Lidia Bastianich Chef’s Story  In my hometown in Italy (now Croatia), Pola, food revolved around the courtyard of the houses.  When the bean pods on the plants were mature and just beginning to dehydrate, people would pluck the whole plant, shake out the dirt from the roots, invert the plant, and hang it on a clothesline with pins so it would dry under the sun.  When they were dry we’d put sackcloth on the ground and take the pods off and we would sit around the cloth and shell them.  Then the kids would hold two sides of cloth and we would toss them in the air, and the wind would blow away everything but the beans, which we would save.  We did that with ceci, too, and with corn for the animals.  To get the butcher for the ritual of the pig slaughter, the whole town would get together and arrange a date.  He would go to each courtyard and help each family slaughter their pig, always with the help of several men, because it takes strength to hold a pig down.  Then he would butcher it, and the family would work on the curing of the prosciutto and the bacon slabs, the making of sausages, blood sausages, musetto, pickled feet—not a morsel wasted.  He would cut out the ribs, the bacon slab; then the family would be left with curing all the pieces, and we kids would help out.  I remember rubbing salt into certain cuts and making blood sausage.  Pola, however, was to become Pula.  That part of the Istrian peninsula was annexed by Yugoslavia, and today it is part of Croatia.  The ethnic Italians had the option to leave and go back to Italy.  My mother did file, as she was ready to go, but she became pregnant, so she decided to stay at home, especially since her mother was there.  And once the iron curtain went down, everything changed.  You became the nationality of the occupiers.  You couldn’t speak Italian or practice your religion, although in border situations one always speaks more than one language, and we spoke Croatian as well.  We finally decided to leave.  I remember it was evening when we left, and my grandmother and grandfather and father were at the train station.  My father was going to stay behind and would try and join us later.  Nobody told us, because children talk, but I sensed something.  I recall thinking, why is everyone so upset?  We were supposed to be going for a vacation, to visit the part of our family that remained in Italy.  Our roots were sort of yanked out from under us.  As children we didn’t know that we were not going to return.  So I didn’t say goodbye to my grandmother and I didn’t say goodbye to my friends.  We got to Trieste, and a few weeks later my father got out.  At that point we were without a nationality.  We could have stayed in Italy to get back our Italian nationality, but my parents assessed the situation and, in the aftermath of the war, said, “Let’s move on,” as we had no passports and were in limbo.  They were essentially looking for a country, for a place that would take them.  The Catholic Charities brought us to New York and found us the hotel room and later our first home and a job for my father in America.  We couldn’t cook at the hotel, so we had to eat everything out.  The Horn & Hardart was across the street from the hotel, but we first ate bananas, milk, and bread that we bought at a market.  Read more of Lidia's story and read the stories of other chefs at https://epdf.pub/chefs-story-27  "I like to take nature and exalt what it gives me.”  http://www.vancouversun.com/life/common+sense+italian+recipes+from+celebrated+chef+lidia+bastianich/9068647/story.html



Frank Hardart Sr. (1850–1918) was the co-founder with Joseph V. Horn of Horn & Hardart, the food service company that launched the Horn & Hardart Automat cafeterias in Philadelphia and New York.  Patrons at the Automats could serve themselves by putting coins into a wall of little boxes, and open a small door to everything from a hot entree or sandwich to a piece of pie.  Frank Hardart Sr. was born as Franz Anton Hardardt in Sondernheim, today an urban district of Germersheim, in the Palatinate (at that time a part of Bavaria) in 1850.  He emigrated to America in 1858 with his widowed mother, an older brother and two sisters, and settled in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He started out washing dishes and cooking in restaurants.  While working at a lunch counter at age 13, he learned the French-drip coffee brewing method--a departure from the boiled coffee common at time.  The French-drip coffee was later credited as part of Horn & Hardart's early success.  In 1876, Hardart bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia, with the idea of introducing New Orleans' French-drip coffee to a new market.  Philadelphia had the Centennial Exhibition that year and the city's restaurants were flush with out of town visitors.  Hardart took a job washing dishes and did his best to sell the idea of French-drip coffee to restaurants, but there were no takers.  He returned to New Orleans and waited tables in restaurants, saving what money he could.  He met and married a young Irishwoman named Mary Bruen and in 1886, they moved to Philadelphia to continue Hardart's dream of introducing a better cup of coffee to the masses.  He was working at a luncheonette called Joe Smith's in 1888 when he answered an advertisement by Joseph V. Horn (1861–1941), who was looking for a restaurant partner.  Horn, who came from a wealthy family in Philadelphia, had borrowed $1,000 from his mother to place the ads.  "Horn got only one answer: three words, scribbled on a scrap of paper, stuffed in an envelope with a boarding house return address on it. Frank Hardart had sent it.  He'd been working in a quick lunch (sandwich shop) called Joe Smith's when he saw Horn's ad.  He tore off the corner of a bag of sugar, wrote, 'I'm your man' on it, and mailed it."  On December 22, 1888, Horn and Hardart opened their first restaurant together in Philadelphia and in 1898, they incorporated as the Horn & Hardart Baking Company.  Horn & Hardart's success grew as they opened lunchrooms on busy street corners in commercial areas of Philadelphia.  Horn had been inspired by a visit to a new "waiterless restaurant" in Boston called, "Thompson's Spa."  But it wasn't until Hardart traveled to Berlin in 1900 to find out more about the German version, called "automats," that their own business changed.  Frank Hardart purchased the machinery for $30,000, a huge sum at the time, from a German company called Quissana, so Horn & Hardart could set up their own Automat in Philadelphia. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hardart



Steak and chimichurri sauce is a classic pairing that is legendary in Argentina.  Whether you cook the steak indoors or outdoors, I think this will become one of your favorite meals—I know it’s one of mine!  And it’s quick and easy, to boot!  A simple three-ingredient rub is made from spices that you most likely have in your pantry, but it delivers flavor that is anything but simple!  Flank steak should be served medium-rare and cut across the grain for maximum tenderness.  Pair this dish with Tex-Mex Chocolate Sheet Cake and a German Chocolate Variation.  Elizabeth Karmel  serves 6

https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/cumin-rubbed-flank-steak-with-chimichurri-potatoes



11 Authors on Their One-Word Book Titles  The art of telling an entire story with a single word

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/authors-on-their-one-word-book-titles/whats-in-a-name



Americans who live in communities with a rich array of neighborhood amenities are twice as likely to talk daily with their neighbors as those whose neighborhoods have few amenities.  More important, given widespread interest in the topic of loneliness in America, people living in amenity-rich communities are much less likely to feel isolated from others, regardless of whether they live in large cities, suburbs, or small towns.  Fifty-five percent of Americans living in low-amenity suburbs report a high degree of social isolation, while fewer than one-third of suburbanites in amenity-dense neighborhoods report feeling so isolated.  These new findings are based on a nationally representative survey that measured how closely Americans live to six different types of public and commercial spaces:  grocery stores; restaurants, bars, or coffee shops; gyms or fitness centers; movie theaters, bowling alleys, or other entertainment venues; parks or recreation centers; and community centers or libraries.  Daniel Cox and Ryan Streeter https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/america-needs-more-community-spaces/589729/?fbclid=IwAR3dDoJvytipxzGotB84E6Cix7ytLj6icpVcdVz0Tq4JWAUJy19G1kGlSf8



In Praise of Public Libraries by Sue Halpern  Years ago, I lived in a remote mountain town that had never had a public library.  The town was one of the largest in New York State by area but small in population, with a couple thousand residents spread out over about two hundred square miles.  By the time my husband and I moved there, the town had lost most of its economic base—in the nineteenth century it had supported a number of tanneries and mills—and our neighbors were mainly employed seasonally, if at all.  When the regional library system’s bookmobile was taken out of service, the town had no easy access to books.  The town board proposed a small tax increase to fund a library, something on the order of ten dollars per household.  It was soundly defeated.  The dominant sentiments seemed to be “leave well enough alone” and “who needs books?”  Then there was the man who declared that “libraries are communist.”  By then, through the machinations of the town board, which scrounged up $15,000 from its annual budget and deputized me and two retired teachers to—somehow—turn that money into a lending library, we had around three thousand books on loan from the regional library consortium tucked into a room at the back of town hall.  We’d been advised by librarians at the consortium that five hundred library cards would take us through the first year.  They took us through the first three weeks.  Our librarian, whose previous job was running a used bookstore, turned out to be a master of handselling, even to the rough-and-tumble loggers and guys on the road crew who brought their kids in for story time and left with novels he’d pulled for them, and then came back, alone, for more.  Books were being checked out by the bagful; there were lines at the circulation desk.  Children especially, but sometimes adults, couldn’t believe it was all free.  By year’s end we had signed up about 1,500 patrons, and there was a book club, a preschool story hour, movie night, and a play-reading group.  https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/04/18/in-praise-of-public-libraries/  The article reviews Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg, The Library Book by Susan Orlean and Ex Libri, a film directed by Frederick Wiseman.



The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup was the eighth edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international football championship contested by 24 women's national teams representing member associations of FIFA.  It took place between 7 June and 7 July 2019, with 52 matches staged in nine cities in France, which was awarded the right to host the event in March 2015.  The United States entered the competition as defending champions after winning the 2015 edition in Canada, and successfully defended their title with a 2–0 victory over the Netherlands in the final.  In doing so, they secured their record fourth title and became the second nation, after Germany, to have successfully retained the title.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_Women%27s_World_Cup



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2121  July 8, 2019