So what is driving liberals into an insane rage nowadays? The easy answer is President Donald Trump. However the more discerning among you would know that the subject of fire spoon eggs has caused an almost inconsolable rift among liberals with each side raging angrily at the other.
The chronicler of this liberal civil war is one New York Times writer named Kim Severson whom we last met in 2014 writing up the obituary of Chick-fil-A founder, S. Truett Cathy, by describing him as a "symbol of intolerance." Now she is covering the liberal cultural war over fire spoon eggs. Her latest dispatch from that front appeared in the Times on Wednesday, What’s Cooking in That Egg Spoon? A Bite-Size Culture War:
In the great food culture wars of the 21st century, the egg-spoon skirmishes may one day be remembered as pivotal.
Recent conflicts over this long-handled cooking tool have fostered a new social-media meme, a fresh front in the #MeToo movement and a handcrafted version that costs $250, not to mention new volleys lobbed by Alice Waters and Anthony Bourdain.
But every war is steeped in history. The first egg-spoon dust-up occurred in 2009, after Ms. Waters, the spiritual mother of all that is organic and sustainable, cooked Lesley Stahl an egg in an iron spoon she held over a fire in her Berkeley, Calif., kitchen for a segment of 60 Minutes.
Here is a clip from that 60 Minutes episode that sparked the Great Liberal Fire Egg Spoon Culture War:
Soon after the fire spoon egg made its debut on national television, the backlash began starting with an outraged Anthony Bourdain:
“She’s Pol Pot in a muumuu,” he was reported to have said at a New York food festival shortly afterward. “I saw her on ‘60 Minutes.’ She used six cords of wood to cook one egg for Lesley Stahl.”
Or maybe Ho Chi Minh in an apron? Would you have felt better if she had cooked two eggs, Anthony?
The lines were drawn. On one side were those who viewed cooking an egg over a fire as the embodiment of food elitism and all that is annoying about the Slow Food movement. Only people who are very rich or very poor have fireplaces in their kitchens, critics said. Where is a working parent supposed to find the time?
In the opposing camp were people happy to discover a slow, delicious way to make those farm eggs that they had worked so hard to find. Even if the egg spoon was merely aspirational, it set the bar for a simpler way of cooking and eating — one in which a fire-roasted egg slipped onto levain toast seemed the antidote to an unthinking, tech-dominated culture fueled by unhealthy, overly processed food.
Two intractable liberal camps unwilling to reconcile their vast differences. Oh, can there ever be peace in that liberal bubble world? Well, sometimes those from the anti camp secretly indulge in the forbidden pleasures of the fire spoon egg...but they end up feeling guilty about their treason:
After drinking her daily “Mason jar half-full of black tea and half-full of organic lactose-free whole milk and maple syrup,” Ms. Adler cooked an egg in a spoon over coals.
Even she knew it had baggage. “Though I cringe to admit it,” she wrote, “I not only own, but love, a hand-forged egg spoon.”
Yes, she enjoyed that egg but now she has to carry the guilt with her for the rest of her life.
Meanwhile the liberal culture war over the fire egg spoons continues unabated. Even Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement are invoked as weapons:
The smoldering war was reignited. Over drinks and on social media, mocking ensued. The hand-forged egg spoon was recast as the new silver spoon.
But social context is everything. This is the post-Harvey Weinstein era, when gender imbalance, assault and harassment in professional kitchens have been laid bare. The egg spoon has caught a ride on a new wave of kitchen feminism. Egg-spoon haters now find themselves under attack.
...For her part, Ms. Waters is as much a supportive parent as she is the figurehead of the spoon wing of the #MeToo movement. “It is hilarious,” she said, “but in another way, I want young boys to hold that spoon, too. I want them to feel the sense of the fire and the closeness to the simplicity of it. It helps you become sensitive. We are hoping men become sensitive and we find each other in that place.”
Gee! I sure would like to hold that spoon and feel that sense of fire too but at $250 a pop, a little rich for my blood.
Oh, and Kim... I think a piece of Chick-fil-A chicken would go perfectly with a fire spoon egg.
