THE ANTHROW CIRCUS TEAM
n honor of the upcoming Nashville Hot Chicken Festival, our team did some hot chicken taste tests. Join us as we taste and discuss the history of Nashville Hot Chicken, a culinary phenomenon that has gained a following fair afield of its regional Music City roots.
Thank you to Pepperfire for providing us with our taste test.
Ocean bays that face westward inspire a strong fascination. My European ancestors left such anchorages to travel to the New World, and as a youth I found my way across the U.S. from Gary, Indiana, to Monterey, California. This city and its bay remain the dream of my green years.
From January to April 1966, I lived in Monterey at taxpayer expense while I roamed the coastline, visited the coffee shops, and enjoyed the city’s ambiance. At that time I earned my living as a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier—enrolled in a three-month Spanish course in the Defense Language Institute (DLI) at the Spanish-built Presidio of Monterey. I was destined for the 8th Special Forces Group in the Canal Zone of Panama.
A VIDEO REPORT BY BILL DIEM
The leg of lamb, or “gigot” in French, is slowly disappearing from French tables. Fewer lambs are being raised in the country, and the stronger taste of the meat is less appealing to young people. And yet, because of its traditional role as a special meal, this dish still has the power to bring people together around the table. Lamb is associated with the Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas and the Islamic holiday of Eid ul-Adha, and the gigot is the choice cut.
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STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS
PHOTOS BY ISABELLE BERNARD & HEATHER M. SURLS
Outside the northern Jordanian city of Ajloun, I sat cross-legged in Wael Rabadi’s olive grove, stripping ripe olives from just-pruned branches. Looking up from the work in my hands, I could see olive trees and oaks, grapevines and stone walls blanketing the hills in all directions. Eighteen hundred years ago, Rabadi’s ancestors owned this whole area, including the prominent hilltop behind me crowned by the centuries-old Ajloun Castle.
A VIDEO REPORT BY BILL DIEM
This happens when I have been alone too long—the words start to leak out of everything and they will not stop. I cannot look around, I cannot take a single step, without it becoming prose, and it is not welcome. It thrusts me into a place where language imposes this acute separation between me and everything else—leaks its ink out of the bark, the pavement, the sky, flowing directly from itself to me in the form of a stream of words, and it will not let me rest.
VIDEO REPORT BY BILL DIEM
That the French love oysters is clear. Why they love them is a result of geography and culture.
A VIDEO REPORT BY BILL DIEM
In a Culture Keeper first, at least in recent memory, we bring you a recipe! In a video report narrated in French (never fear, non-French speaker, we’ve included some English text for you), Bill Diem takes us from the market to the kitchen to a dinner table surrounded by friends ready to enjoy the evening’s star dish. Along the way he sheds some light on the history of this representative of France’s reputed culinary traditions.
