Pigging Out for Prosperity!

Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 13:13

 

An Austrian New Year’s Eve celebration would not be complete without the traditional pink pig-shaped biscuits. A Sylvesterabend (Eve of St. Sylvester) dinner also includes actual pork. If it’s not a ham hock, it’s sausages – which, being fatty, connote fattening wallets. If the past year was unlucky, then the part of the hog to cook was the jowl, supposed to bring about a reversal of fortune. Germanic people tend to pick beef short-ribs as lucky foods.

Italians combine the pork with lentils. In other countries, the legumes of choice are black-eyed peas. This is because during cooking both swell and look like coins; in some cultures they are combined with rice or cereals. Strictly speaking, one ought to eat 365 lentils, black-eyed peas, or grains of rice, in order to “qualify” for a lucky new year. The Italians eat cotechino (boned, stuffed trotter) con lenticchie just after midnight.
Counting, for the Spanish and Portuguese, and their former colonies such as Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru, is a matter of months – they pop a grape for each stroke of midnight, and if a grape turns out to be bitter, the month it represents will be so, too. Peruvians insist on taking in a 13th grape for good measure. Rumour has it that this tradition was deliberately begun in 1909, when there was a surplus of grapes in the Alicante region.
Saint Sylvester is credited with having baptized Constantine the Great; and this means that not only is he the precursor of a new year, but also the vanguard of a new Christian era. It is traditional to toast one another with a typical punch on this night.
Dollar bills are called greenbacks and cabbage in slang. This idea is also transposed to the dinner table – and therefore, eating green leafy vegetables (kale, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, or, to stretch a point sauerkraut or coleslaw) that are torn, as opposed to being cut with a blade, is supposed to bring luck for the forthcoming year. The Danish sprinkled their stewed kale with sugar and cinnamon.
Germans have been known to place fish scales, since they look like shiny coins, in their wallets for good luck. By association, eating herring on the stroke of Midnight on New Year’s Eve will bring health, wealth, and happiness. Herring is eaten either as roll mops (marinated and rolled around a pickled cocktail onion) or, when it is of portion side, whole, with salad.
If the very thought of pink biscuits makes your tail curl, you can follow the Greek customs and put some coins into a plain cake – cheating to make sure that there is one in every slice, perhaps.
The pig, however, remains a prime candidate for New Year’s Eve dinners, perhaps because of its corpulent body, a symbol of opulence. In many American states, it is traditional to eat Hoppin’ John, which combines all three principal ‘lucky’ ingredients – pork, beans and greens.
As with minestra, Christmas Log, and other dishes, everyone insists that there is only one correct recipe – his – for Hoppin’ John. If the dish is going to be cooked like the Italian risi e bisi, must the rice and the peas be cooked separately, and combined, or must they be allowed to simmer together for the flavours to mingle better? Should tomatoes be added to the pot, or must they be purred into a pouring sauce consistency? Or must they be chopped, and raw? Must the peas be mushy, or must they have bite? Is it wrong to use a Dutch oven, a wok, a pressure cooker, or anything else except the traditional cast-iron skillet? If you are using chitterlings, must they be cooked separately, or should you begin with them and then add the rice, and later, the peas? May one use processed peas? The questions go on – and on.

Vinegar Valentines

Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 09:45 by Tanja Cilia

As the days go by, I think how lucky I am…. Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day….. How can I say this….? I always wanted to have someone, someone to love…. I love your smile, your face, and your eyes…. I see your face when I am dreaming….. If we were on a sinking ship with only one life jacket… I’m so miserable without you… I want to feel your sweet embrace….. I want you, and I need you… Kind, intelligent, loving and hot….. Looking back over the years, I wonder….. My darling, my love, my beautiful wife… My love, you take my breath away…… Of loving beauty you float with grace…. Someday I hope to marry… We have been friends for a very long time… You are a part of my life….
Receiving cards with the above messages written on the front would make anyone’s day…. but opening them to find cruel words would wound deeply.
These cards are not run-of-the-mill “joke” cards. They deliberately seek to hurt, insult, the recipient, with acidic messages, and that is why they are called “Vinegar Valentines”.
They were originally sold for one penny – and that is why some people still mistakenly call this type of street literature “penny dreadful” (the name given to potboilers). They counteracted Cupid’s sweet arrows with tart barbs.
The picture, when there is one, is usually a caricature of the recipient, according to type… and sometimes, the message makes reference to this too. This is the type of card that Calvin (of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes) gave to his classmate Susie Derkins, along with a bunch of dead flowers, as an integral part of their love-hate relationship.
It is obvious that these precursors of hate mail were sent anonymously – and seeing that there was a time (not in Malta) before postage stamps were invented, when people had to pay to be given their mail… it means that recipients paid to get insulted.
Raphael Tuck & Sons, proud to be known as “Publishers to Her Majesties the King and Queen” with printing houses in London, Paris and New York, from the mid 1800’s into the early 20th Century also got on the Vinegar Valentines bandwagon, when they realised that it paid.
One could buy these Vinegar Valentines as we buy “open” cards today. Others were aimed at specific professions that people loved to hate – dentists, undertakers, politicians, lawyers, teachers, or anyone to whom one would have taken a dislike.
These days, most people tend to sign their Valentine cards – especially if they cost good money. It is only a few who want to play the guessing game.
Although Vinegar Valentines have gone out of fashion, some so-called humour cards are crass enough to be classified as worse.
Just in case you were wondering what was written inside the cards, the front of which was quoted at the beginning of the piece… here are the complete messages.
As the days go by, I think how lucky I am… that you are not my girlfriend!
Hey, it’s Valentine’s Day… too bad no one likes you!
How can I say this…? I can’t stand you!
I always wanted to have someone, someone to love… and you’re not her!
I love your smile, your face, and your eyes… am I not good at telling lies?
I see your face when I am dreaming… and that is why I wake up screaming.
If we were on a sinking ship with only one life jacket… I’d miss you!
I’m so miserable without you… it’s as if you are still here.
I want to feel your sweet embrace… but don’t take that paper bag off of your face.
I want you, and I need you… to leave me alone.
Kind, intelligent, loving and hot…. this describes everything you are not.
Looking back over the years, I wonder… what did I see in you?

My darling, my love, my beautiful wife… marrying you messed up my life.

My love, you take my breath away… what have you stepped in to smell this way?
Of loving beauty you float with grace… if only you could hide your face.
Someday I hope to marry… anyone else but you.
We have been friends for a very long time… how about we stop?
You are a part of my life… the negative part.

Private Dancers – In Public

Thursday, October 6, 2011, 12:45 , by

 

The sticky, stinky brown stuff has really hit the fan. Some asinine attention-seeking (female) teens have been cavorting in front of their peers, and the media caught wind of it.

However, I was more shocked at the reactions and opinions of quite a few of my friends – mur ara, as one of them succinctly put it, than at the foolish antics of the girls.

One of the women to whom I talked justified her point of view by saying at least I know where she is; another chided me for being behind the times for not taking this in my stride, and another insisted that these days you cannot stop them or ground them because they will call the Helpline – oh, yes, you can; and so what if they do?

Some time ago, in Italy, there was a great to-do about under-age cubisti; youngsters hoping to be ‘discovered’ by talent scouts, who spent their evenings writhing away in suggestive and provocative poses on ‘cubes’ (raised platforms) in seedy clubs.

Whether these, and our local girlies, are offered the casting couch is anybody’s guess.

But I digress. This is much more than a sad case of finding an outlet for raging hormones and the wish to ‘experiment’

Beyond the “what a shame” fifteen-minute yearning for fame lie deeper issues.

Is it possible that these children cannot find a better way of using their talents? If they love to dance so much, how about their organising dance-based fund-raising activities? Rope in some wannabe models and singers, and Bob’s your uncle. I am sure some NGO would back their efforts – if they could find the time to organize their thoughts – and their wardrobes.

My eye was caught by the fact that they had been paid (or rather, given a tip, considering the paltry amount) €10, for frolicking and prancing about in beachwear. Their payment would not even by them a decent – and I use the term judiciously – bikini. So somewhere along the line, I will have to believe that they do not do it for the money.

To call these dancers “erotic” is to make fun of them – I would prefer to call them a pedophile’s wet dream. And let’s not talk about married men who insist that variety is the spice of life to excuse their constant (not seven-year) itches.

But, alas, these girls too immature to realise that they are merely setting themselves up as such. To them, it is ‘fun’. And perhaps, mud-in-the-eye of their fuddy-duddy friends who are not into risqué behaviour.

We have been told that the children’s parents are their ‘friends’ on social sites. This assumes that the parents know about the behaviors, and possibly approve of the fact that their children are getting, if not fame and fortune, at least notoriety and pocket-money.

But wait – does not the fact that money has changed hands constitute “child labour”? I am under the impression that a teen cannot even receive money I she baby-sits the children of a neighbour; how does this, therefore, square up?

Deutschmarks or dollars; American Express will do nicely, thank you…
Tell me, do you wanna see me do the shimmy again?… And any old music will do… All the men come in these places…And the men are all the same…

So sings Tina Turner. And this might explain why all the dancers were girls. They usually are, except in certain dives.

Ironically, one of the dancers was saying that like Greta Garbo, she and all teens want to be left alone – and then, they go and show off. This is illogical.

It has been said that the Police and the Children’s Commissioner is “investigating” this. The parents of babies, toddlers, tweens and teens do not want investigations – we want action.

I have seen enough drunken children in Paceville, despite the ‘prohibitions’. There are enough teen pregnancies, despite the ‘sex education’ lessons. I have seen more than enough children puffing away in the street, despite the ‘awareness campaigns’.

With role models such as Rihanna and Lady (!) Gaga, children are wont to push the boundaries of what is accepted by society. They say that “everybody does it”; but peer pressure works in positive mode too.

If the dominant girl in the peer group takes it into her mind that they will henceforth go jogging, her followers could well agree. In any case, if state school grounds were open after hours, they would even have a place to congregate without risking future repercussions from potential employers who run internet searches on job applicants.

If one bossy girl commands her troop to wear jeans and a t-shirt, and hie off to an old people’s home to perform Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, they will toe her line. Eventually.

However – I will have to add that this requires dedication and rehearsals. It is much easier to grab some underwear and improvise, is it not?

Because, inter alia, mindless gamboling in non-restrictive clothing this is easier to fit in with studies and home life than something that requires assiduity. And ‘instant recognition’ of people in the street tends to be inebriating to someone who is too young to cope with its ramifications.

And…any excuse is better than none.