Dim Sim, Szechwan and Hunan Cuisine
Historical researchers, expecially Archaeologists, will be fully aware that they are looking at the garbage of the past in order to try and interpret it.
The broken pots etc with various patterns tell us what the priorities of that society’s everyday life was. This also extends to the books, entertainment products, statues, tools, vehicles etc aswell. They also tell us about their wealth and development or decay.
Now this is not an exact science. Because certain items arent as materially durable as others. Clothing for instance, or fresh food. Sometimes purges take place. Bouts of frenzied burnings or looting etc. Sometimes a frenzied phase of iconoclasm takes place: where society radically shifts its beliefs (or those in command do) and a destroying-of-the-past takes place.
The other thing is that historical investigators are looking for what they WANT to find, and this in itself is a prejudice. And what they are trying to find may not be entirely logical or consistent. It might be just emotive. Famous Greco-Roman historians and researchers of the 18th-19th century (such as Edward Gibbon or Heinrich Schliemann) are now having some of their methods questioned as, in the frenzy to uncover the ancient past, they accidentally (or maybe deliberately) trampled on the later medieval past, or even a past more primitive to the one they were seeking. There might also be the issue of a present-day regime hostile to the earlier peoples sitting on top of its buried legacy (See Turkey for instance).
When Ive gone to my local opshops over the last 3 summers, I’ve tended to buy retro cookbooks from around the world. This is in spite of the fact that I, along with many Australians, have become increasingly more xenophobic and fatigued by multiculturalism.
My thinking is that when the aliens are finally turfed off, I… if i survive the purging… wouldn’t mind knowing how to make my own delicious dim-sums or Hunan chicken. Or Beef Rendang. Or Moroccan Chickpea Dip.
It also adds some colour and flavours-of-the-world to my local abode, seeing that I have not been able to travel overseas for many years now and wonder if I ever will again.
Finally, its an amelioration of the self and a cultural syncretisation.
Syncretisation,
Syncretisation,
That word again… is Syncretisation.
There, three times. Now you’ll remember it.
Because not everyone will leave. THe people who do leave may not be the ones you were expecting or hoping to depart. Those who you were targetting may be more stubborn or unmoveable than you might’ve expected….
or it might be YOU that gets chucked out, as you realise you were far more outnumbered and weaker than you realise and that you didn’t have the allies whom you were counting on. In that sense, your better play might just be to accept that large chunks of your physical reality have now changed for good, and you are now a living fossil of an earlier time. But that’s not all bad, you have the opportunity to be an educator and also a transmitter of the past into the future.
Cookbooks, as well as being the custodians of deliciois recipes, are also three other things:
-Cheerful
-colourful, well-presented.
-A window into another viewpoint, without being too hung-up on politics.
I’ve learend alot from my hoarde of cookbooks, and not just about cooking.
Infact honestly, my cooking is about the same as it always was and I’ve been forced to become more repetitive and bland as the economic situation has worsened for us.
Or maybe I’ve just come to the realisation that most ethnic cuisines were reall just about throwing whatever was around into a pot or onto a pan and mixing it up. Evrything else is ornamental arrangement.
Another thing I have to ask:
When did Dim Sum become Dim Sim????
A mystery to solve for another day.
And one more;
When I was in the US, all the Chinese take-away places had a dish called General Tso’s chicken, but I’ve never once seen it on the menu of an Australian Chinese restaurant. Why the fuck bro, is this?
And who was General Tso?
Questions, questions, questions…
Anyway, that is all for now. Happy 2026 anons. May it be as wonderful and as rightwing as possible wherever you are….
RightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwingRightwing….
Musical component:
For the 2026 breakfasts and brunches, and because this has been a very food-themed, and fairly racist post we salute the Breakfast Club - Right on Track
…as well as one of the great all-time breakfast-themed music videos: The Ramones - I wanna be sedated.
