[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica, and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:27] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture. Hey, Meg. You know what? It is so good to be back.

[00:40] Meg: Welcome home.

[00:41] Jessica: Cause we've both been away. Welcome home to you, too.

[00:43] Meg: Thank you. It feels like. Yeah, it's been a while.

[00:47] Jessica: It has been a bit. But you've been off having a big adventure.

[00:51] Meg: Well, I've been rehearsing for the play that opens this week.

[00:53] Jessica: My adventure was going to Cape Cod and getting attacked by a weasel. Can our listeners come and watch your play?

[01:03] Meg: That would be amazing.

[01:04] Jessica: And so why don't you tell us where it is? Well, what it's called?

[01:08] Meg: It's called Galatea 2.0. It is at Brooklyn Art Haus, which is. Yes. Spelled the german way house. H-A-U-S. No, um, loud.

[01:22] Jessica: No, um, loud.

[01:24] Meg: It's an absolutely fantastic cast. I can't begin to tell you how much fun I'm having with these wonderful people and across the board.

[01:33] Jessica: Right?

[01:34] Meg: Yes. This is a very fun, crazy ass play.

[01:38] Jessica: And I hear that you have a little doggy friend.

[01:41] Meg: I do. No spoilers, but yes, a doggy. Yes. Okay. Called Pinky.

[01:48] Jessica: Pinky. Yeah. That's a little creepy. Wonderful.

[01:52] Meg: He's definitely creepy and wonderful.

[01:55] Jessica: I'm so excited to see this. Well, I'll be going to see you in it with at least one of our Nightingale friends.

[02:01] Meg: That's really lovely.

[02:03] Jessica: And I hope that our listeners will be there when I am there.

[02:10] Meg: That would be fun.

[02:10] Jessica: So we can talk about how amazing you are together. Yay. So, yes, again, the name of it is Galatea 2.0, and it is at Brooklyn Art Haus. And it premieres on.

[02:23] Meg: It previews on Thursday the 6th. I'll put something on. I'll make a story on our instagram. So people can find it. I heard from Alex.

[02:47] Jessica: I love Alex.

[02:49] Meg: And I wasn't surprised because I think we first met him because we were talking about video games and Ninos and gangs and. Anyway, our story from last week very much was in that vein. And so, yes, Alex wrote us a little something. May I read it?

[03:09] Jessica: I am very excited to have you read it.

[03:11] Meg: Really great, resonant episode this week. I had no idea that the 77th street and First arcade closed in such an ignominious way. But holy shit, like Jessica, I have absolutely vivid memories of that place and know it was not at all a safe space in any meaningful capacity, not even during the day. Also, Jessica's rumination on the striking class dichotomy of kids in Yorkville was, of course, entirely spot on.

[03:42] Jessica: Thank you.

[03:43] Meg: All those tough kids from the proverbial side streets were the very sort that made life difficult for me on the regular and that roughed up Spike and myself in Carl Schurz park that late spring day. It was tough.

[03:59] Jessica: Yeah, I mean, and to be honest with you, it's difficult to talk about because talking about class issues these days is really not done. And at the time, it was very obvious and everyone talked about it. It wasn't spoken of as though it was hush hush. Oh, we must brush it under the rug. It was a big part of daily life. On a lighter note, it's why things like The Official Preppy Handbook were so popular, because they were very pointedly addressing the American class system. And in fact, there's a great book by an author, I think this is from the early '80s. His name is Paul Fussell or Fussell, I believe, called Class: A Guide Through the American Status System and it was a slightly amusing, but really like a very good examination of the class system in the United States. So if you want a real window back to what that was about at that time and how people spoke about. Great, great book. And funny enough, a perfect companion to The Preppy Handbook.

[05:15] Meg: Really cool. Thank you for the recommendation.

[05:18] Jessica: And that is my entire presentation for today. Bye bye.

[05:22] Meg: Okay, are you ready for your engagement question?

[05:25] Jessica: I am very ready.

[05:27] Meg: Did you ever. I mean, you were the youngest in your family?

[05:30] Jessica: Yes.

[05:31] Meg: Your nuclear family. Did you have cousins?

[05:34] Jessica: Sure.

[05:34] Meg: I'm just wondering whether you ever held a newborn. Did you ever visit newborns in the hospital?

[05:40] Jessica: I have cousins, two cousins who are ten and twelve years younger than I am. And then a third cousin who, oh, no 10, 12 and 15 years younger than I am.

[05:56] Meg: Okay. And they live in New York.

[05:59] Jessica: In fact, more than 16 years. No. Yeah, 16 years younger. Two of them in New York and one in Nashville, so yeah I mean I was around. Not. Not terribly. And I will be honest, while now I'm quite charmed by babies. I was never really interested in babies, which also explains my happily childless life. But they were definitely. Yes. I mean, I'm sure I held or saw or in some way interacted with an infant, but it was not my bag.

[06:35] Meg: All right. Yeah. You don't have strong feelings or memories or recollections about, oh, little baby, baby, baby.

[06:42] Jessica: I remember. I have strong feelings to the contrary.

[06:45] Meg: Okay.

[06:45] Jessica: Yes. Got it. Yes.

[06:47] Meg: All right.

[06:47] Jessica: Not a baby person.

[06:50] Meg: My sources today, The New York Times and New York Magazine. Now stick with me because I'm going to tell you a series of short stories.

[06:59] Jessica: This is fantastic. I am really excited about this format. All right, I'm going to lean back with my cup of joe and listen raptly.

[07:10] Meg: On October 21, 1985 Francis Santana was preparing to leave Brookdale Hospital, which is in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, with her three day old baby, Marlene. Marlene's father was out of the country, so Francis's sister in law and her friend had come to pick her up and take her home with her newborn. As Francis was waiting for the nurses to hand over Marlene, a woman in her 20s joined her at the window that looked over the newborns. Can you picture that? Those windows?

[07:43] Jessica: Definitely.

[07:44] Meg: I don't know if they exist anymore, to be honest.

[07:47] Jessica: Well, they're always in the movies.

[07:48] Meg: They are totally in the movies. They are in I Love Lucy.

[07:51] Jessica: Yes.

[07:52] Meg: For example.

[07:53] Jessica: Yes.

[07:53] Meg: Which is not a movie, but yes, it's a famous scene.

[07:56] Jessica: It is. It's a trope. It is.

[07:58] Meg: The woman asked Francis what her name was and which baby was hers. Quote, "it looks like a nice, quiet baby." The woman said.

[08:07] Jessica: Oh, my God. She's shopping.

[08:10] Meg: At 9:30 p.m., Francis, her sister in law and her friend left the hospital with Marlene wrapped in a blanket. The three women walked several blocks before they noticed a woman was trailing them. It was the woman from the baby window. When they got to the corner of Ditmars Avenue and Rockaway Parkway. She was window shopping. Yes.

[08:35] Jessica: I'm sorry. I'm so horrified that I can't contain myself.

[08:39] Meg: The baby window woman approached them with a gun drawn. Quote, "she said she would blow off my baby's head if we didn't do what she said" Francis later said. The woman grabbed baby Marlene and jumped into a white car marked with red lettering that quickly sped off. Quote, "the mother was so nervous and shaken up that she wasn't able to think or talk clearly", Lieutenant LeSchack said at a news conference. Francis cried, quote, "I want my baby. I need my baby. I can't live without my baby."

[09:13] Jessica: This is the worst ever. Sorry, I'm making pronouncements now.

[09:17] Meg: All right, so this is the next story.

[09:20] Jessica: Oh, God. c

[09:21] Meg: Two weeks before the story I just told you, two month old Christopher Morgan was admitted to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital at 166th and Broadway, which is now New York Presbyterian. He wasn't growing, and it was unclear whether that was due to his diet or some other cause. His 15 year old mother, Monique Morgan, had brought him in on October 9, the father incidentally, Ramon Taveras was 26.

[09:52] Jessica: 16?

[09:55] Meg: 15.

[09:56] Jessica: She's 15?

[09:57] Meg: Yeah.

[09:57] Jessica: So she got pregnant when she was 14.

[10:00] Meg: Yeah.

[10:01] Jessica: Or younger.

[10:02] Meg: Yeah.

[10:05] Jessica: Okay. I can't.

[10:06] Meg: All right. Anyway, so Monique, the mom, brought Christopher in, and he'd been in the hospital for the last couple of weeks, and they were feeding him and monitoring him and figuring out why he wasn't growing. On October 19, Monique visited him at 7:30 p.m. At 1:40 a.m. 40 minutes after he had been fed, Christopher vanished from room 1102.

[10:32] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[10:34] Meg: Next story. On the evening of August 4, 1987, Joy White and Carl Tyson took their 19 day baby, Carlina, to Harlem Hospital Center at 506 Lennox Avenue, which is now named Malcolm X Boulevard by the way. This hospital is at 135th Street. Carlina had 104 degree temperature. She had swallowed some fluid during her delivery, and that had caused an infection. A nurse, who Carl described as heavyset, black, and in her 20s, showed Carl and Joy where to go in the hospital and when Joy was clearly distraught, the nurse consoled her, quote, "The baby don't cry for you. You cry for the baby."

[11:23] Jessica: What?

[11:24] Meg: Yeah. So Joy understood that to mean that Carlina would be okay, so she felt a little bit better, and she made plans to stay over at the hospital while Carlina was being taken care of. Okay, so at 12:30 a.m. Carl went home to sleep, and Joy went to her mother's place to pick up some things, at 02:00 a.m. at the hospital, there was a shift change, and police believe that that is when Carlina was abducted. She was receiving intravenous antibiotics, so the abductor had to remove her IV line. The heavyset nurse, who, as it turned out, was not a nurse, was spotted by a guard leaving the hospital at 03:30 a.m. without an infant, but authorities figured she had the baby hidden under her clothes. The hospital realized Carlina was missing at 03:40 a.m. By the way, the heavyset woman had been hanging around the hospital for three weeks so many assumed that she belonged there. There's so many shift changes, they just sort of figured she was a new nurse. Joy and Carl.

[12:32] Jessica: If the expression on my face could be witnessed by. All right, now, what is wrong with people?

[12:41] Meg: Well, we'll get there. Joy and Carl were distraught. They blamed each other, and they broke up about a year after Carlina disappeared. Next story. In 2005, 18 year old Nejdra "Netty" Nance was pregnant. She asked her mother, Annugetta "Ann" Pettway, for her birth certificate, so she could qualify for free prenatal care. But when she handed over her Connecticut birth certificate to officials, they accused her of faking her identity. Angry and confused, Netty confronted Anne, who then admitted that she was not her biological mother. Ann told Netty that her birth mother was a drug addict and had abandoned her. Now, this wasn't surprising to Netty, as she looked nothing like her mother, Anne. Now, six years after that, in 2011, Netty decided to dig deeper. She went on the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and found pictures of the kidnapped Carlina White.

[13:48] Jessica: I just got chills.

[13:50] Meg: Who happened to look just like her daughter, Samani when Samani was a baby, Netty called the Center's hotline, and DNA profiling confirmed that she was the missing Carlina White.

[14:04] Jessica: And this is when I burst into the rage that has been simmering during the telling of this tale, was Ann, the heavyset woman? So the heavyset woman didn't then pass her off to someone that was, she took her and she kept her.

[14:20] Meg: Yeah, exactly. She took her and she kept her. Less than a week after his disappearance, Christopher Morgan was discovered. Remember Christopher Morgan?

[14:30] Jessica: Of course I do.

[14:31] Meg: At 27 year old Toni Reed's Harlem apartment, following an anonymous tip. Toni, who had three children, had given birth to a stillborn baby ten days before she abducted Christopher. She told her husband that their newborn was actually sick in the hospital. She was visiting a friend at Columbia Presbyterian when she heard Christopher crying. Quote, "she said she just picked it up and took it home" Detective Montuori said. Monique, his mother, was elated when she held Christopher again. Remember 15 year old Monique?

[15:07] Jessica: Yeah.

[15:08] Meg: She ran over to him and she picked him up and kissed him. She hovered over him for about 20 minutes. Now, what the hell's going on here, right?

[15:17] Jessica: Is there a third baby?

[15:18] Meg: We'll get there.

[15:19] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[15:21] Meg: But why are women stealing babies?

[15:28] Jessica: I have read articles about this, okay? I have read some psychological profiles about baby snatchers, and it's so pathetic that while I have zero sympathy, it's impossible to know what. Not all, but what some of these motives are and not just be like, you know what? Don't go to jail. Just go straight to the bin. Just get locked up and get some nice psychiatric care for yourself.

[15:59] Meg: Well, there's also some cultural stuff going on, too, which is interesting. But according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, most women who steal babies have a fragile sense of self esteem, a disturbed family background, and a dependency on others. They frequently are trying to save a relationship with a boyfriend or a husband and believe a baby will encourage him to stay with them. Often they pretend to be pregnant, or they may have recently lost a baby.

[16:27] Jessica: It's called the ultimate short term fix.

[16:31] Meg: Or they may have recently lost a baby due to a miscarriage, or they may not be able to bear children. Nowadays, 80% of hospitals in the US use both electronic tagging for babies and an ID banding system for parents. I'll tell you, having a baby in a hospital these days, I don't know how you could steal a baby. They are constantly tagging and electronically checking.

[17:00] Jessica: Can you insist that your baby stay in your room?

[17:03] Meg: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. But, I mean, sometimes they just have to take them out. Basically, none of that existed. So, yeah, you could just sort of walk into a hospital and take a baby, which is kind of crazy.

[17:14] Jessica: Yes.

[17:15] Meg: The electronic tagging system sends an alert if a baby is moved out of the maternity ward while the ID bands verify parents identities.

[17:25] Jessica: And where are the tags on the children?

[17:27] Meg: I think on the ankle.

[17:29] Jessica: And they're not removable? No, they're like little, tiny, tiny.

[17:36] Meg: If you try and steal something from The Gap.

[17:38] Jessica: No, I was thinking about the ankle bracelet.

[17:43] Meg: That, I think is what it's called. Ankle monitoring system.

[17:47] Jessica: Yes.

[17:49] Meg: Hospital employees also wear special identification. That makes it easy for parents to identify them as someone authorized to hold or transport their baby. So changes were made after this, like, all these babies started disappearing from hospitals in the '80s.

[18:06] Jessica: I'm sure that's not even, like, the half of it. I'm sure that if these three happened, my God, it must have been like.

[18:16] Meg: Jessica, I could have told you dozens of stories. So crazy. So, back to our first story. Marlene Santana, the woman that gunpoint. She has never been found. Unsolved Mysteries featured her story. She's still missing. Quote, "she was born with a medical condition that makes her feet appear somewhat C shaped when viewed from the bottom." She's probably our age now, or close to it. And so if you're out there and you've got C shaped feet, she may celebrate her birthday around Halloween and may have been put up for an illegal adoption in late 1985 or 1986. I'm sorry, she's not. She's much younger. But anyway.

[19:00] Jessica: Don't tell people that. What are you insane?

[19:03] Meg: I hope Marlene's safe and that she's out there and that she was raised by people who love her because it's just heartbreaking.

[19:09] Jessica: Jesus, Meg, this violated a whole bunch of my rules.

[19:15] Meg: Come on. I gave you two happy endings.

[19:18] Jessica: Well, I mean, I would say resolutions, happy.

[19:23] Meg: Yeah.

[19:25] Jessica: That is chilling. But it is really good to know that hospitals are better at that.

[19:34] Meg: Progress has been made.

[19:35] Jessica: I guess what I'm saying is it's good to know that while that is a horrible, horrible story, it's not something that could keep someone up at night now because it's not going to happen.

[19:46] Meg: It's not going to happen now.

[19:48] Jessica: So that's something.

[19:51] Meg: Okay, there. My gift to you.

[19:55] Jessica: Yes. For all of my childbearing. That's ahead of me.

[19:58] Meg: No, you're sleepless night's ahead of you

[20:01] Jessica: I have so many other things to keep me awake at night other than snatched babies.

[20:06] Meg: But you can take that off.

[20:07] Jessica: You know what? Yes, I will check that off the long list of anxieties that I don't actually have. People are so gross and creepy. Gunpoint. I'm going to blow the baby's head off and then jumping in a white van. It's always a van. Anytime you see a van, start running. Nothing good ever happened in a van.

[20:33] Jessica: I'm trying to think of what good could happen in a van.

[20:35] Meg: I just thought of that wonderful scene in Little Miss Sunshine. Oh, yes, Alan Arkin. That was a fun van story.

[20:44] Jessica: Quickly because we both just cooed his name. Veteran actor who never really stopped acting, Alan Arkin died at the age of 89. Good long run. He was most recently, I think, in The Kominsky Method. And he's so great in it. If you haven't seen that show, do, he's beyond wonderful. I think Alex put something about this on Facebook, but unsurprisingly, I think he and I share a favorite Alan Arkin movie, The In-Laws. It's really the complete madness of Alan Arkin and Peter Falk running amok together. There was a remake of it with Michael Douglas and I don't even know who, which is like, don't even bother. Don't even look at it. Feuck. No. That whole movie, the genius of it was that it was Alan Arkin and Peter Falk. So do find it on your local streaming, your local, your favorite streaming service. Okay, Meg, so remember how we talked about the women of food of New York City?

[22:09] Meg: Yes.

[22:10] Jessica: The critics. And we talked about Gael Greene, who was also a steamy romance writer. And for Christmas, you gave me one of her unzipped sorts of books. It was like, no candy for you or some insane title like that. Blue Skies, NO Candy

[22:27] Meg: It's someone unzipping their blue jeans.

[22:30] Jessica: Which was a total ripoff of the Erica Jong Fear of Flying Yes, total rip off of the cover which, by the way, is one of my other favorite topics in the world right now, which is the way in which the covers of books now follow trends so rigorously that, in my opinion, it is now doing the opposite of what it intended to do. So it's supposed to indicate, like, this book is, if you liked Giorgio, you'll love Schmorgio. Remember those perfumes?

[23:02] Meg: Sure.

[23:04] Jessica: What were they called? Like, Designer Imposters or something like that.

[23:07] Meg: If you like CK2 then you'll love schmoo schmoo.

[23:11] Jessica: Right. The complete lack of imagination in. Or not. Maybe it's not lack of imagination. Maybe it's just really ham fisted marketing.

[23:21] Meg: I think it's ham fisted marketing, and it doesn't work on me.

[23:25] Jessica: It doesn't work on me.

[23:26] Meg: I am definitely attracted to a good book cover.

[23:29] Jessica: Well, you and I also don't like, we don't read for genre. We don't read for trends. We read for the book and the author.

[23:37] Meg: But I know exactly what you're talking about. There was that period of time, and I think it probably still exists, where if a woman wrote it about another woman, then there will always be, like, a sort of cartoon like silhouette of a woman with a big hat and a purse. You know what I mean?

[23:53] Jessica: Well, those were the chick lit, the horrible and there's, they're horrible. They're the pink cover books.

[23:59] Meg: Right. But some of them are good, but you would never know.

[24:02] Jessica: Nope. And now I saw. So when I was in Falmouth, we stopped into a bookstore that was a very cute bookstore, and a very popular book that I think has been on the bestseller list now for maybe for months, is Lessons in Chemistry and being made into movie, whatever. But it's a bright orange cover, and it has a cartoon, very stylized image of a woman with her hair up in a bun looking over her glasses. And there are nine zillion covers like that. And there's also, like.

[24:36] Meg: So it's a good book with a generic cover.

[24:39] Jessica: Yeah. Anyway, so this is a complete digression. But the Gael Greene book came out, I guess, roughly the same time as.

[24:48] Meg: Fear of Flying, I think, is the '70s, but regardless.

[24:49] Jessica: It was the '70, but they were referencing that very strongly. Anyway, so Gael Greene, Mimi Sheraton was the critic who first started wearing disguises to go to restaurants so she would not be treated in any particular way. But we had spoken about her, and I didn't realize that she had died in April, and she died at the age of 97. And there's this really great obit, which I'll just read a little bit from, a bit of the obit. Obit. And then it goes in. I'm going in a different direction.

[25:28] Meg: Okay.

[25:29] Jessica: But what I loved is how thorough she was. She was unbelievably thorough. Researching food, which is going to play into what I'm going to share in mere moments. But in 2015, she actually wrote 1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lovers List.

[25:44] Meg: Oh, wow. So I think we need to start.

[25:46] Jessica: Working our way through that, considering we live in the metropolis that never sleeps and always eats. When she did an article on deli sandwiches, she collected 104 corned beef sandwiches and pastrami samples to evaluate the meat and sandwich building techniques. Go, Mimi. Do you remember when Bloomingdale's food hall was, like, becoming, like, a really big thing? It was, like, on the way to being, like, the Harrods food hall. It was huge. Like, you could get french jam there, which you couldn't get anyplace else. Weird, right? Remember that? She wrote a review for New York Magazine in 1972 after tasting, wait for it, wll 1196 items being sold at Bloomingdale's.

[26:32] Meg: Whoa.

[26:33] Jessica: In the food department, the task took eleven months. My gosh, she said, I brewed 97 pots of tea and turned over one bathtub just to the jars of jellies and jams.

[26:46] Meg: So interesting food courts. I mean, now there's so many. There's, like, the Chelsea Market and then that wonderful place in Grand Central. I mean, they're ubiquitous now, but they weren't.

[26:57] Jessica: But they're selling prepared foods, and Bloomingdale's was selling imported food that you simply could not get something as ridiculously basic as Dijon mustard in the '70s, that was, like a thing. Do you remember? And this was in the play, which was subsequently the movie, but the play, Six Degrees of Separation, that they know that he's a quality person because he brings a pot of jam as to his host. Remember, pot of jam? And I remember, and I wish I could remember what brand it is, but I remember there was this moment in the late '80s when I was like, oh, I'm going someplace, I need to bring a pot of jam and I realized that all of the brands that had been the pot of jam from Bloomingdale's were now supermarket brands. And I was like, oh, well, that ship sailed. Never mind. I guess that's not happening. And then that was replaced by things like Stonewall Kitchen, which, by the way, again, reference to being in Falmouth. They have a really cute imported foods, whatever store called, I think it's LeRoux Kitchen. And they had a very wide array of Stonewall Kitchen condiments and jams and jellies and boxed things. And I realized I love nothing as much as I love a good condiment. My imagination is captured entirely because I love sandwiches more than anything, which is not a good thing when you're trying to avoid carbs. But yeah, I got a little kooky looking like what Chutney can I put on this? This is so exciting. But that was how Mimi Sheraton it was. So back to Mimi. One of her reviews. And this is not about jam. This is about one of our other favorite things, booze. One of her reviews, based on blind tastings by several New York Times staff members, favored private label liquors over popular brand names of scotch, bourbon, rye, vodka and gin. The review ran weeks before Christmas, the busy liquor selling season. Mimi Sheraton said in her memoir, I heard that $2 million worth of advertising had been canceled. That's how much clout she had.

[29:10] Meg: Wow.

[29:11] Jessica: So imagine a world. Imagine a world where food and products, comestibles can be made or broken by one woman in a veil. Writing for The Times like things have changed radically. Exactly. She wrote several books, her early books, and this is I love this. One of her early books was The Seducer's Cookbook, Is Salami and Eggs Better Than Sex? Memoirs of a Happy Eater. Answer - possibly, depends on who you're having sex with. The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup: Recipes and Lore to Comfort Body and Soul. And The New York Times Jewish Cookbook. She was a boss lady big time. She died at the age of 97. Her obituary appeared just this year, April 6. So why am I talking about Mimi Sheraton? I was thinking about what could we talk about today in pop culture that has to do with time of year? And our time of year is, of course, July 4 weekend. So I went running to The New York Times, home of Mimi Sheraton, R-I-P, to see what was going on. And there she was, Mimi, on July 2, 1983. So on this date 40 years ago, 40 years ago, Mimi wrote a really interesting article about american cooking.

[30:42] Meg: Cool.

[30:42] Jessica: And what I loved about this article and why I want to share it is that not only does it say so much about the way that cooking has changed and the way that we view food has changed, and there are going to be lots of things that come up from this that I know are going to resonate with you, but I talked about the Bloomingdale's food hall because it's such a perfect segue to this. She says the 4 July is perhaps the best time to try to decide what is and what is not american food. The subject has been much discussed in the last year and a half at conferences around the country on what is being called new american cuisine. So here's a callback to Union Square Cafe and other places that we go to and that we've discussed. There's Union Square, there's Gramercy Tavern, all of these places. And even just like any american food that's not a casserole or a turkey dinner, we sort of now think of as new american because it's so blended with other cultures. It is significant that the word cuisine is used instead of cooking. For the dishes being billed that way are plain and simply renditions of french nouvelle cuisine creations. And that's a topic we've talked about, but made with american products. A Terrine de legumes made with California produce or a Gateau de Foie Blond of chicken livers from the Delmarva peninsula are about as american as pizza made with domestic mozzarella or pate based on Long Island duck. Here's what's so funny to me. I know she's trying to make a point, but it's become so ingrained in our culture, I don't know what the point is. I can't find it. Mimi. So she says, there's nothing new about that approach to cooking in this country of course, except for the food of the Indian tribes, aka indigenous people. All our dishes were derived from those of other countries whose people immigrated here. What was new were the combinations of those diverse influences made with local american products, which is what we were talking about earlier. The fine regional cooking of New England, the Southeast coast, and the Gulf coast illustrate such developments most graphically. But because the traditional dishes of those in other american regions are not new and fashionable, they are in danger of being lost, which, again, we've talked about this on the podcast. Very briefly, though, they have been this country.

[33:10] Meg: Give me an example.

[33:11] Jessica: Well, as you know, because I'm a total weirdo, like I really, I look at a lot of old cookbooks, and something as basic in New England as, again, the unfortunately named Indian pudding. It was just a cornmeal pudding that was sweet and like a normal desserty kind of thing. It's like sweet polenta with maple syrup and whatever. Gone.

[33:36] Meg: Okay, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

[33:39] Jessica: No, there's some really great foods there.

[33:41] Meg: Okay, name something that's delicious that we've lost. Maybe we should try and bring it back.

[33:47] Jessica: You know what? Let me do a little bit of research, because I don't want to just wing it, because you know what? That corn pudding is delicious.

[33:53] Meg: Okay?

[33:54] Jessica: But you have now just besmirched its, its nature.

[33:56] Meg: I'm sorry.

[33:58] Jessica: I apologize. Yeah, you know what? Apologize to New England. Don't apologize to me. Back to Mimi. I mean, she's on a rant in this, which I really love. In the best of all possible worlds, the new would influence the old without wiping it out altogether. Lightening heavier, fattier, traditional dishes is in order, but that does not mean the basic dish should no longer be recognizable, which is actually what wound up happening with The Joy of Cooking. Do you remember how I told you how I worked at Simon & Schuster and the woman who was the editor for the lightened up version of The Joy of Cooking, which is the edition that everyone uses now and she was the lunatic who choked her assistant, my friend.

[34:40] Meg: I don't think you told me this story.

[34:42] Jessica: I never told you this story. Okay, well, there's a very famous cookbook editor, so this story is from 1991. This very, very famous cookbook editor had been giving the gargantuan task of revising The Joy of Cooking. So let's just acknowledge, because we're probably the age she was then. She was, like, losing her marbles doing this. This is a pre computer era, so she's doing this. We've talked a bit about how office behavior has changed radically since the '80s and our own experiences working. Well, this is another one where my friend Mara was working for this very well known and very highly regarded cookbook editor who became very agitated when Mara innocently asked some dumb, dumb 21 year old question and choked her in the office.

[35:35] Meg: Oh, my God.

[35:36] Jessica: And Mara was simply moved to a different department because God forbid that the revision of The Joy of Cooking get put on hold. That was that. So talk about lightening up food. Unfortunately, because you see the pun or the bad joke coming, the editor did not lighten up, but the food did.

[36:01] Meg: So if I'm following this, what Mimi is saying, she's suggesting that new American cuisine is taking the recipes from the old country, but using american ingredients.

[36:16] Jessica: What she's saying is that american cuisine is being, like true American cuisine is being wiped out. That's really what her thesis.

[36:22] Meg: The corn pudding.

[36:25] Jessica: Because we've become so obsessed with French nouvelle cuisine and we are applying it to our own food so much that it's no longer like a way to make what we're cooking interesting or to lighten it or whatever. It's just replacing it. Now, I'm not necessarily agreeing with Mimi because Mimi's on a rant where her grammar also loses it.

[36:50] Meg: All right, maybe that's why I can't quite follow.

[36:51] Jessica: Exactly. She says lightening the heavier, fattier, traditional dishes is in order, but that does not mean the basic dish should no longer be recognizable. Usually the poorer versions of old dishes were not, quote, "traditional" anyway, but were the work, in other words, the reason we don't like traditional dishes is because we're getting crappy versions. Okay, they were not traditional anyway, but were the work of inept or indifferent cooks. No good French chef ever loaded sauces with flour or used canned vegetables, which is what she's saying Americans do. But advocates of the nouvelle cuisine leave the impression that such practices were the rule. So in other words, American cooking is dumping flour and using canned vegetables. She's saying that there are two different camps in the world of food, the nouvelle cuisine who turned their noses up at American cooking and traditional American cooking, which has been so maligned and so ignored or not obviously, in 1983, which is when this review is from July 2, 1983, it had not yet been rediscovered. So it's just like everything is a Swanson's dinner, right? And I guess that like Salisbury Steak. There you go. You were looking for an example. Salisbury Steak became lunchline food or a Swanson's dinner, when in fact, Salisbury Steak is just supposed to be like hacked up steak that's highly seasoned and what have you.

[38:27] Meg: Well, yeah, and I think you've talked about this a bit, but in the '70s and '80s in America, everything was canned or frozen.

[38:36] Jessica: Well, convenience cooking. And I think that it really bumps up against women's lib and women also suddenly needing to work, with divorce rates being what they were, suddenly rising. Everything, like the first thing to go is, where's my time to do household crap? And a lot of kids in our age group, latchkey kids, would come home and there would be stuff in the fridge to make a sandwich. What 14 year old is going to be like, I'm just going to whip up a Salisbury Steak with the finest ingredients that only Mimi Sheraton would think are great. They're taking something out of the freezer. My brother lived on frozen pizzas because John was just a picky eater to begin with. But, I mean, that was what it was. You're hungry, you take something out of the freezer.

[39:23] Meg: But also farmers markets in New York City. It's a rather recent development.

[39:27] Jessica: Very recent, yes. The idea of farmers markets and of local farmers actually being able to grow interesting produce in smaller amounts. I don't know what the economics are, and forgive me if I've now stepped in it, but whatever the industry of farming was would not sustain that.

[39:46] Meg: And the farm to table restaurants.

[39:50] Jessica: Exactly.

[39:51] Meg: Again, Danny Meyer, thank you, Danny Meyer.

[39:54] Jessica: Who, there's no, I bet you there's no coincidence that the Union Square Green Market and the Union Square Cafe are right there together.

[40:02] Meg: Absolutely not. No, I mean, I think that's all thanks to Danny.

[40:06] Jessica: Now, Mimi Sheraton goes even more bananas, and I do agree with her on this, about conferences. Conferences really are advertising mechanisms for whatever the industry is, it's a place for everyone to just come and sell their wares to each other. So she's talking about how cooking conferences at this time in 1983 were being lauded as, like, the gateway to new cooking.

[40:33] Meg: Okay.

[40:34] Jessica: And she is saying, "it is unlikely that such new american food conferences are anything more than self promotions for the speakers, usually restaurant consultants and owners, food publicists, wine merchants, food writers, and chefs who would do better to stay in their kitchens." Oh, girl. I wonder what she made of the world of celebrity chefs. She must have been throwing up forever.

[40:56] Meg: You think?

[40:56] Jessica: Yes, I do. But I could be wrong. Maybe that's just another thing to research in the world of Mimi, such meetings are also pure ballyhoo, planned to stir up interest in food so that a market will be created. People who were never interested in the subject before suddenly feel they have to know what is being discussed. So is this elitist, Mimi, or is this just saying like relax and eat your food? I don't know.

[41:21] Meg: It's like she's saying, my opinion is the only opinion that's worth listening to. It sounds a little bit like, yeah, it does.

[41:28] Jessica: Doesn't it? It does. And in summation, Senator, she says, and I love this, this is her closing paragraph, titled A Disturbing Point, "If such discussions must take place, for whatever reason, the participants would do better to work to preserve traditional regional expressions instead of congratulating themselves on the establishment of the new wave." This is really like pointing at Danny Meyer, I think.

[41:51] Meg: I guess so.

[41:52] Jessica: And his ilk. "One of the more disturbing points reported after several such sessions is the insistence by some food professionals that we keep American food pure by using only domestic ingredients." Now it's like a throwaway. She's tucking in some racism and xenophobia at the end with, "it would be more in keeping with the American melting pot spirit to use the best ingredients, whatever their source. It is as pretentious to promote inferior domestic products just because they're American as it is to value ingredients solely because they are imported." So what I loved about this and why I wanted to share it, I was so into it, is that through this lens, Mimi Sheraton has given us a snapshot, a perfect snapshot of July 2, 1983. We have xenophobia in response to what you were saying about the convenience food industry. People reacting to food being grown and brought in fresh from, let's face it, Mexico for the most part, probably like, let's have a moment, shall we? She's talking about the corporatization of the food industry, which is also kind of fascinating, and the fetishization in a wrong headed way that it's not just what is the best food and you want to celebrate what is American, you're celebrating American, what is American by making it into something that fits your elitist view. It reminds me of going to dinner at wd~50, Wylie Dufresne's restaurant.

[43:31] Meg: Love that place.

[43:32] Jessica: Well, I was there with my second husband and some friends, and the men were like, why is there foam right on my food that looks really way too biological.

[43:48] Meg: And I love a good foam.

[43:51] Jessica: I don't. I did. I was fascinated by it as theater, but now at this stage in my life, that's like fun and cute. You can give me an amuse-bouche like that, but please just serve me the steak with something straightforward or your whatever En papillote. I don't mean I'm just going to sit around, eat steak and green beans, but just cook like really yummy food.

[44:17] Meg: Sure. Sure.

[44:18] Jessica: Don't make me suffer through your need to actually be a theatrical producer.

[44:24] Meg: Well, maybe because I'm a little tired, but I kind of feel like she's saying I'm the only one who's allowed to have fun.

[44:31] Jessica: I think that she's cranky as hell. Yeah, she's taking the joy out of discovering new food. What I read her saying is, and this is why I think it's great for 4th of July. Even though what I also love about this is that it says so much about where we were culturally that she didn't even really need to dwell much on 4th of July. That was like a given. She's like, it's 4th of July. I'm now going to have a total crank fest. And that the times was like, okay, it doesn't make perfect sense. This is really just a great slice of Mimi Sheraton being Mimi Sheraton. And I think she's not pretentious because she was valuing the pastrami sandwich as much as she was.

[45:12] Meg: Right. So maybe she lashing out at food snobs.

[45:16] Jessica: I think she is lashing out.

[45:17] Meg: Even though she sort of sounds like a food snob.

[45:19] Jessica: Totally. I think that the point is there is a lot in American cuisine to celebrate, but we're not celebrating it because we've already written it off as being crap.

[45:31] Meg: All right.

[45:31] Jessica: And we've written it off as being crap because of and I'm reading between the lines, but the proliferation of convenience food, just taking this food for granted.

[45:43] Meg: I just think she could have delivered that message in a much more joyous way. It just sounded so rant, rant, rant.

[45:50] Jessica: Well, and again, I'm saying to both of us. So, okay, so it's 1983. What's going on? It was not a great time, generally. We've talked about so many things politically. In this same newspaper. There's a pretty in depth discussion about Reagan's administration doing some pretty, engaging in some pretty rum behavior. And, like, there's apartheid issues in the news. There's all kinds of yuck. One of the only other feel goodish stories was about a bunch of children and a smattering of teenagers who were doing a computer program course at Teachers College. Do you even remember that we had a.

[46:41] Meg: Absolutley. A Computer room, that was really kind of a closet.

[46:44] Jessica: Yeah. I did not. And there was this one lanky English guy who was like, well, thank you for showing up today.

[46:53] Meg: I loved it. And we learned Basic.

[46:56] Jessica: We learned Basic. And we had to make a rocket ship launch or something. Never happened for me.

[47:04] Meg: Oh, I figured it out. That's the most I know about computer programming. No coding.

[47:11] Jessica: It began and ended in 1983.

[47:13] Meg: If this, then that.

[47:15] Jessica: Yes.

[47:15] Meg: Was the concept.

[47:17] Jessica: Yes. Entire.

[47:18] Meg: Pretty cool.

[47:18] Jessica: Basic.

[47:19] Meg: Basic.

[47:20] Jessica: Get it? In this article, these kids were giving their little presentations. And of course, The New York Times being The New York Times. One of the kids, a 14 year old who looks like he's nine, is the child of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Oh, my God. The photograph is of Schlesinger watching his kid and beaming. But I was like, that's so The New York Times. So they still had to be like, look, intellectualism right here. What they were celebrating was that the kids were like, this is really fun, but I'd still rather read a book. Oh Yeah. You know, and that perspective, I think, is kind of mirrored in Mimi Sheraton's cry for traditionalism and not wanting progress to descend on her quite so rapidly. Little did she know what was in store, but that's very 1983. July 2, 1983, was like a moment of, holy shit, it's all really happening.

[48:33] Meg: I'm going to make a cherry pie for 4th of July. I just decided. It's Martha Washington's recipe.

[48:41] Jessica: Oh, really?

[48:41] Meg: Yeah.

[48:42] Jessica: There is a.

[48:43] Meg: It is not light.

[48:45] Jessica: There's a recipe for cherry pie in The New York Times right now from Melissa Clark and is advertised as looking as good as a pie cooling in a cartoon on a windowsill. So that is a great idea. I love the cherry pie idea. Yum.

[49:06] Meg: What's our tie in? We've got stolen babies, but returned babies. Two out of three.

[49:12] Jessica: Well, what I think is you're talking about how electric tagging and all of that, that progress has saved babies. And I think that the Mimi Sheraton article is about do we embrace progress in food and cuisine? Which is a word she doesn't like, food and cooking or. That new fangled word cuisine. Or what should progress in the way Americans eat even be, progress?

[49:43] Meg: Cool. I'll take it. All right. Happy 4th of July.

[49:46] Jessica: Happy 4th of July..