Judie Davis

There is a book about the founder of Dow chemical called “Herbert Dow and Creative Chemistry.” Dow Chemicals is the primary manufacturer of napalm. Midland, Michigan is the seat of this bed of creativity.

Last week the Clergy and Layman Concerned about Vietnam sponsored a protest rally of 400 persons at the Dow Corporation stockholders meeting.

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After talking about it for a long time, there finally is someplace to go on Sunday Mornings, someplace to pick up the Times and read it over coffee and danish.

Your own Eat It girl is opening Alvin’s Finer Delicatessen (Cass at the expressway) on Sundays. We started a few weeks ago with danishes and donuts, my mother’s homemade apple pan dowdy, and a special for the day, Sandy Feldheim’s cheese blintzes. We had a nice crowd and everyone seemed to encourage us.

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As a belated Mother’s Day present—a tribute to my mother (who said I was no lady for using the word “bullshit” in my last column).

Like other little girls, I learned to cook by getting in my mother’s way. You know how mothers are, giving menial tasks like watching the egg whites become meringue when what I really wanted to do was make a wedding cake.

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Having been publicly admonished by the editors for a lack of responsibility, I dutifully return to these pages, hanging my head and offering bagels, begging forgiveness (up the wall, Peter!).

Finals time usually finds me typing papers with little interest in cooking or column writing which is my excuse for a lack of responsibility.

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Open City has started to happen and I’m excited about it and glad to be involved in it. I’m working on the job co-op, hoping to influence the business world to hire freaks who really want to work but are more left of center in their commitments.

Why do we all have to lie so much when we apply for a job? Why do we have to promise to never miss a day and stay with the job forever when both sides know it’s so much bullshit? Part of the job of our committee is to try to get work that is meaningful, a job at which we can be ourselves: long hair, freaky clothes and whatever else we are. We hope to eventually extend beyond the menial, baby-sitting, window washing job set up that other freak communities have established.

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A big thanks to the Tennessee Ghost writer for socking it to you last issue.

And thank you to everyone concerned about my hand. It wasn’t a bad burn and I was fine the next day.

Sundays at Alvin’s continue to be a lot of fun for me and hopefully for everyone who comes there. My soc. class with Dr. Stein has taken to meeting informally at Alvin’s on Sundays as a few Monteith classes have done. It’s a fine place to study later in the afternoon (our hours are 11 to 5).

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As I write this time I’m recovering from a tonsillectomy and therefore haven’t done much cooking or eating.

Vernors ginger ale seems to have healing powers that only Detroiters are aware of. Vernors and milk is also my number one remedy for a morning-after thirst.

I’ve also had this yen for Chinese food for the past three days and can’t wait to swallow a big bite of chow mein or egg roll or sweet and sour pork.

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Talking-pre-holiday-pre-final-two-papers-due-blues. No feel for cooking; no money for eating out and Peter says get your column in.

Heat oil, brown pork on both sides, salt and pepper. Peel 5–6 onions, cut in slices and smother the pork. Pour in a little water, reduce the heat and simmer 20 minutes.

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By the time you read this I will have gotten through Christmas, but as I write I haven’t yet.

I sort of have a tradition which I sometimes wish I could stop. Anyway, I have this tree trimming party every year where everyone who comes for the first time must bring an ornament which somehow expresses the “real” them.

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I had a groovy Thanksgiving that I’d like to tell you about: Some of my friends asked me if I’d like to cook for about 30 people.

What I took on as a challenge turned out to be a great night of eating for over a hundred people. Charlie Auringer, Myron Green, Steve Swainson, Eric Morrice, and Barry Kramer all live and work out of a huge studio loft on Cass which easily accommodated our friends and guests.

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I made a delicious beef stew the other day, a real one pot delight, filled with all kinds of vegetables and served over noodles. Pick up on it.

The meat to use in a beef stew is usually packaged as “stewing beef.” Actually it is sirloin tip or top round steak. Buy it when it’s called stew beef because it usually costs less and is easier to cut into cubes.

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butter

medium onion

few pieces garlic

2 oz. salt pork (few pieces cut up bacon will do)

2 to 3 lbs. frying chicken

1 sm. can tomato sauce

seasoning: pinches of parsley, rosemary, oregano and basil (or a couple teaspoons Italian seasoning which is all of the above in a more expensive bottle).

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Since I’m more or less trapped working downtown this summer my latest food adventure is the lost art of sandwich making.

Making your own lunch is always a drag. When you were a kid there was at least some element of surprise when your mother made your lunch. At least there was with my mother who believed in putting in surprises once in a while.

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It’s been so long now since I’ve written a column that I hardly know where to begin. I was turned off writing about recipes and am hoping this column can take a different direction, but it’s all still going around in my head, so I’ll just ramble on about some food things and non-food things too.

Latest “thumbs down” is the China Doll, Second at Seward which has shitty Chinese food. Portions are small, prices are high and service is nil.

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Summertime—Picnic Time

It’s silly to cook much when the weather is warm. Picnics don’t have to be big, planned things. If you keep a few basic picnic foods around the house, you can grab them and go to Palmer Park or Belle Isle anytime.

I think that food in warm weather should be kept whole and simple. Summer fruits and vegetables don’t need much preparation. It is easy to keep green onions, radishes, tomatoes and cucumbers cleaned and in a plastic bag. Throw a few ice cubes in the bag and everything will stay crisp and cold, even in a picnic basket.

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Now that Fall is here, I hope to be more regular with this column. I just haven’t been in the mood to write about food, what with the world coming down all around. But as my editor says, politics is a dime a lime, but everyone likes to Eat It.

Bradley Jones keeps asking me for some one dish casserole recipes so I’ll start with my own chili recipe. I like chili very thick and sort of spicy sweet.

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Sorry about not making the last issue. Your Eat It girl was in the hospital, which gives her a good reason to rap on institutional feeding and freedom.

The curfew was on the week before I went into the hospital, which seemed to prepare me for the confinement. I became a body which had to be operated on, something which had nothing to do with my mind. First my civil liberties, then my body!

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Jake Frankhouser is a gentle, revolutionary who has good and practical ideas about food. Jake’s good discipline has gotten him an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture and this year, a Masters in urban planning. Beyond all that, Jake’s interest is urban recreation; and he has some fantastic plans for neighborhood recreation facilities, planned and built by the neighborhood.

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A group of friends and myself recently decided to take on the problem of gouging by inner city food merchants. Calling ourselves ICHWAG, or Inner City Honky Women Against Gouging, five of us set out to prove the price differences between inner city and suburban stores. Wouldn’t you just know, soon as we got organized and set the next date for our coffee klatch business meeting, I find out that it is already being done: At a slightly more professional level, too.

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“Bread: prime symbol. Try and find a good loaf.”

Most of us are familiar with this, the opening line from Henry Miller’s essay, “The Staff of Life.” And it seems a good place to begin a column about food.

We all know how really lousy Wonder Bread is, but chances are that’s what is in your bread box. White bread is cheaper and more convenient to buy. Not all of us live near a bagel factory. Now, what to do with it. If you insist upon putting cheese and bologna between it, what can I tell you?

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Why I like Chinese food:

I guess I really became crazy about Chinese food when I was living in New York and working as a waitress. I always ate Chinese on my day off because I was tired of roast beef and other all-American delights.

Chinese food is different from anything else; it’s hard to make at home, and it is usually quite cheap and very filling. I have never known anyone to leave a Chinese restaurant hungry.

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I seem to be coming to a better understanding of what kind of cook I am. What this clarity can be attributed to is uncertain, but I’m digging it. Guess these past few columns are towards a philosophy of cooking.

I’m more of an eclectic, I suppose, borrowing what I can from whoever I can. I am not a gourmet: I rarely measure ingredients, unless it’s a complicated recipe which I’m trying for the first time. I am also not one for expensive cuts of meat or fancy, out-of-season vegetables.

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To begin with, I was never much of a McCarthy supporter. I was naturally on his side, signing petitions and stopping friends in the suburbs who thought the Northwest side was too far to go for such things. But to me the man lacked pizazz: exactly what everyone else liked about him. He sort of reminded me of a professor I once had somewhere, someone whose name of course I couldn’t remember.

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