women are the foundation of Jewish life. The synagogue, the man needs to go there to elevate himself. But a woman is Godly to begin with. So that is why it seemingly looks that the woman is de-emphasized in the synagogue, because actually her emphasis is the foundation of Jewish life, which is the home.

A Torah is a Hebrew Bible Scroll. That's the first five books of Moses. There are 304,805 letters in a Torah. When the scribe writes a Torah, he has to look into a Torah scroll, or book. He has to say the letters, look at the letters, say the letters, and then write the letters. So that, every letter and every word will be permeated with his intention, because it has every action that a person has can be either a meaningless act, or a very meaningful act.

Rabbi Clapman, he’s a very interesting guy. He lectures all over the world. And also he makes all his own ingredients. He cuts his feather. He takes the raw hides, from the skins and prepares them himself in his basement. And he also makes his own ink so that and that's very rare for a scribe to do it. But he wants absolute control, because any process that is out of synch or not done properly would invalidate the Torah.

It's fascinating looking at the Torah. You cannot see that there's any lines on the Torah. But actually there are engraved lines. According to Jewish law, there has to be those lines just made with a piece of metal in order that every line starts at the same point, and also Hebrew letters are written not like on English, on a line at the bottom. But they are always written from top down, just like the flow of Godliness into the world is from above below.

BURT WOLF: Passover matzos making in Crown Heights takes place in the Shmurah bakery.

RABBI BERYL EPSTEIN ON CAMERA: Shmurah means, "guarded." And it's guarded from the time the wheat is harvested from moisture. See, that which a Jewish person is forbidden to eat on Passover is flour and water mixed together with no other ingredients will become bread in after 18 minutes.

The process of making matzos at the matzos bakery is that first flour is poured into the mixing bowl, then the well water is poured into the mixing bowl. And they are mixed as fast as possible. Once he's finished mixing it thoroughly, it is now taken to a table where it's handed out to woman all around a table who are eagerly awaiting that matzos to roll it out as thin as they can similar to a pancake. It will come out to about 12 or 14 inches round. It's then hung on a long rod about eight feet long. And then taken into the matzos oven, where it is laid flat and cooked on both sides at one time, at about 30 seconds, and then taken out of the oven.

They're very strict about every aspect of the matzos bakery. Every tablecloth, which is brown paper, the mixing bowl also is changed. So, every 18 minutes, it’s a new matzos bakery because anything from the previous 18-minute matzos would contaminate the next 18-minute matzos. So it really is an amazing process of dedication that in no way, shape, or form should there be any speck of chometz, or bread leavening, associated with the matzos itself. And therefore, actually the more burnt the matzos is the better, because that means even more well done.

Shmurah matzos is worked, so to speak, dedicated by people who love the mitzvah, and who want other people to love the mitzvah. "Mitzvah", actually means, "Commandment." But it also means, "connection," so that when a person eats the matzos, the goal is to actually overcome and get out of our own personal Egypt, which is freedom from our own desires so that we can serve God with a full heart.

BURT WOLF: At the moment the Hebrews got word that it was time to begin their escape from Egypt they were in the process of baking bread but they didn’t have time to let the dough rise so they took their unleavened bread and raced into the desert.

RABBI DANIEL WOLK: And that's the beginning of the journey. The journey would then be a journey for 40 years, with some difficult moments along the way. Not long after the Hebrews were freed, they encountered the Red Sea in front of them and the pursuing Egyptian armies behind them, and then in that wonderful picture we see the waters of the Red Sea splitting, the Hebrews go through, the Egyptians with their chariots and heavy armor are swept under.

RABBI DANIEL WOLK ON CAMERA: And we again call this a miracle. It's also possible that it was low tide and that's how the Hebrews were able to cross, and it's also possible that this is symbolic. That the Hebrews realized that if they just sit by the shore and don't move on in their lives, they're going to be extinguished. And when you move forward, obstacles, water, your life parts and you can go ahead. And maybe this is as true today as it was then, only those who move forward can find their life to be productive. And so that becomes the journey of Passover.

THE MACAROONS OF PASSOVER

BURT WOLF: In 1980, Sarabeth Levine started selling marmalade that she made from an old family recipe. Today, Sarabeths’ preserves are sold in over 500 stores throughout the world. She has three restaurants, including one in The Whitney Museum of American Art, a fully automated jam factory and her own bakery where she makes macaroons, which are traditionally served at Passover. The name macaroon comes from an Italian word that means “paste”. And it was Italian Jews that introduced the flourless cookie to the Passover menu.

The zest of an orange goes into a pot of syrup made from sugar and water. The seeds of a vanilla bean are mixed in. Unsweetened chopped-up coconut goes into a standing mixer. The sugar syrup goes in. Then the whites of four eggs are added.

SARABETH LEVINE ON CAMERA: And it’s done.

BURT WOLF: Half the batter is scooped onto a parchment covered tray. The remaining batter gets mixed with some frozen chopped raspberries – more flavor, more color. Then the raspberry macaroon batter gets scooped onto a parchment covered tray. Both trays go into a preheated oven for about 25 minutes.

When they come out, they cool and are ready to eat. Chewy and moist - these are definitely not to be passed over.

PASSOVER AT SAMMY’S FAMOUS

RABBI DANIEL WOLK: When the Jews came to this country, I feel that one very major aspect occurred, and that was the desire to have freedom for all peoples. As the Jew began to assimilate, more and more, and become very much a part of the fabric of America, and become very well accepted in America, we then became all inclusive. The seders became interfaith seders, interracial seders, in recent times of course there's been much more emphasis placed on the feminist movement, freedom seders. Once we became free, we felt it was our duty to extend those freedoms to others, and to make the generic aspects of America our own, and these are represented by the diversity of Seder experiences.

BURT WOLF: A Passover Seder is usually a family affair held in someone’s house, but it can also be a more public event in a restaurant. The Passover feast offered by Famous Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse in New York is a unique example. In truth, there is no famous Sammy. There isn’t even a Sammy and the place is really not on any recognized list of New York steakhouses.

STAN ZIMMERMAN ON CAMERA: I opened the restaurant in 1975. And it's been a true experience since then. I know one thing that I might be the owner, but my customers are the boss.

BURT WOLF: The dining room looks like the set for a low budget bar mitzvah movie.

DAVID ZIMMERMAN: I call it Jewish wallpaper. It tells a lot of history about the place. People put up their business cards, their pictures. There's no frames. People bring it in and we just tape it to the wall. If you need a good doctor, you can pull it off the wall. It's very funny. And people put up their pictures; could be them when they were a baby. And then we write something. Call me when I'm 21 or something like that. Available in 2009.

STAN ZIMMERMAN: Passover is an event. It's something special. It's like being at grandma's house or great grandma's house. I remember when Passover was in the Bronx where I was born. My mother used to say to the neighbors, "What are you doing for Passover?" And the neighbor would pick her face up a little and she say, "I'm going to my sister's house." And my mother would say "Great. Could I borrow your table and chairs?"

BURT WOLF: At Sammy’s, each table is set with a bowl of pickles and roasted peppers and a syrup dispenser filled with liquid chicken fat. The traditional dietary laws that govern Jewish cooking forbid the mixing of meat and milk or milk-based products, which means that butter and meat can’t end up on the same dish. The substitute for butter is the chicken fat known as schmaltz. We started off with chopped liver mixed with schmaltz, fried onions, radishes and a little salt and pepper.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Would you consider this a weapon of mass destruction?

CANTOR ON CAMERA: I’m going to ask those of you who can, out of respect for the holiday, to rise.

BURT WOLF: Everyone at the Seder table, who can read, reads from the Haggadah, but children are given a special role. The youngest child, capable of taking on the task asks the four questions and in so doing the story of Passover is retold.

YOUNG GIRL ON CAMERA: Leavened or unleavened bread, but on this night only unleavened bread.

BURT WOLF: After the Seder, more food—matzah ball soup, steak, potato pancakes, mashed potatoes mixed with schmaltz and for dessert macaroons. And to wash it all down--you’re choice of vodka, Manischewitz wine or seltzer. Now I understand why Alan King once said that when he makes a reservation at Sammy’s, he also makes one at the cardiac care center at St. Vincent’s hospital.

Saliou Diouf is the chef at Sammy’s. He came to the United States from Senegal and has a great appreciation of the Taste of Freedom.

The Pilgrims who came to America to escape oppression in England compared their flight to the Exodus. In the American South, slaves sang of the Exodus as they dreamed of winning their own freedom. And whenever the story of the Exodus is told at a Passover Seder, the objective is always to highlight the parallels between the story of Passover, the people present at the Seder, and our modern struggle for justice, and freedom from oppression. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Carnival - #108

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

CARNIVAL

BURT WOLF: Carnival has its roots in an ancient Roman holiday called the Feast of Saturn. It was used as an escape valve to help reduce the tensions between the “rich and famous” and the “never to be rich and famous”. It created an outlet for the frustrations of a major part of the society. There were many more Roman slaves than there were Roman rulers. The Feast of Saturn distracted the slaves from doing the math and trying to take control. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Feast of Saturn was converted into Carnival. The last day of Carnival became known as Fat Tuesday, or in French... Mardi Gras. It’s the last opportunity for the Catholic community to live it up before the forty days of Lent that are marked with fasting and abstinence. Carnival was imported to the new world by the original French and Spanish settlers. And even today, many of the rituals of the New Orleans Mardi Gras are the same ones that are followed in France and Spain. The ethnic origins of New Orleans are still here, still respected, and still presented as dramatically as ever.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is packed with the ancient elements of Carnival. And one of the most important ingredients is the theme of importing something from some other time or place. One way to take in something from someplace else is to bring up “the past”. The past usually feels like it’s in some other place, and during Carnival it is constantly dragged out and put on view. Most of the groups have names from the past, taken from Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The earliest forms of Carnival go all the way back to ancient Rome. They were designed to keep the masses happy and in line and amused. And one of the ways they did that was to throw things to them.

BURT WOLF: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. In New Orleans hundreds of thousands of plastic necklaces and coins called doubloons are flung from the floats to the crowds below. The town is filled with people wearing the necklaces, and fingering the coins that they have managed to catch during the ritual. The hope is that everyone will feel that they are getting, or at least have an opportunity of getting, a piece of the good life. The guys on the floats have everything they want. They’re “up there,” moving through life. The watchers, on the other hand, are more or less locked in place, watching life go by. The idea is that distributing the trinkets will help keep the watchers amused and in place.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It’s a perfect Carnival joke. It celebrates the American myth of equal opportunity and success through the accumulation of material wealth -- and yet at the very same time it makes fun of it. And that’s what Carnival is all about -- making fun of those things which are normally respected.

BURT WOLF: The first documented Carnival procession in New Orleans, with masks in the street, took place in 1837. This film is from the 1920s. From the beginning it was a mixture of French, Spanish and Portuguese traditions, African rituals and the masked balls that were held by the aristocratic families of the Confederacy. In many cases, the pageants of the past made fun of life in New Orleans.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Over the years, there’s been a change in the content of the festival. These days a New Orleans Mardi Gras float is most likely to make fun of something that is safe, something that is already in the process of being joked about. It’s a distinct feature of North American culture to institute change without revolution, and these days the New Orleans Mardi Gras functions within that format. It’s a lot like the cooking -- hot and spicy, but not so hot or so spicy as to offend the millions of tourists who come here each year.

BURT WOLF: The carnival season officially begins on January 6th, which is known as Twelfth Night, Epiphany or King’s Day. It marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of a new season called Shrovetide. The word “shrove” means to hear confession and be given absolution. On Shrove Tuesday, Catholics confess their sins and cleanse their souls in preparation for Lent. Church bells ring and remind people to get “shriven”.

Shrovetide lasts from January 6th to Mardi Gras. It’s a time of feasting in preparation for the fasting of Lent. In New Orleans, Shrovetide kicks off with the Reveler’s Ball. The season ends with Mardi Gras which is French for “Fat Tuesday”. During Mardi Gras you stuff yourself with the foods that you will be giving up during Lent.

ARTHUR HARDY ON CAMERA: New Orleans is a French city and Mardi Gras is a French celebration. I mean our version of it came directly from Paris. New Orleans was founded in 1718, but in 1619 French explorer Iberville was coming up the Mississippi River. And it was March 3, 1699 and the spot that he camped out on at night, he named Point Du Mardi Gras because he knew back in Paris, Mardi Gras was being celebrated. So that's how it came to North America. And after New Orleans was settled, it didn't take long for the, the new citizens to remember those celebrations of Paris and start informally celebrating and then eventually formalizing it into an annual ritual.

It was a big deal immediately. It had been celebrated in homes and on the streets randomly for years. And it actually became quite violent. So in the 1850s the press called for an end to Mardi Gras. They said "this is an uncivilized celebration for these enlightened times." Fortunately some gentlemen got together and formed a parade and a Krewe called The Mistick Of Comus and it was an instant success. Press around the world hailed it as something that's worthy of attention. So visitors started coming before the Civil War to see Mardi Gras. It started with one parade, it has grown to a celebration now of 60 parades held over a 12 day period. We did some calculations and found out that it is 1,063 floats, 588 bands, 304 miles, if you added up all the playgrounds on the street for 205 hours. So it's probably the world's largest celebration.

KINGS & QUEENS

BURT WOLF: Anthropologists love to discuss Carnival because it is a feast that sets out to turn everything inside out and upside down. All festivals do this to a certain extent, but Carnival is more dedicated to changing roles than almost any other celebration. It’s always gross, indecent, and openly obsessed with sex. It demands excess of all kinds: over eating, over drinking, noise, expense, and size.

It makes fun of the famous and powerful. It also takes people who usually have little chance to be creative in their everyday lives and gives them a chance to show their inventiveness. It also gives them a chance to complain about the things that bother them. If you take a good look at what’s going on at Carnival you will quickly learn what is really annoying the population.

There is no royalty in North America, no real kings or queens, so having a king and queen of Carnival is part of the burlesque. In New Orleans many of the floats have their own kings and queens in addition to Rex the official King of the season. During Carnival, America has an oversupply of royalty.

WOMAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Hi. Happy Mardi Gras.

MAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Happy Mardi Gras everyone.

BURT WOLF: The entire organization of Carnival in New Orleans revolves around exclusive groups, private dances, and private balls.

WOMAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Greetings from New Orleans.

BURT WOLF: The groups are called Krewes and they have their own secret rules. The oldest krewe is ruled by Comus, whose real identity is known to only a few insiders. He remains masked, even at his own ball. That kind of secrecy enhances the power of being an insider. An ancient aspect of Carnival is making fun of hypocrisy.

WOMAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Hi.

WOMAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Having Fun!

BURT WOLF: In New Orleans the element of secrecy is used to make fun of America’s image as an open society, one where everyone has an equal chance.

YOUNG MAN PARTICIPANT ON CAMERA: Last time I got thrown into jail but I made it this time. I made it the whole way.

BURT WOLF: Most of the time only the people who are already on the inside ever get to have real power.

JESSICA HARRIS ON CAMERA: Royalty and Carnival is fascinating because at its origins, at its roots, at its inception, Carnival is very much about turnaround. Turnaround being fair play. Master becomes slave, slave becomes master. In that sense the aristocrats become the commoners, the commoners become the aristocrats. Some of the famous Carnival monarchs, 1949, Louis Armstrong, King of Zulu, you find, at one point, and I don't remember the dates exactly, but the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the deposed king goes to Carnival in New Orleans and he and his wife, the Duchess, actually salute King Rex and King Comus, so that you have the king saluting the king in that sense, the aristocrat saluting those who were perhaps not actual aristocrats.

BURT WOLF: Men had always ruled over the public parades, but in New Orleans women, with the title of Queen began to rule over the private balls. During the early 1940s the Krewe of Venus was formed and women began to march openly in the parades. But men and women didn’t march together until the 1960s.

Part of the ritual is to have king Rex die at the end of the festival. In Europe, he was buried in effigy. In America, where we like happy endings, the King waves his wand and Carnival is over. The ritual is also a reminder that we don’t take royalty seriously.

THE FOODS OF CARNIVAL

BURT WOLF: To say that the King Cake tradition was still alive would be an extraordinary understatement. Each year well over one million of these cakes are sold, and they have become so popular that bakers produce them all year long and actually ship them all over the world. This is Haydel’s Bakery in New Orleans, and it’s quite special. In addition to the plastic baby doll in the cake, there is a porcelain collector’s doll. And in one cake each week, there is a certificate that can be exchanged for a solid gold King Cake Baby.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: If you ever end up at a carnival party and your piece of cake doesn’t contain the token that makes you king or queen, don’t feel too bad. Along with the right to become king or queen, you also get the responsibility to organize and pay for next week’s party.

BURT WOLF: A King Cake is a traditional symbol of the sweet life that is part of Carnival in New Orleans, but so is the Pecan Praline candy.

Pastry Chef Kurt Ebert at The Grill Room in the Windsor Court Hotel demonstrates the traditional recipe.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: We are starting with about five ounces of butter. The butter will have to be melted first before I put, add the cream and the sugar in. This is a half a quart of cream, or two cups. At this stage I can add my sugar to it, and I’ll be adding brown sugar first; it doesn’t matter, and this is one pound. One pound of brown sugar, and we also add one pound of white sugar.

BURT WOLF: Okay.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: I will be adding a little bit of vanilla beans to it. If you don’t have any vanilla beans, a lot of people have this Mexican vanilla essence --

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Vanilla extract

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: The extract and stuff like that. Some people put vanilla beans in their ventilation system.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: In the ventilation system?

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: It makes the house smell really wonderful.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: I’ll put ‘em in my socks and see what it does there.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: Oh, God. And that is it; now all I have to do is wait for the cooking, because you do have to get the temperature right before you add your nuts to it. I can actually try to test it. I’ll do this test. A nice plate, a white, straight plate, and you drop some on here. So this cools down immediately, and you can look how it’s running.

BURT WOLF: Aha.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: So you don’t have to use your finger, you don’t have a thermometer, so do the old-fashioned plate test. And this is not done yet, it’s too...

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: It’s too much moisture in there --

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: It’s getting there, it’s getting there, you see? See what it does?

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Ahh. It’s beginning.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: Like it’s not supposed to be runny. But I think I’m getting close. See the bubbles, how different they are from a minute ago? They’re more -- it’s almost like a volcano kind of thing. It’s correct, it’s time to proceed. It is approximately two pounds, and I’m just adding them in until I think it’s the right amount. So it’s really important that you pre-toast them first. Every nut is basically fat, oil. So you’re toasting it to reduce the oil of the nut, and you enhance and bring out the flavor of every nut.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Interesting -- so when I toast a nut, I reduce the amount of oil, it vaporizes, and I get a concentrated flavor.

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: That’s right, ‘cause the pecans will not really cook in this batter; they’ll just be coated in it. So you pre-cook them. Transferring it onto the cookie sheet, you can either use two spoons or one spoon. They’re very shiny and almost translucent at this point. Now, this is one method. Some people are more comfortable using two spoons. So you go in with one spoon, and you take the other one and you sort of turn it out like that. Because you cannot touch it with your hands, it’s way too hot.

BURT WOLF: And how long do they sit?

KURT EBERT ON CAMERA: It’ll take about, I would think, half an hour, forty-five minutes, and they’ll be ready for feasting.

WIDE RECEIVERS

BURT WOLF: Americans love belonging to a group and a parade is an excellent way for a group to show itself off. Accordingly, the number of parades that are staged each year in the United States is extraordinary. The parade that is part of Carnival in New Orleans has become a way for the city to show itself to the rest of the world. Television has given the event a vast audience which allowed the city to turn what had been a local event into a spectacle for others.

These days, there are “national” floats with distinctly commercial overtones. They are large and slick and no longer make the hard-hitting or mocking statements about life in New Orleans that were central to Carnival for over a hundred years. To a certain extent anytime we have a spectacle with a large audience we feel the need to sell them something. In 1969, the Krewe of Bacchus was founded by companies that were involved in tourism. Each year, Bacchus is led by a nationally known celebrity rather than a citizen of New Orleans. Its two-story-high float includes a dinosaur called “Bacchusaurus”. It looks like it escaped from Disneyland. It is charming and friendly and will not offend anyone with the possible exception of scholars searching for authentic examples of ancient Carnival activity.

Part of Carnival tradition is to shower the watchers with gifts. In ancient Rome there were fountains of wine, barrels of nuts and baskets of sweets. In New Orleans plastic necklaces and tin coins are flung from the floats. The begging crowd, with arms open, waits below. Some authorities believe that people at the top throwing money to people at the bottom is a reenactment of the dream of America—streets paved with gold, a capitalist society offering an infinite supply of whatever you need at the moment you need it. People walk through the streets proudly displaying the necklaces and coins they have caught. The American myth of success through accumulation of material things is celebrated and at the same time mocked. It’s a perfect example of people making fun of their society.

ARTHUR HARDY ON CAMERA: There really are no spectators at Mardi Gras. We all participate in it at some level. We don't sell tickets. It by law and by tradition it is not corporately sponsored. The shareholders are the citizens of New Orleans who, who present this gift to the world each year. And that's one of the unique things about Mardi Gras is, I tell people it's almost as if you went to New York and to a Broadway play and you're standing in line to buy your ticket and the actors come off the stage and say "wait, let me buy your ticket. It's on us. And by the way, we're going to give you a free gift to take home afterward." And we do that. Our parades are crowd participation events because we throw favors to the crowd. There's no other entertainment venue in the world where the people who put on the show pay for it and the audience gets a free ride. If you can't enjoy that, there's something wrong.

GATHERING OF THE TRIBES

BURT WOLF: Like most traditions in the United States, Carnival in New Orleans is a mixture of things that have been brought here from different places. The primary elements came from French and Spanish culture. But as soon as they arrived African tradition was blended in.

ARTHUR HARDY ON CAMERA: The word gumbo is such a cliche. But that's really what Mardi Gras is. There's so many ethnic influences and they've melded together to the point that we don't even know what came from where. But it is probably the most diversified event in the world. And, and one of the things that I like the most about Mardi Gras is, is that spirit of togetherness. You know when you're on the street celebrating, you don't know if the person next to you is a banker or a beggar. It doesn't matter. You know we are all equal at Mardi Gras.

BURT WOLF: An important aspect of Carnival in New Orleans is the role of the African-American community—they have their own krewes and their own king. Known as the Zulus, during the early 1900s, they made a conscious effort to portray the grotesque aspects of white racist clichés.

JESSICA HARRIS ON CAMERA: If you think of Carnival as being Saturnalia, masters become slaves, slaves become masters, already we've got black folks emulating their masters, and white folks emulating their selves, if you will. But then you add to it something like Zulu. King Zulu, well, King Rex arrives by water, King Zulu arrives by water, but on a barge, okay. Banana stalk for a scepter, a lard can as a crown originally. So it's a complete burlesque, and in black face. A complete burlesque of the traditional Carnival king who is in turn a burlesque, in a way, of aristocracy. So it's the sort of multi-layered, it's that onion again. It's peeling that onion. You get all of those layers.

And so Zulu is an African American marching organization, Carnival organization that parades and that has become one of the most popular parades of all. They parade on Mardi Gras, which is prime time. Their throws are the most collectable of all throws. Others throw beads and the doubloons and everything else. Zulus throw coconuts. And, you know, you don't want to get one of those lobbed at your head, but you do want to get one of those lobbed at your head because they're the most prized Carnival throw you can have.

BURT WOLF: Mardi Gras has always been a place where ordinary people could show off their creativity. The Mardi Gras Indians are a perfect example of people using Carnival to demonstrate their amazing talents. The Mardi Gras Indians are groups from the black community who call themselves “tribes,” and wear costumes inspired by the dress of the Native American.

JESSICA HARRIS ON CAMERA: What we have in the United States is rather than dealing with the tribes of Africa, we have Indians. We have our own range of Indian tribes, the New Orleans Indians, who parade ... they don't really parade, they have their sort of little neighborhood parades, they're sort of scatter-shot parades, throughout the city during Carnival.

I think that people chose Indians because one of the things that we're only beginning to discover nowadays is the communication that actually went on between enslaved Africans and native Americans. They shared many values, in traditional systems, although they didn't same have the same religion, they understood some things about how you don't own the earth, and how you know, how the world works in other ways. They shared a respect for medicinal herbs; they shared a kind of respect for ancestors; they shared or paralleled each other in many ways.

BURT WOLF: Larry Bannock is the Chief of the Golden Star Hunters.

LARRY BANNOCK ON CAMERA: Basically I taught myself. Over twenty-four years you just get better and better, you know. Every year you learn something different. There never was the Indian suit that was completed. I mean, Mardi Gras morning, time is short, money is funny and everybody’s looking at you -- “Let’s go, let’s go!” So you put it on. But one of these suits, they’ve never been finished. There’s always something else you could do to add on, you could add on.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: You think there’s one message that the Indian sends to everybody when they see him?

LARRY BANNOCK ON CAMERA: Well all I can speak for is what the message I send. When I do a patch, I do a patch because I want it to have a meaning and a purpose. It’s like a spiritual thing. It’s like this patch here. When I do a patch I pay respect to the red man for what they did for us. But then again, you look at the red man culture, the black man culture. When we were slaves, the red men were the first to accept us as men. So this is just a way of paying respect to them. A lot of times people think Indians are just a bunch of guys putting on a costume, but this is a ritual or a culture that starts in September and goes all the way to Mardi Gras day. A lot of people don’t know the heartaches and the pain and headaches that you go through to do this. I mean, it’s no fun, believe me.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Then why do you do it?

LARRY BANNOCK ON CAMERA: Because you love it. Once you do it, and you really love it, you never want to stop.

BURT WOLF: Cities are man-made, they’re structured; they start with a planning grid. Cities need to be orderly or they fall apart. But a city’s structure and control can also be exhausting for the people who live in it — from time to time, they need an infusion of new life—a sense of freedom, and that infusion and sense of freedom must come from outside the community. For cities, throughout the United States, that’s what Carnival is all about. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: St. Valentine's Day - #107

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY

BURT WOLF: February 14th is designated as St. Valentines Day and on that day Americans turn to thoughts of love—thoughts that are expressed by giving heart shaped boxes of chocolate, red roses, and greeting cards with messages of love.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: But who was this St. Valentine and why is he cleaning out my wallet? Well, in fact, we’re not quite sure who St. Valentine was. We don’t even know how many St. Valentine’s there were.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: St. Valentine was a real person. I think we have maybe a problem figuring out which one he was. But it's fairly well-documented that the idea of St. Valentine's Day goes back to the 3rd century, early 4th century Roman Empire, when a rather militant ruler of Rome by the name of Claudius the Cruel outlawed marriage as a way of evading the draft. St. Valentine, before he was a saint, was a priest who in defense of the gentleman's right to betroth, secretly performed marriages. Well, he was caught and thrown in the clink, where his followers, some of them say women, passed notes to him, praising his martyrdom.

BURT WOLF: By the end of the 1300s, St. Valentine, a heroic and romantic figure, had become one of the most popular saints in England and France. There are even a series of references to the custom of sending love letters and small gifts. Lovers were getting into the habit of selecting each other on February 14th. And part of the selection process was calling one another “My Valentine”.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: But even before St. Valentine’s, there was an ancient Roman festival honoring the goddess Juno. On the night before her feast young Roman men would gather in the grotto of the wolf-god. No relation that I know of. There was a box there filled with the names of young Roman women and each guy would pick out her name and that would form a couple and they would go off to the party together often becoming lovers at or after the party and the date of that festival—February 14th.

BURT WOLF: The early Christian Church wanted to do away with this pagan love-in and substituted the names of saints for maidens. A new but not necessarily improved celebration. What you ended up with was the name of your lucky saint for the year. Nice but not necessarily as interesting as a hot date.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

DIANE ACKERMAN ON CAMERA: In the oldest love poems that survive, which were written in Egypt over 3,000 years ago, lovers yearn and obsess exactly the same way that lovers do today and about the same things. They worry about keeping love a secret from their parents. They talk about how love transforms them into their best self. They say that they become sick with love. They feel that they have to idealize the beloved. Love has not changed. Only the fashions have changed. So, I think that if you took a woman from ancient Egypt and you put her in a city today, she'd be understandably surprised by what she saw. But if she happened to glance at two people stealing a kiss in a corner, she'd know exactly what they were up to. Love has not changed at all.

BURT WOLF: But sex has. Originally sex was about having children and that was it. Our societies poured endless energy into getting couples together in marriage with the objective of producing children. The family decided who would marry whom, and the success of the marriage was judged by the number of male children.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Getting married was fine because it was under the total control of society; falling in love however was a real problem because it was beyond anyone’s control especially the people who were falling in love. And if two people could place their own personal desires ahead of the needs of their society, well the whole place could fall apart.

BURT WOLF: During the past hundred years, we have seen an extraordinary decrease in infant mortality. It is now safer to have children than ever before. One result is that couples no longer feel the need to have children in order to prolong the life of the society. Romance, to a great extent, is now free from society’s need to reproduce.

MEETING YOUR MATE

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: In the old days, most marriages took place because your parents had chosen your mate in what was basically a preemptive strike on your emotions and every once in awhile somebody would luck out and actually meet and marry someone they loved. And most of those meetings took place in one of three spots.

BURT WOLF: The first was church, an excellent place to check out a future partner. Much of the community was present so the selection would be fairly large. Everyone dressed for the occasion so you could see someone in his or her Sunday best. You got to see the family too and with a little luck you might get a private moment to express yourself.

The local fountain was also a good spot. Before indoor plumbing made wells obsolete, young men and women were constantly going off to the fountain to bring home a bucket’s worth. Fountains are also reminders of the places in nature where vastly different species of animals come together to drink—not unlike many singles bars. In fact, neighborhood taverns are often called “watering holes.”

Another way to meet that “special someone” was to go to a festival. Festivals were the perfect place to start a romance. Lots of men and women of different ages gathered in the same place and at the same time. They were eating and drinking and dressed in their best clothes.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: For thousands of years, we’ve been designing places for romantic meetings. To be a good spot, you need a couple of things. You need to be able to sit down. You should be able to order a drink and some light food but most importantly you need a level of anonymity. You’ve got to look like you are surrounded by people and not give a signal that you are just waiting for one person or trying to meet one person. For centuries, the best spot was a café.

BURT WOLF: Restaurants are also excellent places for romance. Before you really know each other, the public aspect of the restaurant is very reassuring. In a restaurant, you are under the surveillance of the restaurant’s staff and other patrons and simple gestures can take on added meaning in public places.

BORN OF THE SEA

BURT WOLF: Another constant element in love stories is the sea. Classical mythology associated the sea with creation, sexuality, beauty, fertility and passion. And the deity that symbolized all these elements was Venus, also known as Aphrodite, the goddess of love and the protector of sailors. Her very name means, “born of the foam of the sea”.

So it’s only natural that lovers gravitate to the water. You know, they didn’t call it “the love boat” for nothing. A perfect example of what I mean is a ship called the Millennium—it stands, or should I say floats, in the tradition of the great ocean-going ships, which for over a hundred years have offered lovers an ideal environment.

It’s almost a thousand feet long, and over a hundred feet wide. It’s also the first ship with exterior glass elevators that offer a panoramic view of the ocean. It’s powered by two gas turbines and one steam turbine, which substantially reduces emissions and made the Millennium one of the most environmentally sensitive ships in the industry. There’s one staff member on board, for every two guests.

The first great ocean liners went to sea in the 1890s and their objective was to make the passengers feel that they were guests in the home of an extraordinarily wealthy nobleman. By the early 20s, exercise had become an important part of on board services. There was a Promenade Deck for walks. A swimming pool. A fully equipped gym. Some had squash courts, steam baths and saunas. One vessel actually had a tennis court, and the game of miniature golf was invented for ocean liners. The great ocean liners are the largest moving objects on our planet.

But of all the comforts associated with the great ships, the most important were those that dealt with eating and drinking. The first liners had dining rooms with long tables and swivel chairs that were bolted to the floor. By the early 20's there were sumptuous dining salons with freestanding chairs and an extraordinary staircase that gave guests the opportunity to make a grand entrance.

Food has always had the ability to be more than just nourishment for the body. Food can be a source of emotional comfort and a symbol of love.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Good evening.

MAITRE D’ ON CAMERA: Good evening.

BURT WOLF: The Millennium, which belongs to Celebrity Cruises, had its maiden voyage in July of 2000 and it continues the tradition of great ocean liners. One of its restaurants has adopted the culinary customs of the RMS Olympic, which was the sister ship to the Titanic and went to sea in 1914. The Olympic pioneered the ultimate shipboard service by introducing a first class a la carte restaurant.

The original French walnut paneling from the Olympic has been incorporated into the Millennium’s Olympic restaurant. The dining room features an open galley, which allows guests to watch the preparation of their meals. There’s also an intimate dine-in wine cellar with a capacity for up to eight guests. The menu was planned by Michael Roux who for decades has been considered one of the great French chefs.

APHRODISIACS

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: For thousands of years, there have been rituals associated with foods that were thought to increase sexual activity. They were called aphrodisiacs after Aphrodite, the goddess of love. And many of those foods were chosen because they came from animals that were thought to have prodigious sexual activity. The theory was that if the animal could get away with it and you ate some of that animal; you might get away with it too. I’m gonna have a little bit of this salmon and I’ll get back to you about this later.

BURT WOLF: Guys would look at a salmon swimming for hundreds of miles from the open sea to the river they called home—fighting rapids, fighting hydroelectric dams, fighting famous chefs, and all in the name of love. Clearly, the salmon had a great sexual drive that might be transferred to the eater.

Other foods were considered aphrodisiacs because they had a texture that seemed sexual—oysters, mushrooms, figs and passion fruit fall into this category. Others get on the list because of their shape. Bananas, eggplants, carrots, asparagus, cucumbers have all, from time to time, been classified as aphrodisiacs. The ancient Romans included arugula in their collection of love inducing foods and planted it near statues of the Greek god of male sexual power.

Tortellini is the noodle of love. There is legend that tells of a handsome young man who fell in love with a beautiful maiden who lived in the forest. But a niece of a powerful Duke wanted that young man for herself and proceeded to force the maiden back into the forest. Just before she returned to the forest as a symbol of her love, she gave the young man a handkerchief tied in a love knot. Tortellini is made in the same shape as her knot. Which is not as important as her dough.

Chef Agostino Clama starts his recipe by heating a little oil in a sauté pan. As soon as the oil is hot, in goes some sliced mushrooms and a little salt. While the mushrooms are cooking, the stems are removed from two tomatoes, after which they are blanched for ten seconds in boiling water. The boiling water loosens the skin, and then they are peeled. For me, peeling tomatoes is always an optional process; I kinda like the skins. The tomatoes are sliced, seeded, chopped and added to the mushrooms. A touch of dried hot pepper flakes are added. A sprinkling of salt goes in. A little more olive oil. Then a teaspoon of minced parsley. Four quarts of water are brought to a boil and a pound of freshly made cheese tortellini goes in and cooks for about 45 seconds. Then the tortellini are drained from the water and added to the sauce. Everything heats for a minute, and the pasta of love is ready to serve.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Believe it or not, there is a magazine called The Aphrodisiac Growers Quarterly and the editors of that magazine analyzed 500 seduction scenes in literature and concluded that 98% of them were preceded by a sumptuous meal. And very often the place where that meal takes place becomes saturated with memory and romance and becomes “our place”.

CHOCOLATE

BURT WOLF: In the western world, the food with the most elaborate history as an aphrodisiac is chocolate. Chocolate was being drunk in Central America and Mexico for hundreds of years before the Europeans showed up. Columbus was the first European to see the cacao bean, which is used to make chocolate, but the conquistador Cortez may have been the first European to taste it when he was offered a cup by Montezuma, ruler of the Aztecs. Montezuma considered chocolate to be the ideal beverage for an amorous evening.

Chocolate is especially important on St. Valentines Day because it contains a chemical that has been called “the love molecule”. The physical changes in a body’s chemistry that are associated with being in love are caused by the release of this chemical into the brain.

BURT WOLF: Bright colors, especially red, are considered to be important for lovers. Red is alive and vibrant—it is the color of passion. We color our hearts red. We give red roses. Women wear red lipstick and powder on rouge. Red looks warm—it attracts the viewer. But it is also a signal of danger. Stop signs are in red. As a result, red can send a mixed signal—not unlike May West’s invitation to “come up and see me some time”—enticing but dangerous. Nevertheless we always include red foods in romantic menus: a double threat is a red strawberry dipped in chocolate.

THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE

BURT WOLF: It’s been said that the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemicals and if there is any reaction, both are transformed. There have, however, been a number of scientific studies that do shed light on the chemistry of love.

DIANE ACKERMAN ON CAMERA: The body rewards us when we fall in love with beautiful chemicals. First of all, in infatuation, we rush with an amphetamine-like chemical called phenyl ethylamine, and that is like being on a roller coaster. It gives us all the energy we need to stay up late talking with someone or making love. If we want to get cuddly, then oxytocin takes over, and that rushes through the system, and all we want to do is just nuzzle and snuggle. There's more of it in women than in men, which may be why women like to lie around after lovemaking and just spend some time cuddling. And then, after that takes place, if we really want to stay with someone, the attachment system takes over, and that's like being on a kind of opiate. It's a mental comfort food.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Recently, scientists have concluded that the most reliable aphrodisiac is just being in good shape and feeling good about your body, which is easily addressed on the Millennium. They have the world’s largest floating spa.

BURT WOLF: In the fitness area, they have the most sophisticated equipment available. Their programs have been designed to suit all levels of fitness, with mine as the possible exception.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Lot of people don’t realize it but it’s the rowing machines that make the boat go. Wow. What year is it?

VOICE OFF CAMERA: It’s the Millennium, Burt.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Great.

BURT WOLF: They also have a hydro pool with waters that contain salts and minerals. The ancient Romans added salts to their baths because it helped them float and made them feel lighter. The aqua spa offers forty different therapies to relax the mind and body. They last from ninety minutes to five hours. Heading up the romantic category is the Well-Being Friendship Massage in a Sensory Cabana. Partners lie side-by-side in their own private retreat, while two therapists massage them with warm oils.

ROSES

BURT WOLF: On Valentine’s Day, Americans exchange almost 90 million roses. And for good reason. Plants use flowers as part of their mating ritual and their perfume is a form of liquid memory, reminding us of the excitement we associate with romance. The rose is a symbol of the Virgin Mary, and originally a rosary was 165 dried rose petals wound up tight and made into a chain. In medieval times, roses were used to make medicine and perfume, and love potions. They were dried and used to stuff pillows and make carpets and hats, and even umbrellas. Roses were a basic part of cooking, especially in Middle Eastern cuisine. In Europe and the United States, rose-flavored waters were utilized in recipes until the middle of the 20th century.

VALENTINE’S DAY IN THE U.S.A.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: The actual marketing of Valentine's in America is credited to a bright young woman by the name of Esther Holland who was a student at Mount Holyoke College. She had a very wonderful capacity for designing little works of art. And she made lace valentine cards with beautiful, romantic verses.

In the 1880s and 90s, that rather staunch Victorian period, insult valentines were rather common. And ... and some of them were pretty rude. Of course now we have the electronic valentine's card of which the primary consumer is the male in his 30s, interestingly enough. Maybe the working man who doesn't have time to go, and get a card at the drugstore. So we get more and more electronic valentines. I think one out of six American males purchased one in the last year. The Japanese, interestingly enough, have their own version of Valentine's Day, March the 14th, one month later. At which time, women are instructed to give gifts to men.

BURT WOLF: Throughout the second half of the 1800s, the Valentine’s card became more and more popular, eventually ending up as a mass-market item. Near the end of the century, chocolate manufacturers entered the business with heart shaped boxes and heart shaped

candies. Hearts are associated with romance because when we feel love, our hearts beat faster. People started putting wedding rings on the finger that they believed had a nerve leading directly to the heart.

Americans of all ages take part in Valentine’s Day even though it is not an official government holiday. Elementary age school children often make Valentine cards as part of a class project and put them into a decorated mailbox. On Valentine’s Day the box is opened and the cards distributed to each student.

These days, Valentine’s Day produces more spending than any other holiday, with the exception of Christmas. Most of the money is spent by men between the ages of 30 and 50 and they spend it primarily on cosmetics, perfumes and jewelry.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And sometimes they even buy something for their girlfriends. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Chinese New Year - #106

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

CHINESE NEW YEAR

Central to the Chinese New Year celebration is the Dragon Dance. The dragon is the mythic symbol of water. It controls the rain from the sky and the flow of water on Earth. The sun runs in front of the dragon. Sun and water together, the two elements that are essential for the rebirth of agriculture in the spring, which is what Chinese New Year celebrates.

The Chinese were among the earliest immigrant groups to arrive in America. Between 1850 and 1900 over half a million Chinese came to the United States looking for work.

During the first half of the 1800s, China was in total chaos. There was no central government capable of keeping order. Local warlords rampaged through the country making any kind of normal life impossible. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Chinese men left China in search of a better life. The great majority came from the southern part of China, in and around the city of Canton.

For many, the promised land was California. Gold had been discovered and the rush of 1849 was on. The Chinese arrived, staked their claims and dug side by side with men who had come to California from all over the world.

As the gold rush came to an end, America rushed to build a cross-country railroad. And the Chinese rushed in to work on the construction gangs. The most difficult part of the track, between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rocky Mountains was put in place by Chinese laborers. In fact, 80 percent of the labor for the most difficult stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad was Chinese.

But the Chinese rarely got credit for their work. This is a painting commemorating the moment when the rails coming from the east were joined to the rails coming from the west. It took place in 1869 in Utah. The painting, however, has very little to do with reality. Most of the guys in the painting were not there the day the rails were joined. And the Chinese laborers who were there and did most of the work were not put in the painting.

This is a photograph of the actual event and you can see that many of the workers were Chinese. When the railroad work was completed, thousands of Chinese who were near the west coast went into farming, particularly California grape farming. Many of our finest vineyards were originally planted and cultivated by Chinese immigrants. But Chinese immigrants were faced with even greater hostility than most other immigrant groups.

PETER KWONG ON CAMERA: Americans have always been wary about new immigrants. Worrying about they ..taking their jobs away. But the racial hostility against Chinese was so intense that a law was passed in 1882 to actually exclude Chinese from immigration. And also, not allowing them to become naturalized. And this act passed in 1882 was the first and the only act to single out the people national to be excluded and was not repealed until almost 60 years later in 1943.

The reason Americans object to the Chinese had to do with the fact that Chinese were the first color group, other than blacks and Native Americans, came to America in large number. And so, for the blacks, we put them in the plantation. For the Native Americans, we put them on the reservations. But then you have all these Chinese coming in as free labor. So the only way to get rid of them was in fact passing a law to exclude them from coming in. And at the same time too, making sure they are not allowed to bring their wives here.

Eventually, they would either leave because the hostile environment or they'd just die out as bachelors. In the earlier parts of Chinese presence in the United States, because of exclusion and segregation Chinese pretty much live, work and socialize among themselves. And so, they were able to maintain a lot of their cultural traditions.

BURT WOLF: And the traditions surrounding New Year’s are some of the oldest and most important in Chinese culture.

CHINESE NEW YEAR RITUALS

BURT WOLF: Traditionally, preparations for the Chinese New Year involve the Chinese equivalent of spring cleaning. Everything in the house gets scrubbed, sponged, polished or swept. All that cleaning not only gets rid of the grease and grime of daily life but because of an ancient, powerful and secret ingredient it also removes any evil spirits that have taken up residence in the house during the past year.

Lucky messages are attached to the front of the outside door of the home. They welcome the spirits of good fortune and invite them in for a drink.

A table is covered with offerings for the gods. The three main meats of Chinese cuisine—pork, chicken and fish are present. Oranges, which are a symbol of good luck, are always included, along with rice cakes and spirit money. Candles are placed in a shrine. Incense is burned and family prayers are offered.

When the incense has burned down about halfway, the gods are considered to have had their meal. Nice thing about these gods, they don’t actually eat or drink what is being offered to them. They just take a good whiff and inhale the essence of the food. At which point, the food once again belongs to the family. The gods expect the food to be taken home, cooked, and eaten by the family that offered it. It’s a win-win situation.

Next comes the burning of the spirit money. The Chinese, like many ancient cultures, believe that what you need and enjoy in this world you will need and enjoy in the next. And the way to send things from one world to the other is to reproduce them on special paper, and then burn the paper. The physical aspect of the thing disappears in the heat of the fire. The essence of the object goes into the smoke and the smoke goes up into the other world, where it is received by the spirit to whom it was sent. To send something to the other world that was made of stone or metal would be difficult, wasteful and expensive. Paper, however, is the perfect medium. In Chinese communities around the world, there are furnaces devoted to transferring stuff in symbolic form from here to there.

An essential ritual of the Chinese New Year is giving gifts of money. The currency, which in this case is real, goes into a red envelope. The envelope has the magic power to take your bills and turn them into lucky money. The lucky money has the power to increase the recipient’s ability to acquire additional money. In Chinese culture, red is always the color of happiness and good fortune. It’s also a good idea to use some of the lucky money to pay off as many of your debts as possible before the New Year begins.

In China, lucky money is often given to children in order to send them off on the road to prosperity as soon as possible.

New Year’s is also the time to stock up on paper gods. Paper gods are available in many shops, but you don’t actually buy one. It’s considered impolite to try and “buy” a god. After all, these are not Olympic judges or major accounting firms. What you do is invite the deity to come over to your place for a visit. And you pay the shopkeeper for assisting you with the invitation. You are also allowed to buy candles and incense from the shopkeeper who helped you with the invitation.

The tradition of decorating your home with lucky prints goes back to the 10th century. The most traditional and beautiful examples are printed from wooden blocks that have been carved with intricate designs. The prints vary in size, depending on where they will be in the house, and how much detail is needed to express the essence of the god’s personality. The materials and production are usually inexpensive. When it comes to sacrificial offerings, it’s really the thought that counts.

In almost every Chinese home or restaurant there is a little space that belongs to the kitchen god. It’s usually occupied by a small shrine or a paper print of the kitchen god’s image. The kitchen god comes in two forms: family size and industrial-strength. Family size is used in the home and comes either as a god or a goddess. Industrial strength is used in the work place and only comes as a god.

One of the primary tasks of the kitchen god is to keep an eye on the family and to make note of how they behaved during the year. Just before New Year’s the kitchen god goes back to the other world and reports to the Jade Emperor on what’s been going on in the house. As a general precaution, the kitchen god’s mouth is rubbed with honey in the hope that he will say only sweet things. The Jade Emperor likes to know when you are sleeping and when you are awake, and if you have been bad or good. So be good for heaven’s sake.

The Chinese like to keep the images of their gods close at hand. Some images are carved out of wood and stone; some are molded of clay; some are cast in metal. But the most common images of Chinese deities are those that are made of paper. They are an essential part of Chinese culture and the most popular paper images are the ones that are printed for New Year’s.

Unlike a western New Year’s celebration, which tends to be limited to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, Chinese New Year festivities go on for over two weeks and on the second day of the New Year everyone honors the god of wealth.

The gods always take a vacation over New Year’s and they always return to earth on the fourth day of the year. They are welcomed back with firecrackers and offerings of spirit money. The welcoming ceremonies often take place at the end of the day, because no one wants to offend a god who might be getting back to town a little late.

FOODS OF CHINESE NEW YEAR

BURT WOLF: One place where Chinese traditions in America are still very strong is the kitchen. Michael Tong was born in Mainland China in 1944, went to high school in Hong Kong and then on to the United States where he graduated with a degree in civil engineering. Today he’s the owner of three of the most important Chinese restaurants in New York City, Shun Lee West, Shun Lee Café and Shun Lee Palace.

MICHAEL TONG ON CAMERA: The chef is making boiled dumpling has a filling of chive and meat and roll over a dough, make the shape like a treasury shape of the ancient Chinese dollar. Now the chef is making a different shape of dumpling. This is the we usually call a pan-fried dumpling so the boiled dumpling and the pan-fried dumpling come into different shape. But in Chinese New Year the meaning is the same is for prosperity. In Chinese New Year we serve whole duck, a whole chicken referred as Phoenix. Phoenix in Chinese means wealth and I mean prosperity and this is why we serve duck in the Chinese New Year as a celebration. We are celebrating Chinese New Year, we got to have a duck. Chinese do have greens for New Year’s Eve dinner or New Year’s dinner. Greens means health. Greens means forever young so bok choy is one of our very light vegetables. Here we have the chef cook for you sauté the bok choy with ginger. Fish is one of the most important ingredients for Chinese New Year dinner. Fish means abundance, plentiful so for surplus business I mean saving, fish is the most important that we wish for the coming year. Here we have a steamed fish with ginger, scallion, and Chinese pickle.

BURT WOLF: Like the foods of western New Year, many of the foods of the Chinese New Year have been selected because of their symbolic value. Lotus seeds, peanuts and pomegranates represent a hope for the birth of children during the coming year. The use of fruits with seeds is a common expression of the desire for many offspring. Grapefruits, oranges and tangerines show up because of their association with good luck. And there are lots of candies and sweet foods in the hope that they will produce a year filled with sweetness.

The Chinese word for fish rhymes with the Chinese word for surplus. Accordingly, if you eat part of a fish dish on New Year’s Eve and the rest on New Year’s Day, you may be able to transfer a surplus of good luck from one year to the next.

Chef Tsai at the Taiwanese restaurant in the Grand Formosa Regent in Taipei works on his good luck with a dish of braised fish with soy sauce. Oil is heated to 365 degrees. A whole fish goes in and cooks for five minutes. When the fish is ready, it’s drained away from the oil and set aside. The wok is rinsed out and two tablespoons of oil go in. A quarter of a cup of fresh ginger that has been cut into strips, plus a quarter of a cup of scallions that have also been cut into strips. A few strips of hot red pepper. The fish returns to the wok. A quarter of a cup of soy sauce is added. Then a quarter of a cup of chicken stock. Two minutes of cooking and flipping and as soon as it’s warm and the sauce has thickened, the fish goes onto a serving plate and the sauce goes on top.

There is always an egg dish at New Years because eggs are a symbol for rebirth, which is also why they’re so important at Easter. And round foods are essential because they illustrate completeness. A round omelet is perfect for Chinese New Year.

Three eggs are beaten together in a bowl, along with a half-cup of chopped water chestnuts and a half-cup of sliced scallions. A little salt is added. A half-cup of oil is heated in a wok. The egg mixture goes in and gets cooked on top of the oil. The edges of the eggs are folded in to make a round fluffy omelet. The oil is drained away, the omelet is flipped and it’s ready to serve.

Poultry dishes are also common at New Years because chickens are associated with good luck. Chef Tsai prepares a dish of chicken with chili.

A wok is heated. A cup of oil goes in. Then two cups of chicken are stir-fried for one minute. The chicken’s been cut into bite-sized pieces and marinated for fifteen minutes in egg white, a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a little salt and pepper, and half a teaspoon of cornstarch. Then the chicken is drained away from the oil, except for two tablespoons worth, which are added back into the wok. Two dried red peppers are tossed in and stir-fried for a minute. A little soy sauce goes in, followed by a little Chinese vinegar. A teaspoon of cornstarch mixed into a little water is added, just to thicken things up. The chicken returns to the wok. And finally a half-cup of peanuts are stirred in.

The dumpling is another New Year’s food with important symbolic meaning. On New Year’s Eve, the women of the family gather in the kitchen to make special dumplings. They undertake the task according to a set of ancient rules. Young children are not allowed in the kitchen during the dumpling making because they might say something that could interfere with the development of the good luck which is building up inside the dumpling. Custom demands that if there has been any disharmony between the women in the family, now is the time to work things out. It’s widely believed that New Year’s dumplings will not cook properly if there is any ill will among the members of the family. If anyone says anything unpleasant, the dumplings will be stolen from the pot by an evil spirit. And never count your dumplings while you are still making them. The more you count, the poorer you will be in the coming year. If a dumpling breaks up in the boiling water, the whole year could be filled with unpleasant experiences that will break up your happiness.

Chef Chou demonstrates his technique for improving your New Year’s luck. Dumpling dough, which is similar to the water and flour dough used for pasta is formed into one-inch pieces. Each piece is floured, pressed into a disc, and rolled out into a flat three-inch round. The rounds are filled with a mixture of vegetables and pre-cooked pork sausage meat and sealed. Then they are set into a steamer basket that has been lined with aluminum foil to keep the dumplings from sticking to the basket. The basket is placed on top of a wok that is filled with boiling water. The cover goes on and the dumplings are steamed for ten minutes or until the filling is fully cooked.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: For centuries, it has been the custom to place a gold or copper coin inside some of the dumplings. If you got a dumpling with a coin inside, it was a signal that you were going to have a prosperous year. Recently however in order to avoid having people choking on hunks of metal in their food, the coins have been replaced with little pieces of candy. Some of the dumplings also contain sugar-coated lotus seeds. If a married woman of childbearing age receives a dumpling with a lotus seed inside, it is a signal to her that during the next year she is going to have a son. Now I have always suspected that lotus seeds were chauvinistic but this really proves it.

BURT WOLF: These are the traditional dishes you would get at a Chinese family meal at New Years. They should deliver the good fortune with which they are associated especially if they were prepared within view of the kitchen god.

THE LUNAR CALENDAR

BURT WOLF: The calendar that we use in the western world is based on the earth orbiting the sun. And every time the earth makes a full orbit we call it a year. But for some cultures a year is measured by the time it takes the moon to make twelve orbits around the earth.

The moon-based calendar was developed to meet the needs of farming societies and was used for thousands of years to tell people what had to be done at a particular time in order to have a successful harvest.

Harvest instructions were considered to have come directly from the gods and sent in relation to the position of the moon. To this day, much of Asia’s religious and cultural life is based on what is happening with the moon.

The Chinese lunar calendar is based on a twelve-year cycle with each year being devoted to a specific animal—The Dragon, the Snake, the Pig, the Mouse. Many people believe that the animal of the year in which you were born will influence your life. I happen to be a tiger.

THE LANTERN FESTIVAL

BURT WOLF: The days of the New Year’s celebration come to an end with the ritual of the Lantern Festival, which has been part of the Chinese New Year for over 2,200 years. The people of ancient China believed that the first full moon of the year sent out a magic light that made it possible for people to see the heavenly spirits as they moved around on earth. Torches were added to the ceremony to make the job easier and eventually the torches became lanterns.

At some point, the Lantern Festival turned into a special event for children. Probably because the date of the first full moon of the year is often the date on which children go back to school after the New Year’s holiday. Parents began to construct elaborate lanterns that their children would take to school. Their teachers would light candles inside the lanterns to symbolize everyone’s hope that the children would turn out to be bright students. As the traditions that are part of a Lantern Festival developed, people began coming together to march through the streets with the lanterns. Fireworks were set off, and riddle guessing contests were introduced.

The traditional food of the Lantern Festival is a round sticky rice cake. It symbolizes both the new moon and the unity and completeness of the family. Some people believe that these cakes contain the power that controls aging, and that you will not gain the year of age that comes with the New Year until you eat this cake.

Of all the festivals involved in the cycle of the lunar year, none is as dramatic or as ancient as the celebration of the Chinese New Year. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: New Years - #105

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

NEW YEAR’S

BURT WOLF: Our first holiday celebrations were used to mark a New Year and were based on the sun and the moon. Today, however, we measure time according to the movement of the electrons of the cesium atom. When 9 billion, 92million, 31thousand, 7hundred and 70 beats have been recorded; it’s time to wish everybody Happy New Year. In New York the announcement is made by a glittering ball that slides down a pole, reaching the base at midnight. The dropping ball is actually an old navy custom that was used in ports all over the world. The ball would drop each day at noon as a signal to ships in the harbor that it was time to reset their clocks.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The moment in time between the old year and the new year, when the past meets the future is a dangerous moment. And we try to prepare for it by taking stock of our strengths and weaknesses and making a plan for the future. And we announce that plan because we believe wishes made at that moment have the best chance of coming true. Hope reborn with the new year.

BURT WOLF: A second later when the old year becomes the new year is also a significant instant—filled with superstition and elaborate rituals. It’s important to be fully awake and clear headed when the midnight arrives. It’s the moment when you can consciously direct your fate. And you should be in a good mood during the transition. The whole idea of a New Year’s Eve party is to establish a happy setting as the New Year begins.

SETTING THE DATE

FILM CLIP: Ann Miller singing “Auld Lang Syne.”

BURT WOLF: Some historians believe that our very first ritual was the one we designed to celebrate the start of a new year. It usually makes sense to start at the beginning. But how do you decide when the beginning begins? Interesting problem and societies have answered the question differently from century to century and from place to place. Many people believe that there is a brief moment between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year when good fortune can be brought in. It makes it an excellent time to test your luck. You can even gamble on love.

BURT WOLF: January 1st is an appropriate time to start the New Year because the 1st was dedicated to the God Janus. He’s usually shown as a figure with two heads, one facing forward and the other looking back. Janus represents the turning point—the moment when the old year gives way to the new—the instant when you look back to the past and forward to the future.

The French linked the start of the New Year to the arrival of Easter Sunday. They celebrated the rebirth of the year along with the rebirth of Christ—they combined two important events that celebrated regeneration. Until the middle of the 1900s, the French did not give Christmas presents—gifts were exchanged only at New Year’s.

Visits were made to the homes of people who were higher up in your business or political circles and you always left your card behind. But since almost everyone was out visiting someone else, slightly higher on the social ladder, nobody was at home. So people began mailing their business cards. Eventually the business card evolved into the New Year’s greeting card.

SUPERSTITIONS AND RITUALS

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The use of a baby as a symbol for the New Year goes back well over 2,500 years to the ancient Greeks. They had a holiday where they celebrated the return of the growing season and during the feast, the new season was represented by a constantly returning baby.

BURT WOLF: The image of the new year as a diapered baby being welcomed in as the old year is ushered out illustrates an old German idea that was imported into North America during the 1800s. Often the old year is shown as Father Time with a scythe that he uses to cut off the past.

In order to bring in the New Year you must get rid of the old one. It’s a time to turn over a new leaf—to make your New Year’s plans and resolutions. Your house should be clean and all the garbage put out.

The moment when the old year becomes the new is a moment when evil spirits can slip past your guard. Loud noises, however, can scare them off, which is one reason New Year’s is marked with the blowing of horns and the banging of drums. Making noise is also symbolic of initiations, and new beginnings; it’s like banging on a door to make it open.

Being together with friends and family as the old year gives way to the new goes back for thousands of years.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: One of the most important act we indulge in at New Year's time is making those resolutions, the ones we know we're going to break by January 5th, I think in most cases. The period of the end of the year, the last few days of the year, the 12 days of Christmas, are very, very important days because as we close out the cycle we know that the behavior of things on those days will determine what lies ahead.

How we behave at the turn of the year, how we behave at the right at the midpoint of that cycle, that overturning of the cycle will, we hope, predict how we'll behave in the future. So it's all about getting off to a good start, turning over a new leaf. And you do that at the time when the door is open, because that's the time when I think the spirits and the gods would be most sensitive to helping us to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, I suppose, statistics would show not many of those resolutions ultimately work out.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: You should bring good things into your home and accept any gifts that come your way—especially if they involve money or sweet foods, but make sure everything comes into your home before you give anything out. There’s an old saying: “give out then bring in, bad luck will begin --- bring in then give out, good luck comes about.” Simple.

BURT WOLF: In Scotland, your happiness in the coming year is thought to depend on the first person that comes to pay a visit. That person is known as the First Footer. He should be male, tall, not flat-footed, and carry an evergreen branch. If he fits the description he is known as “the lucky bird”. Almost everything associated with the First Footer is dark. Dark things are thought of as dangerous and powerful, so you want to get them on your side as soon as possible. Also, everything the First Footer brings into the house must be used up inside the house: nothing brought in by him should be taken out or your good luck might escape.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: If you like your work and you want it to continue doing it throughout the New Year, carry something that’s a symbol of your work on New Year’s Day. If you wear new things it will help you get new things. And on New Year’s Day don’t lend anything to anybody and don’t cry and don’t whine…I hate whining.

THE FOODS OF NEW YEAR’S

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Many people believe that what you eat and drink on New Year’s Eve will affect your luck in the future year. On New Year’s Eve the ancient Romans would set out a huge table and put all of the foods that they wanted to eat during the next year on that table. It was important to pay attention to the individual foods as well as the quantities. You wanted a lot of stuff. Anything you didn’t put on the table you ran the risk of not getting next year.

CATHY KAUFMAN ON CAMERA: New Year’s celebrations in Colonial America were very much derived from Dutch and to some extent English customs of holding open houses on New Year’s. The housewife would open up the doors on midnight on New Year’s Eve to let out the bad spirits, welcome in the good spirits. And then the following day, friends, family, any one in the town would come and make a brief social call, visit, have a little something to drink. Perhaps some cake or cookies, whatever was on the buffet. But it was very important that you visited everyone. I don't think we have changed the holiday so much from what you would see in Dutch communities, in English communities who also adapted the Dutch tradition. Even if they're not necessarily open houses. This is the one time of year that you can show up at a party with 150 people in a Manhattan apartment and nobody thinks twice about that. The idea of just getting the more the merrier. The fact that we pack into Times Square as the communal open house for New Yorkers I think tells us something about that sense of wanting to re-establish bonds with our community at large.

BURT WOLF: New Year’s is a time to take a look at the shape of things to come. Foods eaten during the New Year’s celebration often have a symbolic shape. Breads and cakes that are usually long will be rounded for New Year’s. The circle expresses your hope for a “well-rounded” year. It also keeps the luck from escaping out of the end. Round pasta dishes will be served instead of those that have ends like spaghetti or linguini.

The foods we traditionally serve at New Year’s often show two aspects of life.

One group is expensive and extravagant. They indicate our desire to have lots of good stuff in the new year. But along side the foods of extravagance are foods that are simple, inexpensive or easy to make.

CATHY KAUFMAN ON CAMERA: New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are two sides of the same coin. They are indulgence the night before and repentance the morning after. New Year’s we tend to go all out. It's a time; it's the last night of the year. You know whatever is in the larder that's yummy and fabulous our last you know, pennies can be put to some fabulous indulgence. And then it really is the morning after. You wake up perhaps you haven't had too much to drink, but it is a sobering thought of I now have to face the New Year, let me be a little more frugal. A little more measured. I've had my Bacchanalian blow- out and now on New Year’s Day that's when you have Hoppin’ John. That's not a New Year’s Eve food. That is a New Year’s Day food, something much more humble.

New Year’s Eve is a difficult holiday to categorize from a food perspective. New Year’s Eve depends so much on your budget, what you feel like doing. I think if there are any two foods that tend to show up, it's champagne and caviar if you can afford it. People like doing that. But I have gone through scads and scads of magazine articles, cookbooks looking for common threads in the New Year’s Eve menus. They're really not there other than to say, this is an important meal. It's an expensive meal. But there's no one food I think other than the caviar and champagne that is fairly consistent.

I think they are there because of the expense and people think they seem very, very sophisticated. So it's a time to be sophisticated. Men it’s often the black tie, tuxedo, long dress and you know what could be more glamorous than biased cut satin and champagne and caviar.

BURT WOLF: Champagne is one of the ancient regions of France but it’s also the place where champagne was invented.

One of the classic champagne houses is Laurent-Perrier. It’s run by the family

de Nonancourt. There’s Bernard and his two daughters, Alexandra and Stephanie.

Their champagne is made in a small town in the middle of the French district of Champagne and they are made by the most traditional method. They select their grapes from over a thousand different growers in the region, and their job is to find the ones that are just right for the balance.

When the grapes arrive from the growers, they are crushed and their juices allowed to ferment, which takes about two to three weeks. The sugar in the juice changes to alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The gas is allowed to escape. The wine from each area is held separately in stainless steel tanks.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Each champagne house tries to develop a “house style” for its non-vintage champagne, and to reproduce that style each year. The job of developing the house style and reproducing it year after year is the work of the champagne blender. The blender will use wines from over two hundred small villages, and a number of different years, in order to develop and maintain the house style.

BURT WOLF: After the blending, the wine goes into its bottle along with a small amount of yeast and a little cane sugar. Then the bottles go into the cellar for the next three to five years. Shortly after they arrive, the yeast in the bottle starts a second fermentation. Gas is formed again, but this time it’s trapped in the wine -- and that’s how champagne gets its effervescent bubbles.

The next step in the process is called riddling. The bottles are held more or less on their sides and each day a riddler comes in and by hand turns the bottle a little to one side and slightly up. The solids that have formed in the bottle as a result of the second fermentation slowly slide down to the neck. A riddler goes through 60,000 bottles a day.

When all the sediment is in the neck, the bottle is placed into a very cold solution of brine. The liquid in the neck freezes. The cap is taken off and the block of sediment shoots out. A little cane sugar is added to balance any acidity, plus some more wine to top off the bottle. Then the cork goes on, followed by the wire covering that keeps it in place. The wire is important... there’s a considerable amount of pressure in the bottle. Three more months of resting in the cellar and it’s ready to party.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: What makes one great champagne house different from another is the style that they use in making their non-vintage champagne, and it’s a style that they use year after year. But every once in a while the grapes of a specific year are so extraordinary that they decide to make a champagne just using the grapes of that year. And when they do, they call it a vintage champagne. But a vintage champagne tells you more about the year than it does about the style of the house.

BURT WOLF: You hear the sound of a champagne bottle opening and you think... somebody’s celebrating something!

Sweetness is also important. It’s a metaphor for the good fortune people hope to have in the New Year. And chocolate plays an important role, symbolizing the rich and sweet hopes that the giver has for the recipient.

An individual chocolate cake can stand as a gift for the trials of the past and a hope for a sweet and rich future. Here’s how they are prepared in the kitchens of The Trianon Palace Hotel in the French town of Versailles. Eggs go into a mixing bowl and get whisked together until they are quite fluffy and filled with air. That’s a ten-minute job by hand or about two minutes by machine.

In a second bowl, sugar is mixed together with flour and some melted semi-sweet chocolate. The chocolate mixture is then blended into the whipped eggs... a little of the egg mixture at first, and then the rest. You don’t want to mix it so much that the air in the egg is forced out. The air gives the final cake its lightness. Half-cup molds are filled about three-quarters of the way with the batter. And then it’s into the oven for a few minutes. The chef mixes a little heavy cream together with a little Bailey’s liqueur and covers the base of the serving plate with that blend. A design is drawn on the plate with some melted chocolate and finally the baked chocolate is placed onto the plate. It looks like a little cake, but when you cut into the center it will be soft and runny like a soufflé. Definitely a great way start to a new year.

The balance to a dish of something that’s sweet and rich is something that is inexpensive and simple--which is what is often served on New Year’s Day. The idea is to say, “please give me the rich stuff because I love it, but don’t forget I’m just a simple person at heart.”

Gerald Hirigoyen is a Basque chef who came to America and opened up two fine restaurants in San Francisco. His simple New Year’s Day dish is a potato and white bean soup. Originally, this was eaten for lunch as a mash of beans and potatoes. Now it's served as a thick, smooth soup. The preparation begins with olive oil being heated in a saucepan; chopped onions and crushed garlic go in and are sautéed for five minutes. Then dried white beans that have been soaked in water overnight, and potatoes, along with a sprig of rosemary. Gerald pours in a vegetable stock and the soup simmers for an hour.

GERALD HIRIGOYEN ON CAMERA: And also what I like about this soup too ... its mostly vegetable and it still has a great flavor to it.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And very low in calories…

GERALD HIRIGOYEN ON CAMERA: Exactly.

BURT WOLF: While the soup is cooking, olives are pureed in a blender. When the soup is cooked, the rosemary is removed and the soup goes into a blender to be pureed. The soup is poured into bowls and the olive puree and some chives go on top. New Year’s is also the time to eat something new or unusual, under the theory that people are hoping for new experiences in the coming year. The day was often used to visit the more unusual members of your family and celebrate with them. And it was always a mark of honor to do the visiting which is why I would like to thank you for visiting with us while we took a look at the rituals of New Year’s. Happy New Year! For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Kwanzaa - #104

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

KWANZAA

BURT WOLF: This is the island of Manhattan. The first European settlers to arrive here were Dutch and they showed up in 1625. They called their community Harlem which was the name of the town they had come from in the Netherlands. Today, Harlem is the epicenter of African-American culture in the United States.

During the 1830s, the New York and Harlem Railroad built a rail line connecting Harlem to downtown New York and the area became a hot property. Many of New York’s most important families decided to build their estates on these streets. When a second railroad line was built from downtown to Harlem, the area was overrun with real estate developers. They thought they could build hundreds of elegant and expensive homes and wealthy New Yorkers would buy in, but they ended up with more expensive homes than New York had wealthy families. The developers didn’t do the math and they were in deep trouble.

A group of black and white real estate brokers, approached the white developers in their empty buildings, explained that they were aware of the developer’s reluctance to sell to blacks but also pointed out that money was green and the only way the developers were going to get any was from them.

Between 1900 and 1920, Harlem became a predominantly black community, but it also became the geographic center for black literature, theater, painting, photography and music.

JOYCE GOLD ON CAMERA: There were a number of reasons why Harlem became the center of Black culture. One of the reasons, I think, had to do with some literary output that came about before many literary figures and artists started moving into Harlem, particularly in the 1920s. Gene Tumor, W.E.B. Du Bois, wrote works of literature that appealed and sort of helped define African-Americans to themselves, and there was something of a literary awakening that spread beyond the confines of Harlem, and it helped attract African-Americans from many parts of the country to that hotbed of cultural ferment. There were a couple of other reasons as well. In the early 1920s, Noble Sissle wrote a play called "Shuffle Along". It was the first African-American play that appeared on Broadway in ten years. It was very well received; it was very lively, and people wanted to hear more. A'Lelia Walker, the daughter of Madame C. J. Walker, the wealthiest, self-made woman in America, her mother had left her a third of her fortune, and A'Lelia Walker opens up something of a salon in Harlem, something called The Black Tower. What happened at the salon was some of the white downtown money appeared, heard what the Black cultural center was achieving, and helped fund some of it. So, that attracted more black artists to Harlem, because there was a way of getting some recompense for what they were turning out.

BURT WOLF: The African-American community had art, culture, music but it did not have its own holiday until Kwanzaa.

THE SYMBOLS OF KWANZAA

BURT WOLF: Kwanzaa runs from December 26th to January 1st. It’s not a religious holiday, but a holiday of reflection--an opportunity for African-Americans to celebrate their African roots. Kwanzaa is a Swahili word and it means “first fruits of the harvest”. It was created in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, — a leader of the Black Cultural Movement and chairman of the black studies department at California State University in Long Beach.

The festival revolves around the number seven. It lasts seven days and there are seven principles and seven symbols, that must be observed. You can celebrate the holiday along the lines Dr. Karenga laid out in his book or you can create your own traditions.

JESSICA HARRIS ON CAMERA: I contend that African-Americans, we don't we don't follow rules well. I mean, so we improvise. It's like jazz. There is a basic Kwanzaa, if you will, and for that, certainly, the reference is anything by Karenga. He invented it. He gets to say what it is. Okay. And basically it's those seven principles and those seven days. We've talked about the seven principles and the seven days but there are also seven symbols of Kwanzaa, and anyone who is going to celebrate Kwanzaa will have these seven symbols organized either on a Kwanzaa table, as a centerpiece to the house, to the room you're celebrating in but in some way, and they're built on the mkeka or the mat. The mat, representing the building block, if you will, of the holiday, the foundation of the holiday.

BURT WOLF: The mat also symbolizes the foundation of Africa and the foundation on which African American values are based. A basket of fruit and vegetables goes on to the Kwanzaa table symbolizing the harvest that takes place when people work together; ears of corn represent children; a communal cup is laid out to show the unity of all the people of African descent. A seven-branched candleholder stands for Africa and the candles stand for the seven principles that Karenga made part of Kwanzaa.

JESSICA HARRIS ON CAMERA: A kinara has seven candle holders, and we organize it in such a way that the middle candle holder is the black candle. The black candle because the colors of the candles on the kinara are red, black and green, which are the colors of African unity. The black one, again, self-evident, for the people. The red one, to represent struggle, and the green one to represent attainment. So, on the first night of Kwanzaa, we light the candle of umoja, the Candle of Unity, which is the black candle in the middle. And on all subsequent nights, we first light on the second day of Kwanzaa the red candle, on the third day of Kwanzaa the green candle, and so on and so forth until we end with the final green candle of Imani. Why do we alternate between red and green? To represent the fact that without struggle, there is no attainment.

And finally, zawadi or gifts because it is still a holiday. But the gifts of Kwanzaa, the zawadi of Kwanzaa are different in that they are gifts that speak to who we are as individuals or as people. They are books about African history about the history of Africans in the Diaspora. They may be records. They are things that are self-made or hand-made or things that in some way will instruct and propel and urge onward the youngsters. And the zawadi of Kwanzaa, the gifts of Kwanzaa are for the most part for the young. I think Kwanzaa is an incredible holiday for just that because it tells the young something about who they are, and it gives them a focus as to where they go.

KWANZAA AT THE BOOKER HOME

BURT WOLF: Every year Marie Booker and her daughter Kathleen invite their family and friends to celebrate Kwanzaa — an evening of drumming, eating and ceremony.

KATHLEEN BOOKER ON CAMERA: It's a bonding time for my mother and I, first and foremost, cause this is a tradition that she and I have started and even though we work very hard, it really is a time that it just shows our love for one another, and especially I hope it shows my love for my mother. And we're both very giving, nurturing people and community minded, and it's s way to share not only it's a way to share what we have with each other with others, and to invite the community at large to open up their hearts, their souls, their minds, and go out and touch someone else. I come, I touch you. You go, you touch someone else. It's a ripple effect.

So it's sort of a spiritual celebration, renewal of your moralities, a coming together, a oneness with the universe and a oneness with your friendships, all of these things.

FOODS OF KWANZAA

BURT WOLF: Food is a major part of the Kwanzaa celebration. Often the foods cooked for Kwanzaa are drawn from different parts of the world where Africans were brought during their enslavement or in which they have a long heritage: Africa, the American South, the Caribbean, South America.

KATHLEEN BOOKER ON CAMERA: We always have a fish because it represents in African American lore, culture, it represents silver, coins. It’s also luck. We always have some type of African dish because it introduces our community to our culture.

BURT WOLF: Kathleen starts by cleaning the fish and making sure all of the scales are off. Then she makes slits in the skin on both sides. Paprika, dried thyme, garlic powder and fresh black pepper get mixed together and rubbed into the slits in the fish. The spice mixture is spread all over the fish inside and out. The sauce is made by sautéing onions, garlic and chopped green pepper. Fresh pureed tomato is added along with dried thyme, scotch bonnet chili and homemade fish stock. The mixture cooks until its soft and then gets pureed in a blender. The fish goes into a pan, the sauce is poured over the top. It’s covered with aluminum foil and baked in the oven. Kathleen and her mom also prepare a dish of marinated collard greens. The greens are rolled up and thinly sliced. Olive oil and sesame oil are added and a little garlic powder.

KATHLEEN BOOKER ON CAMERA: Some cayenne pepper that my mother and I brought back from Benin, West Africa, just a splish splosh to give it a little kick.

BURT WOLF: Sliced shallots go in. Some fresh garlic and everything gets mixed together.

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES

BURT WOLF: On each day of Kwanzaa, a candle is lit and one of the seven principles discussed.

ADA MARIE MURRAY ON CAMERA: Each one of the zaba or seven principles that black Americans should live by on a daily basis and which are reinforced during Kwanzaa. Umoja which is unity; Kujichagulia which is self-determination;Ujima, collective work and responsibility; Ujamaa, cooperative economics; Nia, purpose; Kuumba, creativity; and Imani, faith.

BURT WOLF: A perfect example of the fourth night, cooperative economics, is Londel’s restaurant. In 1995, Londel Davis, a retired police officer, opened Londel’s Supper Club on the same spot where he used to pack groceries as a child.

LONDEL DAVIS ON CAMERA: Londel's was put here intentionally because I think this part of Harlem needed something to lift it up. I felt that black people had to take hold of their condition, they had to do certain things to better their plight. Londel's Restaurant has been put in a place right in the middle of the so-called hood, the inner bowels of the Harlem community, which is Northern Harlem. I’ve been able to hire people from the community and often when someone comes to me that has had problems, they've just come out of jail or they had some drug addiction, I let it be known to them that this is a new beginning, so this is a way that you can sort of get back on track, better your condition.

Londel's cuisine encompasses three different styles of cooking. Southern traditional, Cajun, Continental. When me and Kenny, Kenny being the chef, sat down and talked about the type of menu, we both agreed that Harlem needed something for the future, realizing that the complexion is changing, there's new people coming to the community, and ideally as people live here, they will spend their money here. So the menu being encompasses these three types of cooking, we refer to it as New York style, and that mix or that blend of cooking, you can sort of accommodate any taste.

This restaurant I think has become quite popular for its catfish. The blackened catfish, sauteed spinach, seasoned rice pilaf.

BURT WOLF: The restaurant is also known for its barbecued ribs and smothered pork chops and you could make a whole meal out of the sides of macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and candied yams.

LONDEL DAVIS ON CAMERA: Londel's is a supper club, it dictates that we have music.

LAURA MANN SINGING ON CAMERA: Tonight is going to be a good night because we’re just going to mix everything up, okay?

LONDEL DAVIS ON CAMERA: I have a wonderful woman tonight, Laura Mann, and me and Laura go back to the early days of the restaurant. She's a wonderful, wonderful woman. This is back in the day when the restaurant was doing very poorly, and we couldn't pay much money. The scale might have been a hundred dollars at a meal. And she would come and she'd say, well, you know, God's going to bless you, don't worry about it. I just like the spirit of the restaurant.

I often say that, my mother and the spirit are the reason I'm here and I'm doing what I'm doing. She's a wonderful woman, I think that most of all she instilled in me the love of God and just the love of people. That's the kind of person she was. Her picture's on the wall because I feel that she's watching over me.

BURT WOLF: When it comes to the principle of creativity you’ve got to take a look at the Apollo Theater. The Apollo opened in 1914 as a burlesque house. Though blacks performed, it was a white-only audience. By 1934 under pressure from Mayor La Guardia, the theater went from burlesque entertainment to variety revues and opened its doors to African Americans.

BILLY MITCHELL ON CAMERA: First of all, I just want to welcome you all to the world famous Apollo Theater. My name is Billy Mitchell. I used to be an errand boy for the stars. I would stand in the back of the Apollo backstage door, and as these stars would come in, I would offer to run errands for them. In the latter part of 1934, there was a Jewish brother. His name was Frank Schiffman. He ran this place from 1934 until 1977 starting the careers of all of these people whose pictures are up on the wall, including the careers of people like Billie Holiday and Lena Horne, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, James Brown and they all appeared right inside on the stage in a show called Amateur Night at the Apollo, which is our longest running show to this date.

Now, when you talk about jazz and jazz trumpet players, one of the greatest ever player of trumpet, up there in the corner, Mr. Miles Davis. The lady next to him in that beautiful gown with the stripes, she was a blues singer, her name was Ruth Brown. Mama, you treat your daughter mean. Otis Redding. Sitting in the morning sun. Brooke Benton. Rainy night in Georgia. And Ben E. King. So darlin', darlin', stand by me.

And Ella Fitzgerald. Ella Fitzgerald. In 1937, she was a contestant on our Amateur Night show, and when Ella was scheduled to perform she originally came on to be a dancer. Ella you know was studying dance for awhile and she was intimidated by the dancers that preceded her on the show that night. So she turned to the host Ralph Cooper, and said, Mr. Cooper, sir, I don't think I can go out there, those people are so good and I don't want to embarrass myself. He says, honey, you got to go out there, your name's on the program, you're scheduled, you got to go out there. She says, please don't make me. He says, honey, you got to go. She says, please. He says, well, what else do you do? She says, well, I do sing a little bit and he sent her out there, and she won the Amateur Night performance.

All right. All right, family, now we're inside. This is the Apollo Theater auditorium. When we do our Amateur Night, usually the host stands over there, the amateur stands right here. If they like what you're doing up here, they'll applaud you. However, if they think that your act is, as they say, is wack, they will do something that to most civilized people sounds rude, but it's tradition here, they will boo you. Now, folks, I want to do something right now. And I need your cooperation. I would like for us, just us, right, to put on our very own Amateur Night right now, right here on this stage of the Apollo. So I need a few volunteers. Come on, this is just for fun.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a big Apollo welcome to Harlem Love. Come on make them feel good.

HARLEM LOVE ON CAMERA: Wave your hands in the air. Wave ‘em like you just don’t care.

BILLY MITCHELL ON CAMERA: Give it up for Freight Train. Whoa!

It took a lot of courage for them to come up here and do this. And that's evident by so many of you that are sitting down there. I see you. I see you. So please join me once again and give them all a big round of applause. Take a bow.

BURT WOLF: Imani is the sixth candle and stands for faith. One of the great examples of faith in action is the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. It’s been called a model religious institution that can help save America from the social stresses of our time, a church for the twenty-first century.

REVEREND CECIL WILLIAMS ON CAMERA: Most people during that period of time when I was a child, 12 or 13 years old, would play Indians and Cowboys, I didn’t, I played church.

BURT WOLF: Under the direction of the Reverend Cecil Williams it has become the city’s largest private provider of social services, offering recovery programs for substance abusers, domestic-violence workshops, teaching job-skills, and feeding 3,500 people three times a day.

REVEREND CECIL WILLIAMS ON CAMERA: And I used my imagination to integrate people into the church on the basis of them not being segregated. We are the church first and foremost and it’s concerned about justice. And with justice is always unconditional love. I’ve got a 144 boys gospel choir, a band that will get down, and I’ve got over 3,000 people who come here every Sunday all colors, all kinds, people from all over the world. And what we do is we create spontaneous action with each other there’s no telling what might occur. This is a place where we celebrate.

BURT WOLF: Hallelujah. Just what I was thinking. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Christmas - #103

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

CHRISTMAS

BURT WOLF: Christmas is about remembering the past. It could be your actual past or some other past that you just feel like remembering. The sound of sleigh bells, the smell of pine needles, the taste of gingerbread. The toy trains and doll houses that remind us of a time when we thought we could control the world around us—when it looked like all our dreams might come true. In the northern hemisphere, we celebrate Christmas at the coldest and darkest time of the year when the fields are barren. And for that reason, the central message of Christmas is “no matter how dark and how cold it looks now, light, warmth and growth will return”.

CHRISTMAS TREES

BURT WOLF: During the 1500s, German Protestants introduced Christmas trees because they felt that the human images of St. Nicholas, the Three Kings and the Christ Child being used in Catholic communities were inappropriate.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: Christmas was never a big deal in America, largely because the Protestant immigrants who came here, many from Germany, mostly from Germany in the early eighteenth century, and late seventeenth century, were not terribly fond of idol worshippers. And so therefore they tended to downplay the holidays that came, in the course of the Roman Catholic year. Tree worship goes back a long way. When I say knock on wood, what do I really mean? Well, wood is a tree. And a tree is important to us, for well, let's think, it gives us shade in the in the hot summer. It gives us fuel in its wood in the winter. It gives us fruit so that we can eat. No wonder worshipping trees, was very, very important throughout all culture. The German form of the tree would be the evergreen. It was brought here by German immigrants. And it was decorated with baubles and I think that that decorating of the tree is no different from the reason why we decorate our houses with lights. We want to be ostentatious.

BURT WOLF: The Christmas tree tradition became popular in the United States in December of 1850, when Godey’s Magazine published a picture of Queen Victoria of England and her family standing around a small Christmas tree. The image was reproduced around the world.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The Queen's husband, Prince Albert, was German, and Christmas trees had been part of the German holiday tradition for centuries. Prince Albert was merely introducing his kids to what had happened in his own childhood, but anything that happened in the British royal household was immediately covered by the British press, and anything that was in the British press was immediately covered in the United States.

BURT WOLF: One year later, in 1851, a farmer from the Catskill Mountains paid a licensing fee of $1 to the City of New York and set up the first official sidewalk concession for the sale of Christmas trees. The greenery of the forest slipped into town and everybody loved it.

The first set of electric Christmas lights went on to the tree of Edward Johnson, who was the Vice President of Thomas Edison’s electric company in New York. Electric lights were more economical than candles because they could be reused for years and even more important they were much safer than a candle’s open flame.

When I think of F.W. Woolworth, which isn’t that often, I think of him as the man who made a fortune as the father of the five and dime store. But a big hunk of his fortune came as a Christmas present. In 1880, Woolworth was wandering around the warehouse of an importer in Philadelphia, looking for some cheap toys to put into his store. The importer thought that F. W. might also be interested in a series of glass Christmas ornaments that he had just brought in from Germany.

Woolworth thought the importer was out of his mind. The breakage during shipment would be enormous and if any of them got through in one piece, no one would know what to do with them. The importer, however, felt so strongly about the market for these ornaments that he guaranteed their sale. If Woolworth didn’t sell at least twenty-five dollars worth, he could have the whole shipment for free.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The ornaments came into Woolworth's store just before Christmas and he put them out thinking, boy, am I wasting good retail space. Two days later, they were sold out. The next year, he stocked up even more and sold them out and more and more and more until he made twenty five million dollars on those little glass ornaments. And when the Second World War came along and put an end to trading with Germany, he taught the Corning Glass Works of Corning New York how to make the little Christmas tree ornaments and they didn't do badly, either.

CHRISTMAS AT BILTMORE ESTATE

BURT WOLF: Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, is the largest private home in North America. It was put together by George W. Vanderbilt in the late 1800s. George was the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. At one time Cornelius was the wealthiest man in the world and the family’s sense of grandeur is clearly visible throughout the estate. The original property covered one hundred and twenty five thousand acres. George planted those acres with a working forest and a wooded park. He also directed the planting of five gardens and the construction of 30 miles of roadway. Cathy Barnhardt is the floral supervisor at Biltmore Estate.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Of course we have the winter garden decorated for Christmas right now. We have very typical Christmas plants in here and some maybe that aren't so typical. Poinsettia I think most people can identify as Christmas.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Mm-hm.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: But why? You know, we have bright red bracts these are actually bracts rather than the flower. The flower are the small yellow pieces here in the center and those represent the Crown of Thorns for Christ and the bracts are the blood of Christ. So that that's where the Christian symbolism comes into using poinsettias in your home and church.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: They're not native to America, are they?

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: No, they were collected in 1829 by Joel Poinsette who was the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. And of course in Mexico poinsettias are just roadside weeds they're growing everywhere. But quite exotic at that time. This is an Olmstead basket what we call an Olmstead basket a miniature garden in a basket.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And it's named after the garden architect

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Right.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: its landscaper who built the place ...

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Frederick Law Olmstead who also was the landscape designer for Biltmore Estate. And it has all those little garden elements in it. As well as traditional plants but I especially like to use the twigs. And again there's a little symbolic reason to use that you see the buds about to

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Yeah.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Burst, you know? So spring is coming there's renewal there. Another plant typical of turn of the century decorating is ivy and I like to use that one at Christmas time because of its symbolism as well. It was used in ancient times to protect from evil spirits.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Ivy?

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Yes planted around the house and growing up over the cottage the vine-covered cottage to protect the inhabitants from evil spirits.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Oh, I never heard that that's fascinating.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Yes. And then the Christian belief takes it a step further and talks about the strength of ivy because once it does cling to something it doesn't let go. So that strength that fidelity that belief is reflected in the ivy.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: I am going to plant ivy this spring and ...

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Protect yourself and be strong. Another plant typically found in winter gardens otherwise known as palm courts are palms and we have several varieties here in the winter garden. This is a fan palm we have eureka, fish tails, lots of different textures of greenery.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: And they're also associated with Christ.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: They certainly were that's another nice tradition that we can tie in with Christmas we all think about the palm tree being or palm fronds being laid at Christ's feet.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Yeah.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: on Palm Sunday and that represented humility and also honor for Christ.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: So all of the plants in this room besides being beautiful plants have additional meaning that relate to Christmas.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: Yes. Many, many of the plants that we use do relate right back to Christmas. And I think it's important that we here at Biltmore try to hold onto those traditions. We may not convey to every guest what those traditions are. But I think that it's important that we keep, putting it out there so people think about it.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: You need to know what you're looking at.

CATHY BARNHARDT ON CAMERA: That's right.

SANTA CLAUS

BURT WOLF: For over a hundred years the dominant image of Christmas in the United States has been Santa Claus. But as it is with so many superstars, the general public usually doesn’t realize how long the guy had been in the business before he was “discovered”. Santa is a perfect example.

His early work was as a bishop during the fourth century in Turkey. He was a real person and his name was Nicholas. His thing was to give gifts to kids and dowries to young ladies who wanted to get married. Later he became a minor folk hero in northern Europe, and eventually arrived in New York City with the early Dutch settlers. The name Santa Claus comes from the Dutch for St. Nicholas.

His first significant media exposure came in the 1860s, when Thomas Nast, an important artist of the time, showed him in a series of illustrations for Harper’s Weekly.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: At the time, people were interested in the explorers who were heading to the North Pole and it was Nast who decided that Santa Claus lived at the North Pole. Nast's drawings showed him in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, big sacks of gifts behind him and stockings hung by the chimney with care. Nast got those ideas from a poem by Clement Moore called "A Visit From Santa Claus." And Moore got those ideas from Washington Irving, all of which is to say that our picture of Christmas started with the work of Washington Irving.

BURT WOLF: Santa, in his present form, is an all-American invention. The size of his stomach, his ruddy complexion, his fur-trimmed suit and his desire to share his stuff all speak to the image of America as a nation of abundance.

We also present Santa as an entrepreneur. He’s got a factory filled with workers. He developed an airborne delivery system a century before anyone heard of Federal Express. And he is one of the leading authorities on the advantages of the “not for profit business”.

GIFT GIVING

BURT WOLF: Originally, Christmas presents were simple gifts for little children. The tree was the holder and they hung from the branches—the gifts, not the children. As the trees got bigger, the presents got bigger. And when the presents began to get too big to hang on the tree, they started getting placed under and around the tree. In the old days, the present was clearly visible—no wrapping—what you saw was what you got. And most often they were hand-made.

Things began to change however and one of the great forces for change in the history of American business was the Civil War. Suddenly, the Union army was placing huge orders with manufacturers. Industry had to learn to mass-produce what was needed. Instead of getting a suit cut to the precise size of your body, you got a 52 regular and hoped it did the job.

The war created a need for foods that were easy to carry. The canning process for food had been developed in 1825 but its growth was slow until 1858. That was the year when the can opener was invented. Having both the can and the opener made all the difference and the industry took off in response to orders from the Union Army.

Demand from the troops was also responsible for the success of condensed milk, and canned pork and beans. The troops were introduced to commercially made soap and candles. We even learned to mass-produce our Christmas presents.

During the 1860s the first wrapped gifts showed up. The paper was always plain and held in place with ceiling wax or pins and later with string and tinsel cord. By the middle of the 1870s, everybody was wrapping. But fancy wrapping paper only arrived during the First World War when Joyce Halls' little shop in Kansas City, Missouri, ran out of the solid color tissue and filled in with some French envelope lining paper that he used in his greeting card business.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: He sold out. Next year he bought some more and sold out again. So, he decided to start printing his own wrapping papers. Wanted a brand name. So he called it Hallmark. Some historians believe that the idea of wrapping a present is part of the Victorian passion for enclosing things, for disguising all intimacy, for holding off the anticipated. But to tell you the truth, that's kind of a stretch for me. I tend to think a cigar is just a cigar. Nevertheless, 96 percent of all Christmas presents given in the United States are wrapped.

CHRISTMAS THROUGH A WINDOW

BURT WOLF: These Lord & Taylor windows interpret the story of the Nutcracker.

Well now, we're literally underneath the sidewalk. In Fifth Avenue. So, this is how a hydraulic lift system, that was installed here in this store, in 1914. And still works. Let's bring it down. The great thing about this system is that, enables us to create a, to play with the levels in the windows. So you will see in order to hide all the mechanics, for the figures, the mechanical figures, we create this three, three to four foot platform. In all the, the mechanism underneath, in case you have to go back and fix something. You don't have to literally destroy the window you just crawl underneath, and fix everything, there.

People always asking me, what do you like the most about your job? I always say, when everything is done, when the windows are complete, and I finally have the chance to go upstairs and just kind of mingle with the crowd, and, and hear the comments, and then listen to the oohs, and aaahs, that's a great feeling, and that pays off all the long hours and the hard work.

THE FOODS OF CHRISTMAS

BURT WOLF: One of the most important rules in any festival is that the festival itself and most of the objects within it must be temporary. A festival, by definition, is something out of the ordinary, different from everyday life. If it stays around too long it loses its impact. For that reason, food and anything made of edible material is always a mainstay of any festival.

The Christmas meal varies from place to place, even within the United States. The core of the meal is usually a big bird either a goose or a turkey. But if you go down south you will also find ham.

Perhaps the greatest single influence on Christmas dinners in the United States came from the meal that was described by Charles Dickens in “A Christmas Carol”. He took the grand family feast of the Old English Christmas and shrunk it down so it worked for a single household. His book was first published in 1843 and became a Christmas instruction manual for the American homemakers.

CATHY KAUFMAN ON CAMERA: The most detailed meal is the meal of the dream with the ghost of Christmas present. In it, Bob Cratchett is at home .There is a roast goose with gravy. There is potato and onion and sage stuffing for it. There's certainly gravy for the goose, applesauce and some mashed potatoes, interestingly enough. The interesting thing, we tend to think today of goose as being a fairly elegant bird. A fairly expensive bird. And turkey being relatively inexpensive. And some how as slightly less elaborate than a goose. That was not the case in the nineteenth century, both in England and in this country. Goose was the much more plebeian bird. Turkey was the luxury bird. When Scrooge wakes up the following morning and realizes he has a chance to repent, he flags down a little street urchin says "is there that big turkey still in the poulter's window?" The little boy says "the one as big as me?" And Scrooge, who was a changed man says "Ah!, very bright fellow, yes, that's the one." And sends him off to buy that turkey to send to the Cratchett family. The fact that he chose a turkey rather than a goose, was a real step up to the Cratchett family in terms of the fair on their table.

BURT WOLF: Each year, Andreas Hauk at the Hotel Nassauer Hof in Wiesbaden, Germany prepares a traditional Christmas goose. He starts by chopping onions, apples, and oranges and putting them into a bowl and seasoning them with salt and pepper and dried thyme. The mixture goes into the goose which is sewn up. The legs are tied together and the outside of the bird is seasoned with salt and pepper. Oil goes into a pan and the bird is browned on all sides. The giblets go into the pan, some water and into the oven. It cooks in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for one and a half hours and then another ten minutes at 500 degrees to crisp up the skin. The goose is then ready to be carved and served.

Red and green are always the colors of Christmas and Christmas foods. Red is for warmth and brightness; green is the promise that the leaves of the trees will return in the spring. Red cabbage is often on the menu.

Andreas starts his recipe for red cabbage by cutting the core of the cabbage out and then slicing it. He adds cloves, juniper berries, bay leaves, a cinnamon stick, and salt and pepper. Red wine is poured on top. The cabbage is covered and refrigerated for 24 hours to marinate.

Goose fat goes into a pan or you can use oil. Sliced onions are added. The red wine is squeezed out of the cabbage and the cabbage is added to the onions. Red wine from the pan goes in, followed by some sugar. The cabbage cooks on low heat for an hour. Apples are grated and put into the pot and it’s ready to serve.

Christmas is also a time for bread and cake baking and cookie making. Special Christmas breads are introduced like the German Christstollen. Andreas starts by soaking raisins in rum. Then warm milk is poured into a bowl, and yeast is whisked in. Flour is slowly blended in by hand. Almonds, butter, candied citron, and candied orange peel are added. The dough is worked together. In goes the sugar, salt, baking powder, and raisins. A cloth goes on top and the dough is put in a warm place to rise for an hour and a half. A form is floured, the dough is pressed in and it’s off to the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When it’s baked, it’s sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.

Gingerbread is also part of the Christmas tradition. Ginger is an ancient spice that originated in Asia. During the Middle Ages it was the second most popular spice—right after black pepper. And during the 1500s, bakers started adding it to breads and cookies. German bakers were particularly attracted to the taste of ginger and the city of Nuremberg, which was one of the spice trading centers of Europe, became the gingerbread capital of the world. The town’s sculptors, wood carvers and goldsmiths began forming gingerbread into hearts, angels, men, animals and houses.

In the United States, the traditional beverage for Christmas is eggnog. Eggnog is related to a series of drinks made from milk and wine that go back for hundreds of years. When the wine and milk drinks arrived in colonial America, we dropped the wine and replaced it with rum. Rum drinks were called grog and one particular recipe was known as egg and grog, which eventually became eggnog.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: In 1897 eight year old Virginia O’Hanlon the daughter of a New York City doctor wrote to a local newspaper and asked was there really a Santa Claus. Francis Church, a correspondent for the paper, answered with his famous column “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.” The column recommended that Americas be generous of spirit, love their fellow man, and even in the darkest days of winter trust that the Sun – which was also the name of the newspaper – would return. It recommended that we all have a positive vision of the future. And Merry Christmas to all.

For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Hanukkah - #102

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

HANUKKAH

BURT WOLF: During the Jewish month of Kislev, Jews throughout the world light Hanukkah candles in memory of a battle that took place in 165 B.C. A Jewish clan known as the Maccabees won a battle against the King of Syria, which allowed them to return to Jerusalem and rededicate a sacred temple that had been sacked and burned. The encounter was part of a rebellion by the Maccabees.

RABBI JEFFREY WOHLBERG ON CAMERA: It was a rebellion doomed to failure because it was a small group of guerrillas against the greatest armed might of the world. And ultimately, they could not win. But they won some battles and some significant victories. They were able to recapture the Temple. And in 165 before the Common Era, they cleansed the Temple, they removed the statue, they rededicated the Temple to God, their God, the God, our God, and they celebrated a festival. According to the tradition that grew up, there was only enough sacred oil found to last one day and the sacred oil miraculously lasted eight days and we celebrate that miracle and the rededication of the Temple. The word Hanukkah itself means dedication or re-dedication.

BURT WOLF: But it was not just a battle against the religious oppression of the Syrian King. It was also a battle against assimilation—the acceptance of Greek Hellenist culture by Jews.

RABBI WOHLBERG ON CAMERA: The Maccabees didn't rebel because they wanted political independence. They lost. Jews had lost political independence centuries before and they were not about to get it back. They were rebelling because Judaism was outlawed. They were rebelling not only because Judaism was outlawed but because they were seeing assimilation all around them. Hellenism was a dominant culture, very significant, and it was very attractive. It was new and it was upbeat and it was worldly. And so, Jews were attracted to it. And Jews who should've known better were participating in the Greek games, they were speaking Greek, they were adopting Greek culture and Greek attitudes. And in doing that, they were abandoning Judaism. So the Maccabees were fighting on two fronts, as it were: the external front against this domination and the internal front against assimilation.

BURT WOLF: As Rabbi Wohlberg pointed out, when the Maccabees were cleansing the Temple, they came upon a container of sanctified oil which they needed for their rituals. It appeared to be only enough oil to last a day, but it lasted for eight days which was considered a miracle. Hanukkah is therefore an eight-day festival with one light being lit each night in a special lamp.

The largest and most comprehensive collection of these lamps is in New York’s Jewish Museum. The lamps on view come from all over the world and illustrate many aspects of Jewish history. Susan Braunstein is the Curator of Archaeology and Judaica.

SUSAN BRAUNSTEIN ON CAMERA: I think that all the lamps that we have on display here show a special relationship, of the Jews to the lands they were living in. The form of the Hanukkah lamp, other than the fact that it needs eight lights, is the only requirement for a Hanukkah lamp, and so the decorations, however, vary according to where the Jews lived. And so many times you see the national symbol of the country where the Jews are living incorporated in the lamps.

Originally there were only to be eight lights, one for each night of the holiday, but during the course of time it was realized that the eight lights provided room light, that you would be reading by this or using it to do work by, and the rabbis decreed that you can not use the Hanukkah lamp for anything but religious. It was a religious light, it was a holy light and you couldn't use it for secular purposes. So over time a ninth light was added, which kind of took the function of the secular lighting of the room. You can imagine, in days before electricity, that people didn't have brightly lit rooms, and candles and oil were expensive, and so the Hanukkah light just had to provide some illumination in the room, and so in order not to use it for secular purposes, they added a ninth light. Today, we use the ninth light also to light the other eight.

One of my favorite lamps is this lamp over here. It originally started out as a souvenir from Australia, and you can see that it has an emu on the top, and a kangaroo down here. And it had this wonderful frame, and originally an emu egg would have hung in the frame. And I surmise that eventually the emu egg broke and the person didn't know what to do with this, so they put a row of oil containers there, and they used it as a Hanukkah lamp. So it started out its life in Australia, probably was bought as a souvenir and brought to Europe or the United States and was used as a Hanukkah lamp.

This is a magnificent lamp, done in the eighteenth century in Poland and it's made out of silver and gilt and it’s open work and repousse and quite elaborate decoration. And what it does is represents the Torah arks that Jews in Poland and the Ukraine would have had in their synagogues, these magnificent two and three story Torah arks that were made out of carved open wood work, and in the scrolls you can see animals and birds all inhabiting it. So I think it's a combination of baroque style and also of the local folk art style, because of all the use of the animals and the birds, which were very popular in folk art of the time. And if you look down here, you see a double-headed eagle, and that is the symbol of the ruling emperor, of the Hapsburg Empire of Austria. And so Jews, again, incorporated the symbols of the countries under which they lived, the art styles of the countries where they lived, but we have them doing that on a Hanukkah lamp.

This lamp was created in 1974, I think it's a combination of pop art and folk art, and it was created by Mae Rockland Tupa in anticipation of the Bicentennial of the United States. It has wonderful patriotic imagery, the American flag on the base, and these Statues of Liberty, which are actually holding birthday candleholders in order to light the lights. The artist is obviously celebrating the joys of being an American citizen, the joys of being free in the United States as a Jew, but she's also expressing a poignant issue as well, that some of the statues she has placed facing forward, and some she has placed facing backward to the viewer.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Why are they facing backwards?

SUSAN BRAUNSTEIN ON CAMERA: These are facing backward because the artist feels that at times in the history of the Jews in this country, the United States turned its back on Jews and she's thinking particularly of the time during World War Two, when Jews were fleeing Europe and were not allowed to enter this country. So I think she’s expressing both the wonders and joys of being in the United States, but also some of the bad points as well.

THE FOODS OF HANUKKAH

BURT WOLF: From biblical times on, olive oil has played an important role in Jewish life. It was used for cooking, as a sunscreen and moisturizer, as medicine, as fuel and as an anointing agent in religious services. Olive trees can live for hundreds of years. The roots are so strong and deep that even if you cut the trunk of the tree the roots will send up new life. Olive trees are a symbol of immortality, dependability and peace. Of all foods, the olive most symbolizes the continuity of the Jewish people.

At Hanukkah, Jews eat foods that are fried in oil to symbolize the miracle of the oil that lit the lamps in the Temple. One of the most traditional foods is the potato pancake.

The recipe for potato pancakes is pretty simple. Grated potatoes are mixed with chopped onion, egg, salt and pepper, and a little parsley to add color. The mixture is shaped, flattened and fried.

JOAN NATHAN ON CAMERA: In America you would never go to a home without potato pancakes. Either boxed or bought frozen or made from scratch. I'll make about three dozen for tonight.

Jews from Sephardic countries, the Mediterranean, they don't have to have pancakes fried in oil because they had a lot more food. So they might have oil desserts. They might have donuts, for example, for desserts.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: But always a fried disk of some kind?

JOAN NATHAN ON CAMERA: Always fried disk. Always some sort of fried pancake.

BURT WOLF: The last night of this particular Hanukkah festival fell on a Friday, which in Judaism is the beginning of the Sabbath--the day of rest.

JOAN NATHAN ON CAMERA: Challah is a Sabbath bread. And the one that is used every Friday night, at least in my house, to separate the Sabbath from the everyday week. Whenever I'm making challah I think about Eastern Europe where people could not get white bread. It was very expensive.

You know, we have a tradition on the Sabbath, you say a blessing, over bread before you eat it. And before we say the blessings, we take these breads, put them over our heads and hold onto somebody who's holding onto the bread, or hold onto the bread. So that we show a connection between people.

ALLAN GERSON ON CAMERA: We are here to celebrate together a very very special holiday, but like all holidays in the Jewish tradition we are asked to always interpret it differently. It’s very simple. It’s the story of freedom but everybody has to interpret freedom in their own way because every generation has a different challenge. Happy Hanukkah.

FAMILY AROUND TABLE ON CAMERA: Happy Hanukkah.

BURT WOLF: Hanukkah at the Nathan household is all about connecting to loved ones and paying respect to their Jewish ancestry.

JOAN NATHAN ON CAMERA: I think that we all, no matter what our background is, owe something to our traditions. And it doesn't really matter how you carry it on, but that you do carry it on, that you remember who I am as opposed to who he is. And say it with pride.

It's ironic that in this period of history where Jews in America have the freest life they've ever had that some people just don't care about their traditions. Here, this is a time in America when we have the freedom to carry on the traditions that each of us, I don't care what background you're from, brought to America. And I think it's our sort of an obligation to carry it on, to continue it.

Sufganiyot anybody? For dessert at Hanukkah I always make sufganiyot, which are Israeli jelly donuts. And the jelly donut is the one food that all Israelis eat at Hanukkah.

BURT WOLF: To make jelly donuts, you need a dough that is similar to a brioche dough--eggs, flour, yeast, sugar, and lemon rind are combined and left to rise in the refrigerator overnight. When they’re ready to serve, they’re rolled into balls and deep fried.

JOAN NATHAN ON CAMERA: You have to have very hot oil cause you want them to puff up and then you fill them with jelly afterwards. I use a Chinese wok when I’m deep-frying because you don’t have to use as much oil. It heats up evenly. I think it works really well. You can’t put too many in a time so it’s not too saturated with oil. When I make these this connects us back and this connects my family back with what there was in ancient Israel. Even if they don’t get what I’m doing in the kitchen, they do get it because these kids are connected to other kids so they have a good time and they associate coming to my house I hope with having fun with being with other children and after all, what are holidays for if not connections with your family with your friends with your family friends.

RUGELACH

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: At Hanukkah there is a particular interest in foods based on cheese. And that’s because of the story of Judith. It seems there was a Syrian general attacking the Jews and at the same time trying to date Judith. One night he was over at her house and she served him a lot of cheese that had a lot of salt in it. The salt made him thirsty. He drank a lot of wine. Eventually he passed out and as soon as he did Judith took a sword and cut off his head, which made him more or less useless as the head of the army. And to commemorate that event, cheese-based foods are served at Hanukkah.

BURT WOLF: A favorite example of a Hanukkah food is rugelach. Rugelach means little rolls and they originated in Austria. They are small crescent-shaped cookies and their dough is made with cream cheese, which brings us back to the story of Judith and the salty cheese.

Sarabeth Levine, who is the Sarabeth in Sarabeth’s, is doing the baking. She graduated from college with a degree in sociology which is the systematic study of how groups of human beings behave. Considering her success, this seems to have been the ideal background for a professional baker. A professional who is devoted to baking the special foods of our holidays.

She starts her rugelach by mixing butter and cream cheese together in a standing mixer. Sugar and salt go in. A little vanilla. A little lemon zest. The flour is slowly added and all the ingredients for the dough combined. The counter gets a light dusting of flour so the dough won’t stick. The dough comes out onto the flat surface and is cut in half. Each half is rolled into a ball and goes into the refrigerator for a couple of hours to chill out.

When they come out, each ball is rolled into a disk that is about fourteen inches in diameter and about a quarter-inch thick. Sarabeth then covers the dough with her own plum cherry preserves and is careful to leave a one-inch preserve-free border. Next she sprinkles on a filling made from chopped walnuts, granulated sugar, brown sugar, cocoa powder and cinnamon.

Each disk is then cut into sixteen slices. Starting with the wider back edge she rolls the dough into a tubular shape. The tube is then turned in at the ends to form a crescent and placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Then into a preheated oven for about thirty minutes. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and you are ready to honor the heroism of Judith. The crescent shape of the pastry is reminiscent of the shape of her dagger; the cream cheese is a reminder of the cheese she fed to the enemy.

SPINNING DREIDELS

CANTOR ON CAMERA: Okay here we are. Everybody see the letters over here.

YOUNG BOY ON CAMERA: I can read them.

CANTOR ON CAMERA: They’re Hebrew letters right and you can read them.

BURT WOLF: Hanukkah has an official game—dreidel spinning. A dreidel is a four-sided top with a letter on each side. Each letter stands for an instruction to the players.

CANTOR ON CAMERA: Well, that’s a shin, right?

BURT WOLF: The game starts with each player placing a coin, or something that stands for a coin, into the pot. Then one of the players spins the dreidel. If it lands with the nun up, then the player takes nothing from the pot. If the gimel is up, you take everything in the pot. Hay will give you half and if it’s shin, you add a coin.

CANTOR ON CAMERA: Okay, shin.

YOUNG BOY ON CAMERA: I win.

BURT WOLF: If you come to a point where you no longer have any coins, you’re out of the game.

RABBI JEFFREY WOHLBERG ON CAMERA: According to the tradition, the Maccabees, in order to indicate that they had achieved independence, which they really didn't, but to try to emphasize that they had, minted coins. That was a symbol of their independence. So the minting of the coins by the Maccabees in ancient times became the symbol for Hanukkah gelt in modern times.

BURT WOLF: You’d think playing with a dreidel was easy but in certain environments it’s quite difficult.

CONTROLLER AT NASA ON CAMERA: Endeavour it’s Houston for Jeff. All of America would like to know what you’ve got and what you’re doing with it.

ASTRONAUT JEFF HOFFMAN ON CAMERA: This is the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and there’s various ways that we celebrate it. And one of the games that we play is a little game with a dreidel. And its something that you spin and then you see which side comes up and according to that you either win or lose. And I was just trying to see how you might reinterpret the rules for space flights since there’s no up or down. Hanukkah is the festival of lights. It lasts eight days and to celebrate it, we light a little menorah which has eight candles and you light one more everyday until finally on the eighth day you have eight candles and so I brought a little traveling menorah of course up here in the shuttle we’re not going to actually light the candles. To help the celebration of the season I brought it along. It’s a little silver traveling menorah.

BURT WOLF: Challenged by the Mission Specialist Jeff Hoffman’s skill, I returned to

Temple Adas Israel in Washington D.C., for a remedial class in dreidel spinning.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Okay. Who’s going to teach me how to spin the dreidel. Okay. Go ahead. Show me how.

BURT WOLF: There’s a legend that explains why the game is associated with Hanukkah. It says that when the King of Syria decided that any Jew found studying religious texts

would be put to death, members of the Maccabees gathering together to discuss religion would put a dreidel on the table and spin it. If the authorities passed by they would think that they were just a bunch of guys gambling. The characters on the dreidel also stand for the first Hebrew letters of the phrase, “A great miracle happened here”.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Ah, that’s it. Now watch closely. Pay close attention there. Okay you watching that. Okay. You’re getting very very sleepy. Your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier. You want to take a nap.

RABBI JEFFREY WOHLBERG ON CAMERA: Oh, Hanukkah's a fun holiday. We love Hanukkah. The kids love Hanukkah. Families love Hanukkah because there's a lot to do. We have a wonderful pre-school. That pre-school brings in many children from families in the neighborhood who know that it’s a quality school. The school is a Jewish school, emphasizing Jewish values, Jewish celebrations and rituals. We light the Hanukkia together as a whole school and we sing the blessings together. And many other things. Emphasizing our Jewish connectedness and Jewish traditions. And what's interesting always is, the parents who come here and bring their kids here because it's a valuable resource in the community who had never really thought of giving Jewish traditions to children of that age, find themselves engaged as well. We think it's through our children that we can re-invigorate Jewish life in America.

Well, America's a wonderful country. It has offered Jews tremendous opportunities, as it offers all of us opportunities. We've been able to find acceptance here that we were not able to find in any other part of the world throughout history, as it were. And so, that's very special for us. But with freedom comes assimilation because if there are no ghetto walls holding us in, which there aren't in America, and there are no laws forcing us to be different, which there aren't in America, we then begin to expand and lose some of the essences of what held us together over the centuries. And some of the ties become weaker. The pull in America is centrifugal, whereas the pull in Europe in the smaller communities was centripetal, it pulled to the inside and we're pulled to the outside. That influences everything we do. It means, for example, that on Hanukkah we do things that were never part of Hanukkah.

We've taken this gift giving from Christmas and we've blended it into Hanukkah, which traditionally not its right place, its rightful place. We decorate. And so, my wife puts some decorations on the table for our Shabbat dinner because it was Hanukkah as well. Little Hanukkiot out of paper, little dredles, we have a "Happy Hanukkah" sign hanging in ... in our home, as do many children. And that's not traditionally Jewish. Certainly, nothing any nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly fine. It doesn't diminish Judaism at all. But it's quite unique and it happens in the free society of America. People want to be like everybody else and do what they do in a way which is more American, not just Jewish.

BURT WOLF: The power of American culture is extraordinary. It appears to have the ability to influence and alter virtually every holiday and celebration that arrives on our shores.

For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

March 15, 2014

Taste of Freedom: Thanksgiving - #101

March 15, 2014/ Guest User

BURT WOLF: Most of our holidays and celebrations were developed to mark the cycles of nature and they have taken place in traditional forms for centuries.

They bind the past to the present and predict the future. They are a basic part of every society that has ever existed.

THANKSGIVING

BURT WOLF: The word parade comes from an old Spanish word that means “the stop”. It was used to describe the days when a foreign army stopped in a town and occupied it. During the occupation, soldiers would march through the streets to show their strength and impress the local population.

In the United States parades are still used to occupy and demonstrate strength and power, especially on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving celebrates a number of things including the start of the holiday shopping season. Cities throughout the United States have parades that occupy the attention of thousands of people, while demonstrating the strength of the U.S. dollar and its power to purchase.

The first Thanksgiving Day parade was held in Philadelphia during the 1920s and it was sponsored by Gimbel Brothers Department store. The parade ended with Santa Claus climbing a fire-truck ladder and entering a department store window.

Thanksgiving in America is a time when we give thanks for the things that we have and make plans to buy more things. We are a nation that works hard and shops hard.

But the primary objective of most of our holiday shopping is not to buy things for ourselves but to buy things for other people that we love. We shop and we share. The Saturday following Thanksgiving is always the biggest shopping day of the year.

SETTING THE DATE

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The idea of a Thanksgiving day goes back to Europe. The King would declare a holiday and ask everybody to give thanks. Might be for success in a battle, or the end of a plague, but it was always a one-time event. You might go to church to offer a prayer of thanks, but it wasn’t a religious holiday. It was always political or secular.

BURT WOLF: The first nationwide Thanksgiving in the United States took place at the end of the Revolutionary War. George Washington called for a Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, November 26th, 1789. But it was a one time only event.

Sarah Hale was the editor of Godey’s Ladies Book, a popular magazine of the 1800’s. She used her editorial page to urge the country to set aside a day each year during which the nation would give thanks for our blessings.

In the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln responded to Sarah’s appeals and proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving for the prosperity and freedom that had been achieved in America. He also wanted to express his wish that the Civil War would soon end—every year since then, Americans have celebrated a Thanksgiving Day.

At one point, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was lobbied by business interests to move Thanksgiving to an earlier date, so the Christmas shopping season would be longer. The public hated the idea and put so much pressure on Roosevelt that he had the old date formalized by Proclamation. In 1941, Thanksgiving was finally sanctioned by Congress as a legal holiday—the fourth Thursday in November.

LET’S TALK TURKEY

BURT WOLF: Presidents still make an official proclamation of Thanksgiving about six weeks in advance. One way or another, Presidents are very much involved in Thanksgiving. Even West Wing’s President Barlett calls the Turkey Talk-Line.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Hello.

WOMAN ON PHONE: How can I help you sir?

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Well first let me say, I think this is a wonderful service you provide.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Well thank you. May I have your name please?

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: I’m a citizen.

WOMAN ON PHONE: I’m sure you are sir, but if I have your name I can put your comments in our customer feedback form.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: I’m Joe Bethersenston. That’s one T and with an h in there.

WOMAN ON PHONE: And your address?

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Fargo.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Your street address, please.

RICHARD SCHIFF ON CAMERA: Zip code Fargo, North Dakota, right now.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: My street address is 11454 Pruder Street. And it’s very important that you put street down there because sometimes it gets confused with Pruder Way and Pruder Lane. It’s apartment 23R. Fargo, North Dakota. Zip code 50504

WOMAN ON PHONE: Thank you. Your voice sounds very familiar to me.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: I do radio commercials for products.

WOMAN ON PHONE: And how can I help you?

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Stuffing should be stuffed inside the turkey, am I correct?

WOMAN ON PHONE: It can also be baked in a casserole dish.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Well then we’d have to call it something else, wouldn’t we?

WOMAN ON PHONE: I suppose.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: If I cook it inside the turkey is there a chance I could kill my guests? I’m not saying that’s necessarily a deal breaker.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Well there are some concerns. Two main bacterial problems are salmonella and Campylobacter jejuni.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: All right. Well, first of all I think you made the second bacteria up and second of all, how do I avoid it.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Make sure all the ingredients are cooked first. Saute any vegetables, fried sausage, oysters, et cetera.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Excellent. Let’s talk temperature.

WOMAN ON PHONE: One-hundred and sixty five degrees.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: No see I was testing you. The USDA calls for turkeys to be cooked to an internal temperature of a hundred eighty to one hundred eighty five degrees.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Yes sir. I was talking about the stuffing which you want to cook to a hundred and sixty five to avoid the health risks.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA:Okay. Good testing.

WOMAN ON PHONE: You have an accurate thermometer?

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: Oh yeah. It was presented to me as a gift from the personal sous chef to the king of auto sales in Fargo. Phil Baharnd. The man can sell a car like well like anything.

WOMAN ON PHONE: Very good sir. You have a good Thanksgiving.

MARTIN SHEEN ON CAMERA: And you do too. Thanks a lot. That was excellent. We should do that once a week.

BURT WOLF: In reality, the other end of the phone would be staffed by one of 48 professionally trained home economists and nutritionists who handle nearly 170,000 callers each year during the months of November and December. The Turkey Talk-Line was set up in 1981 and is prepared to help with any turkey-related questions.

WOMAN ANSWERING QUESTION ON CAMERA: Turkey talk line, how can I help you? Oh certainly. How many people are you expecting for dinner?

BURT WOLF: And why do these volunteers answer questions year after year?

WOMAN ON CAMERA: Being able to help people. They really sometimes just get such anxiety over fixing a turkey and they don’t have to.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: There is probably no animal associated with any holiday more strongly than turkey is with Thanksgiving. It is the traditional American bird. It existed nowhere else. It was part of that Thanksgiving Day table set outdoors in Massachusetts by Bradford. It has grown ever since. The White House menu, printed during Lincoln's administration had it right at the top with cranberry sauce and everything else. And it's always been there for us. But I think one thing that, some North Americans may not know, is that the turkey is ubiquitous throughout the Americas.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Benjamin Franklin was deeply disappointed when the eagle was chosen as our national bird. He wanted the turkey. He felt that the eagle was a bird of bad moral character and lived by swindling. He felt that the turkey was a much more respectable animal and a true native of our nation.

BURT WOLF: But turkeys seem to have a real image problem. Not a single sports team is named after them. You have cardinals and beavers and bears and colts and dolphins and rams. You even have razorback hogs. But no turkeys take the field, at least no turkeys, who put that name on their uniforms.

THE FOUNDING MYTH

BURT WOLF: Our present Thanksgiving Day celebration is clearly a day for giving thanks—but it is also a harvest festival. During their first winter in Massachusetts, half the colonists that reached North America on the Mayflower died. When spring arrived the survivors planted corn, peas and barley and in the fall of 1621, there was a harvest and a crop to live on. The fifty two people who survived from the original hundred and sixteen decided to have a harvest feast.

ANTHONY AVENI ON CAMERA: Thanksgiving is among those many festivals during the year that deals with the last of the harvest, the bringing in of the tail end of the harvest and it became a very big holiday in America, as we all know, because of the Pilgrims. And it was good old Mr. Bradford who brought that about with his proclamation in 1621 after a long, hard winter. We can say after the Pilgrims turned the corner. They knew they had it made. And what do you do when you've got it made; you go down to the local pub and have yourself a beer. Well, in this case, they had themselves eels, clams, deer, wild geese, probably wild turkey, although it wasn't certainly wasn't the featured bird of the day. And then, of course, the products of the harvest, the last of the harvest, the beans, wheat, squash, corn. And a celebration, we're told, if we're to believe Bradford, and he was a pretty straight arrow, lasted three days. You can imagine, it was quite a feast.

BURT WOLF: But the event was not of historical importance until the middle of the 1800s when millions of immigrants arrived in America.

ANDY SMITH ON CAMERA: And part of the problem was how do you explain America to groups of people that would have had no American history and would have little understanding of what America was all about. So it was an origin myth that America began with the pilgrims in Plimouth, Massachusetts. Now of course the first English Colony that was successful was Jamestown. And it was founded in 1607, almost 14 years before Plimouth. But the problem with Jamestown as a place of origin was slavery. And, slavery began in Jamestown in 1619 and after the Civil War, you couldn't trace the origin of a country back to where slavery began so the Massachusetts and other New Englanders decided that what we really need to do was have Plimouth as the first real founding fathers of America and Thanksgiving holiday was part of that. That's why the first Thanksgiving is supposedly in Plimouth. There were many days of Thanksgiving in Jamestown prior to that. But they're not looked on as the first Thanksgiving because we have our origin of our nation, and our origin of our nation goes back to the pilgrims, who are an interesting lot. Good group of people.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Thanksgiving day in the United States is a combination of two traditions. First of all, it is a fall harvest festival but it is also a Thanksgiving Day proclamation and both of those traditions have been going on for thousands of years.

THE FOODS OF THANKSGIVING

BURT WOLF: Philadelphia was our most important commercial city and the nation’s capital when George Washington proclaimed our first national Thanksgiving Day.

Philadelphia was a great trading port. Three times each week ships sailed into Philadelphia with spices and fresh produce from the Caribbean—coconuts, bananas, pineapples, and limes were readily available. It was also our country’s gastronomic center—famous for its bakers and pastry makers, beer brewers, and serious eaters.

The Mennonites came to Philadelphia from Germany and the Amish from Switzerland because the city promised religious freedom. Both groups knew a great deal about the use of spices and were excellent bakers. They were the masters of the cinnamon bun and perfected American fruit pies.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: The American Revolution brought a new government to Philadelphia. And the new government brought hundreds of politicians with expense accounts. Philadelphia became a heaven for good eaters. And just as the American Revolution came to an end, the French Revolution got started. Chaos. And at the same time, an uprising in French speaking Haiti. More chaos. By the middle of the 1790s, Philadelphia was filled with Frenchmen looking for a stable place to live. And being French, many of them were cooks, bakers, candy makers and wine experts.

BURT WOLF: The place where people like Washington or Jefferson and Adams came to eat and drink in those days was the City Tavern. It was opened in 1773 by a group of wealthy Philadelphia businessmen who wanted a tavern of the quality they had known in London. It became a hotbed of revolutionary activity and it was where the First Continental Congress met to discuss drafting our constitution. It is presently owned by the federal government and overseen by the National Park Service.

Under the direction of Walter Staib, proprietor, chef and cookbook author, City Tavern has been turned into an excellent restaurant with an authentic eighteenth century feel. The tankards and goblets resemble those which would have been used by Washington and Jefferson to celebrate our first Thanksgiving. The plates are like the ones used by the Continental Congress. Even the stemware is similar to that used during Colonial days. And from the very beginning, Thanksgiving was an important meal at City Tavern. Walter starts his Thanksgiving dinner with his stuffing.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: This is an eighteenth century stuffing with chestnuts and currants. Everything else is pretty much normal.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Currants.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Currants. Uh. Huh. And just chopping a little bit of onion. And not too fine actually. Really coarse because remember this stuffing later goes into the bird and cooks in the bird for almost another three and a half hours slowly. And chestnuts I already roasted them. Got them out of the shell and basically I cooked them al dente so later you can still feel them once you have it in the stuffing.

BURT WOLF: Onion is added to a sauté pan in which butter has been melted. Then some chopped celery. Some chopped garlic, mushrooms, dry white wine. Then on to the stove for a few minutes.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Now you want to cook it until the white wine is reduced until dry but you don’t want to overcook it remember again because it’s in the cavity of the bird for such a long time.

BURT WOLF: As soon as the wine is reduced everything goes into a giant bowl.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Chestnuts which we’ve just quartered. Parsley. The currant. Full thyme. Next comes the bread the croutons. And the chicken stock is really what binds it.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Ah you roll up your sleeves and mix.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Just want to get it nice, just the flavor. And what makes this very unique is the dried currants and obviously drying your food was definitely an eighteenth century way of preserving things because you know they had no freezers, no canned goods so they were pretty innovative and the flavor, that flavor, it gives the bird is just spectacular.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Concentrates it.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Oh yeah. Want to give me a hand?

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Yeah.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Give me about five six good strokes of pepper in there. Now remember with the salt and pepper you have to be very careful because you already have the salt in the bread as well you know so from a flavor point. Now we’re going to get the turkey ready prepped so we can stuff the turkey. Shallots. Rosemary. Thyme. And parsley. Olive oil. Just enough to kind of drench it. When you do this you have to be gentle because otherwise you’ll rip the skin. The herbs and the shallots you know penetrates the normally dull breasts. So the flavor you get out of this is mind boggling because put it on the outside, don’t if you put it on the outside it doesn’t go inside the meat so between it almost creates like a vacuum and sucks the flavor right into it. That’s basically what it is. Now what I’ve done earlier this morning, I washed the cavity really good and that I recommend for anybody to do. Wash the cavity good. I just like to put a little bit of salt in it, a little bit of the herb mixture, nothing else before I put the stuffing in. People have different ideas you know but me a little bit of the herb mixture into the cavity.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Just more flavor.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: Yeah a little bit of kosher salt. The easiest way to fill it I find you just make like a big ball easy to get in. Little olive oil. And then I recommend slow cooking those birds. Start off at high heat and reduce down by three and a quarter. Now let’s stick it in the oven.

BURT WOLF: As the turkey is cooking it is periodically basted with Madeira which is a fortified wine similar to port or sherry.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: You can never baste enough actually to tell you the truth. The moisture comes and the skin just gets very beautiful.

BURT WOLF: The colors of Thanksgiving foods are those of fall: gold and red. The particular foods associated with Thanksgiving are foods that became widely popular during the early 1800s—turkey, pumpkin, Indian pudding, sweet potatoes, maple syrup and cranberries.

WALTER STAIB ON CAMERA: What I want to do, first thing I want to open and get a drumstick out. What I want to do is just wiggle the drumstick a little bit when you move it a few little times you can feel it now obviously I’ve done it a million times so I don’t have to feel it but and here you go. Drumstick comes off. Voila. Then I can do two things. One, to make it easy for the novice person. Go down the center. There’s a bone. The breast bone. You want to go down the breast bone right here and loosen it up a little bit. All you got to do is push the knife. Put pressure on the knife and the knife will do the rest because there’s a bone that brings you all the way down. Here you go and then you can do two things. Loosen the entire breast or you can just leave it on the bone. I personally like it on the bone. Then just go like this. Now basically the bone has loosened it. Can you see here? Now all I got to do is go this way. And I make beautiful slices. Look how beautiful this turkey is. Unbelievable. And I slice it this way. And see the herb rubbing the herb stuffing that before we put underneath. It’s between the skin and the bone the skin and the meat. Right here. That’s where the flavor comes and penetrates it. And the reason is such a nice and shiny is because the Madeira glaze. The Madeira obviously has sugar in it and sugar caramelizes the skin and gives the skin an unbelievable flavor.

BURT WOLF: Over eating at a harvest feast has always been standard-op. On the last day of the harvest, when all the work was done, the landowners would reward their tenant farmers with a big meal—good food, good drinks and lots of both. Everyone would celebrate and thank the forces of nature. Workers were often presented with the gift of a goose, which is where Americans got the idea of giving devoted workers a turkey just before Thanksgiving.

Stuffing is a food that has always been an important part of festival recipes. It’s a way of making a dish more impressive without necessarily making it more expensive. It shows more work, adds more food, and extends the number of flavors.

Cranberries also play a significant role at Thanksgiving. It was one of the first foods that the Native Americans introduced to the English colonists and cranberry sauce was an important product. It could be made during the cranberry season and held throughout the winter.

Candied sweet potatoes are also a traditional dish at a Thanksgiving meal. The recipe became popular during the Civil War as a symbol of unification—sweet potatoes are thought of as mostly a Southern vegetable, the maple syrup used to sweeten them is associated with New England.

Drinks in City Tavern include shrubs, which were an early American cocktail made from sweetened fruit preserved in vinegar and blended with rum from the Caribbean. City Tavern also makes one with ginger ale instead of rum.

There was also beer. Today the tavern has a period beer made for it from recipes that were originally developed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

One of the things being celebrated at Thanksgiving is the wholeness of the family. The idea is reflected in the “wholeness” of the pies and cakes and molds.

When families immigrate to the United States, they often keep eating the foods of their native country. They also tend to continue celebrating their traditional holidays. The one American event that gets incorporated into the holiday cycle of almost every new arrival is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a way for immigrants to celebrate being in America and to share that celebration with everyone in the nation—from the descendants of the people who arrived here on the Mayflower to a family that arrived here last year.

Thanksgiving is a celebration of America’s prosperity and yet we don’t give gifts. That’s because in part Thanksgiving is a harvest feast—the earth does the giving and we do the receiving.

BURT WOLF ON CAMERA: Thanksgiving celebrates two things: Abundance and patriotism and the turkey’s pretty good too. For Taste of Freedom, I’m Burt Wolf.

BURT WOLF

BURT WOLF

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BURT WOLF

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Taste of Freedom: Chinese New Year - #106

Taste of Freedom: New Years - #105

Taste of Freedom: Kwanzaa - #104

Taste of Freedom: Christmas - #103

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Taste of Freedom: Thanksgiving - #101

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