Broadside by Heidi Larsen

BROADSIDE

A MAGAZINE FOR THE MASSES

We literally illustrate every way to skin a cat. Page 24

SON OF A PEACH Lincoln never gave up, would you? Page 36

FEATURES 36 COVER STORY: Do I Dare a Peach?

Broadside • November 2011

There are major categories of things that affect how much pleasure we take from food. One is sensory, and that’s where the supertasters fit in. We don’t all taste things the same way. That’s hardwired. The other is experience, the pathologies you have encountered. That is all learned.

24 Die Cat! Die! 57 The Art of Art

DEPARTMENTS 2 SIDE BAR They Might Be Giants

4 SIDE NOTE Fall Album Preview

6 SIDE SHOW Philip Seymour Hoffman

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THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS We sit down to catch up with John & John after the release of their 15th studio album Join Us. Written by: Beard Beard Beard

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liamsburg 8-bit biodiesel beard tumblr. Beard carles iphone blog scenester jean shorts. DIY brunch mixtape, marfa dreamcatcher letterpress Letterpress +1 master cleanse bicycle rights keffiyeh williamsburg 8-bit biodiesel beard tumblr. Beard carles iphone blog scenester jean shorts. DIY brunch mixtape, marfa dreamcatcher letterpress Art party messenger bag Austin next level? Letterpress +1 master cleanse bicycle rights keffiyeh williamsburg 8-bit biodiesel beard tumblr. Beard carles iphone. For more information, go to www.broadside.com

Album: Beard Beard Beard

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Album: Beard Beard Beard

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Album: Beard Beard Beard

WHAT HIS SUCCESS MEANS FOR ALL OF US Written by: Beard Beard Beard

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Look at me squish my eyebrows. - Hoffman

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DO I DARE EAT A PEACH?

Because as a kid, I wouldn’t go near one. Or a cheeseburger. Or soup. Or anything that had touched a pickle. My parents said I was the finickiest child they’d ever seen, and our meals together gave new meaning to the phrase “food fight.” So now that I’m thinking about starting a family of my own, I decided it was time to figure out why I used to be by Bill Magrity

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’ve never eaten a pickle, at least not on purpose. It’s not a claim I make with pride, though it comes up somewhat often, especially in the summer months. Backyard-beer-and-burger-flip season. For much of my life, such occasions were actually harrowing affairs, hardly conducive to the relaxation for which they were purposed. The stress typically kicked in at the end of hour one, just as the congregants moved to the fixings table. The sun might shine and the birds might sing. A piñata might even hang in the yard. But the spread would stretch out like a minefield. Plates stacked with onions, tomatoes, and lettuce, items that, to my mind, had no more business on a burger than peanut butter. Bowls filled with potato salad and coleslaw, two concoctions whose very names I preferred not to let pass my lips. For dessert, the dreaded watermelon. My only solace would come when the chef called, “Who wants cheese on their burger?” at which point, if I was lucky, I’d spot a five-year-old wearing my same look of disgust. A compatriot. We’d get our burgers first—less time was spent in their construction—then go eat at the swing set. “You know,” I’d explain, “I’ve never eaten a pickle, at least not on purpose.” On one such occasion a friend’s son got curious. “Does that mean you’ve had one on accident?” he asked. “Actually, your father once snuck four pickle slices and some mustard on a hamburger he fixed for me. It was at a cookout shortly after we got out of college, an engagement party for him and your mother.”

“What did you do?” “I took one bite and spit it all over the table. I think your grandmother was pretty grossed out.” He looked up at me skeptically, causing me to worry for a moment that he might be pro-pickle. But as he turned to examine the burger on the paper plate in his lap, I knew it didn’t matter. I could make him understand by likening the pickle to the beet. Or to broccoli. For that is the essence of the picky eater’s dilemma: Whatever that foodstuff is that he finds most objectionable, nothing will be as terrifying as the thought of having it in his mouth. I say that with intimate authority. I grew up the worst eater I’d ever heard of, the kid that my friends’ parents always sent home at suppertime, a sufferer of bizarre food phobias that were absolutely nonnegotiable. I’d refuse to eat cheese, except on pizza, and then only with pepperoni. Mac and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches were out. By a similar logic, french fries were in but mashed potatoes were out. Condiments were unthinkable, and so too soup, fruit, and any vegetable that wasn’t corn. Those few foods I did eat

could never be allowed to touch on the plate; “casserole” was the dirtiest word I could think of. I would eat a peanut butter sandwich but had no use for jelly and would refuse to take a bite within an inch of the crust. Chicken was fine, turkey was not, and fish was just weird. Essentially, all I ate willingly was plain-and-dry hot dogs and burgers, breakfast cereal with “sugar” in bold letters on the box, and anything with Chef Boyardee’s picture on the label. Or, rather, almost anything. I didn’t fully trust the shape of his ravioli; something told me cheese might be lurking within. Such proclivities came at a cost. In elementary school, I was regularly disciplined for not eating enough of my lunch, sequestered to the “baby table,” where talking was forbidden and cafeteria monitors would loom overhead, pushing me to eat. When summer came, my parents would no doubt have loved to ship me off to camp but didn’t out of a legitimate fear that I’d starve. That was fine by me. I was similarly terrified that some camp counselor would force me to drink iced tea. At home, my parents did what they could but never had much heart for the

FRUIT FACTS A strawberry is not an actual berry, but a banana is. Apples float in water because they are 25% air. Kiwi contains twice as much Vitamin C as an orange

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THE SKINNY ON VEGETABLES Tomatoes are very high in the carotenoid Lycopene; eating foods with carotenoids can lower your risk of cancer. Other vegetables high in carotenoids are carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, and collard greens. Most of the nutrients in a potato reside just below the skin layer.

battle. According to my dad, the opening skirmish was over a sweet potato, when I was two. Though I remember nothing of the encounter, my guess is— given that my parents were children of the Depression and were neither adventuresome eaters nor particularly adept in the kitchen—that the sweet potato had been boiled, probably for longer than it needed to be. I looked at it and told him that I didn’t eat those. He responded that this was the first sweet potato I’d seen. At his strong insistence I took a bite, then airmailed it onto his chin. Meals became a combination of accommodation and subterfuge. My mom served dinner on steel cafeteria trays purchased at an Army surplus store. That allowed her to segregate my food. She’d sprinkle Jell-O mix on banana slices to make them seem closer to candy. She’d even turn a blind eye—occasionally—when I’d slide objectionable items to my two younger

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brothers, neither of whom suffered from finickiness. One of them actually ate crayons and cigarettes. My palate did broaden as I got older, though none of these victories were won at my parents’ table. And so ingrained were the food phobias that I can clearly remember each time I branched out. I first tried ketchup as a tenth grader, at the old Holiday House on Austin’s Ben White Boulevard, in an effort to look sophisticated in front of two much cooler upperclassmen. I was a University of Texas sophomore standing on the corner of Speedway and what is now Dean Keeton when I became an acknowledged fan of caramelized onions. A friend argued that they were the primary attraction in the $1.50 fajitas we’d just bought from a campus vendor, then opened one up to prove it. I was shocked. At that point I’d been enjoying them unwittingly for more than a year. And then there were tomatoes. I’d

long heard that garden-fresh tomatoes were nothing like the canned ones I’d picked out of my mom’s spaghetti. I could even recite the lyrics to Guy Clark’s celebratory hymn “Homegrown Tomatoes.” But I’d never been willing to try one until an afternoon twelve years ago at the home of the writer Jan Reid. The occasion was a reunion of sorts. Four months earlier some friends and I had been with Jan in Mexico City. Our cab had been hijacked by two pistoleros, and Jan had fought back, ending up with a gunshot wound in his belly and a bullet near his spine. While rehabbing in Houston, he had asked me to water his cherished tomato plants. When he finally got home, the Gang of Four, as he called us, met at his house for dinner. As we sat down, he announced he was serving BLTs, casually mentioning how good it had felt to have been able to pick the tomatoes that afternoon. He thanked me for keeping them

alive while he’d been in the hospital. are available. With the first bite, chemiIt didn’t seem an appropriate time to cal reactions between the burger’s say, “I don’t eat those.” They tasted ingredients and taste receptors in his as great as tongue will send messagfood served es through his nervous “There are major by someone system, primarily the categories of things who’s saved chorda tympani nerve, your life that affect how much which stretches around should. And pleasure we take from his eardrum to the stem the affinity of his brain. If there’s a food. One is sensory, held up; the tomato on it, or maybe and that’s where the next time I some ketchup, he’ll get supertasters fit in.” encountered a sweet taste, which a homegrown upon arrival upstairs will tomato I bit into it as if it were an trigger a small dopamine release. His apple. body will read that as good By then I was 33 years old. And news. The same though nowadays I’ll eat just about any- will happen thing—and have never really wondered with the what my life would have been like if salty only I’d met tomatoes sooner—a new fat concern has arisen. At 44, I’ve finally gotten married, and my wife and I are talking about starting a family. We’ve seen enough friends have children to know that wearing regurgitated yams will be part of the bargain. But we’d like to find a way to make that stop sometime before the kids go to college. Since my genes will get the credit for any picky eaters produced, the burden of learning why they happen and how best to deal with them has fallen to me. So I started doing some research. Imagine a caveman is eyeballing a hamburger. His reaction will be as instinctual as going to the bathroom or looking for love. The sight and smell will alert his brain that proteins and calories

in the meat and cheese. But if by chance there’s some arugula onboard, a bitter taste will register, signifier of potential poison. He’ll likely spit that out and pick it off the rest of the burger. As he continues, chewing and swallowing each bite, a second, internal smelling process will take place every time he exhales. This information will be more detailed than that from the tongue, which can read only the five basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and the newly discovered, ever-nebulous umami. The news will combine in the brain and be read as distinct flavors. He’ll go about the rest of his day with a good supply of

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energy and remember that meal as a his meat patty but the bun, there’d be fine thing. plenty of potential reasons why. Now picture the caveman eating “When we talk about picky eatat Austin’s Counter Cafe, rightfully con- ing, we are talking about pleasure and sidered home to the city’s best burger. people who don’t get the same hit Sitting next to him and regarding an from eating that others do,” instructs identical lunch is Linda Bartoshuk, a member of that the director of “We don’t all taste class of Austinite human research things the same way. that considers at the University itself the town’s That’s hardwired. The of Florida’s Center most evolved: the for Smell and other is experience, trendy hipster. Taste. She was the pathologies you (Though they one of the first have encountered. share the same experts I called, a That is all learned.” bedhead and legend in the tight beard, the hipster circle of neurosciwill be identifiable entists, psycholoby the pair of Ray-Bans folded next gists, and nutritionists who study the to his plate.) His relationship with the way people eat. She’s researched taste burger will be much more complicated. for 45 years, and among her discoveries Assuming his parents were middle- to is the supertasting phenomenon. “w. upper-class, he’s at least one generaWe don’t all taste things the same way. tion removed from foods of necesThat’s hardwired. The other is experisity, so he’s known only the luxury ence, the pathologies you have encounof choice. If he grew up in the seventered. That is all learned.” ties or eighties, his earliest exposure Those lessons come early. When to vegetables was probably via Del Bartoshuk explained the fundamental Monte and Green Giant, black-magic nature of conditioned food preferences alchemists who, through canning and and aversions, she pointed to baby rats, freezing, confused an entire nation on who sniff their mother’s breath to learn the meaning of “garden fresh.” If he what is safe to eat. In finicky humans, suffered from chronic ear infections the primary pathology is gastrointesas a kid, his chorda tympani may have tinal problems. If a person of any age been damaged and his sense of taste throws up shortly after eating, he’ll permanently altered. Or he may even automatically develop an aversion to be a supertaster, one of that quarter of whatever he just ate, regardless of any the populace whose tongues can have causal connection between it and gettwice as many taste receptors as the ting sick. “When I see a picky kid, the average eater’s. In that case, every taste first thing I try to find out is his mediwill be magnified, particularly the bitcal history. If the parents say he threw ter ones. Given all the variables, if the up a lot when he was young, I’ve got hipster chooses to leave everything off a pretty good idea why he finds many

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foods disgusting. It’s a brain mechanism he can’t help.” The neuroscientists I consulted stressed the same kinds of physical problems as Bartoshuk. Psychiatrists and psychologists, on the other hand, steered the conversation to the behavioral side of the equation. They said that many kids between the ages of two and four will experience some measure of pickiness. It’s as natural as learning to say no. Timid children may have an ingrained distrust of things that are new. Tactilely sensitive kids, like the ones who need the tags cut out of their T-shirts, may have trouble with food textures. Others may live in the neon food world of a supertaster. In these instances, the key is the parents’ reactions. If the parent forces the kid to eat food he doesn’t like, meals will turn into power plays. With a strongwilled child, that’s the kind of problem that can stretch well into adolescence. (The chefs I talked to, by the way, piled on the parents even harder. The problem, they said, is that most moms and dads can’t cook.) As the experts ticked off the things that typically go wrong, they sounded as if they had had access to my child-

hood scrapbooks. My first extended hospital stay came shortly before I turned three, during a frightful bout with epiglottitis. Because of a virus, my throat was closing shut, producing the kind of prolonged, painful eating trauma that the shrinks and neuroscientists said could lead a kid to reject a whole host of foods. But the sole connection my parents ever made to that event and my diet was of a different sort: They cited it as an example of how obstinate I could be. The hospital stay had been cut short because I wouldn’t eat the food. My folks got tired of bringing me Spaghetti-O’s. As my teen years approached, every meal became a battle of wills. My parents would tell me to eat, I would refuse, and they’d wait me out. My brothers would finish dinner and be excused to their rooms before I could sneak them my green beans. The family dog, a supremely overfed basset hound named Bobo who was my greatest ally in such matters, would be shooed to the garage. While Mom cleaned the

kitchen, I’d remain at the table. Eventually she’d sit and watch me, sometimes for as long as an hour. She never turned cruel. One doctor I talked to described parents who tell their children, “If you don’t want it for dinner, you’ll have it for breakfast,” then put the plate in the fridge to serve it again in the morning. That sounds like torture, and that didn’t happen. Instead, I’d ultimately give in, choke down my two green beans, and wash off my plate. But those wars were fought just once a week. My dad worked days and my mom worked nights; Thursdays were the only time we assembled for what we called “sit-down family meals.” Only years later did I recognize another dynamic at work. My folks split at the start of my senior year at UT, after 29 years of marriage. Suddenly it dawned on me that they’d never exactly been crazy about each other. That explained their work schedules and the tension around mealtime and the fact that my dad moved into my room when I left for college. It also provided a new name for the suppers he had cooked solo: Dysfunctional-Family Recipes. We ate a lot of fried bologna sandwiches and pancakes made with Bisquick and water when there was no milk in the house. A favorite among us three boys was something my dad called “barbecued hot dog casserole,” which consisted of butterflied foot-long wieners spread out in a glass dish, bathed in a full jar of hickory sauce, and baked. I’d always thought that eating a condiment and a casserole.

HISTORY OF CANDY AND DESSERTS The first candy confections were fruits and nuts rolled in honey. The price of manufacturing sugar was much lower by the seventeenth century when hard candy became popular. By the mid-1800s, there were over four hundred factories in the United States producing candy. Fortune Cookies were invented in America in 1918, by Charles Jung.

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