The history of the tomato sandwich has been a sine wave of violence and repose, cut, slice and chew. The tomato. A spoil of conquest and greed ending up between two slices of bread in an act of breathtaking expediency and innovation.
The 4th Earl of Sandwich was an addicted card-player who would not rise from the table to eat but had his servants present him with meat between two slices of bread for a repast. An idea he read in the classics. The Romans introduced eating meat in this way to Britain when Julius Caesar invaded . Caesar was attributed with the saying, "Veni, vidi, sandwichi.", meaning, "I came, I saw, I made a sandwich."
Lycopersicon lycopersicum was cultivated by the Aztecs and known as Tamatl. Aztecs who were known to be not adverse to the odd bowl of tlacca-tlaolli or man and maize soup enjoyed thin shavings of tamatl between two slices of crisp maize bread and served as an horsdouevre before a scrumptious bowl of boiled guy. Tlacca-tlaolli is said to have tasted like the Chinese Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup.
Tamatl became tomate in Spain. Rapidly entering the cuisine and everyday life where even the colour was adopted for the bullring in the cape used to goad the bull, then known as the tomatodor. Later shortened to matador.
And, though undoubtedly some rustic in Spain or some bucolic boob in Bologna hit on the idea of laying slices of tomato on white bread, the moment of true confirmable genesis, the birth of the Tomato Sandwich did not come until more than four hundred years had passed since Hernan Cortes picked those first fateful seeds from his beard after biting into a ripe tomato.
Up till that fateful morning in 1930 in the least likely place in the world for the tomato sandwich to be born, the use of tomatoes had been inhibited by the tomatoes tendency to burst juice and seeds when bitten into. Up till then the tomato had been been enjoyed as something illicit. Introduced to Europe in the form of a yellow fruit it was first known as the golden apple or the pomme d’or. But this became corrupted into pomme d’amour, or the love apple. The English disdained the love apples because it led led to an excessive interest in things carnal. Tomatoes were considered an aphrodisiac for three hundred or more years and many an amorous moment was marked by the tomato juice squint of a seed in the eye after an overexcited bite into some ripe fruit held by one’s paramour. Casanova discusses some recipe’s for the removal of tomato stains from bed sheets. And one of Shakespeare's lost sonnets is said to have sung the rhapsody to pepper on tomato to freshen one’s breath before serious nuptial workouts.
" tis the tang of tomato on her tongue which doth frenzy me, hung like a banner as it is beneath the portcullis of pepper, suspended there ‘neath its great fleshy wall, writhing under the prodding finger of the breeze, bidding me, " te’amato", "I love thee."
Three hundred and ten years after the bard sang of his love for his wife's love of tomatoes we come to that defining moment in the history of the tomato sandwich one morning in the great South Land, Australia, the morning of Katoomba Public schools annual fete. The year is 1930, the month is February, late February and Mrs Beatrice Cowsdimple had forgotten to bake a cake. The great depression was whirling like a destructive willi-willi through the country throwing many people out of work.
Food was expensive so everyone had a vege patch with some fruit trees carefully tended for the jam’s they’d yield. But stretched out on stakes throughout the backyards of the town, and for that matter the country were the rich red monster delicioso tomato vines which could be grown even in pots if you didn’t have the land for spuds and trees.
She had baked a hi-top which was cooling on the bench beside her, a bowl of fat red tomatoes sat in the window, outside the heat was making the air shimmer, and the three sisters wished they had parasols.
She was in a turmoil, as she describes years later, "I was in a turmoil. The other mums would think I was a loser because I hadn’t baked a cake. But with the depression and everything going on at the time, you think you could be forgiven, but those P&C fascists couldn’t keep that "I’m a more concerned mother than you" look off their faces as they rolled up with their Sacher Tortes and Black Forest cake, and for heaven’s sakes, Lamingtons! Lamingtons. I had to come up with something. I couldn’t stand that withering sympathy. The eyes. The eyes."
The experience for many mothers of being on tuck shop committees, or P&C committees has left a legacy of post traumatic stress syndrome victims through the generations. Beatrice was one such veteran of the tuck shop trenches. She had to come up with something so her children would not hang their heads in shame. Nothing less than the honour of her blood line was at stake. Somewhere in that bloodline there had been a da Vinci, a Keppler, an Archimedes and they came to her rescue. Genius again changed the world. None can explain how that spark of genius works which associates a log rolling down a hill with the problem of taking home a dead mammoth, and comes up with the wheel but it worked for Beatrice Cowsdimple. The tomatoes, the bread, the problem.
She picked up the knife, she held it, she thought feverishly of the faces filled with reproach, "No cake, poor dear, no cake oh dear, what will we do with you?"
She held the knife as she glanced about in fever, searching needing an inspiration something to break the whirl of despair, and then she seized on it. Down came the knife! Blade sharpened to a razor, catching the sunlight as it fell on the hapless tomato. Off came one slice, then another, and another. She was creating, she was inspired. And like da Vinci in a fever, or Archimedes naked to the world in his exultation she drove on amok with the juices of her own creativity. The bread was seized without ceremony and rudely thrown down on the cutting board where with swift motions two slices were severed from the loaf.
And here is where history is made, where true genius reveals itself in details, she took the butter, she held it and she buttered the bread. Not for her the rude assembly of raw tomato and naked bread to make a wet mess, unpalatable in its texture, impractical. Which with the hindsight of history we see was the sandwich barrier for the tomato. Not until butter was added did we have the true tomato sandwich. Safe in the bottom of bags, the juices sealed between two impervious layers of butter fat, enveloped in two layers of white milk bread circumscribed by two perimeter of bread crust. Not overwhelming but protecting the integrity of the whole. Not since Cellini has something so practical been as beautiful as Beatrice Cowsdimple’s first tomato sandwich and which to this day remains the prototype of the supreme finger food. The tomato sandwich cut into four triangles has graced tables and function of the rich and the poor alike ever since. Its debut was an unmitigated success. Beatrice Cowsdimple was lionised but alas the fire which had burned within her to give us the tomato sandwich had in its fury turned her mind to ash. She was to never create another sandwich again. But generations salute her and what she gave the world. The first honest to goodness Tomato sandwich. We were to wait another fifteen years before someone added pepper but that’s another story from the passing parade of Food in History.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
On the identity of the Antichrist:
On the identity of the Antichrist:
Prophetic Oracle has been a tool used throughout history to find the way when paths are unknown. The Sumerian world bestowed oracular powers on the priestess who awaited the coming of Baal in the chamber atop the Ziggurats. The Egyptians sought the advice of Ammon. The Greeks sought their most ancient oracle at Dodona in Epirus, the conduit for Zeus's advice. There the rustling leaves of oak trees in the sacred grove were interpreted by priests. The most famous oracle in the Greek World was at Delphi and was dedicated to Apollo. But there were many others. The Roman state kept a book of Oracles called the Sibylline Books in a vault in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and these were referred to in time of crisis right up till the year 405 when Flavius Stilicho, the Valentin Beria of his day, had them burned in an excess of Christian zeal, purportedly because they foretold the end of Rome.
Prophets speak for God, revealing and interpreting God's will. Mohammed stated there had been 200,000 prophets but only six of them brought new laws and dispensations. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed himself.
Christ was a prophet as well as the son of God. And the doctrine of compassion, of love, of communistic disbursement of wealth Christ spread was as revolutionary in its day as that which Lenin or Mao spread nineteen hundred years later. The mindset of classical man was of conquest and violence, rape and enslavement, retribution and revenge. These were normal and proper and were enshrined in the doctrines of the Old Testament and the epic sagas which described the morality of their respective civilizations. Prophets were the interlocutors of Divine will. The notion of the False Prophet was entrenched in Hebrew lore and spurred the charges levelled at Christ. Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians, (2, 1-12) restates the coming of the Evil One. But it was John in the first Epistle (II,18 and 22) who gave a name to this force and that name was the AntiChrist, the Beast whose number is 666. He stated that the arrival of the Antichrist preceded the second advent. It was a notion that stuck and ignored the metaphorical nature of prophecy. The power of the parable.The charge Antichrist has been levelled at emperors, Nero among them, popes; Silvester II and Paul Vand kings; Frederick II of Prussia. Napoleon. Reformers like Luther and Lenin. It has burned many innocents at the stake.
Michel Nostradamus is probably the best known of the prophets of recent times. Certainly it is his prophecies that have been most widely popularised. Though arguably the likes H.G. Wells could well fit the bill of prophet given the widespread popularity and hence the profound effect he and other science fiction writers of his ilk have had on technical developments of this century.
Nostradamus wrote in the middle years of the sixteenth century. As we draw to the end of the millennium we have seen and will continue to see recurring waves of interest in Nostradamus' oracular powers. Nostradamus systematcially set out his prophecies in sets of quatrains, covering twelve centuries of precognostication. Nostradamus only names the Antichrist once and that is in quatrain 62 of the second century. The name he gives the Evil one is Mabus, M-a-b-u-s.
Pope Innocent III declared a crusade on the Cathars, christian purists, who used Christ's Sermon on the Mount as the their pivotal doctrine. These people made no bones about their opposition to the papacy, explicitly naming the Pope Anti Christ and his Church the Kingdom of Evil. In the general slaughter at Beziers, a Cathar stronghold in Southern France in 1209 the papal legate, a man named Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics in the town should be spared. His answer, "Kill them all, God knows his own." Now, given the record of papal immanity by way of the inquisition and it various crusades to proselytise the faith, its dogmatism and weddedness to secular powers and wealth one would have to wonder who in fact was the Evil party.
For that matter if we look at the Old Testament and see the vengefulness of God, the pestilences and plagues brought onto the heads of those that did not follow the faith one could be forgiven again for seeing that this God was the very antithesis of the God of peace and Love that Christ preached. And given the content of Revelations and the odious retributions visited on disbelievers as each of the Seven Seals is opened by the Lamb of God one would have to ask the question where is the mercy, the gentleness, the forgivness for which Christ is synonymous? Everything described could easily be seen as nothing but anti the christian message. All these things pose serious questions for those that believe in the Christian precepts. No real Christian would wish eternal damnation on anyone, let alone those who were demonstrably so weak as to wander from the path.
But let us allow for a moment that Nostradamus might have been onto something. That John for that matter was onto something. That these prophets in their ecstasies tapped into some pool of universal knowledge. Interpreting Nostradamus one can easily sea the bones of past events in his words. The quatrains are metaphors. Open to intrepretation in any manner at all. Yet by the same token there are some unnerving resonances. References to Il Duce and Franco. To newspapers and fission bombs. And missiles and flying machines described in Revelations. Scary shit.
So in these days, as the Millennium draws to a close minds turn to prophecies from the past. Jews and Muslims are dragged out of society's closets for drubbings, being the most conspicuous non christians. Fundamentalists speak their narrow interpretations of what was meant, liars mount the podiums of self interest and broadcast their so called truth. Tensions rise, and here and there innocents are denounced as AntiChrist. This is where Nostradamus may have done us the greatest service. He names the AntiChrist as this Mabus, and according to the cognoscenti this Anti Christ is alive now.
Mabus shall come and soon after shall die,
Of people and beasts shall be a horrible destruction,
Then on a sudden the vengeance shall be seen,
Blood, hand, thirst, famine, when the comet shall run.
What if Nostradamus was referring not to an individual but to an ethos, a system, a culture. Our world is largely the product of the fusion between capital and religion. It teeters irresolutely between the doctrines of the free market and social justice. In neither one or the other. Balance the record of Capital against the Christian vision and then the record of the Church against the same vision. Neither comes off looking very good. And as we are the products of this fusion of two systems then consider our history, our impact in the first world on the rest of the planet.
Besides Nostradamus may have forseen a different usage for the name Mabus. Give this name the be bop spelling popularised in names like INXS and Me D 8, and ask the question, Who is the Anti Christ? The answer would be, it Ma B Us. Scary thought, huh?
Prophetic Oracle has been a tool used throughout history to find the way when paths are unknown. The Sumerian world bestowed oracular powers on the priestess who awaited the coming of Baal in the chamber atop the Ziggurats. The Egyptians sought the advice of Ammon. The Greeks sought their most ancient oracle at Dodona in Epirus, the conduit for Zeus's advice. There the rustling leaves of oak trees in the sacred grove were interpreted by priests. The most famous oracle in the Greek World was at Delphi and was dedicated to Apollo. But there were many others. The Roman state kept a book of Oracles called the Sibylline Books in a vault in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and these were referred to in time of crisis right up till the year 405 when Flavius Stilicho, the Valentin Beria of his day, had them burned in an excess of Christian zeal, purportedly because they foretold the end of Rome.
Prophets speak for God, revealing and interpreting God's will. Mohammed stated there had been 200,000 prophets but only six of them brought new laws and dispensations. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed himself.
Christ was a prophet as well as the son of God. And the doctrine of compassion, of love, of communistic disbursement of wealth Christ spread was as revolutionary in its day as that which Lenin or Mao spread nineteen hundred years later. The mindset of classical man was of conquest and violence, rape and enslavement, retribution and revenge. These were normal and proper and were enshrined in the doctrines of the Old Testament and the epic sagas which described the morality of their respective civilizations. Prophets were the interlocutors of Divine will. The notion of the False Prophet was entrenched in Hebrew lore and spurred the charges levelled at Christ. Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians, (2, 1-12) restates the coming of the Evil One. But it was John in the first Epistle (II,18 and 22) who gave a name to this force and that name was the AntiChrist, the Beast whose number is 666. He stated that the arrival of the Antichrist preceded the second advent. It was a notion that stuck and ignored the metaphorical nature of prophecy. The power of the parable.The charge Antichrist has been levelled at emperors, Nero among them, popes; Silvester II and Paul Vand kings; Frederick II of Prussia. Napoleon. Reformers like Luther and Lenin. It has burned many innocents at the stake.
Michel Nostradamus is probably the best known of the prophets of recent times. Certainly it is his prophecies that have been most widely popularised. Though arguably the likes H.G. Wells could well fit the bill of prophet given the widespread popularity and hence the profound effect he and other science fiction writers of his ilk have had on technical developments of this century.
Nostradamus wrote in the middle years of the sixteenth century. As we draw to the end of the millennium we have seen and will continue to see recurring waves of interest in Nostradamus' oracular powers. Nostradamus systematcially set out his prophecies in sets of quatrains, covering twelve centuries of precognostication. Nostradamus only names the Antichrist once and that is in quatrain 62 of the second century. The name he gives the Evil one is Mabus, M-a-b-u-s.
Pope Innocent III declared a crusade on the Cathars, christian purists, who used Christ's Sermon on the Mount as the their pivotal doctrine. These people made no bones about their opposition to the papacy, explicitly naming the Pope Anti Christ and his Church the Kingdom of Evil. In the general slaughter at Beziers, a Cathar stronghold in Southern France in 1209 the papal legate, a man named Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics in the town should be spared. His answer, "Kill them all, God knows his own." Now, given the record of papal immanity by way of the inquisition and it various crusades to proselytise the faith, its dogmatism and weddedness to secular powers and wealth one would have to wonder who in fact was the Evil party.
For that matter if we look at the Old Testament and see the vengefulness of God, the pestilences and plagues brought onto the heads of those that did not follow the faith one could be forgiven again for seeing that this God was the very antithesis of the God of peace and Love that Christ preached. And given the content of Revelations and the odious retributions visited on disbelievers as each of the Seven Seals is opened by the Lamb of God one would have to ask the question where is the mercy, the gentleness, the forgivness for which Christ is synonymous? Everything described could easily be seen as nothing but anti the christian message. All these things pose serious questions for those that believe in the Christian precepts. No real Christian would wish eternal damnation on anyone, let alone those who were demonstrably so weak as to wander from the path.
But let us allow for a moment that Nostradamus might have been onto something. That John for that matter was onto something. That these prophets in their ecstasies tapped into some pool of universal knowledge. Interpreting Nostradamus one can easily sea the bones of past events in his words. The quatrains are metaphors. Open to intrepretation in any manner at all. Yet by the same token there are some unnerving resonances. References to Il Duce and Franco. To newspapers and fission bombs. And missiles and flying machines described in Revelations. Scary shit.
So in these days, as the Millennium draws to a close minds turn to prophecies from the past. Jews and Muslims are dragged out of society's closets for drubbings, being the most conspicuous non christians. Fundamentalists speak their narrow interpretations of what was meant, liars mount the podiums of self interest and broadcast their so called truth. Tensions rise, and here and there innocents are denounced as AntiChrist. This is where Nostradamus may have done us the greatest service. He names the AntiChrist as this Mabus, and according to the cognoscenti this Anti Christ is alive now.
Mabus shall come and soon after shall die,
Of people and beasts shall be a horrible destruction,
Then on a sudden the vengeance shall be seen,
Blood, hand, thirst, famine, when the comet shall run.
What if Nostradamus was referring not to an individual but to an ethos, a system, a culture. Our world is largely the product of the fusion between capital and religion. It teeters irresolutely between the doctrines of the free market and social justice. In neither one or the other. Balance the record of Capital against the Christian vision and then the record of the Church against the same vision. Neither comes off looking very good. And as we are the products of this fusion of two systems then consider our history, our impact in the first world on the rest of the planet.
Besides Nostradamus may have forseen a different usage for the name Mabus. Give this name the be bop spelling popularised in names like INXS and Me D 8, and ask the question, Who is the Anti Christ? The answer would be, it Ma B Us. Scary thought, huh?
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