HBM154: Ancient Roman Recipes

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Digital render by Jeff Emtman featuring a public domain illustration of the lovage plant by Joseph Miller (via the New York Public Library’s digital collection)

 

Sally Grainger was originally a chef, but in her 20’s, she was gifted a copy of an ancient Roman cookbook called Apicius. 

Apicius is a bit of a fluke.  It shouldn’t have survived the 2000-ish year journey into the modern era, but it did.  And in this episode of Here Be Monsters, Grainger explains how Apicius persisted due to being a favorite text for monks-in-training to practice their gilding skills.  And thus, this fascinating book of recipes (featuring cooking instructions for boiled ostrich soup, complex sauces, and cucumbers stewed with brains) is still feeding people today.

While cuisine today might seem distant from ostrich soup, Grainger thinks that Roman food often gets inaccurately portrayed as overly decadent or overly spiced.  Cooked correctly, the cuisine is quite balanced, she says.  And in her book, Cooking Apicius, she uses her knowledge of ancient Roman life to put the recipes in context for a contemporary kitchen and contemporary cooks. 

 
 

Sally Grainger cooking Chestnut Lenticulam. An ancient Roman recipe from the book Apicius.

 
 

Also, on this episode, Jeff also reads from a 1932 English translation of Apicius by Joseph Dommers Vehling, which is available in the public domain thanks to Project Gutenberg. 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

Have you seen the new HBM stickers? They’re beautiful.  Get yours here.  As of publish date: if you buy 4, one of them will be free.  The discount gets applied automatically when you add them to your cart.

 

The Straight and Narrow

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Interlocked gold rings floating in clouds. Image by Jeff Emtman. Digital render.

 

In 2012, a street preacher walking three small dogs tried to convince Jeff Emtman of his way of thinking about gender and the afterlife. 

In this Here Be Monsters brief, Jeff shares the short essay he originally wrote about the dinner party where they attempted to make an uneasy friendship. 

Jeff re-edited the essay in 2022 and gave pseudonyms to the main characters (“Cliff” and “Sophie”). 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

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HBM153: Klänge from Berlin

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Digital render by Jeff Emtman.

 

The composer Pauline Oliveros thought there was a difference between hearing and listening.  She defined hearing as a passive act, something done with the ears.  But she defined listening as something active saying that listening happens in the brain.  

 

Recording a dog in the Saxony region of Germany.

Sam Parker is a recordist who takes inspiration from Oliveros’ words and work.  About six years ago, on an episode of Here Be Monsters called Sam’s Japan Tapes, Sam shared dozens of recordings he made during his first (and only) trip to Japan.  He released those recordings under the name Observance as an album called Japan, 6/21 - 7/14.

On this episode, Here Be Monsters host takes two trips to Germany, and records the sounds of Christmas in Berlin, New Years in Saxony, and many hours of people and birds just going about their daily lives in the late winter and early spring. 

Before Jeff leaves on his first trip, he calls Sam Parker back, to ask for recording advice before the trip, and Sam offers three tips: 

  1. Take lots of time.

  2. Capture moments of everyday routine. 

  3. Trust your instincts

  • MM:SS - Description. (📸 = Photo)

    08:45 - Train to SeaTac airport.
    09:45 - Announcements on an Air France flight.
    11:00 - Turbulence and people rustling.
    12:30 - Berlin's Brandenburg Airport
    13:15 - A brown swan hissing and chirping
    13:30 - Boats rubbing against wooden piers and a small dog barking.
    14:15 - Cars driving on cobblestone streets.
    14:45 - Ice Skating at Berlin's Alexanderplatz 📸
    15:30 - Swing ride with metal chains at Alexanderplatz. 📸
    16:00 - Riding on the subway, then walking up several flights of stairs.
    18:45 - Radio playing advertisements, news, and Christmas music
    20:45 - A Christmas Eve service in a cathedral with a speaker reading a children's story.
    21:30 - Christmas carols playing as people mill around.
    22:00 - A wedding party in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
    23:15 - A Christmas exhibit with a lit up polar bear and fog machine.
    24:00 - Birds chirping in Berlin's Mauerpark as people walk by.
    25:00 - Crunching frosted leaves on a cold morning.
    25:30 - Walking through a forest in the Saxony Region of Southern Germany.📸
    26:15 - Whistling through hands in the forest.
    27:00 - Buying 5 kilograms of potatoes from a vending machine as a dog barks.📸
    27:30 - Mountaintop shop selling hot drinks and snacks in Czechia.
    27:45 - Chopping kindling. Distant fireworks echoing through the hills in Saxony.
    28:30 - Snaps and pops of a small fire
    29:00 - Distant fireworks to celebrate the start of 2022.
    29:30 - Close fireworks echoing.
    30:00 - A strong wind blowing on a mountaintop in Saxony.📸
    30:30 - A tree swing creaking.
    31:15 - 6AM on the outskirts of Berlin. Traffic starting, crow screaming.
    32:45 - Captive pigeons fluffing their feathers and cooing at Hasenheide Park
    34:00 - Slow motion recording of a sudden hailstorm.
    34:30 - A motorized billboard in a subway station
    35:00 - Accordion player performs in a subway station in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood.
    37:45 - Applause after a play.
    38:15 - A small bird singing several songs.
    39:30 - Church bells ringing.
    40:45 - Wind flapping the torn domes of the Teufelsberg listening station as people sing.📸
    43:00 - Walking through the forest near Teufelsberg as bikes pass.

 
Buy the album!

The recordings on this episode are available as an album called “Field Recordings: Germany, 2021-2022” and it’s available for purchase on Bandcamp, under Jeff Emtman’s pseudonym: The Black Spot.  Until June 30th, 2022, all profits from the sale of this album will be donated to The International Committee of the Red Cross. 

 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: Remixes from HBM049: Sam’s Japan Tapes.
Photos: Jeff Emtman
Thank Yous: Sam Parker, Johanna Gilje

 
 
 

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HBM152: Dirt Becomes You

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Image by Jeff Emtman. Digital render.

 

What do you want to happen to your body when you die?  It’s a touchy topic where tradition, religion and death denial all come into play.  But across much of the world, there are just two options: burial and cremation, which both have substantial ecological impacts. 

In 2019, Washington State passed SB 5001, which legalized several new options for deathcare. 

In this episode, host Jeff Emtman visits Return Home, a facility in Auburn, Washington that’s using one of those new options, called “Natural Organic Reduction” (NOR) which is commonly called “human composting”.  

Return Home has built the world’s largest NOR facility to date, with 74 available individual vessels.  Their process (which they’ve trademarked as “Terramation”) takes about two month to complete, and involves dressing a deceased person in a pressed cotton gown and placing them a bed of organic material, and left to naturally break down using active composting techniques that bring the contents of the vessel to well above 100° Fahrenheit for much of the composting period. 

 
 

The techniques used by Return Home were largely inspired by Katrina Spade, a death activist and the owner of Recompose, another NOR facility located near Seattle.  Spade was one of the people who strongly advocated for the passage of SB 5001.

There’s currently one other NOR facility in Washington State: Herland Forrest in Wahkiacus.  Currently two other states, Colorado and Oregon have legalized NOR.  

NOR’s future isn’t known.  It’s new and still relatively rare. Do enough people want to be composted to have it be a viable business model? Each of these companies have different approaches to their process.  

 
 

Return Home’s model relies on scale.  They wouldn’t disclose the exact cost of building their facility, or how many simultaneous descendants they’d need in their facility to be profitable.  As of publishing, they charge $4,950 for their process and they have 15 of their 74 slots occupied.  

And in some ways, the full ecological benefits for Return Home’s process also rely on scale.  In a follow up email, CEO Micah Truman stated:

We calculate our inputs as follows. Our electricity bill each month is about $1,700, and is sufficient to Terramate 74 bodies. This comes to $22 per body. In current gas terms ($5 a gallon at present) that is roughly 4 gallons of gas, which is about 1/8 the amount of gas used for cremation. The number is actually quite a bit better than that, as our electricity bill also powers our entire facility, not just the Terramation equipment.

When asked about the relative emptiness of the facility, Katey Houston (Return Home’s Services Manager) said,

The funeral industry is so slow to change. When cremation became a thing, it took sixty years to become mainstream.  The fact that we’ve served just over thirty families now in four months, is quite amazing.  And we’ve continued to grow month-over-month, and that’s all I can ask for.

Thank you Hannah Suzanna for help with research for this episode. 

Here Be Monsters is an independent, listener supported podcast.  Consider supporting the show on Patreon. 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot and Serocell

 
 

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HBM151: Blowgun Time Warp

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Image by Jeff Emtman. Digital render.

 

Season 10 of Here Be Monsters starts and host Jeff Emtman hallucinates his adolescence while working long hours. Scenes from middle school dances, dawn bus rides, the basement, and ( most crucially), a late-night raffle at a hardware store.

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Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: Serocell and The Black Spot

 
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Hello: a Radiolab episode that’s about humans and dolphins communicating.

Season 10 is Coming!

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Season 10 is nearly here!  The season starts on March 9th and episodes will be released on a rolling basis until all ten shows are published.

Want to advertise on an episode? Fill out the sponsorship request form. 

Want to support HBM with a small monthly donation?  Become a patron on Patreon. 

Can’t wait to share the season with you.  More soon. 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot