Frank Beacham's Journal

Pierre Salinger was born 96 years ago

Pierre Salinger: A Personal Remembrance

Pierre Salinger was born 96 years ago today. He was White House Press Secretary to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Also, Salinger served as a U.S. Senator in 1964 and was campaign manager for the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign.

He later became known for his work as an ABC News correspondent, and in particular for his coverage of the American hostage crisis in Iran and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

It was at ABC News that I got to know and work with Salinger. In 1978, he was hired by the network as its Paris bureau chief. He became the network's chief European correspondent based in London in 1983. Under Salinger, I worked in Paris for about six weeks — doing a variety of stories.

Because Salinger was as much a French cultural ambassador as newsman, he was a lot of fun to be with. He was far more casual about news stories than his choice of food and drink, which he took very seriously. We ate at some amazing restaurants, where Salinger was always treated more like an important food critic than a VIP guest.

For a while in Paris, ABC booked me into the exclusive Hotel Saint Georges. After a period of working several days in a row with no time off, Salinger ordered a limo and put it at my disposal for an entire day to go anywhere I wanted. I was amazed by his generosity.

Such luxury is long gone from television news today, but in the era of Pierre Salinger it was still very much alive. He lived life to the fullest and made sure those around him enjoyed the fruits as well. Later, after leaving ABC, Salinger hosted a program in the early 1990s on the A&E cable network called Dining in France. No one was better qualified!

Salinger later made a permanent move to France, making good on his promise that, "If (George W.) Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France."

Salinger died in October, 2004 of heart failure near his home, La Bastide Rose, in Le Thor, France at the age of 79.

The Story of the Fortune Cookie

Ever wondered about the origins of the fortune cookie? They are almost certainly not Chinese.

The fortune cookie may trace to Japan, reported the New York Times, but they were made popular in America by Chinese or Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century. Several U.S. companies claim to have made the first fortune cookies.

The largest in the world is Wonton Food, Inc., based in New York City. The factory opened in Chinatown in 1973, but has since moved to Brooklyn. They make over 4.5 million fortune cookies each day. In 1992, the company introduced fortune cookies to China.

Until World War II, fortune cookies were known as "fortune tea cakes" — likely reflecting their origins in Japanese tea cakes.

Fortune cookies moved from being a confection dominated by Japanese-Americans to one dominated by Chinese-Americans sometime around World War II. One theory for why this occurred is because of the Japanese American internment during World War II, which forcibly put over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps, including those who had produced fortune cookies. This gave an opportunity for Chinese manufacturers.

Fortune cookies before the early 20th century, however, were all made by hand. The fortune cookie industry changed dramatically after the fortune cookie machine was invented by Shuck Yee from Oakland, California.

The machine allowed for mass production of fortune cookies which subsequently allowed the cookies to drop in price to become the novelty and courtesy dessert many Americans are familiar with after their meals at most Chinese restaurants today.

In 1867, Charles Feltman, a German immigrant, opened the first hot dog stand in Coney Island

The story of the original Coney Island Hot Dog

In 1867, Charles Feltman, a German immigrant, opened the first hot dog stand in Coney Island.

He called his signature frankfurter the Coney Island red hot, and it was served with mustard, sauerkraut and diced raw onions.

Soon, Feltman’s red hots were all the rage. Al Capone is said to have devoured one every night as a teenager before his shift at a local nightclub.

Feltman’s hot dogs were originally made near the Brooklyn Navy Yard and sold from a pie cart. In 1871, an enormous Feltman’s restaurant opened in Coney Island. It took up two city blocks and could serve 10,000 diners at once.

It wasn’t long before other companies entered the competition. A young man named Nathan Handwerker worked for Feltman in 1915. The next year, he opened his own shop, Nathan’s Famous, down the street, where he sold his hot dogs for a nickel less.

Nathan’s ultimately became the dominant brand on the boardwalk. Feltman’s went out of business in 1954, eight years after Charles Feltman’s sons, who were in their 70s, retired and sold the business to a hotel owner.

But five years ago, Feltman’s of Coney Island returned, with two brothers once again at its helm.

Michael and Joe Quinn are relying on their complementary talents and skills to run the business — Michael is a Coney Island history buff, and Joe, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has the business approach of a military strategist.

For example, Joe focused on locking down the Feltman’s supply chain in January, when he first heard about the Covid-19 outbreak. The brothers have also had good timing: People are pandemic-buying hot dogs like crazy.

Since March, the company has seen a 100 percent increase in sales from supermarkets and a 200 percent increase in online orders.

“Usually sales peak starting Fourth of July weekend,” Joe said. “So far it’s like March and April have turned into July.”

Thanks New York Times!

The story of barbecue...

Once upon a time, the Taino Indians of Jamaica got hungry, and they used the sweet wood of the allspice tree to cook meat over a slow fire. The wood they used was called barbacoa. That’s where the word barbecue comes from.

When Spaniards arrived in Jamaica in the 1490s, they enslaved the Indians and brought them to near extinction in about 50 years. African slaves were brought in to replace them.

In the 1650s, escaped slaves joined the remaining Taino in the forests and tried to fight the British and Spanish for control. The slaves learned how to preserve meat with spices because they didn’t know when their next meal might be. They shared with the Taino their method of smoking food in pits dug into the earth.

Barbecue has survived for more than 350 years from these humble origins.

Thanks New York Times!

John Harvey Kellogg, the American doctor who discovered dry cereal, was born on this day in 1852 — 169 years ago

John Harvey Kellogg, the American doctor who discovered dry cereal, was born on this day in 1852 — 169 years ago.

With his brother, Will Keith Kellogg, Dr. Kellogg ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which combined aspects of a hotel, a hospital and a spa. Wealthy patients took in a regimen of exercise, fresh air and a strict diet — with wheat as a centerpiece.

One day in 1894, the Kelloggs overcooked the wheat, but went ahead and put it through the rollers they used to make dough. Voilà! Grain flakes were born. They prepared the accidental toasted flakes for patients, and the cereal was a hit. Granose Flakes went on sale in 1896.

It was rebranded as Corn Flakes a decade later and gave birth to the cereal giant, Kellogg.

It also led to another cereal powerhouse. A sanitarium patient, C. W. Post, loved the flakes so much that he began a rival company, Post, in Battle Creek, Mich., in 1895.

Battle Creek, west of Detroit, thus became the cereal capitol of the United States.

Thanks New York Times!

Finding Soul Food, and Comfort, at Sylvia’s

Finding Soul Food, and Comfort, at Sylvia’s

Alexander Smalls is now an acclaimed restaurateur in his own right, but when he came to New York to sing opera in 1977, he told us, he found sustenance and comfort at Sylvia’s, the Harlem restaurant and fixture founded by Sylvia Woods in 1962.

For me, it was sort of like going to a big Southern enclave where the people were very much like Southern people I knew in the South.

Sylvia was the queen of all that in Harlem because she came from South Carolina and she created this environment for other Southern people to congregate and carry on.

It was like that Sunday dinner after the church service, but it was in Sylvia’s.

We would go up there, and it was a little edgy and sketchy and you kind of clutched yourself a little tighter because clearly the economic scenario there was much different from the Upper West Side or Lincoln Center.

But it was also exciting. We were going to have fried chicken and candied yams and mingle and run into folks who made you feel like you were back home, south of the Mason-Dixon line. That’s what Sylvia’s was like. It was a pilgrimage.

And Sylvia was there. And she greeted you. And seated you and sometimes gave you a hug. When I told her I was from South Carolina, I remember her taking me back in the kitchen, showing me how she made her ribs.

It makes me think of Nina Simone. I was there eating one night, and Nina Simone came in and she and Sylvia had a little tussle, a little argument, because Nina never wanted to pay her bill.

You know Nina was one of those girls, like, “You know who I am?” And Sylvia was like, “Yes, and somebody’s going to pay this bill, Nina, I’m tired of you.”

I’ve been there many times with Cicely Tyson; with Ruby Dee and Ossie. This is the chorus of voices and images and impressions that wraps around me when I go there.

These are people I knew personally, but I was introduced to them as a 20-something-year-old from South Carolina who had come to New York to produce my operatic career, and they were as fascinated with me as I was with them. Baldwin! At Sylvia’s! It was iconic.

And I see that photo and I think of Gordon Parks and Life magazine.

And that’s what comes at me. You hear the roar of history, you know, a flash of civil rights and marches, Sylvia standing out front during a press conference and being revered and being seen as the mother of whatever the movement was, an anchor that anchors this great community. Adam Clayton Powell. That picture conjures up all of that for me.

New York Times

Photo by Jim Wilson

Article by Damien Cave

The story of how macaroni and cheese came to the United States

Do you know who brought the idea for macaroni and cheese to the United States?

The answer is Thomas Jefferson, an American founding father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States.

Despite his credentials, it could be argued that Jefferson’s greatest achievement was popularizing macaroni and cheese.

Though a dish of English origin, Jefferson first encounter macaroni and cheese in Paris and northern Italy in the late 1700s. He hand drew a sketch of the pasta and wrote detailed notes on the extrusion process.

In 1793, he commissioned the American ambassador to Paris, William Short, to purchase a machine for making it. Evidently, the machine was not suitable, as Jefferson later imported both macaroni and Parmesan cheese for his use at Monticello.

In 1802, Jefferson served "a pie called macaroni" at a state dinner. The menu of the dinner was reported by Rev. Manasseh Cutler, who apparently was not fond of the cheesy macaroni dish.

Nevertheless, since that time, baked macaroni and cheese has remained popular in the United States. Jefferson liked hot, melted cheese blended in creamy harmony with pasta, one of the great comfort foods.

A recipe called "macaroni and cheese" appeared in the 1824 cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, written by Mary Randolph. Randolph's recipe had three ingredients: macaroni, cheese and butter, layered together and baked in a hot oven. The cookbook was the most influential cookbook of the 19th century.