Interesting Thing of the Day

Sandboarding / Dry surfing or hot snowboarding?

Joe Kissell — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:01 -0700

It was in a high school English class that I first ran across Emerson’s famous quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” Something about that struck a chord with me, and ever since, I have tried to nurture a healthy appreciation for paradox if not outright contradiction. For example, as I may have mentioned, sports are not among my top thousand or so favorite things in life. So I was chagrined to discover how many of the suggestions for topics to include on Interesting Thing of the Day were sports-related. Someone would very excitedly come up to me and say, “Hey! You’ve got to write about this cool piece of tennis trivia,” or “There’s this really amazing baseball story your readers would love to hear,” and I’d kind of grin and nod and pretend to make a mental note, all the while thinking there could hardly be anything less interesting to write about than sports. However, when my son, Ben, suggested an article on sandboarding, I had to admit that did sound sort of interesting—and at least I didn’t have to participate in it. So in the noble spirit of contradiction, I set out to discover what I could about this sport.

Getting Board with Sand
Sandboarding resembles snowboarding as seen through amber glasses. The general idea is the same; participants strap a short board to their feet and slide down a hill, only in this case the surface is sand rather than snow. Sandboarders sometimes say the experience is more like surfing than snowboarding, an impression undoubtedly enhanced by the lack of heavy clothing. As in snowboarding, the sport is sometimes recreational, sometimes competitive; some participants focus mainly on speed, others on acrobatics and tricks. But one of the biggest differences is that sand dunes don’t have lifts; to get to the top for a run, you must hike or take a four-wheel-drive vehicle (euphemistically known as a “chair lift”)—and a friend to drive it back down the hill. Unlike snow-covered mountains, sand dunes are constantly changing size and shape due to shifting winds, making fixed installations of lift equipment impossible.

The sandboards themselves are superficially very similar to snowboards, which is to say they’re about the same size and shape, and use similar bindings. However, since sand is much more abrasive, and with much higher friction than snow, some modifications are necessary to keep the boards running smoothly and to keep them from getting chewed up rapidly. The bottom surface of most sandboards is covered with a tougher, more slippery material than wood—often Formica or ABS plastic—though stainless steel is sometimes used as well. The choice of material must be matched to both the type of sand on which it will be used and the intended effect (lighter materials for acrobatics, slipperier ones for speed). Some riders wax their boards to reduce friction further and prolong the life of the board, but even under the best conditions sandboards wear out even more quickly than snowboards.

The Sand(boards) of Time
I initially assumed that sandboarding was a very recent invention, a simple snowboarding knock-off. This is only approximately correct, however. On the one hand, sandboards have appropriated snowboard technology, and attracted snowboard riders, only in the last couple of decades. But there is evidence that ancient Egyptians were sliding down sand dunes on pieces of wood or pottery 3,000 years ago. Modern, upright sandboarding is believed to have been invented in Brazil in the 1940s. In recent years, though, advances in materials and techniques have led to much faster speeds and longer jumps than ever imagined before—professional sandboarders routinely reach speeds in excess of 60 m.p.h. (100 k.p.h.) and jump distances of 50 feet (15m) or more.

Sandboarding can be done anywhere there are sand dunes—which is a surprisingly large number of places. Certainly the deserts of Africa, Australia, and California are natural choices, but suitable sand dunes can be found all over the world—from Chile to the Athabasca sand dunes in Saskatchewan, Canada, from China to North Wales. The international sandboarding championships are held annually in Nurnberg, Germany, attracting as many as 50,000 fans. Florence, Oregon is the proud home of the world’s first sandboarding park, called Sand Master Park.

I should perhaps mention that, as sports go, the ones that involve standing on a board and moving very fast are among the last I’d personally be inclined to try. Whether the surface is water, snow, concrete, or sand, that whole mode of movement just doesn’t appeal to me—even if I get to ride a high-tech hoverboard. I do like the idea of sandboarding, especially the fact that it’s not as commercialized as snowboarding. But I think I’ll start out with sand tobogganing—or maybe just hold out for the 3D force-feedback sandboarding computer game, undoubtedly coming soon. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Sandboarding...

You can find good introductory articles on sandboarding at Extreme Dreams, Surf Wax (reprinted from Sandboard Magazine), and GettingIt.com.

Sandboard Magazine is a free Web-based publication.

One of the top suppliers of sandboards and bindings is Venomous Boards. Also see Australian designer Ocean Culture.

Sand Master Park in Florence, Oregon offers sandboard sales, rentals, and lessons, not to mention the world’s first and only permanent sandboarding park.

There is actually such a thing as sand tobogganing—see, for example, Alter-Action or Desert Explorers.

Lagniappe / But wait, there's more!

Joe Kissell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:01 -0700

On our last trip to Paris, Morgen and I met some friends for dinner at a restaurant that had gotten some very good reviews. The owner of the restaurant arrived at our table to take our orders, and we told him the prix fixe set menu sounded good. He looked strangely concerned, as though we foreigners couldn’t possibly know what we were getting ourselves into. “You understand,” he asked, “that this meal includes an aperitif, an entree, a main course, a dessert, and coffee…and an unlimited quantity of wine?” We nodded and assured him that we knew the routine. He smiled slyly and said, “Ah bon. There will also be…some surprises.”

A few moments later, a small dish of sausages arrived at our table—an amuse bouche, or a sort of pre-appetizer—along with some fresh bread. Then the advertised courses appeared, one by one, until finally, after coffee, the owner returned with a bottle and four small glasses in his hands and a conspiratorial expression on his face. “A little something to conclude your meal,” he offered, and poured us each a glass of marc, a potent digestif distilled from the bits of grape skin left over when wine is made. Splendid. We would have enjoyed the meal thoroughly even without the unadvertised extras, but the unexpected attention to detail left us with an even warmer feeling about the restaurant.

Little Things Mean a Lot
In New Orleans, the term that would be used to describe “a little something extra” of this sort is lagniappe, pronounced “LAN-yap.” There is an old custom among merchants in New Orleans to add a small, nearly trivial gift to an order—particularly for large purchases or repeat customers. The word “lagniappe” originally comes from the Quechua word yapay (“to give more”), which led to yapa (“gift”), and then to the American Spanish la ñapa (“the gift”). Although the term lagniappe is not used in, say, Paris, the underlying principle appears in many forms in many cultures—including the “baker’s dozen” that was once the norm in North America.

There’s a subtle yet powerful psychological principle at work here: the amount or quality of something you actually receive is not as important as how it compares to what you were anticipating. For example, let’s say you see an ad on TV for a salad steamer and think, “Wow, I have to buy this.” When your package arrives in the mail, you discover it contains not just what you ordered, but as a special thank-you gift, a certificate redeemable for a free head of lettuce. Because what you got was more than you thought you paid for, you’re likely to feel happier with your purchase and more favorably disposed toward the merchant. On the other hand, if the merchant had promised “free lettuce with purchase” and you expected a fresh head of lettuce in the box, you might be disappointed and annoyed to find that you have to make an extra trip to the store to get what you paid for. The actual contents of the package may have been the same in both cases, but your reaction was different because of the expectations you had.

As Seen on TV
This principle can be a very effective marketing tool if used correctly; it can also, of course, be abused. If you have three products that are all cheaply made and collectively worth US$10, how do you sell the set for twice that? Easy: hype up just one of the products and advertise it at the “low, low” price of “only” $20. Then, dramatically, add: “But wait, there’s more!” and mention, as if benevolently bestowing excess riches on a favorite nephew, that you’re going to throw in the other two products “absolutely free!” This strategy works surprisingly well, all because the initial step of setting expectations was executed so cunningly. This is also why some hardware and software developers in the computer industry have adopted a mantra: “Underpromise and overdeliver.” What counts is not so much the feature set and delivery date of a product, but rather how the reality compares to what your customer (or your manager) was expecting.

This is not to say, of course, that the notion of lagniappe is always or even usually misapplied; merchants who are generous—or just very savvy—may well give you more than you pay for. For that matter, you don’t even need to be selling something to apply the principle of lagniappe—it is equally effective when giving gifts, inviting friends over for dinner, or even writing a book. But for lagniappe to function most effectively, it should really be unexpected. (This is why I’m perturbed at New Orleans merchants who go out of their way to advertise “We Offer Lagniappe!” on their signs—that seems to me to be missing the point.) When the “little something extra” is a surprise, it can truly delight the recipient. —Joe Kissell

A Little Something Extra
If you enjoy reading Interesting Thing of the Day, you might also want to check out idea a day. I don’t have anything to do with this site personally, but I’ve enjoyed reading it for quite some time. Every day, a new idea—often for a new product or service, but there’s quite a variety—appears on this site. You can also subscribe to the ideas by email, which I find more convenient. Ideas are contributed by readers and are in the public domain, so anyone who thought the idea was worthwhile could attempt to implement it. Some of the ideas are really brilliant; others border on the absurd. But they’re all free, and well worth a few seconds of your time to glance at every day. You may stumble on a real gem.

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More Information about Lagniappe...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

If you like stories, you may enjoy the CD Louisiana Lagniappe Storytelling Collection by Rose Anne St. Romain. For Cajun recipes, try Louisiana Lagniappe by Mercedes Vidrine or Lagniappe: “Something a Little Extra Special”: Louisiana Cooking Form the Kitchen of Chef Walter’s Blue Bayou Inn by Walter G. Mazur.

Bread Pudding / Carbohydrates and marketing scams

Joe Kissell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

Given a menu listing a dozen dessert items, I invariably gravitate toward one of the two or three choices on the list that include chocolate as a main ingredient. I don’t think of this as a boring or predictable preference; on the contrary, life is short, and I feel one must not miss an opportunity to experience one of Earth’s great pleasures. You can imagine my feeling of disappointment, then, when at restaurant after restaurant in New Orleans, I arrived at the end of the meal only to find such chocolate-free choices as bananas Foster, pecan pie, and bread pudding on the dessert menu. Suppressing my instinct to jump up and shout, “That’s not really dessert!” I chose to give each of these local specialties a fair chance. Or several.

(Dessert) Space: The Final Frontier
Truth be told, I have nothing against any of these desserts; in fact, I’m quite fond of bread pudding in particular. The only problem is that it’s extremely filling, and if you’ve just finished a Cajun or Creole meal, you are unlikely to have the tiniest space left in your stomach. With some careful planning (and belt-loosening), I was able to try several different bread pudding recipes. The variety of bread puddings surprised me; they differ greatly in density, sweetness, texture, and flavor. The only bread pudding I had ever known was a very generic (though still tasty) recipe such as you’d find at a buffet or a potluck dinner. But in New Orleans, every restaurant has its special twist, and toppings like a creamy whiskey sauce are quite common.

For those unfamiliar with this dish, bread pudding is typically made by soaking bread cubes in a mixture of milk, egg, and sugar; adding raisins and spices; and baking. So it’s not that much different from French toast, except much moister and usually served in a bowl. Of course, one’s choice of bread, the addition of optional ingredients, and the details of preparation can make one bread pudding shine where another merely glows. The possibilities are endless.

Bread Publishing
A couple of years ago, I got an email from my friend Paola asking if I was interested in bread pudding. (She knew the answer already: I’m interested in everything, especially if it’s dessert.) There’s a magazine all about bread pudding, she told me, and she wondered if I thought it might be sufficiently interesting to buy myself a subscription and then share it with her. You gotta love friends like that. I went to the relevant page on Amazon.com, where I found that a “subscription” to Bread Pudding Update consists of only one issue, at a cost of US$5. That was odd, I thought, but I figured I could hardly go wrong for $5. The ad promised “a review of the myriad ways one can take leftovers and liquor to new heights” and mentioned ingredients like “brandy, sherry, bourbon…oozing caramel sauce…seasonal fresh fruits.” Good enough. I placed my order.

Several weeks later an envelope arrived via Airborne Express. It contained exactly two photocopied pages. The first page had the words “Bread Pudding Update” in large letters at the top. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The “magazine” consisted of a grand total of three bread pudding recipes and a copyright notice. No articles or commentary; not even so much as a paperclip to hold the pages together. And, by the way, no mention of liquor, caramel sauce, or fruits (seasonal, fresh, or otherwise). The magazine (wisely) came with a “no refunds or cancellations” policy, so I returned to Amazon.com and left an extremely uncomplimentary review (adding it to several others already present). Shortly thereafter, the listing for the magazine was removed, only to be replaced by another one, this time without the editorial promises—or my review. But now the price has gone up to $12.95. (I guess those courier services can get expensive.)

The story has a happy ending, however. Some time after this happened, my mother mentioned to me that her mother used to make bread pudding all the time. I don’t recall ever having eaten Grandma’s bread pudding, and my mother said she doubted the recipe was ever written down before Grandma died. Not long thereafter, though, I got an email with the happy news that my mother had located Grandma’s recipe for bread pudding on the back of a card in her recipe box. Final score: Bread Pudding Update, 0—Grandma, 1. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Bread Pudding...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

I’m amazed that Bread Pudding Update is still available for sale. You can see the listing at Amazon.com—but please, I beg you, don’t order it. Grandma would be so disappointed. (You can read the original text of the ad for the magazine at MagazineStore.biz.)

There are dozens of recipes on the Web for New Orleans-style bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Here’s a randomly selected sample by Alzina Pierce.

I must be perfectly frank: Grandma’s recipe is not the most inventive or exciting way to prepare bread pudding. As bread pudding recipes go, it’s fairly standard. On the other hand, it does have that homemade taste that you’ll be hard-pressed to find at a New Orleans restaurant. The recipe as found was rather terse; you’ll need to read between the lines for the details:

2 cups milk—warmed
1 cup bread cubes—soften in warm milk
Beat 2 eggs and add scant 1/2 cup sugar
dash salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
Raisins as desired

Bake at 350°F about 1 hour, stirring about every 20 minutes.

Oysters Rockefeller / The secret of name recognition

Joe Kissell — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

I studied philosophy in college, but as much as I enjoyed it, I had to choose a different profession. If I hadn’t, I risked a fate that seems to befall most philosophers sooner or later: having one’s name turned into an adjective. Think about it: Platonic, Socratic, Aristotelian, Augustinian, Cartesian…I’ve even heard Husserlian and Wittgensteinian. Of course, it’s not just philosophers who suffer this fate. So do psychiatrists (Freudian), novelists (Orwellian), filmmakers (Kubrickian), physicians (Hippocratic), and explorers (Columbian). With all due respect to those who will no doubt wish for a concise way of referring to my system of thought or writing style, I would be very unhappy to think of anything or anyone being referred to as “Kissellian.” I’m not sure why, but the whole notion of adjectivizing names has always bothered me (whereas verbing nouns does not). If my name is to be immortalized, I would prefer that it be kept intact, preferably in close proximity to the name of a food. Peaches Melba…Crêpes Suzette…how about Cherries Kissell? Instead of Quiche Lorraine, try Shrimp Kissell. You can even wash it down with a Joe Kissell on the rocks. (See my forthcoming book The Joe of Cooking for recipes…)

The Color of Money
Of course, the ultimate tribute food is Oysters Rockefeller. This dish was invented in 1899 by Jules Alciatore, son of Antoine Alciatore, the eponymous founder of Antoine’s in New Orleans. The dish consists of oysters that have been topped with a purée of mixed greens and then baked. The dish was deemed so rich that it could only take the name of the richest family in the country at that time, the Rockefellers. (It is no coincidence, I’m sure, that the color approximates that of U.S. currency.) The recipe has been kept a closely guarded secret at Antoine’s for over 100 years, though there have been countless imitations.

I tried Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s and it was good, but in my opinion it didn’t live up to its hype. On the other hand, if it had been called “Baked Oysters with Greens” I wouldn’t have given it a second glance on the menu. It was the legendary name that made it sound especially appealing. Well, that, and the mystery of what the dish actually contains. While Antoine’s has never revealed their original recipe, they have stated categorically that the one ingredient it doesn’t include is spinach. This is significant, because it looks like it contains spinach, and the majority of imitators use spinach in their recipes. But as with Colonel Sanders’s recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, it doesn’t matter what the specific details are or whether the recipe is better than all the rest, it only matters that it can claim to be original and unique. The game of trying to guess how Antoine’s Oysters Rockefeller is made has driven many thousands of customers to the restaurant over the past century.

Everybody Loves a Mystery
The shrewdness of this marketing ploy cannot be overstated. Antoine’s has benefited enormously from the great mystery surrounding their recipe. Quite a few journalists have tried unsuccessfully to bribe ex-employees for information. One author claims to have smuggled a sample to a lab for analysis. Even if it turned out that the ingredients were corn flakes and food coloring, the simple fact that they are a mystery has contributed to Antoine’s status as one of the most respected and popular restaurants in the city. There’s just nothing like free publicity.

What various researchers have been able to piece together from a variety of sources is that there are probably 18 ingredients in Oysters Rockefeller, among which are watercress, scallions, parsley, fennel, garlic, butter, and bread crumbs. It also likely contains Pernod or Herbsaint, brands of pastis that substitute for the absinthe that was almost certainly used in 1899. I have yet to see any research, though, as to why the spinach-based recipes with only 10 ingredients taste better. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Oysters Rockefeller...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

Visit the Antoine’s home page and history page for the complete story of the restaurant and Oysters Rockefeller.

Other Oysters Rockefeller resources and recipes:

Oysters Rockefeller on Chuck Taggart’s Gumbo Pages
Chef’s Corner by Jon Bullard
Brennan’s Oysters Rockefeller recipe
Oysters Rockefeller by Craig Claiborne at Leite’s Culinaria
Bigger Secrets by William Poundstone (This author claims to have the authentic recipe, thanks to laboratory analysis of an actual sample. You can take that for what it’s worth.)

Although you won’t find recipes for Antoine’s Oysters Rockefeller, you can find many examples of reverse-engineered restaurant recipes in Copycat Recipes Cookbooks and Secret Restaurant Recipes.

Voodoo / The spirit(s) of a misunderstood religion

Joe Kissell — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

On my first walking tour of New Orleans, our guide promised us chilling stories of ghosts, vampires, pirates, horrific murders, and all the other dark elements of the city’s past—some real, some fictional. And as if to show that these dark forces were still alive and well, he said that our very last stop would be a genuine, functioning Voodoo temple. At that point, everything I knew about Voodoo had come from bad films and TV shows. I gathered that it had something to do with black magic, curses, and sticking pins in dolls. So a chance to meet real Voodoo practitioners seemed a bit exciting and a bit scary.

To Grandmother’s House We Go
When we finally got to the temple, it was a bit anticlimactic. The building was just a converted house, the rooms were bright and cheery, and there wasn’t the remotest suggestion of any evil undercurrents. Yes, there was the smell of incense in the air; yes, there were a bunch of altars piled high with offerings and candles; and yes, there were a lot of unusual images on the walls. But then, the same could be true of a Buddhist temple. Wasn’t Voodoo supposed to be, like, wackier? Then we met the resident clergy, Priestess Miriam. In retrospect, the Voodoo priestess reminds me of the Oracle in the Matrix films—friendly, down-to-earth, maybe even grandmotherly, and not what I was expecting. She gave a short talk and answered all our questions. Her mild manner and warm smile seemed to say, “Sorry if you were expecting animal sacrifices and gibberish. I get that a lot.”

Most educated westerners are familiar with the world’s major monotheistic religions, at least in broad strokes. But Voodoo holds a much different place in the public awareness, because sensationalized fictional accounts of Voodoo practices are so common. Even the word “Voodoo” has become slang for “scary,” “silly,” or “nonsensical.” Unfortunately, what books and films say about Voodoo is mostly misleading if not downright false. Zombies, devil worship, and human sacrifices all make for a scary story, but they have nothing to do with Voodoo as practiced by 60 million people worldwide.

Voo Who?
The term “Voodoo” is an unfortunate Americanization of a word that originally was more like “vodu”; alternate spellings, each of which is championed by one group or another, include Vodun, Vodoun, Voudou, Vaudoun, Vodou, Voudoun, and probably quite a few more. The religion as practiced in Haiti, where it has the largest number of adherents, is usually spelled “Vodou” (pronounced “vo-DOO”). Voodoo (under one name or another) is practiced in several Caribbean countries and is the official religion of Benin in western Africa, but also has a large following in the United States. New Orleans seems to have earned a reputation as the unofficial Voodoo capital of America.

Far from being a set of evil practices, Voodoo is actually a complex religion with a rich set of beliefs and rituals. Although there are many different varieties of Voodoo (comparable, perhaps, to the variety of Christian churches), they share in common a belief in a single God, called Bondye (from the French Bon Dieu, “good God”). This God is, however, remote and normally inaccessible, so interaction with the spirit world is generally by way of contact with lesser spirits called Lwa (or Loa), pronounced “l’wah.” The Lwa, of which there are many, are often referred to as a “pantheon,” but that term is a misnomer because Voodoo practitioners think of the Lwa as more like saints than gods. In any case, the spiritual business of Voodoo—healings, prophecies, blessings, prayers, and so on—requires contact with the Lwa, who often possess or “mount” worshippers during ecstatic rituals. Another central tenet of Voodoo is veneration of one’s ancestors. Their spirits are believed to influence one’s life, so proper respect and sacrifices (of food, generally) are seen as important to stay in their good graces.

The Beat of a Different Drummer
Rituals play a large part in the practice of Voodoo; most are presided over by a priest or priestess in a local temple. Drumming, singing, and dancing are almost invariably part of Voodoo rituals, and in the versions of Voodoo practiced in some areas, animal sacrifices do occur regularly to appease the Lwa. But the main focus of Voodoo rituals is on positive desires such as healing, prosperity, and protection. As in any religion, most practitioners seek a harmonious relationship with other people as well as with the forces of the unseen world. But as is also true of other religions, there are smaller, more extreme groups of believers who practice a darker and more violent version of Voodoo. Even that version doesn’t quite live up to the Hollywood picture, though.

And what about the infamous Voodoo dolls? They do exist—but mainly as souvenirs for tourists. There are some Voodoo practitioners, particularly in the southern United States, who use Voodoo dolls in their rituals, but generally the idea is not to make an enemy cry out in pain by sticking a needle in a doll’s eye. Rather, the dolls are used as a symbolic proxy for attracting good things and dispelling bad things from one’s life—your own or someone else’s.

Animism Meets Catholicism
Voodoo as a modern religion evolved in the second half of the 18th century in Haiti. Yoruba slaves from West Africa developed a system of religious practice based on animistic beliefs that can be traced back thousands of years. But in the 19th century, a series of crackdowns by the Catholic church drove Voodoo underground. Since Voodoo could not be practiced openly without serious repercussions, worshippers began to associate Catholic saints with Voodoo Lwa. In other words, while they appeared to be praying to, say, St. Patrick, they were really just calling the snake Lwa Dumballah by another name. There is some disagreement as to whether this mapping amounts to syncretism; it’s not so much an absorption of Catholic beliefs as an openness to alternative terminology. Nevertheless, distinctive ritual elements of Catholicism and various African religions are easily found in Voodoo—particularly in the variety practiced in the southern United States. And in Haiti, despite the fact that Voodoo is no longer outlawed, a large percentage of the population practices both Catholicism and Voodoo with equal earnestness, and without feeling there’s any tension between the two belief systems.

Voodoo doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of modern religions. It doesn’t have a bible or other set of universal codes. It gives the appearance, at least, of mixing and matching elements from other religions. And it has, let’s face it, a funny-sounding name. But when you get right down to it, Voodoo beliefs are no more (or less) wacky than those of any other religion. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Voodoo...

For more information on Voodoo, see Vodun (and related religions) on the ReligiousTolerance.org Web site. The Vodou Page also has extremely detailed information, including a series of Vodou “lessons,” a discussion on the spelling of the name, a section on Vodou and politics, and much more.

Introduction to Voodoo in Haiti by Bob Corbett is just an outline, but it still contains useful information that applies, for the most part, to many different brands of Voodoo.

An article on African Religion Syncretism by Eshin Fun discusses the relationship (or lack thereof) between Voodoo and other religions of African origin, especially Santeria.

The Voodoo Spiritual Temple in New Orleans, which I visited, has its own Web site. Of course.

And if you really must own an “authentic” Voodoo doll, check out Voodoo Authentica of New Orleans.

Café du Monde / The simple pleasures of beignets & café au lait

Joe Kissell — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

It’s 3:00 a.m. and the streets of New Orleans are filled with fog. In some of the livelier areas of town, bars are still open, the last wave of sleepy patrons thinking they might stick around to hear the band play just one more tune before calling it a night. Here, however, on the fringes of the French Quarter, the streets are quiet. Steps away from the Mississippi river, outside a building near the French Market, a man hesitates, then approaches an open window. He exchanges a few words with the person inside, and hands over some money. A small bag is offered in return. The man, clutching his illicit purchase, hurries across the street to Jackson Square. He sits down on a secluded bench, looks around furtively, and opens the bag. Inside, all he can see is a white powder. As he reaches into the bag, he thinks to himself, “I know this is a bad idea. This stuff is gonna kill me some day, but I just…can’t…help myself.” A few minutes later, the bag is empty and the man is happy, having blissfully forgotten his reservations and guilt—and entirely oblivious of the growing effects of the toxins accumulating in his body. A telltale white residue on his upper lip, he stumbles home. Tomorrow he will repeat this ritual. Next time, he decides, he’ll order some coffee too. A nice hot drink might help to take the edge off of all that powdered sugar and grease.

The man has just been to Café du Monde, a New Orleans landmark that’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. His purchase was an order of beignets, a deceptively decadent type of doughnut that made this café famous. Make no mistake about it: enough of these will kill you, all right. But you will die very happy.

Beignet There, Doughnut That
Café du Monde is to coffee shops what In-N-Out is to burger joints. Its charm lies in the utter simplicity of its menu and the quality of its product. At Café du Monde, there is but one food item you can order—beignets—along with a limited choice of beverages. And that is enough: the place is nearly always packed with customers—tourists and locals alike. It has been like this since Café du Monde opened in 1862. The store is called a coffee stand, but it’s very large, with dozens of tables outside under the trademark green-and-white striped canopy, and more inside. On every table are plates of rapidly disappearing beignets.

What exactly are beignets? Café du Monde’s marketing propaganda calls them “French-style doughnuts,” but I’ve always found that description a bit unsatisfying. The term “fritters” might be a bit closer. Like doughnuts, they’re basically deep-fried dough. Unlike doughnuts, they’re square—about 3 inches (8cm) on a side. They’re also very puffy, consisting mostly of air if you go by volume. They are served covered with powdered sugar, and I do mean covered. I have been served beignets with a sugar coating a good solid inch (2.5cm) thick. Thus, a few beignets and a large cup of coffee will supply your full daily nutritional requirements for the four major food groups (starch, grease, sugar, and caffeine).

Café du Monde serves beignets in orders of three, and since that’s the only food item on the menu, it’s considered redundant actually to mention what it is you’re ordering. You simply say, “I’ll have an order and a café au lait.” If you arrive during peak hours you may have quite a wait in line before you get to place your order (even longer if you want a table). Follow the line around to the back of the building and you can watch through the window as the beignets are made. If you’ve ever been to a Krispy Kreme shop, this will be familiar to you, except that at Café du Monde, each beignet is tossed across the room by hand into a vat of hot oil.

Au Lait, Can You See?
Then there’s the coffee. Although you can order black coffee, orange juice, or even cola at Café du Monde, only one beverage provides the perfect accompaniment to beignets: café au lait. Most Americans—at least, those steeped in the Starbucks culture—know what a cappuccino or a latte is, but café au lait is relatively uncommon in North America. The recipe is simple: one part hot brewed coffee (not espresso), one part hot milk.

At Café du Monde, though, café au lait is always made from a blend of coffee and chicory, giving it a much different flavor from ordinary coffee. Chicory is the root of the endive plant, and it is roasted and ground in much the same way as coffee beans. During World War II, shipments of coffee to the U.S. were disrupted, and chicory was used either as a substitute for coffee or as an additive to stretch the coffee supply. These days, most coffee purists look down their noses at coffee-chicory blends, because chicory was historically a cheap imitation of the real thing. Like substituting carob for cocoa, it simply doesn’t have the same taste. But different is not necessarily bad. Café du Monde’s chicory café au lait has a wonderfully smooth flavor, and it matches the beignets delightfully.

Besides the original location on Decatur Street next to the French Market, Café du Monde has a number of other shops in and around New Orleans. This includes, I’m sad to say, several locations in shopping mall food courts. Objectively, the quality of beignets found in the newer locations is no worse than the original, despite being made using shiny new equipment and being located in close proximity to generic fast-food outlets. But the experience is just not the same.

Roll Your Own (Dough)
For that matter, the same can be said of beignets you make yourself. All over New Orleans (and, of course, online) you can find beignet mix and Café du Monde’s signature blend of coffee and chicory for sale. In fact, you can buy every component of the Café du Monde experience—their mugs, spoons, powdered sugar shakers, and even napkin holders with the authentic Café du Monde menu on the side. With modest effort, you could recreate the tastes, smells, and sights of Café du Monde at home. This can be a pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning—I’ve done it myself—but you’ll never get quite the same effect as visiting Café du Monde in person.

Savvy locals will tell you, not without some scorn, that Café du Monde does not have the best beignets in town. That may be true, although the recipe is not one of great subtlety or sophistication, so variations are likely to be comparatively minor. Likewise, one could say that it’s not the best dining experience, especially considering the crowds and noise. But for my money, this combination works. Tasty (if artery-clogging) food, served instantly and inexpensively in a place with history and character: that’s my kind of café. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Café du Monde...

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Visit Café du Monde on the Web at CafeduMonde.com. You’ll find pictures, a history of the store, and an online store where you can buy beignet mix, ground coffee with chicory, and all the other accouterments of the café experience.

The photo, I realize, doesn’t show a whole lot of Café du Monde itself, but I figured the building was less interesting than the products it produces.

Other articles on this site extol the virtues of In-N-Out Burger and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. As for Starbucks, well…you’re on your own there.

An alligator named Boudreaux eats beignets at Café du Monde in the children’s book Boudreaux and His Buddies by Cindy Barnett Armstrong. The book has a serious side, though: it follows Boudreaux as he experiences Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans Cemeteries / Cities of the dead

Joe Kissell — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

There are few cities with as great a reputation for decadence as New Orleans. If you want rich, fatty, and extravagant foods, you can hardly do better than the Crescent City. Alcohol flows freely, too, and almost any desire of the flesh can be indulged for a modest fee (sometimes payable in cheap plastic beads). But decadence in the original, non-metaphorical sense is also a regular fixture in this city whose past is littered with pirates, devastating fires, and horrific murders. There has been a lot of death and destruction in New Orleans, and the associated signs of physical decay—whether of buildings or of bodies—are everywhere. Particularly striking to many visitors are the city’s numerous old cemeteries filled with creepy-looking aboveground tombs. Whereas death is usually kept hidden, buried out of sight, New Orleans gives residents and visitors constant reminders of the impermanence of life.

The Dead Shall Rise Again
Why aren’t the dead in New Orleans buried underground as they are in most of the rest of the country? Tour guides are fond of explaining (and sometimes embellishing) the practice to shocked tourists. The main issue, they explain, is that New Orleans is actually located slightly below sea level. Because of this, the water table is quite high. When early European settlers put coffins under six feet of earth, they found that the water level would often rise above them, especially during the city’s frequent floods. Since the coffins were filled with air, the water sometimes pushed them up through the earth, causing both a gruesome sight and a health hazard. To keep the coffins underground, holes were drilled in the lid to let air escape, and the coffins were weighted down with rocks and sand. But this was only partially successful, and in any case the saturated corpses did not decompose properly, leading to unsanitary conditions. The only solution was to bury the dead above ground.

Tour guides seldom mention that above-ground burial was a common practice in both France and Spain, where many of the early settlers were from. Even without the resurfacing coffins—which, by the way, were the exception rather than the rule—this practice may well have been adopted simply to keep with tradition. In any case, this method is still widely used today, even though the water table has dropped considerably over the past two centuries as nearby marshes and swamps were drained.

A Bone in the Oven
The first cemetery in New Orleans designed for aboveground burial was the St. Louis #1 cemetery, which opened in 1789. Some accounts claim it was modeled after Paris’s famous Père-Lachaise cemetery, and there can be no doubt that the two bear a strong resemblance to each other. But Père-Lachaise wasn’t used as a cemetery until 1804, so that resemblance may be coincidental. Be that as it may, there is a significant difference that goes beyond the superficial similarities. At Père-Lachaise, the visible structures are, for the most part, just monuments; the bodies themselves are usually placed in vaults in the floors of the tombs. In New Orleans, however, bodies are usually placed inside the walls of the tombs. Because of the hot, subtropical climate, the tomb then effectively becomes an oven, and the high heat causes the body to decompose rapidly in a process that has been compared to a slow cremation. Within about a year, only bones are left.

Just as an oven would not be constructed to bake a single loaf of bread, the tombs in New Orleans cemeteries are used again and again. The specifics vary depending on the exact design of the tomb, but a typical scenario is that after a year, the bones of the departed are swept into an opening in the floor of the tomb, which is then ready for its next occupant. It is a common practice to bury all the members of a family—or multiple families—in the same tomb, with names and dates added to a plaque or headstone as necessary. This procedure is not only sanitary and efficient; it also avoids the problem of growing real estate needs as time goes on.

No Walk in the Park
St. Louis #1 (there are, by the way, a #2 and #3 as well) is the oldest and most famous of about 15 aboveground cemeteries in and around New Orleans. Just as Jim Morrison’s grave attracts visitors to Père-Lachaise, St. Louis #1 has its own star: Marie Laveau, the Voodoo queen. Or, I should say, it has a tomb that many people believe contains her remains—no one is quite sure. But this uncertainty doesn’t stop legions of admirers from leaving offerings and marking the tomb with X’s in a supposed Voodoo ritual that is in fact apocryphal. This is just one of the cemetery sites associated with Voodoo practices—some genuine, some not.

While you may not encounter any ghosts or Voodoo rituals in the cemeteries of New Orleans, you are very likely to encounter thieves, drug dealers, and other ne’er-do-wells. Every single brochure, visitor’s guide, and concierge will warn you, repeatedly and in the strongest possible terms, not to enter the cemeteries alone or at night. Some careless tourists have unwittingly become permanent residents—enough said. That’s not to say you can’t safely visit the cemeteries, just go in a group with a tour guide, during daylight hours.

The cemeteries of New Orleans are often called “cities of the dead.” Not only do the tombs look like buildings, but the cemeteries are organized with streets (and street signs) much like the cities of the living. And it seems somehow appropriate that in New Orleans the decay of death faintly mirrors the decadence of life. That continuity between this life and the next is strangely comforting. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about New Orleans Cemeteries...

For more information about the cemeteries of New Orleans, read City of the Dead: A Journey Through St. Louis Cemetery by Robert Florence. There are also plenty of good Web sites about the cemeteries, such as:

Immortelle.net

at New Orleans

Experience New Orleans!

Frommer’s New Orleans

Lots of tour companies offer (safe) guided tours of the cemeteries. See, for example, Haunted History Tours or Tour-New-Orleans.com. Before visiting one of the cemeteries, you might want to check out the New Orleans Police Department’s Tips for Visiting Our Cemeteries.

Gumbo / The one good thing about okra

Joe Kissell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

I have watched a number of reality TV shows on which contestants were asked to consume extremely unappetizing foods. You know the sort of thing I’m talking about, I’m sure, so I’ll refrain from elaborating. Under circumstances of sufficient duress or social pressure, I’ll uncomplainingly choke down just about anything, however unpleasant it may be. But there are a few foods that I would find it difficult to get past my uvula no matter how many viewers at home were cheering me on or how many dollars were at stake. I am thinking, for example, of okra.

Slime Me
In the United States, okra is known as a staple of southern cuisine, and rarely seen elsewhere. A member of the hibiscus family, okra is a tall plant with yellow flowers and edible seed pods. If you look up okra in a dictionary, the one word that will invariably be used to describe the texture of these seed pods is mucilaginous. This word means “glue-like”—that is, viscous, sticky, and slimy. These are acceptable characteristics for adhesives, but not the sort of thing that feels good on my tongue.

Having said that, I must now confess that I have personally, voluntarily cooked with okra, and enjoyed the results tremendously. That’s because context is everything. The one dish in which okra is not only unobjectionable but mandatory is gumbo. I first tasted gumbo several years ago on a trip to New Orleans. I decided to brave it, even knowing it contained okra, because it seemed like one of those quintessential Louisiana experiences everyone should have. I absolutely loved it. The surprising thing was that I could not detect any hint of that mucilaginous texture. When I later made my own gumbo, I figured out why.

Okra is OK
Gumbo is a hearty soup that is one of the cornerstones of Cajun cuisine in Louisiana. There are countless recipes and variations, but it invariably consists of a thick broth served in a bowl over a mound of rice. Some gumbo is made with chicken and andouille sausage; some is made with seafood; some is made with whatever meat happens to be handy. (Purists generally scoff at the notion of vegetarian gumbo.) Gumbo usually starts with a roux (a browned mixture of flour and oil or butter) along with diced, sautéed pepper, onion, and celery. Then a stock is added along with the meat and sliced okra; the resulting mixture is simmered for several hours before serving.

When the okra is heated, its mucilaginous fibers begins to dissolve, and serve as a thickening agent for the soup. Depending on how fresh the okra was when you put it in, how small the slices were, and how long you cook it, there may be no visible remains of the okra at all by the time it’s served. If whole pieces remain, they are quite soft but not even slightly slimy—entirely edible. So the very quality that makes whole okra yucky turns out to be essential to making gumbo yummy.

There are gumbo recipes that omit okra, but they miss the point. For one thing, the word gumbo is derived from the Bantu word kingumbo, which means “okra.” In other words, gumbo without okra is sort of like oatmeal without oats. For another thing, okraless gumbo just doesn’t taste right. The usual alternative thickening agent is filé, a powder made from dried sassafras leaves. Filé becomes gummy when it’s boiled, so it can’t simmer into the soup. It has to be added just before serving, or sprinkled on at the table. There’s nothing wrong with a filé-thickened soup, but it shouldn’t be called gumbo. —Joe Kissell

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You can read sample definitions of okra (containing the word “mucilaginous”) at Dictionary.com or Hyperdictionary; there’s also one without in the Wikipedia (though the word does appear later on the page in the discussion of how to cook okra).

There are 3.7 bajillion recipes for gumbo on the Web, and when I make it myself, I combine elements from a few different recipes rather than following just one. So I can’t tell you how to make my gumbo, but here are a few reasonable recipes to get you started:

Gumbo Recipe by J. Michael Spector
Gumbo Town Gumbo by David Pannett
Gumbo du Monde by Chuck Taggart
Seafood Okra Gumbo by Emeril Lagasse

Also see the Wikipedia article on gumbo.

Non-Human Farmers / Animal agriculture

Joe Kissell — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

On a recent trip to the Galapagos Islands, I was astonished when our guide showed us how damselfish (family Pomacentridae) farm algae on their own. It was also amazing to see how aggressively protective they were of their farms. To demonstrate, our guide took a sea urchin and dropped it into the damselfish’s algae farm, and within seconds the damselfish pushed the sea urchin out of the farm. Some damselfish farm algae on coral heads and nip the coral to create cuts that encourage the algae to grow. Apparently, they are known even to attack human beings that swim near their farms. Fortunately, they are very small fish with small teeth, so death by damselfish is unlikely!

The damselfish inspired me to learn about other animals that farm their own food. It turns out that besides humans, four kinds of animal are known to farm fungi (fungiculture)—leaf cutter ants, termites, ambrosia beetles, and marsh snails.

We humans capitalized on the invention of agriculture to place ourselves on the path to achieve a dominating position in our ecosystem. It is our gregarious nature, societal structure, communication skills, and a measure of engineering skills that were key. Let’s examine how non-human farmers stack up in these areas.

Society & Organization
All three of the insect farmers have very well organized societal structures that in all likelihood developed before they learned fungiculture. They have built complex societal structures with task specialization that would put a Henry Ford or a Frederick Taylor to shame. This has also allowed these insects to sustain very large populations—colonies of leaf cutter ants (previously discussed on Interesting Thing of the Day) are known to have tens of millions of ants.

Leaf cutter ants belong to a group of ants called “attines”—the genus Atta. Attines are notorious for their ability to deforest vast tracts of land in a matter of days. All the ants in the leaf cutter ant community are specialists—the queens that are the breeders and also start the farming area called nests, ants that specialize in cutting the leaves from the trees, ants that specialize in reducing the leaves to a mulch, and ants that specialize in harvesting the fungi. There are also garbage worker ants that help manage the waste in garbage chambers that are kept isolated from the nest. Since there is a risk of contamination if these garbage worker ants mingle with the rest of the ants, these garbage workers cannot leave the garbage chambers. Scientists have observed that if these garbage worker ants go to the main part of the nest, they are forced to return to the garbage chambers or even killed by the other worker ants. There are 210 species within 12 genera of attines that are farmers. Ants have developed at least 553 strains of farmable fungi belonging to seven different genera.

Ambrosia beetles (order Coleptera) are a type of bark beetle. In the ambrosia beetle community, the females create farming areas inside the trees called galleries where they lay the eggs; the males do the rest of the work. The beetles cultivate a fungus called “ambrosia” that serves as food for both the adults and newly hatched larvae. The fungi cultivated by the ambrosia beetles are not pathogens, but the tunneling itself can kill trees. The fungi carried by other closely related bark beetles, however, can be deadly to plants all by itself. About 3,400 species of farming beetle are known.

About 330 species of termites farm fungi. Fungus-cultivating termites are found in tropical Africa and Asia. Termite colonies consist mainly of worker types, which work to feed the other colony members. There are also soldier types to fight predators and the queen, which reproduces. Similar to ambrosia beetles, they are monoculturists, as they farm only one type of fungus—which in the case of termites is Termitomyces (Termite Fungus).

It was only recently that marsh snails (Littoraria irrorata) were added to the list of animal farmers; they are also the first in the marine world known to be fungiculturists. Marsh snails live in salt marshes and their main food is a fungus that grows on cordgrass leaves. Similar to the damselfish, they cut the cordgrass leaves to create wounds, and lay their excrement into the wounds. The excrement contains the fungal spores (like seeds) and also the nutrients for the fungus to flourish in. Although in snail colonies as many as 1,000 snails per square meter can be found, snails are non-social. Therefore, complex societal structures are not a requirement for farming.

Engineering & Communication Skills
The insect farmers use specialized chemicals called pheromones to communicate amongst themselves; this communication is essential to forming complex societal structures. Leaf cutters build nests as large as football fields. Termites build mounds that are true engineering marvels—some of them can be as high as 9 feet (3m) above ground. Scientists have documented the sophisticated methods termites use to regulate the environment inside these mounds. What is amazing is that the mound has an elaborate ventilation system that enables the internal area to have carbon dioxide and humidity levels that exceed that of the outside air. This ventilation system also helps maintain the temperature at an optimal level to allow the fungus to flourish. Ambrosia beetles bore tunnels deep into tree branches. As they bore, they push out the dust into small protrusions. The tunnels typically number in the hundreds and form large networks known as galleries.

The insect farmers also use a variety of techniques to weed out unwanted fungus from their farms. Interestingly, the leaf cutters use antibiotic-secreting bacteria of the group actinomycetes to weed out other unwanted fungus growing in the garden. What is amazing is that we derive many of our own antibiotics, such as streptomycin and tetramycin, from actinomycetes.

The parallels with human farmers do not end with agriculture. There are species of ants that herd aphids in much the same way humans herd cattle and live on the sugary excretions of the aphids.

Why do they farm?
Why these animals farm is a highly debated topic in the scientific community. In my opinion, these are likely to be highly evolved symbiotic relationships. Symbiosis—two or more organisms living together such that both are more successful within the partnership than they would have been if they were living on their own—originated as a survival method 400 million years ago in the form of lichens. Interestingly, one of the components of the symbiosis we know as lichens is a fungus and the other is algae. I would hypothesize that scientists may one day discover that some other species also practice fungiculture. —Rajagopal Sukumar

Guest author Rajagopal Sukumar lives in Chennai, India and serves as the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) of a software consulting company that specializes in the global delivery model. You can read his personal blog at www.sastwingees.org.

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After this article was published, a reader pointed out that spotted jellyfish also farm algae.

You can read a great deal more about animal farmers in general in The First Farmers by Susan Lumpkin and Stephanie Hsia on the Smithsonian National Zoological Park’s Zoogoer site or Fungi and Insect Symbiosis at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

For more about leaf cutter ants, see Leaf Cutter Ants by Joe Kissell on ITotD. The agricultural pathology of ant fungus gardens by Cameron R. Currie, Ulrich G. Mueller and David Malloch is also a must-read for this topic. This paper also gives an excellent set of references for further research. For more information on Pheromones, see Alphabet of the Ants by James W. Keefer.

Termites’ construction techniques are covered in Tribute to the termites by Gerald Marewo.

Additional information about ambrosia beetles can be found in Asian Ambrosia Beetle at Texas A&M, Bark Beetles Management Guidelines at the University of California, or Bark Beetles and Ambrosia Beetles at Canadian Biodiversity.

And to learn more about the marsh snail, see Salt marsh snails plow leaves, fertilize fungus by Susan Milius at Science News.

The Hidden Lives of Sloths / Symbiosis in slow motion

Joe Kissell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

There are times—quite a few of them, for better or worse—when I’m confronted with evidence that something I’ve believed (or assumed) to be the case for years is simply wrong. These occasions can be a source of embarrassment, such as the time a few years ago when a friend pointed out to me that I always misspelled the word “embarrassed.” Being someone who takes the use of language seriously, this came as quite a blow to me. Most of the time, however, I greet epiphanies of mistaken assumptions with equanimity, if not pleasure. I love to learn, and most learning requires a certain amount of unlearning.

I had several such experiences in rapid succession while visiting a wildlife sanctuary in Costa Rica. Aviarios del Caribe, located near Cahuita on the Caribbean coast, is a sloth rehabilitation center. Sloths that are injured or orphaned are brought here and cared for, and then—if they’re able to fend for themselves—released back into the rain forest. A volunteer had patiently explained many of the differences between two-toed and three-toed sloths, about which more later. But as I was watching a baby two-toed sloth, I noticed with some puzzlement that it actually had three toes on each foot. Clearly there was an interesting story here, but that was just the beginning of the strange and wonderful things I was to discover about sloths.

Digital Communication
First, let’s talk about those toes. Sloth expert Judy Arroyo explained to me that all sloths actually have three “toes”—that is, three digits on their hind limbs, if you want to think of them as feet. The difference is in the “fingers”—the digits on the fore limbs. Two-toed sloths have two; three-toed sloths have three. So why weren’t they called “two-fingered” and “three-fingered”? Apparently it was a problem of translation. According to Arroyo, the Spanish word used to describe the sloths’ digits can mean either finger or toe, and the English word choice turned out to be a bit misleading.

Whether you call them fingers or toes, sloths use them to great advantage. They’re hooked and very strong, which makes them handy for climbing or—more frequently—hanging upside-down for extended periods of time high in the trees. Sloths sleep up to 18 hours per day, and when awake, spend most of their time munching on leaves. They move (very slowly, of course) from tree to tree every day or two, and descend to the ground only about once a week to urinate and defecate.

Two-toed and three-toed sloths share many traits in common, but I was surprised to discover how many differences there were. The two-toed sloth (Choloepus hoffmani) has light brown fur and is nocturnal. The three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) has, as its name suggests, variegated fur. It’s active during the day, so it’s the one you’re most likely to see on a rain forest hike. Males have distinctive markings on their backs that identify them uniquely, in much the same way as fingerprints. And the extra bones in the three-toed sloth’s neck enable it to turn its head almost 360°.

The Value of a Green Back
What I find most interesting about the three-toed sloth is the symbiotic relationship it has with other organisms. One effect of the sloth’s languid pace of life is that it can’t be bothered to groom itself. This turns out to be beneficial to several varieties of algae and mold that grow inside the sloth’s hollow hairs. The algae effectively turn the sloth green, giving it excellent camouflage among the leaves. The camouflage is crucial to the sloth’s survival, because its inability to move quickly makes it an easy target for the harpy eagle.

But the symbiosis doesn’t end there. The algae in the sloth’s fur provides food for a great many insects. (I should point out, incidentally, that sloths have extremely long fur, making them appear much larger than they really are.) Beetles have been found by the hundreds living on a single sloth. Another insect that calls the sloth home is a type of moth—Bradipodicola hahneli (or “sloth moth” to most people). The sloth’s fur provides both food and protection for the moth. Not only does it feed on the algae, but it also deposits its eggs in the sloth’s droppings, where they pupate and hatch, and then fly off to look for another sloth to live on.

For a Good Time, Call
Sloths are not known as particularly social creatures, but they do spend enough time with the opposite sex to reproduce. One of the studies underway at Aviarios del Caribe when I was there involved the mating habits of three-toed sloths. We saw a video in which a female sloth named Buttercup let out a blood-curdling mating call that sounded like a woman shrieking. Immediately, males from as far away as 700 meters began rushing toward the sound. By “rushing,” I mean crawling at the breakneck speed of about 200 meters per day. But for a sloth, this single-minded, deliberate movement—on the ground, no less, in plain view of predators—is definitely rushing. Ah, the things we do for love.

Females usually give birth once a year, and with gestation periods of about six months, that means they spend about half their adult lives pregnant. When a sloth reaches six months of age, it’s old enough to be left on its own. Before that time, however, if a youngster falls from a tree, the mother will not attempt to rescue it; the risk of attack by a bird or jaguar is too great.

Young sloths separated from their mothers in this way are the main wards of the sloth rehabilitation center I visited. Other residents were injured by contact with an electrical line, or orphaned when an eagle attacked the mother. Staff members and volunteers nurse the sloths back to health, and participate in a variety of scientific studies and conservation projects. Buttercup was the center’s first resident, and has been there for about 13 years. She serves as a living mascot, helping to promote awareness and research of her species.

Slow Is Beautiful
Sloths’ slow, graceful movements have been compared to those of a t’ai chi master. I agree with that assessment—and coincidentally it was for a t’ai chi retreat that I went to Costa Rica in the first place. But sloths have also been called “ugly,” and here I must disagree. Up close, sloths are actually quite cute, and the shape of their faces gives the impression of a permanent smile. In the wild, of course, the menagerie of plants and critters growing in the fur can be off-putting, but a well-groomed sloth is—and I’m speaking from experience here—downright cuddly.

Sloths share their name with one of the so-called “deadly sins” because their slow metabolism gives them the appearance of laziness. But slow and lazy are two different things. The grace, balance, and gentleness of the sloth—not to mention its hospitality toward the other creatures that depend on it—are traits I could aspire to emulate. —Joe Kissell

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This article was featured in Carnival of the Animals No. 4.

If you’re ever in Costa Rica, Aviarios del Caribe is well worth a visit. Besides being a wildlife sanctuary, it’s also a bed & breakfast. Owners Judy and Luis Arroyo will tell you everything you want to know about sloths, and you can also take a canoe ride into the rain forest to see a wide variety of other wildlife. Janet Younger wrote this article for the Travelwise web site about her stay at Aviarios del Caribe; her experiences were very similar to my own.

Christopher Baker’s article Mammals on photo.net compares sloths to t’ai chi masters but claims they’re ugly. I beg to differ—I’ve met some very handsome sloths (and t’ai chi masters, for that matter).

The Sloth Club is an organization that promotes some positive sloth-like traits: slowness, simplicity, nonviolence, and ecological consciousness.

Saint Bernards / Rescuing the rescuers

Joe Kissell — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

In October 2004, I read an article with some shocking and disheartening news: the Swiss monks responsible for breeding St. Bernards since at least the 17th century were getting out of the dog business. The last 18 dogs living in the alpine hospice where the breed originated were up for sale. At that time, I didn’t know anything about St. Bernards except that they were known as rescue dogs and usually pictured wearing a little barrel or cask on their collars. It had not occurred to me that there was some particular base from which their rescue operations had traditionally begun, or an actual Saint Bernard after whom the dogs had been named. But as I read about the imminent end of the monks’ caretaking operations, I began wondering about the real story behind these dogs. Did they ever really perform rescues? How did the monks figure in? And what was the deal with those little casks? Glass of brandy in hand, I began my research.

Anyone for a Walk?
The story begins in the year 962, when Bernard of Menthon founded a monastery and hospice in the Swiss alps. To the north is the Swiss canton of Valais; to the south, the Valle d’Aosta in Italy. It was not for seclusion that Bernard chose this particular spot, at a snowy pass some 8,000 feet (2500m) high. The pass was often used by pilgrims making their way from France into Italy to visit Rome, and was known as a treacherous and forbidding spot. Bernard’s idea was that the hospice could provide shelter for the pilgrims and aid to those who became lost or injured on their journey.

By the time Bernard was canonized in 1681, the hospice he had founded centuries earlier had begun keeping dogs, which the monks found helpful in carrying out their rescue missions. Over many years, the monks bred a type of dog ideally suited to both the weather and rescue work—a huge, energetic, friendly, and faultlessly loyal breed related to the mastiff, with thick fur and keen senses of smell and hearing. And from the early 1700s, when the oldest surviving records were made, until the late 20th century, the dogs assisted in rescuing about 2,500 people. The dogs were first referred to informally as “St. Bernards” in 1833, and the name became official in 1880.

Dog Days
In the 1950s, however, helicopters appeared on the scene, and technology began increasingly to fill the dogs’ role. The last time a dog helped with a rescue was around 1975. In the years since then, the monks—who now number only four or five—have continued to raise the dogs. But St. Bernards are costly to feed and require a great deal of time to care for; the monks felt that since the dogs were no longer assisting them, their limited time and money would be better spent serving human beings. And so, in late 2004, the dogs were put up for sale.

Although from the monks’ perspective this was a reasonable and utilitarian decision, it prompted a tremendous public outcry. Those most vocally opposed to the change included local merchants, dependent as they are on the business of thousands of tourists who come to the area each summer only to see the famous dogs. In less than two months, the matter was resolved. A couple of Swiss philanthropists donated the equivalent of over US$4 million to buy the dogs, who will continue to spend their winters in a kennel in the nearby city of Martigny but will return to the hospice each summer. A museum honoring the dogs will also be built in Martigny and is scheduled to open in the spring of 2006.

As for the barrel on the collar, it first appeared in a painting by artist Edwin Landseer called “Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler” in 1820; Landseer was only 17 at the time. The cask was thought to contain brandy and quickly caught on in the public imagination, though the monks and their dogs never actually used such a thing. (Alcohol, after all, could hasten dehydration—not a good treatment for a snowbound traveler.) Nowadays, that little barrel could prove more useful as a carrying case for a GPS receiver and a cell phone, giving the next generation of St. Bernards updated rescue capabilities more suitable to the modern age. And, if the helicopter is on its way anyhow, maybe a wee nip of brandy wouldn’t be so bad after all. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Saint Bernards...

To read about the monks’ decision to sell the St. Bernards, see Monks seek homes for St Bernards at BBC News (October 8, 2004), Technology Puts St. Bernards Out of Work at RedNova News (October 11, 2004), or Switzerland’s Famous Saint Bernards for Sale at Deutsche Welle (October 30, 2004). Saint Bernard rescue dog gets rescued at MSNBC describes the donation that will fund their new home.

Just about everything you’d ever want to know about St. Bernards is included in the Saint Bernards Breed-FAQ for rec.pets.dogs. Other resources include About Saint Bernards at the Saint Bernard Club of America and The Saint Bernard History at Chandler’s Saint Bernards.

Read more about St. Bernard of Menthon in The Catholic Encyclopedia.

Crows that Make Tools / The brains behind the beaks

Joe Kissell — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

I’ve seen numerous books about the differences between men and women. My own theory is that the main difference has to do with tools. When I walk into the tool section of a hardware store—guys, you know what I’m talking about—I get wide-eyed and giddy. Every tool suggests a new project or task. I want to come up with things to make or repair simply to justify owning another obscure tool. Although, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even care that much about using the tools, I just want to own them. One day when I was helping a friend of mine install some kitchen cabinets, he pointed out a particular piece of decorative trim that had cost US$100, then mentioned that he didn’t have the right kind of saw to cut it with. “Oh well,” he said with mock resignation, “I may have to break down and buy one. Too bad it costs $200.” I said, “It seems a pity to pay more for the tool than the material you’ll use it on.” My friend replied, “Not really—I have two pieces of trim to cut!” We laughed about this because to guys, tool ownership is its own reward.

Women, on the whole, don’t seem to appreciate the stereotypical male trait of wanting equipment for its own sake. This is equally true for things like computers and stereo components. Women don’t understand why we would spend our money on seemingly useless or frivolous tools instead of, say, shoes. But there are also, of course, counterexamples. I know women who are carpenters, computer geeks, and hi-fi buffs, as well as guys who like shoes better than tools. For every theory about the important differences between men and women, there seems to be a reason to doubt it.

Tools Are for the Birds
Likewise, humans, on the whole, tend to think of the ability to make and use tools as a defining characteristic of our species, something that sets us apart from other animals, that proves we’re more intelligent and more highly evolved. But here again, there are counterexamples. A few species of animals use tools, the canonical example being a stick pressed into service to fish insects out of a log or burrow for food. But there are even a few—very few—nonhuman species that make their own tools. It’s not too much of a stretch to think of other primates making tools—especially if you’ve read Congo by Michael Crichton. And in fact, some chimpanzees and orangutans have been known to make simple tools (though not, as far as anyone knows, stone paddles). But even some birds have been observed to make their own tools. The latest species to make waves among scientists and achieve worldwide acclaim is the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides), a bird with surprising and impressive abilities.

At the University of Oxford, researchers in the Behavioural Ecology Research Group are studying tool use among New Caledonian crows. It’s one thing to observe animals using tools in the wild, but in the relatively controlled environment of a university laboratory, scientists are able to watch (and film) the crows much more extensively and determine in greater detail how they behave. Their findings over the last several years have given the crows (and the people studying them) minor celebrity status. Time after time, the crows have unhesitatingly used a variety of wooden tools to retrieve food by pushing or pulling it out of a tube.

But these crows also make new tools to accomplish specific tasks. It had long been known that New Caledonian crows in the wild made simple tools from leaves and twigs, but they have even figured out how to make tools out of materials they could never have encountered before. In one experiment, researchers provided a pair of crows, Betty and Abel, with two pieces of wire—one straight, one hooked. They put some food in a small bucket with a handle and dropped the bucket into a tube, so that the only way to retrieve it would be to pull it out with the hooked wire. After Abel tried and failed, he flew off with the hooked wire, leaving Betty with the straight wire. No problem—she immediately bent it into a hook, pulled out the bucket, and had lunch. The first time I saw a video of this, I was absolutely stunned. It sounds like such a simple task, but it is just not the kind of ability I’ve ever thought of animals as having—certainly not birds.

Crows Just Want to Have Fun
New Caledonian crows—at least those being observed in the lab—seem to use tools constantly, not just when they’re trying to get food. This poses some unexpected challenges for the scientists who work with them. The crows are so adept at using tools that researchers have come into the lab to find the fire alarms disassembled. And crows are just as likely to try prodding around in an electrical socket as a test tube. If you thought it was difficult to child-proof your living room, imagine crow-proofing a university research facility.

But lest you think these crows are all work and no play, they also seem to use tools just to have fun. Dr. Jackie Chappell, a researcher who spent years working with the crows, had this to say about the way they like to play:

One aviary in particular has an obsession with stones. They pick stones up from the aviary floor and bring them into the housing room. We then find stones everywhere. They carefully place them inside the tubes that we use to test their tool use, and they have hammered perfectly sized stones into holes we’ve drilled in logs to give them natural probing sites. They are such a tight fit that we can’t get them out. They also play at rolling pebbles inside a tube. We have some film of them carefully inserting a pebble into a plastic tube, then slowly lifting one end of the tube so that the pebble rolls to the other end (and makes a nice noise—we don’t know if this is the objective), then they repeat the procedure from the other end. This can go on for minutes on end.

Is “Bird Brain” a Compliment?
While it’s very interesting that New Caledonian crows make and use tools, what exactly does this prove? By itself, nothing. But what scientists studying the New Caledonian crow hope to demonstrate is evidence of complex cognitive abilities—including things like abstract reasoning. It may be that the crows’ cognitive abilities are limited to tool-related tasks, or it could be that they’re more general. A series of experiments is underway to find out.

One type of experiment involves selectivity. Observation in the wild suggests that crows select their tools according to the task at hand (or beak). Given a range of tasks and materials the crows have never encountered before, will they consistently select (or make) the best tool for the job? Likewise, are they flexible in their use of tools? Having used a certain type of tool for a given task, will they also use less-suitable tools for the same task if necessary? And does their use of tools suggest an implicit understanding of the basic rules of physics?

You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Birds
Tool use by New Caledonian crows also raises a host of other questions. For instance, how do they learn to do this? Are there secret tool-making classes in the trees, or do young birds just watch their parents attentively? Once acquired, how does the knowledge spread? Is there something unique in their social interactions that facilitates learning about tools? And why don’t other birds make tools? The New Caledonian crow doesn’t have the largest brain among birds or the most complex social system, so what makes it unique in this regard? Could other birds learn how to use tools too, given the right environment? For that matter, could a New Caledonian crow teach another species of bird to use tools? These are just a few of the many questions scientists are hoping to answer.

How soon these answers arrive will depend on whether the researchers can keep ahead of the birds. The crows are so clever at solving problems that they often come up with entirely novel ways of accomplishing tasks, thus derailing carefully designed experiments. As I read about the research, I’m reminded of the white mice in Douglas Adams’s Life, the Universe, and Everything. The furry little creatures were really “hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings”; while scientists thought they were running experiments on the mice, the mice were actually experimenting on humans. But I don’t worry about a conspiracy of crows. Any creature that likes tools is OK with me. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Crows that Make Tools...

This article was featured in I and the Birds of Idaho, the 25th edition of the “I and the Bird” Blog Carnival.

Everything you ever wanted to know about New Caledonian crows and their use of tools can be found on Oxford University’s Behavioural Ecology Research Group Web site, specifically the Tool Use in Corvids section. This includes photos and movies, the most impressive one of which shows Betty making a hook to lift a bucket out of a tube.

Michael Crichton (Congo) and Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe, and Everything) are two of my favorite authors.

I can’t take credit for the “task at beak” bit—that goes to Jackie Chappell, a researcher who spent years working with the crows. Dr. Chappell doesn’t usually go by “Jack,” but I can’t resist mentioning the song “Jack’s Crows” by folk singer John Gorka (on the album of the same name). It’s not an especially cheery song, but the title is apropos. Jack’s Crows is one of my favorite John Gorka albums, by the way—I especially like the songs “Good” and “I’m From New Jersey.”

Leaf Cutter Ants / A different kind of deforestation

Joe Kissell — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

I’m a city person at heart, but every now and then I like to get far away from the chaos and soak in some nature. On the two trips I’ve taken to Costa Rica, I’ve found it ideal for such a getaway. It’s quite a contrast from my usual environment—everything from the food to the climate is different, not to mention the language, driving habits, and so on. But we adapt rapidly, as humans tend to do. After a few days, we become accustomed to the heat and, to a lesser extent, the humidity. We get used to seeing the occasional frog or lizard in the shower. The sights, sounds, and smells which were so foreign just a week earlier begin to seem commonplace. “Honey, look! Up in the tree!” one of us will say. What, another sloth, a family of monkeys, a toucan? Ho hum. Been there, done that. The novelty of such sightings wears off much too quickly.

The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah, Hurrah
Such was the case with leaf cutter ants. At first you think it’s an optical illusion. You’ll glance at the ground and detect a line of movement, just a rustle. You look at a bare strip in the grass and think: The leaves can’t possibly be marching across the ground. You try to figure out what you’re seeing, whether it’s moving plants or plant-shaped bugs of some kind. On closer inspection—much closer—you see tiny ants, almost blending into the soil, carrying comparatively huge slices of leaves in a long column. Ah: leaf cutter ants. Yes, I think I read about them somewhere. They climb trees, slice up the leaves, and carry them off to their nests. Got it. Once you’ve figured out what it is, it doesn’t seem especially remarkable.

Everywhere we went in Costa Rica—rain forest, beach, and everywhere in between—we saw these long columns of tiny marching leaves. They could be fun to watch if you had nothing better to do. Once I dropped a couple of new leaves onto a trail, just to see what would happen. Sure enough, within a few minutes the ants had checked them out, picked them up, and started carrying them toward home.

Hats Off to the Soldier
A week later on a nature hike near the Arenal Volcano, our guide, Paolo, stopped the group when we came to a column of leaf cutter ants. By this time I had seen dozens of these, so I wasn’t paying much attention. Paolo picked up one of the larger ants—a soldier—and asked me for my hat. “Excuse me?” I said. I couldn’t comprehend what my hat had to do with the ant. He repeated the question. “Your hat—can I borrow it?” I stood there puzzled for a few seconds, then took off my hat and handed it to him. Paolo held the chin strap of my hat up to the ant, which pinched it between its mandibles. Then, still holding onto the ant, Paolo let go of the hat. The ant held it firmly. OK, now I was paying attention. Watching an ant carry a leaf a few times its size is mildly impressive the first time, but seeing an ant hold my hat—this was something else altogether.

The ant was apparently unharmed, but undoubtedly suffering the ant equivalent of psychological trauma. Paolo put it back on the trail and picked up another one. This time he repeated the trick with a branch. Not a twig, mind you, but a hefty branch nearly a meter long and perhaps two centimeters at its thickest point. The ant held it for only a few seconds, but that was more than enough for Paolo to make his point. These little guys are seriously strong. The mandibles seem to have a mind of their own, too: they’ll keep holding on just as tightly even if the ant dies. Because of this, they are sometimes used to close wounds in a pinch (so to speak). The technique is to hold the ant so its mandibles pinch either side of a cut, then twist the body off, leaving the head in place. A bit gruesome, but it makes a fair substitute for a suture.

The World’s Smallest Agriculturalists
This was just the beginning of the surprising things we were to learn about leaf cutter ants. The most obvious question we had was what they did with all those leaves once they got where they were going. I figured they either ate them or used them as a building material. In fact they do neither: their digestive systems can’t break down the cellulose in leaves, and they live in underground nests (which, by the way, can be enormous, holding as many as 10,000,000 ants). When the ants arrive home with their leaves, they hand them off to specialized workers that chop them up into even smaller pieces, cover them with their own droppings, and use them as a medium for growing the fungus that the ants actually eat. In other words, the ants are basically fungus farmers.

The ants and the fungus form a textbook symbiotic relationship—each depends on, and benefits, the other. The fungus thrives on the food provided by the ants, which also give it a cool, moist environment to grow in and weed out any other plants competing for its food and space. The ants also enable the fungus to propagate, which it would otherwise be unable to do. In exchange, the fungus serves as food for the ants.

Flies Can Be a Headache
Another thing we noticed was that much smaller ants would often ride on top of the leaf fragments as they made their way along the path in the jaws of the delivery ants (known as foragers). Paolo told us they serve a sort of quality control function. That may be true, but further research showed them to have an even more important and much weirder role. It seems that a bug called the coffin fly likes to land on an ant and lay eggs on its head. When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into the head and feed on the ant’s brain. There being so little brain to go around, there isn’t enough for both the ant and the fly, and the ant dies. Ordinarily, ants can defend themselves against the files, but not when they’re carrying a giant leaf. So the tiny tag-along ants, known as minima, defend the foragers against the nasty coffin flies.

Leaf cutter ants will travel quite a distance—up to 100 meters from their nest—to locate just the right plants to defoliate. Quite often I watched the ants pass by what appeared to my unsophisticated eye to be perfectly yummy trees right near their nest. Apparently the ants have developed a subtle art of leaf selection, choosing only the ones most conducive to the growth of their food. A large colony of leaf cutter ants can bring in as much as 34kg (75 lb.) of leaves per day, comparable in mass to the daily grass intake of a cow.

Although leaf cutter ants are sometimes regarded as a pest—they damage both food crops and ornamental plants—they do much more good for the ecosystem than damage. They aerate the soil and produce nutrient-rich fertilizers. The symbiotic relationship they have with the fungus they use for food is a favorite research subject among biologists. And, of course, for jaded tourists like me, they provide both entertainment and a reminder that there are more interesting things around us than meet the eye. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Leaf Cutter Ants...

There are many fine articles on leaf cutter ants on the Web. Some examples include Corwin’s Carnival of Creatures on AnimalPlanet.com and the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

A British site called Easy Insects has an illustrated article on keeping leaf cutter ants—as in building your own ant farm. They aren’t what I’d think of as good pets, but you may feel differently.

Poison Dart Frogs / Pretty to look at, but don't put them in your mouth

Joe Kissell — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

Where I come from, frogs were always considered harmless, even comical, creatures. Not that you’d want to have one in your bathtub with you, but you imagined them leading a leisurely amphibian life, hopping from one lily pad to the next, keeping the pond free of insects, and croaking happily away. Kermit, of course, epitomized the friendliness and goofiness of frogs. He sang, “It’s not easy being green,” but his biggest problem seemed to be that his girlfriend was a pig.

In countless high school biology classes, students have had to set aside their anthropomorphic image of frogs to dissect them and study their anatomy. Although the students sometimes consider this quite unpleasant, you could hardly imagine a less scary specimen. And of course there’s fried frogs’ legs, a fairly bland but unobjectionable dish I’ve enjoyed in New Orleans.

A Touch of Color
In the tropical rain forests of Central and South America, however, frogs conjure up a rather different image. If you look on the ground—under broad leaves, near puddles, or in other cool, moist places—you’re likely to see a tiny splash of color. Only about one inch (2.5cm) long, poison dart frogs contrast vividly with the dull greens and browns of their habitat. But poison dart frogs differ from their larger, greener cousins in a more important way. Their name comes from the fact that glands on their backs secrete a poison that is sometimes rubbed on the tips of darts or arrows for hunting. They are, in a passive way, quite dangerous, and about as far from Kermit as you can get.

There are about 170 different species of poison dart frog. Their appearance varies greatly from one species to the next, but the colors are always very bright. Every neon shade of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue is represented. One species, the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog (Dendrobates pumilio), is sometimes called the “blue jean frog” because it has a bright red or orange body with blue legs. Another, the Harlequin (Dendrobates histrionicus), has spots that contrast sharply with its base skin color, though the pair of colors varies from one group of frogs to the next.

Of Mice and Men
Just how poisonous are poison dart frogs? Well, that depends. Generally speaking, the secretions from a poison dart frog’s back cannot permeate unbroken human skin, so they can be handled safely as long as you don’t have any open cuts and are careful to wash your hands afterward. The poison causes problems only if it gets into your bloodstream (either directly or through ingestion). Even then, it probably won’t kill you, though some species are much more toxic than others. The statistic usually quoted about the Golden Poison Dart Frog (Phylobates terriblis), for example, is that its skin contains enough of the alkaloid chemical Batrachotoxin to kill 20,000 mice. Some Web sites claim this equates to eight adult humans, though actually the number is closer to 100. But the frogs don’t bite, so you’ll only get into trouble if you try snacking on one.

Poison dart frogs reportedly become less poisonous over time when in captivity, apparently due to a change in diet. The toxin is created from chemicals found in insects the frogs eat in the wild; without access to exactly the right kinds of food, the toxicity rapidly fades. Of course, poison dart frogs in captivity also have less need of this natural defense mechanism, which reduces their appeal to natural predators from spiders to birds.

Take Two Frogs and Call Me in the Morning
For a number of years researchers have been investigating medical applications for frog toxins. The secretion from the Ecuadorian species Epipedrobates tricolor has been adapted to create a pain killer called ABT-594 (nicknamed “epibatidine” in honor of the frog). Epibatadine has been described as being 200 times more potent than morphine, with fewer side effects. Poison dart frog secretions also show promise for the development of muscle relaxants and heart stimulants.

You may have heard of people getting high from licking toads that secrete a hallucinogenic chemical. That is an entirely different (and arguably more benign) substance from that found on poison dart frogs. Kissing a frog is unlikely to turn it into a handsome prince, though if you kiss the wrong kind of frog there’s no telling what you may experience. Personally, I have a general policy of avoiding lip contact with any wildlife and I think I’ll stick to it. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Poison Dart Frogs...

The University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web has detailed information on seven poison dart frog species. Other good sources for information are AllAboutFrogs.org and the Exploratorium. There’s also a Poison Dart Frog webring with a few dozen participating sites.

Some people raise poison dart frogs in terrariums. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not, but you can get more information at Black Jungle’s Dart Frog Shop.

Mate / The national beverage of Argentina

Joe Kissell — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:01 -0700

I’m a coffee person. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to it, but I do certainly enjoy drinking it on a more or less daily basis. Sometimes two or three times a day. In fact, now that I think about it, I could use a cup right now. Excuse me. (Time passes.) Ah, that’s better. I do not drink coffee for my health, although I am aware of studies suggesting that coffee consumption in moderation may reduce the risk of colon cancer, kidney stones, heart disease, and even Parkinson’s Disease. I don’t even, for the most part, drink it for the caffeine. Partly it’s the aroma that I find so appealing, and partly it’s just the soothing effect of a warm beverage sliding across my tongue and down my esophagus.

Many of my friends, however, are tea people. I have nothing against a nice cup of tea now and then, and of course tea ably fills that hot beverage need. But in terms of aroma and both psychological and physiological impact, tea just doesn’t do it for me. Once again, tea’s supposed health benefits—of which there are, I admit, far more than those of coffee—don’t quite tip the scales. Maybe I’d be 5% healthier if I switched from coffee to tea, but then, maybe I’d also be 10% grouchier.

A Drink to Die For
I am always, however, happy to try new and unusual hot beverages, especially if they are reputed to have health benefits, a strong aroma, and a flavor frequently referred to as an “acquired taste.” And even more so if the beverage must be prepared and served in a highly ritualized way using special, single-purpose gadgets. So while in Argentina, I was enthusiastic about sampling, and acquiring the necessary paraphernalia to make, their national beverage, which is known as mate.

According to one survey, mate (pronounced “MAH-teh”—and not to be confused with the Spanish word maté, which means “I killed”) is regularly consumed by some 92% of Argentineans—and by similarly large numbers of people in Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. Superficially it appears to be a kind of tea, but appearances are deceiving. The true story is much more complex.

For starters, there’s the nomenclature. The dried leaves that are brewed to make mate are known as yerba mate—the word yerba meaning “herb.” This is, however, a misnomer: the leaves come from an evergreen tree in the holly family, Ilex paraguariensis. The word mate itself comes from the Quechua word matí, which refers to a certain type of gourd (Lagenaria vulgaris) which, when dried and hollowed, is used as the serving vessel for the beverage. So depending on context, mate can mean the leaves, the container, or the infusion of the leaves in water. The latter sense appears to be the most common.

Details, Details, Details
Yerba mate plants must be carefully cultivated and their leaves harvested at just the right time. The leaves are briefly roasted to preserve their color and prevent spoilage, then dried thoroughly, coarsely ground, and left to age for nine months. Finally, they are crushed and packaged. One supermarket we visited in Patagonia had an entire aisle of mate—dozens of varieties, textures, blends, and package sizes. But even the highest-quality brands were inexpensive: a few dollars or so for a kilogram.

The gourds come in every conceivable shape, size, and color, usually with a three-legged metal base (to prevent tipping, since the bottom is convex), and often with a metal ring around the hole in the top, to reduce wear. Although actual gourds are most common, we also saw mate pots made out of clay, ceramic, metal, and even cows’ hooves and horns. Each gourd also requires a special accessory called a bombilla—basically a metal straw with a strainer at the bottom. Instead of filtering out the tiny leaf fragments when the beverage is brewed, drinkers use the bombilla to filter it as they sip.

To prepare mate, one must begin with a properly “cured” gourd—one that has been soaked or cleaned in one of several ways to remove the residual oils that could adversely affect the flavor. The gourd is then filled about two-thirds full of yerba mate leaves, shaken, and tipped at an angle. A small amount of hot water is poured into the empty side, and after a couple of minutes, the bombilla is inserted and a larger quantity of hot water added. Each of the numerous books and Web sites I read that described mate preparation had different instructions for the precise method of creating an ideal mate—and in fact, many people prefer to leave this immensely important and challenging task to a cebador, a local expert in mate preparation. Every source I consulted, however, was in agreement that unlike tea, mate must never be made with boiling water.

Mate has the somewhat bitter taste of tannins, much like tea. Because of the ratio of leaves to water, it is a very strong flavor. Some of my companions likened it to “grass,” “hay,” or “alfalfa.” I believe these descriptions were intended to be uncomplimentary. I felt about the taste the way I felt about coffee the first time: kind of bitter, not immediately appealing, but I’ll bet it could grow on me.

Drink Me
Mate is normally shared among several people. Each person takes a sip or two from the bombilla, passes the mate to the next person, and the cycle continues. When the liquid gets low, more hot water is added. Because such a large quantity of leaves is used, it takes a very long time for a single dose of mate to lose its flavor. The people we observed drinking mate appeared to be unconcerned about sharing germs, but apparently in some situations individual, disposable bombillas are used. Our guide did tell us, though, that according to legend when companions share a mate, they will also share their dreams. I did not check to see what other members of our group dreamed about the night after we shared our first mate, but it makes a nice story in any case.

Purists drink their mate hot and unsweetened—just the way I like my coffee. But I read repeatedly that some segments of the population, such as women, children, and city dwellers (if you can believe such categories) prefer their mate cold and/or sweetened with sugar—and sometimes even prepared with milk. We observed locals drinking mate at all hours—in fact, pretty much constantly throughout the day—except with meals. The quantity typically ingested in a day puts my considerable coffee consumption to shame. In order to be assured of a ready supply of raw materials, some people carry around leather cases large enough to hold a gourd, a thermos full of hot water, and a large bag of yerba mate.

Mate is a mild stimulant—when brewed, it has about half as much caffeine as coffee. Some people believe that unlike coffee, mate’s stimulant effect disappears very quickly when you stop drinking, so it can be consumed safely at bedtime. Mate supposedly functions as a digestive aid, which seems reasonable enough; it’s also used as a laxative. Other health claims abound: mate is said to curb the appetite, boost immunity, combat the effects of aging, and even return gray hair to its original shade—among many other benefits. How many of these effects are genuine, I can’t say. But I suspect its health benefits handily beat those of coffee.

Argentineans who drink mate all day long take it very seriously—they must have just the right brand, prepared just the right way in just the right gourd. And of course, “just right” differs enormously from person to person. In this respect, the mate phenomenon is very much like the culture of coffee snobs in the U.S. I did bring home my own mate kit, and in fact my gourd is curing as I type this. Whether I trade my coffee fanaticism for mate remains to be seen, but if I suddenly seem younger and healthier, you’ll know why. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Mate...

Today’s article is part of two week-long series on Patagonia. To learn more about Patagonia, see the first article in this week’s theme, Introduction to Patagonia.

This article was featured in Coffee and Tea Festival #8.

UPDATE: A reader from Buenos Aires informed me that the custom as he knows it is not to take “a sip or two” and pass it to the next person, but rather to finish the amount of water in the gourd and pass it back to the cebador, who then refills it and passes it to the next person. I can’t verify this from personal experience, and it’s contrary to the information in two books I have on mate, but far be it from me to argue with a local. This reader also said that the disposable bombillas are a matter of convenience, not germ avoidance.

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

For more information on mate, see:

Yerba Mate Online
Yerba Mate in the Tropical Plant database
Crop of the Day: Mate

You can buy yerba mate, mate gourds, and other accessories at Amazon.com.

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