The Stomach of Man Under Socialism: A Culinary History of Socialist America

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Herucalmo

JesterBL said:
Ultimately, I think it is a case where time heals all wounds and potentially, you could rearrange the stars in the canton creatively to differentiate (I'm not really a vexillologist). The flag only gets into rotation after the 'Blues have gone grey' and is always surrounded by red flags in the interest of propriety. Displaying the 'old' canton arrangement or flying only the American flag is suspect, for the same reasons you mention, but when at a Party endorsed event and flanked by red flags, who will say otherwise?
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That's perfectly reasonable, I think. And also it can easily be the case that our British author with some latent influences from the Blue exiles doesn't quite catch some of the nuances within Commonwealth pageantry and patriotism and sees much more meaning in Stars and Stripes looking flags popping up as some sort of rehabilitative process and reformist impulse, as opposed to people bringing out all the alternative designs that were mentioned as just detached from a broader nationalist thread and representing more local color and old state quirks or the Commonwealth's view of historical continuity back to the Civil War and War of Independence.
 

Mike D

Burton K Wheeler said:
Could kelp be used as a food source?
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Dulse is quite popular in Northern Ireland if you go to seaside towns. It's very healthy - high in potassium and calcium and good for bones, reducing blood pressure and thyroid health apparently. Dulse is made from a different seaweed from kelp but I can't see there being much difference between them.
 
JesterBL

JesterBL

goodol' turan said:
You could also use the kelp as a food source and as a food supplement as well
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Mike D said:
Dulse is quite popular in Northern Ireland if you go to seaside towns. It's very healthy - high in potassium and calcium and good for bones, reducing blood pressure and thyroid health apparently. Dulse is made from a different seaweed from kelp but I can't see there being much difference between them.
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sprite said:
The Welsh also eat seaweed for breakfast. Laverbread
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Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is a very different beast than a lot of other edible seaweeds. But moreover, one major point of this chapter was that the Cooperative Commonwealth mostly abandons utopian food solutions (and open ocean aquaculture is more practical than closed system aquaculture in some regards but definitely still qualifies as utopian, alongside vertical farming and insect cultivation and other things such as vat grown meat) in favor of the much more technologically simple solution of just feeding humans what you would otherwise be feeding to animals (and they also don't focus on increasing yields of those animals as obsessively as OTL's Americans did, owing in part to how food animals are owned and managed).

And while the author talks about them abandoning legibility, which they did do temporarily (or rather, they shifted what is legible to the average American as food)- the means by which they dress up tofu and the other faux-meats here is very much an attempt to claw that back. They smoke tofu, they dress it up in a sweet and sour sauce, they form the ground nut cutlets into the shape of a pork chop and serve it with a gravy. And to go back to the mother-in-law sandwich- they still try to make you feel like you are eating a meaty main! Its hard to see how a kelp salad really finds its way here, in a culture which hasn't even had the shifts of OTL's America towards raw greens (an outgrowth of California Cuisine, health food and diet culture) and towards things like arugula and kale.
Aghasverov said:
My dad was a Chiropractor (now retired), so was very much into healthy lifestyle, nutritional supplements, etc... I remember taking vitamin supplements made from kelp when I was younger...
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And you'll note that spirulina (not technically a kelp but an algae and very much in the same sort of health food vogue) does make an appearance in American public schools as a supplement.
 

Revolutionary Avocado

JesterBL said:
Its hard to see how a kelp salad really finds its way here, in a culture which hasn't even had the shifts of OTL's America towards raw greens (an outgrowth of California Cuisine, health food and diet culture) and towards things like arugula and kale.
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This (specifically that while raw greens aren't going to be as common, I'd bet cooked greens are) makes me think about something we've seen hinted at but haven't gotten a full chapter on: how African-American "soul food" in particular and American Southern folk cuisines in general stand in relation to the rest of the country's diet. I've always thought that of America's regional cuisines, soul food is the most rooted in a specifically American terroir, and also frankly it's more delicious than most American regional cuisines. Especially without as much immigration, and with a faster turn towards civil equality for black people, soul food might be even more nationally prevalent as the thing you get when you want something that tastes interesting.
 
goodol' turan

goodol' turan

JesterBL said:
Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is a very different beast than a lot of other edible seaweeds. But moreover, one major point of this chapter was that the Cooperative Commonwealth mostly abandons utopian food solutions (and open ocean aquaculture is more practical than closed system aquaculture in some regards but definitely still qualifies as utopian, alongside vertical farming and insect cultivation and other things such as vat grown meat) in favor of the much more technologically simple solution of just feeding humans what you would otherwise be feeding to animals (and they also don't focus on increasing yields of those animals as obsessively as OTL's Americans did, owing in part to how food animals are owned and managed).



And you'll note that spirulina (not technically a kelp but an algae and very much in the same sort of health food vogue) does make an appearance in American public schools as a supplement.
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I see. Makes sense now that you explain it.
 
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