In This Issue
City Kids "Top Ten"
Not Your Typical South Beach Diet
The Olive
Join Our Mailing List
January 2008
black beans 
Escape the winter doldrums, and join Cory Lewis in Miami for a culinary adventure!  Cuban, French Caribbean, and Asian cuisine will await you.  Tastings and cooking lessons - so you can bring a bit of the sunshine state home with you.
 
Divina Cucina cooking class 
Join Cory Lewis in Italy and learn about the culinary traditions of Tuscany.  
 
Details coming soon!
 
Tanzania
June 3-12, 2008
 
Zebra on the Serengeti
The Academic Traveler is pleased to present Tanzania: A Photographic Safari.   Join photographer Brooke White on this exciting African adventure.
 
City Kids: New York
"Top Ten"

FAO Schwarz

On the recent City Kids: New York trip, the youngsters came up with their "top ten" list for the Big Apple:

#10  Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge

#9   Broadway plays - Wicked, The Color Purple and Hairspray

#8    Riding the subway

 
#7   Yankees baseball game
 
#6   Seeing the giant Richard Serra sculptures and Van Gogh's The Starry Night at MoMA
 
#5  FAO Schwarz

#4   The singing waitstaff at Ellen's Stardust Diner

#3   The American Museum of Natural History

#2   "The Beast" speed boat ride along the Hudson River

#1   Scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

MoMA

Our Sponsor
The University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi
The Academic Traveler
Division of Outreach
University of Mississippi
P. O. Box 879
University, MS  38677
phone (662) 915-6511
fax (662) 915-5138
The Academic Traveler Newsletter
Septermber/October 2007
Greetings!

The Academic Traveler is an educational travel program for people who enjoy experiential travel - learning by doing, living as the locals live, visiting off-the-beaten-path sites.  This newsletter is dedicated to our upcoming culinary programs in Miami and Florence, Italy, two very different, but equally exciting culinary traditions.
 
Happy travels,
 
Laura Antonow
Program Director
The Academic Traveler
 
Not Your Typical South Beach Diet
by Laura Antonow
 
No fruit, no grains, no starches or no alcohol - doesn't sound like much of a vacation.  The kind of South Beach diet we're offering up consists of fresh fish and seafood, tropical produce, and exotic spices.  South Florida cuisine is a unique, eclectic blending of Caribbean, Latin American, and Asian traditions with an occasional dose of the American South thrown in. 
 
A sampling of South Beach Recipes:
 
If you find it hard to believe that Miami is becoming an American culinary capitol, a quick search of the Internet may convince you otherwise.  Southfloridagourmet.com is a culinary site featuring articles, an extensive calendar of culinary events, restaurant reviews, and wine ratings.  Culinary blogs featuring banter about Miami cuisine now exist -  Miami Dish and Mango and Lime are just a few.
 
So abandon your idea of a South Beach diet as a way to lose weight.  Instead, think of it as a way to enjoy interesting seafood selections such as cobia, snapper, wahoo, and conch paired with the tropical flavors of mango, star fruit and coconut, prepared with aromatic spices such as ginger, coriander, nutmeg and cinnamon.  Finished with a mojito, of course.
 

Laura Antonow is the director of the Academic Traveler program at the University of Mississippi, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Art, and food lover.

 

Join the Academic Traveler's Miami A Culinary Adventure program in January and experience the cuisine and culture of South Florida.

The Olive - 'Olea europaea' - A Classic Hero or Urban Legend?
 Olivesby Cory Lewis
In preparation for the first Academic Traveler culinary adventure to Florence, Italy, I began reading everything that came my way concerning olives. At the outset, my readings focused on the culinary life of the small but much exalted fruit. After churning through several books and multitudes of recipes, I came across Olives, The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit by Mort Rosenblum. His passion, wit and insights into "olivedom" have revolutionized my understanding and appreciation for all things...olive-y.

 

My considerable stacks of books and articles extolling the virtues of olive oil, and explaining the benefits of ancient versus modern mechanized processing techniques, regional flavor nuances, and quality designations now inhabit the outer margins of my desk and the floor around it, but, Rosenblum's Olives lives on my bedside table. Perhaps this is symptomatic of my recent seduction by Rosenblum's personal olive adventure involving the purchase of a tired and in-much-need-of-attention farmhouse with olive trees in the south of France, or simply my obsession with culinary history and traditions. Either way, I am infected with Rosenblum's devotional writing about the olive.

 

For centuries, the olive has symbolized peace, prosperity and wisdom, as well as conflict. The Mediterranean region is defined by centuries of migration and the resulting battles that arose when one population invaded another. Rosenblum says it best:

" Olives have permeated every Mediterranean culture from prehistory to last week. Aristotle philosophized about them and Leonardo invented a modern way to press them... The earliest Olympic flame was a burning olive bough. Rome had a separate stock market and merchant marine for oil. And conquering gladiators, like Roman emperors, were honored with olives."

Fast forward to the 19th century across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America. A new chapter in the life and times of the olive was beginning. It started in the late nineteen hundreds in Martinez, California when bartender, Julio Richlieu concocted a drink mixing gin and vermouth finished off with an olive, and dubbed the cocktail a "Martinez." Nearly half a century later, on the other side of the continent in the Knickerbocker Hotel a bartender mixed a similar drink with the addition of a lemon twist for John D. Rockefeller. The bartender's name was Martini di Arona di Taggia. This classic cocktail continued to gain popularity after Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin a now trendy "dirty martini": one part vermouth to two parts gin with a splash of olive juice. Personally, this story became much more interesting when I read that Roosevelt also mixed a martini for Stalin's foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. Maybe a vodka martini would have been a better option?

 

Whether this is true or embellished legend, one thing is for certain, the olive was on the martini scene from the beginning. Its role in this classic American cocktail is pivotal. The olive provides a visual focal point and sustenance while negotiating the spindly stem of the ceremonial glass.

 

A final piece of olive trivia that I learned while reading Rosenblum's book is about the cartoon character Olive Oyl created by E.C. Segar in 1919. What I found interesting is not that she is one of the oldest cartoon characters in existence, but that the Spanish refuse to translate her name literally, referring to her as Rosario so as not to denigrate the sacred olive. I think that sums up the attitude differences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and many thanks to Mort Rosenblum for hours or entertainment and enlightenment. 

 
Cory Lewis is an artist, chef, adjunct assistant professor of art  and a culinary instructor in the Academic Traveler program at the University of Mississippi.
 
Join the Academic Traveler's upcoming Florence: A Culinary Adventure program and explore the world of Tuscan cuisine.