May 4, 2005
DR FREUD, CALL YOUR OFFICE:
Behind every good chef is a mom (Jennifer Wolcott, 5/04/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
After school, when his friends were playing outside, 7-year-old Delio Susi Jr. could be found in the family kitchen, watching his mother make deep-fried shrimp, risotto with calf's liver, or her much-loved gnocchi."She didn't want me to be there," recalls a now-grown-up Mr. Susi. "She just wanted me to be a normal kid. But her cooking always smelled and tasted so good. I had to learn how she did it."
Finally, Amelia Susi stopped nudging her son to join his pals, grew to enjoy his company at the stove, and eventually relied on him to help prepare family suppers. Now executive chef and owner of his own restaurant in Cambridge, Mass. - aptly named Amelia's Trattoria - Susi is constantly inspired by those early days.
His most important culinary teacher died last December, but he still serves many of the same rustic Italian dishes she taught him from her native region of Abruzzo.
Like many chefs, Susi says his work as a culinary professional is inextricably linked to his childhood and his mother's influence
Twinkies at 75: munch 'em, fry 'em, save 'em for years (Judy Mandell, 5/04/05, The Christian Science Monitor)
The Twinkie just turned 75. Considering that 500 million of them are sold yearly, it seems obvious that Americans are crazy for these sweet, spongy, cream-filled snacks. The question is - why?Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2005 8:29 AM"The reason behind my loving Twinkies is obvious - they taste so darn good," says Debbie Rizzo, a publicist in San Francisco..
"Twinkies are simply my favorite food group," says Denise Dorman, a Twinkie connoisseur in Florida. "I craved Twinkies during my recent pregnancy, and we're having my newborn son's christening cake made of Twinkies."
OK, so some people think Twinkies taste great. But why have the squeezable yellow cakes endured as an American cultural icon?
"Great brands live on because of the emotional response they evoke as part of our [long-term] memory," says Tom Collinger, associate professor of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Professor Collinger once thought of a Twinkie as the perfect food: "You could hold it in one hand. You didn't get crumbs on your fingers or your mouth. There were options to get at the filling inside - biting, licking, and slurping or sucking."
Good thing Professor Collinger doesn't live in Massachusetts.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 4, 2005 8:39 AMMr. Susi's story reminds me of one of the contestants on the PBS culinary equivalent of "American Idol" called "Cooking Under Fire." Check it out tonight if you get the chance.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cookingunderfire/
We did an informal Twinkie experiment in college where we left an unwrapped one out for the entire semester. No change at all. Supposedly they have a shelf life of infinity. Yum.
Posted by: Rick T. at May 4, 2005 9:30 AMDid you see the accompanying picture of the 1,000 Twinkies a minute? They were just a blur coming off of the assembly line. We need to bomb North Korea with the things.
Posted by: AllenS at May 4, 2005 9:31 AMThink I've linked this before but it's a great site:
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 4, 2005 10:23 AMSpeaking of Twinkie experiments, Caltech once had an expensive scientific instrument that was supposed to be deployed to a telescope in Hawaii. It had to be evacuated so that inner parts could be cooled to about 4 degrees above absolute zero. Suddenly, it became hard to get a good vacuum, and for months they couldn't fix the problem. Finally they disassembled the whole instrument, and found a half-eaten Twinkie inside. Apparently one Twinkie will spoil a vacuum for months on end.
I'm not pointing any fingers, but one person on their team later came down with scurvy from his diet of candy and Coca-Cola. He added oranges to his diet and the scurvy went away.
Posted by: pj at May 4, 2005 10:40 AMJust north of the Space Needle in Seattle is the Hostess factory for the Northwest. For several months I had a job at a office just downwind, and going ot work in the morning was cruel. I'm not a Twinkee fan, but I could have easily become one.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at May 4, 2005 1:16 PMI'll leave that one alone David.
Posted by: Genecis at May 4, 2005 1:58 PMI haven't seen the print layout of today's Christian Science Monitor, but I'd be interested to know how close together they laid out this story with the one about Bill Clinton's enlistment into the battle against childhood obesity.
Posted by: John at May 4, 2005 3:59 PMDid our host, apparently a decent cook in his own right, really mean to suggest that Chef Susi is a Twinkie?
Posted by: ghostcat at May 4, 2005 4:38 PM