[Sca-cooks] Chili dishes...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Laura C. Minnick:
>The talk about chili and spaghetti and such with bland Midwestern 
>seasoning reminds me of something that happened 20, 21 years ago. My 
>then-husband and I were over for dinner at my folks', and Mom made 
>'Spinach Lasagna'. Or rather, she thought she did. not particularly 
>one to pay attention and follow a recipe, Mom had the idea that 
>spinach lasagna was made with spinach noodles. It may have been 
>tasty, but when she pulled it out of the oven, it looked like a car 
>accident. I was about 12 weeks pregnant with Annie, and it was all I 
>could do to make it to the bathroom in time to lose my lunch. And 
>Mom got upset and accused me of being melodramatic. But it was years 
>before I could look at lasagna without flinching.
>
>'Lainie

For some reason this sort of stuck in the back of my mind, requiring 
further processing. Do you think it's possible that the affront to 
your then-pregnant aesthetic was because you were pregnant, as much 
as by any inherent repulsiveness of the spinach-noodle lasagne? I ask 
because pregnant women have often been known to become violently 
nauseous over things that would otherwise not disturb them. My lady 
wife was unable to even pass by the premises of the well-known New 
York Japanese grocery supplier Katagiri, claiming it reeked of 
rotting fish, even though A) it did not, and B) she's a smoker and 
has a rather weak sense of smell when compared to most people, and 
astonishingly weak when compared to me. However, I wasn't pregnant...

So, unless I'm missing something, what was it about using [presumably 
green] spinach noodles (is it safe to assume it was at least spinach 
lasagne, and not spinach fettucine?) that set you off? Is the sight 
of a green layer among all the other colors, when the green layer is 
spinach pasta, that much worse than the sight of a green layer that 
is spinach? I mean, there's a difference in the shade of green, but 
how bad could it be?

I remember, also some 21 or so years ago, becoming violently ill (and 
I mean _violently_ ill: my toes left my shoes in order to protrude, 
inside out, from my mouth at one point) as part of a massive 
sinus/migraine attack, shortly after eating in a Japanese-inspired 
health-food restaurant. I was sure the miso was responsible, somehow, 
and for the next 15 years or so, was unable to even look at miso 
without spontaneous waves of pain and nausea. Miso became my 
kryptonite. Years later, and for no apparent reason, everything was 
fine again between me and miso.

I guess I'm wondering if you had an extreme propensity to spontaneous 
nausea at the time of your lasagne incident, and if you made some 
kind of association at the time that molded your food aesthetic in 
that way: had you not been pregnant, would the reaction have been 
less severe, or would (and this is not simply a question of degree, 
if you follow me) there have been no reaction at all?

Adamantius, thinking about spinach lasagne bolognese al forno, which 
he suspects is not what 'Lainie's mom made

-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04