[Sca-cooks] A digression on the Rochester Garbage Plate and comments

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Wed May 6 08:08:30 PDT 2009


On May 6, 2009, at 9:16 AM, Saint Phlip wrote:

> You know, A, that garbage plate sounds very much like it might be a
> leftover from the 60s and 70s, when everyone, of course, was smoking
> the happy weed, and would come down with a case of the munchies, and
> start eating eveything in sight..

That's certainly a decent working theory. On the other hand, late- 
night consumption of some rather unexpected things (for example, the  
after-hours places that sold French-onion soup, and French onion soup  
only, to people leaving nightclubs at 3 or 4AM in 1920's London) is  
not without earlier precedent.

And then there's the whole thing where college students on a studying  
binge lose track of day and night, and/or want some substantial food  
to help soak up the booze to keep alcohol toxicity at bay.

> I seem to recall at one point a
> bushel of crabs needing picked, a head of lettuce (iceberg of course),
> and a loaf of bread that were intended to be converted into a crab
> salad for sandwiches, and somehow got consumed seperately and
> individually before any crab salad sandwiches could be made. Not sure
> whether it was more fun catching the crabs (at Assateague) or
> consuming them...

Sounds like rather a gestalt sort of pursuit, the yin and the yang,  
etc. It's also a very social activity, between the fairly labor- 
intensive activity and somewhat inherently enforced intimacy. I mean,  
it's not like you're going to sit there and get squirted with crab  
juice by someone you don't like.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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