A Steady Diet of Words

One of the things I miss most about living in California is the influence of Southwestern cuisine.  After moving back East, it took a long time to acclimate to the relative blandness of the food.  To be fair, Southern cooking is not really bland—it is simply designed around a butter-and-bacon paradigm.  When we moved from Atlanta to New England, however, we found the local cuisine to be bland in the truest sense.  Here in the Northeast, we  make up for the lack of amplitude by introducing a breadth of farm-fresh and heirloom flavors.  Not a bad trade-off, actually.

During my San Diego visit, I could not resist heading to Old Town to visit my favorite Mexican restaurant, (aptly named, Old Town Mexican Café.)  Since I first came here nearly thirty years ago, and probably for decades before that, women have stood in the front of this restaurant, open to the sidewalk passersby, making tortillas by hand.  Traditionally handmade tortillas are nothing like the flat planes of cardboard manufactured and sold in plastic wrap at supermarkets. Filled with grilled ingredients, authentic Mexican cheeses, and salsas made daily from roasted chilis, these tortillas are the centerpiece of a menu that makes all other Mexican restaurants pale by comparison. 

A short walk from the café is the Old Town State Historic Park (the original center of San Diego dating back to 1820), an attraction flanked by a commercial area called Fiesta de Reyes.  Tucked away is a small shop that contains one of the most provocative selections of hot sauces I have experienced.  By provocative I mean that the names of the sauces actually made me blush.  But I was glad for the inspiration (and even some of the nasty visuals that the graphic monikers conjured) because these days everything is a blog.  Seriously, stand in one place for too long and you, too, could be my next blog.

Having cast my analytical eye across the offerings, I concluded that there were no less than three distinct genera of sauces.  The first stood behind fairly benign names, and by implication, less effective hot sauces.  Most were simple signatures that could be considered euphemisms for “extreme.”  Among these were such classics as “Da Bomb,” “Raw Heat,” and “Afterlife.”  I was a fan of a particular variety called “Pappy’s White Lightning,” which boasts “all the love you’ll ever need.”  This appealed to my inner chef; all chefs know that you always balance hot with sweet.

A second level, which on my scale follows the imagery of the infernal and descends, rather than ascends, contains hot sauces named for mortal hazards and perils.  This genus appeals to our greatest fears: “Satan’s Rage,” “Mad Dog,” “Arch Nemesis,” “Vicious Viper,” “Acid Rain.”  Included in this collection was a mixture called “Slap Ya Mama” and another that warned “Beware: Comatose heat level.”  I blanched a bit at “Sancti Scorpio,” (scorpions are to me as snakes are to Indiana Jones) and wondered whether a product called “Widow: No survivors” might be gender specific.

The final genus was notable for its anatomical references, articulating a consensus of physical side effects from ingesting the products.  As I assigned products to this final level, I visualized the marketing strategy meetings where names and concepts are pitched to top executives.  What were the candidates from which “Butt Pucker” was selected as the best among other options?  Was “Colon Cleaner” a trademark left over from another division of the company?  Did “Ass in the Tub” derive from an R & D department report detailing the rigorous testing of the product?

It betrays a quirk of our society that such fearful warnings and graphic imagery help to sell these products.  To me, they seem rather akin to the unadorned FDA warnings on the sides of cigarettes, designed to deter rather than encourage.  Suppose other foods were named reality-style, using this standard of graphic scare tactic.  I wonder if one of my guilty pleasures—lobster macaroni and cheese—would be as appealing if it were offered on the menu as “poached bottom feeder bathed in rennet-cured, coagulated milk protein and starch.”

Maybe this brand of truth-in-advertising is the key to our nutrition and obesity problem in America.  Instead of promising our children they can “Have It Your Way,” we should offer them the stark truth of what they put in their bodies.  I doubt that I would enjoy a juicy, aged Texas Rib-Eye if it were billed as “fire-roasted cow muscle hung on a meat hook for thirty days until dry.”  A rack of barbequed ribs would not be appetizing as a “slow-cooked and basted rib cage of a hairy, foraging, even-toed ungulate.”  I could easily give up the carb content of “milled wheat infected with sugar-fed yeast,” or “slivered tuber roots bathed in hot fat.” 

Perhaps the key to health is to talk up our food choices.  When I consider the “fruit of the apple tree” it sounds as good as it is.  If the words make us cringe, maybe the food should, too.