The Lost Supper, from Taras Grescoe

Wondering About the Sound of Crickets?

Taras Grescoe — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 21:34:54 GMT

As much as I appreciated being on Substack, my tolerance for fascists is non-existent. (I wouldn’t permit my books to share a catalogue with the publishers of white supremacists and Nazis, and Substack is a publisher—albeit a particularly negligent one.) I explain more about where I’m coming from here.

(And I’m not casting shade on anyone who stays on t…

If You've Signed Up for The Lost Supper Substack...

Taras Grescoe — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 18:26:12 GMT

I’ve moved down the road a-piece. Too many Hitler-types in these parts, y’see.

It will take you to the new home of The Lost Supper. I won’t be publishing on this platform any more (I explain why here). But The Lost Supper continues, with the full archives, and a new dispatch every week. As with Substack, all you have to do is enter your email to sign up …

Pssssst...I'm Over Here*

Taras Grescoe — Sun, 18 Feb 2024 21:10:48 GMT

I’ve spent a few weeks moving my archive of newsletters to a new platform. You can now find my transport dispatches at www.straphanger.blog , and my food history dispatches at www.lostsupper.blog (If you’ve already subscribed, you’ll automatically get the weekly dispatches from the new platform, so you don’t need to change anything.)

I’ve had discussions with other writers recently, some of whom are about to join Substack, or are remaining here. Most justify their decisions with classic freedom of expression arguments. (The argument sometimes goes: “You’re still on the Internet right? But there’s all kinds of people spewing hate on the Internet! I don’t see you about to quit the Internet.” I don’t even know where to start with that one…) I’m of the view that Substack is a publisher, if a particularly negligent one, and it’s my choice not to be published by a platform that publishes hate speech.

There have been a few times that I’ve asked myself whether I’ve over-reacted. So I spent a little time going down the rabbit-hole today, starting with a visit to the Substacks of Neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer (Alexandria) and white supremacist Patrick Casey (Restoring Order), and then checking out what they recommend. That led me to Substacks like the White-Papers, Morgoth’s Review, Brandon’s Great Reset Letter, The Forbidden Texts, Turning Point Stocks, and many more. Lots of discussion of the “Great Reset,” “Zioworld,” Taylor Swift psy-ops—and so much hatred of people of color and transgender people. Most of these Substacks have removed the swastikas, sonnenbands, and more overt symbols of Fascism, presumably to escape removal after the Jonathan Katz article in The Atlantic that took Substack’s founders to task for doing nothing about de-platforming Fascist and white-supremacist newsletters. But they’re still there, still spewing hate. And some of them have 1000s of followers.

To tell you the truth, I’m feeling a bit sick to my stomach, and like I need to give my eyeballs a good washing. Wading through the convoluted discourse of hate is hard on the system.

So, as of this date, Feb. 18, 2024, Substack remains the home of Fascists, Nazis, and white supremacists. (It’s also the home of lots of people on the Left with ridiculously extreme views. Few of them, though, are as obsessed with promoting the removal or extermination of other people as their alt-right counterparts.)

That said, remaining on Substack, or leaving, is a personal choice. I write a newsletter about transportation, and another on food history, but I’m also the author of a book about the anti-Fascist resistance in 1920s Italy. During the research, I spent enough time in the state archives in Rome (and on the streets of contemporary Rome, where Fascist symbolism has never been removed) to know

There are a lot of people on Substack whom I respect, among them Timothy Snyder (the anti-Fascist historian) and the wonderful author George Saunders. Patti Smith remains on Substack; so does Margaret Atwood; as does Chuck Palahniuk. That’s their decision. I’m the first to admit, there are a lot of advantages to remaining on this platform: it’s easy to use, and offers lots of opportunities for boosting readership through its Notes and recommendations features.

I’m happy that I went through the Substack experience, especially at a time when it’s getting so hard for writers to make a living from er, legacy media. But learning to Substack was basically the process of learning how to create a blog with subscribers, some of them paying. That taught me that it’s become a pretty easy thing to do—no special coding knowledge required. (For what it’s worth, the people over at Ghost, which hosts my blogs, are very helpful when it comes to migrating subscribers and making sure paid accounts follow. Patreon is another popular choice for writers, as is Buttondown; I found Wordpress’s learning curve a little too steep.)

That said, it has still eaten up about a week—there were glitches in the transfer, some of which I’m still working out, apologies for the rough edges—so for those considering making the switch, know that it doesn’t take a lot of time, but it does take some time.

I’m happy to be where I am now. Mostly because I’m getting sick of seeing platforms taken over by trolls and hate-mongers, feeling like I’m contributing to the problem by providing content for them, and then wondering when it’s going to get too disgusting to handle. If you see me posting on this platform in the future, it will only be in this form: telling you where I’ve gone, not providing new content on subjects that are close to my heart.

Autonomy requires more effort to get to—always has. But it’s a good place to be.

The Peak (Olive) Oil Crisis

Taras Grescoe — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:15:42 GMT

One of the super-centenarian olive trees I met (and yes, hugged), in Puglia. At their age, they sometimes need crutches.

I’m an olive oil addict. At any one time, there are two bottles going in our kitchen: a well-priced 750 ml (25 oz) bottle for everyday sautéing, and a more expensive 500 ml (16 oz) bottle of flavorful Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese oil for dressing salads and finishing dishes. I regularly shoot down tablespoons of the stuff, as if it were cod liver oil, and I’ve been known to rub it into my skin, like a lotion. Our family of four goes through at least two full-sized bottles a month. That’s getting close to the two monthly quarts people in ancient Rome consumed (under the Cura Annonae, or grain dole, olive oil was one of the products that was distributed free of charge to citizens of Rome). I attribute my young sons’ stamina, high energy levels, and lustrous hair to all the olive oil that their parents sneak into their diet

The Neighborhood Miller Chronicles

Taras Grescoe — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 18:00:24 GMT

Before I was so shockingly interrupted in 2023—by Nazis, no less1—I’d written the first instalment of a dispatch about baking loaves of bread with an ancient grain, ground by my friend Nick’s brand new flour mill.

Between the Bibliotheca and the Bonfire

Taras Grescoe — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 22:10:16 GMT

I’ve been a little slower to publish this week, for a number of reasons. There’s the round of holiday visits; there’s the fact that our school-age children, like most of the kids in the strike-bound province of Quebec, have been home for weeks, and are avid for diversion; and I’ve been sick (nothing serious, just an energy-sapping cold).

And then there’…

A Visit to the Neighborhood Miller

Taras Grescoe — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 18:19:50 GMT

At the café this week, my friend Nick came up to my table with a big, soupy1 smile on his face. He told me the flour mill he’d ordered had been delivered, and he invited me to come over and give it a try.

This was very good news indeed. The last time I’d ground my own grain, I’d used a grindstone and a quern (or actually, a Mexican metate, intended for grinding corn), a process that took me at least five hours of hard labour, and left my back and shoulders aching and my palms blistered. (I describe the way I went about making Neolithic flatbread in this post.) I still had five bags of whole grain left over from that experiment, and I’d been looking for a way to reduce the hard kernels to flour without incurring too much pain. I’m a proponent of de-industrializing the kitchen, but there are limits to the lengths a twenty-first-century human can be reasonably expected to go.

Why go to the trouble of grinding your own grain? One factor is cost: buying whole grain in bulk is cheaper than purchasing already-ground flour, and it can be stored almost indefinitely. The other factors are flavour and nutrition (the two, I’ve noticed, are often connected).

The Soil We Eat *

Taras Grescoe — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 14:01:17 GMT

* Remember Richard Manning’s influential 2004 Harper’s essay The Oil We Eat ? I do.

Why did the Roman Empire collapse again? Wasn’t it something about the barbarian hordes? Or the rise of Christianity and the inevitable eclipse of the decadent pagans? Wait…maybe it was the lead in the pipes beneath the Palatine Hill?

Here’s another hypothesis: the Empr…

What Did the Romans Ever Give Us?

Taras Grescoe — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 18:01:05 GMT

To mark American Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to cook up a dish that could not possibly have been eaten in Pilgrim-era North America. Lenticulam de castaneis, a pot of lentils and chestnuts, made with entirely Old World ingredients. (I know what you’re thinking, but Castanea sativa, the European chestnut, wasn’t introduced into North America until the 19t…

In Defence of Farming

Taras Grescoe — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 18:00:36 GMT

And yet, I’ve written them.

How alienated are we from the people who produce our food, and the places that produce it? So alienated that calls for abandoning farming altogether are being taken seriously, to the extent that they are seen as guideposts to a more sustainable future.

Baking Neolithic Flatbread

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 16:59:22 GMT

In last week’s dispatch, I told the story of travelling to Çatalhöyük, in central Turkey, to see how the residents of the world’s largest proto-city ground their grain in 7,200 BCE. Then I came back home, and began the process of grinding grain, made from emmer (an ancient grain, one of the first domesticated by humans), with the help of Marc-André Cyr, an accomplished baker here in Montreal.

Fisun Ercan, and your correspondent, in front of the clay oven in the kitchen of her restaurant Bika.

Today I’m going to describe how I actually set about baking my Neolithic flatbread. (Spoiler: it takes a village!) My challenge was to bake the bread in a clay oven, like the ones I’d seen in the replica house in Çatalhöyük. The archaeobotanist responsible for analyzing remains from the site, Lara Gonzalez Carretero, had shown me photos of an outdoor oven she’d fashioned from clay, and I considered borrowing a backyard to do the same, but then settled on a compromise. Marc-André had suggested I contact the Turkish-born chef Fisun Ercan. During the pandemic, she’d opened Bika, a farm-to-table restaurant, in the semi-rural area around St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. When I called up Ercan, she told me she’d never baked with emmer, but would love to try. She had a specially built clay-walled oven in her kitchen and offered to fire it up for me.

Bonjour-Hi-se:ko Montréal / Tiohtià:ke!

Taras Grescoe — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 20:28:44 GMT

“Launch” in quotes, because I had a kind of-sort of launch in Vancouver at Upstart & Crow earlier this month. But that was a mere dress rehearsal. This is the real thing, with special guests (no spoilers here, but they do bring the spice!).

It will be at the lovely, spacious bookstore De Stiil, on Rue Duluth. All the information you need is in the graphi…

How to Make Neolithic Flatbread

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 19:46:12 GMT

During the writing of The Lost Supper, I had a goal that became an obsession: recreating the bread that was consumed at Çatalhöyük, a proto-city whose ruins I visited in central Turkey. It was the first place where humans lived together in large numbers. Eight and a half thousand years ago, Çatalhöyük (pronounced cha-TAHL-hu-yook) was home to as many as eight thousand people, making it the single largest concentration of humans that had ever lived on earth.

Fresh-baked bread provided the long-lived people of Çatalhöyük with a large percentage of the calories in their diet. It was made with a kind of wheat the ancient Babylonians called ziz, the Egyptians called zeia, the Hebrews referred to as kassemet, and contemporary Turks know as kavilca. In English we call it emmer. Along with barley, it was the first wild grass ever domesticated, putting it among the most ancient of the ancient grains.

On the Çatalhöyük site, I found replicas of the saddle querns that people there used to grind the emmer into flour, as well as the ovens used to bake the dough into bread. They resemble firins, the beehive-shaped ovens used in villages in contemporary Turkish village to make ekmek (bread, but also the Turkish word for food or sustenance).

Taking My Showboat on the Rowboat

Taras Grescoe — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 15:14:49 GMT

Just a quick bulletin about my ongoing Lost Supper tour.

This Sunday (Oct. 22 at 11 am) I’ll be in Vancouver, at Performance Works on Granville Island, as part of the Vancouver Writers Festival.

It’s a breakfast talk, along with several other writers (Hey Charlotte Gill! Long time, no see!)

No Recipes!

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 18:13:28 GMT

I’ve got a lot of cookbooks at home. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to re-sell the ones I love best, because they’re stained with olive oil, tomatillo sauce, and sundry, unidentifiable ingredients. (Will future scholars be able to exactly recreate 21st-century meals from the organic remains found splashed on cookbooks?) Looking at them, I can retrace …

Tasting Silphion

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 15:30:57 GMT

In my last Lost Supper dispatch, I told the story of how I took a high-speed train to central Turkey with Mahmut Miski, a professor at the University of Istanbul, who made the case that he’d discovered the mystery herb of the ancient world growing on the flanks of an extinct volcano near the city of Askaray. Here’s the rest of the story.

Your corresponde…

Montreal Book Launch--Delayed

Taras Grescoe — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 15:16:36 GMT

Just a quick note to let my readers in Montreal know that the official launch of The Lost Supper, which was scheduled for Oct. 6 at the De Stiil bookstore, has been delayed. The host/surprise guest had an “empêchement” (ie, something came up!) Not to worry, there will be an event at the same location, probably in early November.

You’ll get an email with …

The Holy Grail of Food History—Rediscovered (Pt. 1)

Taras Grescoe — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 19:16:39 GMT

If there’s a Holy Grail in the annals of food history, it’s the plant that the ancient Greeks called silphion, and which Romans knew as laser or silphium. According to Pliny the Elder, the last stalk of silphion was shipped from North Africa to Rome, where it was said to have ended up in the ample belly of the Emperor Nero. It was prized for its intoxicating aroma, and a flavor that transformed everything from a plate of scalded sow’s womb to a pot of lentils into a dish fit for the gods. The disappearance of silphion is considered the first extinction of any plant or animal species in recorded history, as well as a cautionary tale in how thoroughly human appetite can extirpate a species from the wild.

While I was researching my latest book, The Lost Supper, I followed up a lead that a professor at the University of Istanbul had re-discovered silphion growing on the Konya Plain in the heart of Turkey. National Geographic sent me to investigate his claims, and I’ve had the opportunity to see the plant growing in the wild, and even had a chance to taste it. I believe that this professor is correct, and that silphion—the long-lost delicacy of the ancient world—never disappeared.

I’m going to share my quest for silphion, and the reasoning that leads me to believe that this plant is the real thing.

Lost Supper Pub Day!

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 20:45:37 GMT

Today, September 19, is the official publication day of my latest book The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past.

What does that mean?

Up until today, you haven’t been able to buy it on Amazon or other online retailers. I went to my local Montreal bookstore, Drawn & Quarterly, late last week, and they already had a few h…

Q. How Can I Be as Healthy as a Hunter-Gatherer?

Taras Grescoe — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 20:44:56 GMT

I’ve long been a proponent of adventurous eating. In The Devil’s Picnic, I sought out homemade absinthe in its birthplace, Switzerland’s Val-de-Travers (more on my quest here), as well as tea made from coca leaves in the Bolivian highlands. In Bottomfeeder, I noshed on drunken shrimp in Shanghai (watch out, they bite back!), and slathered on the oolichan grease in Ilahee Chuk (a place known to many settlers as British Columbia).

That said, I’m nowhere near as adventurous as some of the more out-there gastronauts. When I asked British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Café what the most extreme food he’d ever eaten was, he replied: human placenta. With that, any attempt at one-upmanship I may have been contemplating ended abruptly.