Martin Lane Perspective

While we were in the throws of pulling off our last Home Restaurant.... ML grabbed John's camera and started shooting... The perspective of a ten year old watching her parents run around like crazy! Here is what she came up with... AMAZING!

Declaration of Independence

Every fourth of July we go down to the mall to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence. John has been studying that Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, often referred to himself as a follower of the ancient philosopher Epicurus.

Here is John on what that exactly means:

President Jefferson who was known to have eaten little in order to truly enjoy what he had, lived by a mantra of moderation and ate mostly vegetables with meat only as a side dish. Jefferson's home, Monticello , to this day is a fabulous garden flush with juicy peaches and a variety of eggplants. All three of these qualities point to a true Epicurean and not the Epicurean-ism of the food channel. Epicurus was known to eat mostly barley cakes and water–a little cheese was a huge indulgence. Like Jefferson, the philosopher known to have advanced a notion of 'what is needed is simple to procure' was an avid gardener and Epicurus even held school in the "Garden."

Epicurean-ism practices a hedonism that can be summarized by the idea that 'the greatest pleasure is to eat when hungry'. Epicureans vowed to limit their pleasures and by doing so opening themselves up to the greatest amount of pleasure. Pleasure for this ancient philosophy was what should lead one AND pleasure must be something determined by the individual in an active practice of discerning what would cause the least amount of anxiety. To eat when hungry seems simple enough but not so commonly understood in contemporary America. For Epicurus pleasure should be an active practice thereby the limiting of pain. The thing to keep in mind is that Epicurus is encouraging us not to let hunger or pain lead us for this would position desire as a lack and pleasure as a stop gap measure. From this limited perspective, pleasure is always in the immediate and never involved in a larger practice. The object of any practice should be pleasure.

The term Epicurean is probably the most misused tag in the history of western thought and has been abused by many competing schools, in a rush to disavow a school, for declaring any form of religious mythology the greatest evil (Jefferson as an act of Epicurean-ism also wrote a secular bible and viewed Jesus as a thinker not a prophet).

Epicurus stands within the series of thinkers that posits desire as productive, a positive notion that produces life–a precursor to Darwin. For anything necessary is easy to get and anything that is not easy to get causes anxiety. Anxiety is to be avoided at all cost and a practice that eliminates anxiety is the highest form of hedonism.

Above everything Epicurus held "Friendship" and believed that public life was a waste of time that would only lead to anxiety management–interesting to think that Jefferson declared his love for Epicurus after he left office... Something to think about as we celebrate our individual forms of patriotism.

Chuppah

When I became a full time florist in 2002 the last thing I thought I would have to figure out, would be constructing temporary mini-tents in which people could get married under. The chuppah is used traditionally in Jewish weddings and symbolizes the home a couple will make together. Chuppahs can be free standing constructions or can be held by symbolic/significant participants of the wedding party. John and I were married under a chuppah held by our brothers, Kenan and Alexander as well as two dear friends Derrick and Melvin. Although part of the Jewish tradition, I am seeing chuppahs used in many non-religious ceremonies. For example I am Jewish and John is not and since we were not religious we were free to appropriate the symbolism and content from wherever felt good–we used a chuppah, broke a glass and were married by a dear friend and long time family astrologer, Sandra ( also a minister recognized by the state of Maryland).
However in my floral practice the free standing chuppah has been a challenge for me. I am not very handy with power tools. I can put anything together using pins, string, tape or even the occasional staple gun but sawing, drilling and bolting always seemed daunting.



In June I had a wedding on top of the Newseum downtown, the couple wanted a sparse simple elegant chuppah to match the construction of this ultra contemporary building. After multiple trips to Home Depot to scout out material just to see if this was possible for me to build, I decided I needed to finally get professional help–put an end to the free standing chuppah angst.



I called my friend Darrell a former professional skateboarder turned carpenter. He was excited about the project although he had just had a co-worker put a nail through the bottom of his foot. Darrell explained that being a former skateboarder he had broken more bones in his body than he could count and that a nail through the foot was not much more than a good excuse to enjoy pain killers. Darrell started making drawings and within two days we had this structure of a cube, a cube without walls in our backyard. He had designed it with metal slats running from post to post to insure stability and piece of mind that our temp tent would not fly off the top of the Newseum and onto the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues. He also created a system of easy take apart and put together bolts for multiple uses in various places. This was like magic to me, in that unless I can hold sticks together by sinking them in a vase with rocks it is not going to happen!



The painter Francis Bacon created geometrical cube-like structures in his paintings. This gesture created a psychological space and framed his abstract portraits. The chuppah does just this as a symbolism of the home a couple will create and a temporary structure. The Jews were originally a nomadic people, malleable in that they could pick up and put down almost anywhere. This symbolism implies an open ended concrete union, abstract in a very real manifestation of home and that home implies nothing more than a shared perspective–a psychological space.


We love this structure in our backyard in the between weddings.

foie gras

Shaun Hill is one of John's chefs and mentors, a master chef and a Irish man who spoke beautiful French and listened to Gregorian chants as he drove his car, literally, over the moors of Dartmoor looking for short cuts home after a long night of cooking. Southwest England was where they met and where Gidleigh Park Country House Hotel was located. A mock Tudor mansion that stood at the end of a winding hedged lane, Gidleigh was a magical place in the late 1980's where you could run into Andrew Loyd Weber or Pete Townsend. Sylvia Plath's Ted Hughes lived down the road and in the local village of Chagford the population was under a hundred yet there where four pubs.

Gidleigh Park was where Shaun Hill made the most beautiful Foie Gras terrines. Marinating well cleaned livers overnight in Armagnac and Port, this almost curing process left you with a product that needed almost no cooking at all. Foie gras is mostly fat so it is crucial to cook slow and low when making a terrine (quite the opposite when sauteing: cook hot and fast). Placed in a bain marie and barely cooked at 200 degrees until the fat just started to melt, Shaun would pull out of the oven and then sit weights on top as the terrine would cool in the water it was cooked in while the pieces of liver melded together.

At Rupperts we made quite a few Foie Gras terrines. I guess the question is given our shift toward more health and ecocentric practices is: If Rupperts were open today would we serve Foie Gras? The city of Chicago has banned it. PETA constantly protests its production. I can only guess that Shaun would find this question ridiculous. A chef in Europe at the level of a Shaun Hill has many times over earned enough, lets call them, "sustainable" credits to be granted the pleasure of working with a completely non-factory farmed product such as the Foie Gras that a Shaun Hill would be working with. Chefs in Europe at this level have been practicing so called slow food, so called locavorism, so called non-factory farming not for any reason other than that they are best practices and produce Superior meals.

Today we started a terrine for a Rupperts guest. They asked us to make them a Terrine to go with a 'glorious' Sauternes they are drinking this weekend. And even though we really enjoyed making this and the livers are excellent from Hudson Valley Foie Gras, I don’t think we would serve Foie Gras if Rupperts were open today. The reason I think more than anything is that eating Foie Gras just doesn't fit with what we are doing now, maybe just a bit too complicated... although I do think we need to find away to get more pleasure into our politics, especially our food politics.

The French have a saying that "eating is learned" and that pleasure is a practice.