"So, you ask, is there progress in human affairs? Have we learned anything in the last 100 years? Speaking only for the past quarter of a century -- the span of my sojourn on these shores -- I'd say America has relearned how to eat and drink. When I stepped off the boat, a cup of coffee was 16 ounces of unlovely liquid in an unattractive cup. Pasta was mostly inedible. Bread was disgusting. Thank the hippies who fled cities to the country in the late 60s and early 70s and began to demand organic foods and flours. Thank the cookbook writers. Thank the travelers. These days, in Eureka, once and somewhat still a logging town, you can pick and choose among at least a dozen brands of coffee beans at Safeway, which sells at least eight types of potato, plus the diversity of foods required to satisfy polyethnic Californians. Italian bakers produce bread from a stone oven. A Humboldt County couple -- hippie in origin I suspect -- make Humboldt Fog, a goat cheese that has won the respect of the snooty French."
Thank God for the extirpation of "unattractive" coffee cups. I can't wait to read AC's next dispatch from Humboldt, emblematic of America's world-historical rise as a Nation of Connoisseurs!
Carl ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com