The history of the world is on your plate. All food is an expression of a long struggle and a long story.
-Anthony Bourdain
Back in Chapter 7, Gloria got into a conversation about tacos with everyone’s favorite dead robot Boofar:
@jonnywaistcoat@FrogCroakley@SiennaSasha Okay, here it is.
— Midnight Burger (@weopenat6)
2:45 AM • Jan 16, 2022
In their conversation they touched on the idea that food can contain your ancestry, your personal history, and your personal choices.
In Chapter 16 (Listen here!) Gloria returns to that idea in her speech to the people of Milinov, a planet that is quickly starving to death due to sanctions by the Ted Empire. In the speech she talks of things that are seemingly innocuous to some, but hold a very different historical truth for others. Cheap Ramen to most is just a way to have a quick lunch, but there was a time when those same cheap, dry noodles were a life line for the people of Japan while they slowly recovered from the second World War.
In my garden this summer, you can see me attempting the “Tres Hermanas”, the earliest form of what’s known as companion planting:
Beans climb up corn stalks and replenish the nitrogen that the corn saps from the soil, while broad squash leaves protect the soil from the sun and keep moisture trapped there. For me this is just a smart thing to do in a small garden, but it was a technique developed by the Aztecs thousands of years ago, a civilization that was enslaved and decimated by the Conquistadors.
You can see this everywhere you go and it’s often glossed over. The Scotch Bonnet Pepper comes from the mountains of Jamaica and was first used by those who had escaped slavery and were living in hiding, making do with whatever they could find. I doubt this ever comes up on an episode of Hot Ones.
We talk about food a lot on Midnight Burger, not just because it’s a restaurant, but because the story as we know it all began when a lonely taquera cut her tether with the world she knew and took a giant step into the great beyond. We all make our way through the unknown armed with the known, so it’s no surprise that Gloria confronts a malevolent galactic empire with the only tool at her disposal: feeding the hungry.
I hope you all enjoyed the new episode, we certainly enjoyed making it for you.
Weird thing I’m doing: When I finished Chapter 13 I realized that the first three episode titles were also song titles. For some reason I decided to keep the trend going for all of season 2. So here is José José with his mournful 1970s banger “El Triste”:
We’ll be out there, somewhere, lookin’ for ya’.
-Joe