A More Perfect Plate was my way of celebrating what I love about America during the summer of our 250th birthday...the stories about real American ingenuity and the people who came together to make things happen.
Every facet of American life has stories that combine these two elements, but I love food and drink most, so I wanted to share the stories behind some of our most iconic comestibles.
Over the last 15 weeks, I've done more research than I have since college, learned more about subjects I thought I knew, and discovered new meanings in everyday things.
I love history, but I understand many people find it boring and irrelevant. I believe history is relevant only insofar as it gives you context for why people behave the way they do today and helps you learn lessons so you can avoid making mistakes in the future!
On this week's Discussion podcast, Bridget and I highlighted 3 major themes we saw from this series (efficiency, logistics, and marketing, if you want the short version) and shared a few of our favorite stories, but in this Dispatch, I want to give one big lesson or bit of context about the current world that I learned from each week's topic.
Let's get started with the rundown!
Episode 1: Cheese Curds
This was a fun episode to get started with, and our first of many shout-outs to our friend Ron and Hill Valley Dairy.
The fact that the squeak from cheese curds is a protein structure in the cheese grating on the enamel on your teeth is always my favorite little tidbit to share with people to put a very uncomfortable thought in their head.
Episode 2: Juneteenth & Soul Food
This episode was a bit contentious, but it was one of my favorites because I learned so much.
Juneteenth is closely associated with certain foods, and the easy assumption many people make is that those foods were served at the first Juneteenth celebrations.
Well, no one wrote that menu down, so we don't know for sure.
But does it actually matter that we don't know the menu?
Maybe the traditions and stories and feelings behind these traditional foods is what matters the most, not being 100% accurate.
I think the tradition of celebrating what must have been a sweet taste of the end of slavery after generations of involuntary servitude is incredible, and I'm glad to have learned more about the holiday and the culinary traditions that go with it.
Episode 3: Ham & The American Smokehouse
It was fun to try different hams from around the world in this week's Discussion, not least because LGCM's own ham is still my favorite even when I try even "fancier" jamón ibérico!!
Beyond the meat, I've always wondered what all of the different outbuildings on farms were used for. Now I know at least one of those windowless, small buildings was probably a smokehouse!
Another favorite tidbit from this episode: Cincinnati was once called Porkopolis. After learning that, I'm forever going to refer to Cincinnati as Porkopolis!
Episode 4: Hot Dogs & Hamburgers
The idea of a hamburger seems so simple, but pattying meat and putting it between buns was evidently a huge deal. I think it's crazy that there are so many different claims to the invention of the hamburger.
For me, I will always stand up for Seymour, Wisconsin's claim: long live Hamburger Charlie!
Episode 5: The American Farm
Woof, there was so much in this episode. I enjoyed putting together all of the family vignettes to understand trends throughout history.
The biggest thing that I took away from this episode (and one of the major themes in the entire series) was how incredibly efficient the American farm has become.
We've gone from 1 farm feeding 1 family to 1 farm feeding dozens of families, and not just American families, families around the globe.
This is a remarkable accomplishment that should be celebrated and appreciated. It should also be understood that it comes with the trade-off of fewer people being connected to the land and massive concentration of agricultural power.
Few things in life are 100% positive, but what we should never forget is the science, engineering, ingenuity, and hard work American farmers have put into building our modern agricultural system.
Episode 6: Rum
This was such a fun Discussion episode to record - Bridget was super skeptical but ended up having a good time trying all of the different drinks.
The rises and falls of rum on the American bar illustrate the other two themes that really resonated in this series: logistics and marketing.
When it was easy to get molasses, rum boomed. When prohibition outlawed other booze, rum boomed.
When rum needed a story to jump-start sales, marketing executives gave it one.
You may have a great product, but without solid logistics and a bit of marketing push, it'll get left behind!
Episode 7: Barbecue
Barbecue, my beloved food, the food of America.
The sauce taste-off with Bridget was fun, and it was impressive that she guessed six different sauces correctly in our blind tasting challenge.
From this episode, I take away how wonderful it is that America has so many different regional traditions to argue over, but at the end of the day, we have so much more in common than differences.
Yes, Memphis and Carolina have different sauces, but both cook pork low and slow, have a party, and enjoy a flavorful, time-honored meal.
Episode 8: Bratwurst
Bridget commented that this was a frustrating episode because she still doesn't know what makes a brat a brat and how it's different from a sausage.
The answer is that...well, it's a brat if we call it a brat, but it's still also a sausage!
It's a deeply unsatisfying answer that has no real basis other than in Wisconsin, we're Germans, and we call it a brat.
Sometimes things just are what they are, and it's not worth thinking too much about it!
Episode 9: Fair Food
I could not believe how much the "food on a stick" trend is a relatively recent phenomenon and that the "stick wars" really took off at the Minnesota State Fair!
I always thought food on a stick was a long time easy way of serving food as you traveled. Sure, we took it to extremes recently with the twinkies on a stick, crickets on a stick, etc, etc. but I didn't think it was that new of a trend.
Nope, the crazy stuff didn't take off until the 1990s.
Episode 10: Indigenous Foods
There were so many fun little stories in this episode, so I don't want to single any of them out, but instead just marvel at the bounty of the foods that come from the Americas.
Much has been written about the "Columbian exchange" where new foods went from the Americas to Europe, but it is always worth pointing this out:
Is there even Irish food without a potato?
Could you imagine a trip to Switzerland without taking home a bit of chocolate?
Now the big one...Italian food without tomatoes??
All of these iconic "European" foods are American in origin and took generations of know-how from indigenous people to domesticate and cultivate.
I think that's pretty cool.
Episode 11: Bourbon
The fact that Elijah Craig was a real person who distilled whiskey but 99% did not invent "bourbon" except in the marketing materials of the distillery named after him is one of those hilarious marketing stories that kept creeping up throughout the series.
Myself, I prefer the bourbon origin story of the Tarascon brothers, French immigrants trading on the Ohio River who needed booze to sell into New Orleans. By using charred barrels (a technique they learned from Cognac at home), or so the story goes, they tricked the partiers on Bourbon Street into thinking the cheap Kentucky whiskey they were drinking was something fancier.
Marketing, gumption, and hustle.
That's the American Dream!
Episode 12: Beef
This was such a timely episode given what's happening in the public discussion right now, and I didn't intend for it to be so close to a major debate when I put it in the schedule.
Plenty has been said about the politics and ways to help ranchers or not help ranchers, so I'll focus on the historic part of this episode that I thought was interesting.
I had no clue that cattle drives came about because of economic inefficiency (beef was pennies on the dollar in Texas compared to the East Coast) and that within 20 years, railways expanded so much that cattle drives became a thing of the past.
For a run of only 20 years, the image of the cowboy, home on the range, has really stuck in the American legendarium like few others!
Episode 13: Tailgating
In Wisconsin, tailgating at a Brewers game is a key part of summer, so we think we have tailgating down to a science.
That said, I really enjoyed learning about other, more niche traditions like yacht gating at places with stadiums on water, and I particularly liked the University of South Carolina invention: the cockaboose.
The portmanteau of "gamecock," the mascot of the University, and "caboose," cockabooses are old cabooses parked next to the stadium that a developer turned into mobile living rooms to enjoy a pre-game party.
He sold them, profited, of course, and now the proud owners are living their best life cockaboosing before Gamecock games.
Win-win for everyone.
Episode 14: Labor Day
This was a tough one for me.
Butchery as a trade has become overlooked. The discussion around meat isn't "wow, the people producing meat are skilled craftsmen worthy of respect"; it is "we need it to be cheaper."
You can't have cheaper meat and pay your butchers a wage that treats them as the equal of other skilled craftspeople like plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.
I don't want to rehash the arguments in today's Dispatch, but I would encourage you to check out the positives and negatives I laid out in the Labor Day Dispatch to gain context on what the contributions of butchery to the American labor market have been and why it's an underpaid profession compared to other trades.
That's It (For Now)
Thank you so much for being part of this summer series. I had so much fun researching, writing, recording, and sharing.
I need to extend a massive thank you to my co-host Bridget who took hours out of her busy schedule to record a weekly series and was such a good sport in trying all of my zany ideas. This series doesn't work without her humor and willingness to be a real person on a podcast!
Food is never just food. It's necessary nourishment, but it can be so much more.
It's stories, it's emotions, it's people.
When you have the context, food can be a joy and a way to connect across what divides us - from each other today, as well as from our predecessors - and make life better.
My very sincere hope is that in reading and listening to these stories, you found a bit of joy, as well as a bit of context and understanding that made you think about the world in a way you haven't before.
This series is wrapped up, but we may be back with a few special Dispatches for the holidays, so stay tuned.
If you have a request for a future episode, or had something you really enjoyed from the series, please leave us a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Have a great weekend, go eat something delicious.
Cheers!
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