RIP Anthony....is there Spaghetti in Heaven?

Anthony the kid in the Prince Spaghetti commercial is dead at 61. Just a couple of years younger than me so we are almost exact contemporaries. I lived that life in Brooklyn.

The clothes and the food and the decor in the commercial are what I grew up with in the 1960's. My Mom had the same haircut as his Mom. I used to be outside with my friends playing all day and at dinner time the Moms would open the window and shout at us to come home. It was never all the Moms. Just the one closest to where we were hanging out The rest of us got the message and hurried home. If we didn't want a smack.

Back in those days everyone bought the same stuff. Not Prince or Barilla or some other brand. Everyone bought Ronzoni macaroni and Red Pack tomatoes and Polly O mozzarella and ricotta. It was a given. They were always on sale at G&G on Henry Street and my Grandmother would send me out to buy it. A simple supper was often just spaghetti and sauce with nothing much on it other than grated cheese. Sometimes as a special treat she might cook up some veal spiedini in the sauce. But usually it was just a basic puree. Of course that wasn't the Sunday sauce with the meatballs and sausage and the pork skin. That was what made Sunday Special.

You can't buy Ronzoni anymore. It is way too starchy. The macaroni just falls apart. Some big company bought it from the family that ran it and ruined everything. Red Pack is still around but I use Pomi tomatoes exclusively that are imported from Italy in cartons not cans. Much less salt and much better tasting. Still only use Polly O since they are the best by far and are what we are used too.

Kids don't play out in the street anymore either. It's was all play dates or video games on the phone. Nobody plays stick ball or stoop ball or skelly.

Anthony wouldn't recognize the North End. Just like I don't recognize South Brooklyn.

I hope they have spaghetti in Heaven.

I know Hell has Indian food.

The Old World Kitchen

Elisabeth Luard 1987. This is a large book, some 521 pages. No pictures and that makes me sad.

Luard does survey the whole world. Good Lord, she traveled and researched deeply. She looks at the food that peasant farmers eat and have eaten for centuries. It is an historical survey of the food of the poor.

I'm seeing a new version on Amazon for $19.00, my version used for $30.00, but gleefully, I see my version at Abebooks for $1.00 +$2.50 shipping, I'd snatch up one of those in an instant.

The book is filled with enlightening anecdotes throughout about how people lived, how they grew their own food and survived, how they stored food, traded food, and prepared food. Flipping through recipes it looks like adding this to that and that's it. The book is about how people got by and survived. They ate like kings.

Abebooks, Old World Kitchen. Elizabeth Luard Condition: very good

Had Michelle Obama simply read such a book as this, then her Princeton and Harvard education irrelevance regarding food preparation for herself and for her family would be ... well, irrelevant. This one book is all that a person would need to see for themselves how they've been snookered into thinking food acquisition and food preparation is out of their hands, beyond them, confusing, that food industry is too scientific to be available to them. That hotdogs must come from a hotdog factory, that pudding must come from a box, that hamburger needs help found in a box by some industrial interest, that rice must be reconstituted -- to what? From what? And had she just read through this one single book she would be happily propounding its virtues therein and not attempting to impose one-size fits all standards, and questionable standards at that, across an entire far-flung and resisting nation through law and by government agencies, politicizing food. She would teach and show by kindness and by knowing and by example and not struggling to impose from the top by force of will.
Oats

Porridge, a thick gruel which could be made with barley or rye as well as oats, was always the great staple dish of the northern peasantry, particularly in Scandinavia and Scotland, which share many culinary preferences as well as climate. During their military scurries with the Scots, the English sometimes attributed their opponents' success to their excessively simple and easily prepared diet. Porridge needs minimum preparation in exchange for maximum food value.

The shepherds of Glen Feshie lived on porridge, reported Elizabeth Grant in 1898 

The shepherds lived in bothies on the hill, miles from any other habitation, often quite alone, their collie dog their only companion, and with no provisions beyond a bag of meal. This they generally ate uncooked, mixed with either milk or water as happened to suit, the milk or water being mostly cold, few of these hardy mountaineers troubling themselves to keep a fire lighted in fine weather. This simple food, called brose, is rather relished by the Highlanders; made with beef broo -- the fat skimmings of the broth pot -- it is considered quite a treat.  Beef brose is entertainment for anyone.  The water brose must be wholesome; no men looked better in health than the masons, who ate it regularly, and the shepherds. These last came down from their high ground to attend the kirk sometimes, in such looks as put to shame the luxurious dwellers in the smoky huts with their hot porridge and other delicacies. [Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, 1830]  

Midlothian oats are reputedly the best, but some reckon the small Highland ones are better. 

Serves: 1
Time" 5 minutes plus 20 to 30 minutes cooking 

1 breakfast bowlful water (just under a half pint) per person
1 handful coarsely milled oatmeal (a little over 1 ounce) per person
1/2 teaspoon salt.

Me:

Oatmeal is crap without salt and I mean it. It must have salt. But why stop there? Look, you are American, load it up with butter, include a teaspoon brown sugar for its molasses, have fruit in there, dry fruit is fantastic, raisins, craisins, and nuts, and so is fresh fruit. Put anything in there you like or that you have on hand, finally for hot/cold contrast pour over the whole thing cold milk or cream for an extra extravagance and I guarantee you will not find a more satisfying meal, one that keeps you satisfied for the rest of the day. If you are dieting, you cannot do better than this.

Look at that! What? Oh, no he dint.

See my site, if you like, search [oatmeal] in Blogger's search in top left corner, and be surprised what pops up.

Oats as whole grain is marketed as groats that are de-husked. They take a good while to cook. This is the best you can do. Nothing is lost to processing. Just the real deal. The real dadgum Scottish deal.

You can put these groats in your coffee mill and chop them up into bits for faster cooking and retain their full nutritional value. If you over process they will turn into powder that will cook to oats-polenta.

Rolled oats are steamed then smashed with heavy steel rollers for faster cooking. They are already partially cooked and flattened. They microwave in four or five minutes. Very convenient. Some nutrition is lost in this processing.

Rolled oats marketed as oatmeal have been cooked slightly under pressure or baked. You will find thick rolled oats and rolled oats that have been baked or pressure cooked and rolled oat fragments, these bits absorb water much more easily than bits simply broken, and the processing, packaging, transportation and storage as such manhandled bits sacrifices nutrition.

Steel cut oats are groats processed through a steel burr mill. This you can do in your own coffee bean grinder.

Smashed flat and baked and steamed and pressure cooked and cut into bits and packaged in tiny unsatisfying portions.

Cut rolled oats are all that described above chopped up even finer, processed further and longer for even more speed and convenience. These are the most heavily handled, most processed of all, most seriously packaged, and  least nutritional of all.

The oats lauded at top are the original groats that do take some time to absorb water or milk and fat. For the home cook it comes down to a matter of time, and cleaning a pot.  The time being 20 to 30 minutes.

Recommended: groats.

This post has been edited by me 1 and a half times. Complaints accepted in comments.