This must not be a new idea, but somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that the great culinary traditions of the world can probably be traced back to how that particular culture or region chose to deal with surplus. Wouldn’t this make a great book? (Maybe one already exists?)

When you think about a world pre-refrigeration, surplus and seasonal go hand in hand. Nature dictates the seasons, which results in cyclical surplus of several crops at a time. It was these co-occurring fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, nuts, and mushrooms that effectively constrained what people could prepare with what. Come to think of it, wouldn’t this make a great cookbook concept?

What are some examples of foods that might have had their root in a natural surplus? Here are a few off the top of my head:

• fruits and berries => jam preserves
• milk => cheese, yogurt, butter
• summer vegetables => ratatouille

I have to admit that these are only concepts that have occurred to me over the course of getting a box of fruits and vegetables delivered every other week for the past two years. The seasonal veggie box idea is such a brilliant concept, I have to wonder sometimes why it’s limited to CSAs. Why doesn’t Whole Foods offer a subscription veggie box? Or Safeway?

It’s definitely crossed my mind that in some future life I might lead a more agrarian lifestyle, but saying I’d like to be a farmer reeks of a kind of wannabe Pollanian hipsterism. Instead, if I look at it from the perspective of surplus, both in creating it (too many sheep, too much wool, too much milk, too many vegetables, etc) and dealing with it (lamb, yarn, cheese, canning, etc), the agrarian ideal, for me at least, becomes much more real, and potentially enjoyable. Like problem solving on a seasonal scale.

Homogenization disrupted the chemical structure of the milkfat so drastically as to release a torrent of enzymes that promptly turned raw milk rancid. Even when dairy chemists learned to sidestep rancidity by combining the steps of pasteurizing (which inactivated the enzymes) and homogenizing, there remained the age-old consumer habit of judging milk by its richness—i.e., the thickness of the cream layer on top. When packaging in glass bottles came in toward the start of the twentieth century, one of its advantages from a buyer’s point of view was the plainly visible ‘creamline.’ The fact that homogenized milk in glass tended to acquire an unpleasant oxidized flavor on exposure to light more rapidly than creamline milk was another strike against it.

As a result, until shortly after World War II few people saw any reason to want homogenized milk. Milk for drinking was almost without exception available in only two degrees of richness: with or without all the original fat. Skim milk, or what was left when the cream was separated for other purposes, was the ugly sister. Health experts warned mothers that it was paltry stuff, deficient in crucial nutrients. (Most states required that it be fortified with vitamin A to replace the fat-soluble beta-carotene that disappeared along with the cream; this step is still mandatory for fat-free and most reduced-fat milk.) At the nation’s creameries skim milk was an unvalued by-product, often dumped for lack of any profitable use.

As early as the late 1930s a few dairy processors had been trying to win people over to homogenized milk. The turning point came with a postwar shift to opaque or cardboard containers in place of returnable milk bottles. This in turn accompanied another shift away from home delivery and toward supermarket purchases of milk. Consumers and supermarket managers adored the convenience of throwaway packaging, Milk processors and distributors loved the fact that cardboard couldn’t be seen through, which incidentally solved the oxidation problem. It was the perfect moment for abolishing creamline milk and substituting a product whose appearance had previously weighed against it.

For a laugh, check out Steve, Don’t Eat It! Vol. 7, Cuitlacoche.

Friday it rained. We took it easy. Ran a few errands. Packed. Had one last dinner with Aurelie, Michel, and Luna. Went to bed after midnight and woke up at 5am to catch our 7:30 flight from Nice to London.

Highlight of the trip home was breakfast at Huxley’s Bar and Kitchen in Heathrow. I had the “Great British Breakfast”: bacon, sausage, eggs, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, hash brown, and toast.

Also fun was riding the longest escalator in Heathrow:

On Tuesday the autumn rains arrived, which was fine by us as we had indoor lunch plans with some old friends of Stephanie’s and indoor shopping plans at CAP 3000, both in Saint-Laurent du Var.

The restaurant, La Sartaïa, specialized in local Niçoise cuisine, so it should be no surprise that I ordered the assiette niçoise, which included a sampling of beignets de courgettes, sanguin mushrooms, roasted peppers with sardines, petits farcis (vegetables stuffed with ground meat), and the universally-popular insalata caprese.