BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Drinkers like me, and Adrian Chiles.

Quit drinking?

But I'm no quitter.

I'm a regular reader of The Guardian, and remember Emine Saner's review of the television program, which was published in August. It seems to me I'd made note of it in this space, but apparently not.

In my own case, a lifetime of drinking far more weekly units of alcohol than recommended by Great Britain's National Health Service has resulted in an unreliable memory, and I don't dispute it.

There'll be no deep thinking from me, at least not today. We turn instead to a British television personality, Adrian Chiles. 

Drinkers Like Me – Adrian Chiles review: the complicated, conflicted world of boozing, by Emine Saner (The Guardian)

The broadcaster’s film about ‘nice, regular drinking’ soon becomes an analysis of much more, from his physical and mental health to society’s difficult relationship with alcohol

Adrian Chiles has a drinking problem. Or maybe he has an Adrian Chiles problem, alleviated by drinking. Anyway, he’s definitely not an alcoholic, he says in his exploration of “nice, regular drinking” in Drinkers Like Me – Adrian Chiles (BBC Two).

Looking back on the past week, which included a wine dinner at La Chasse on Monday, I've had two glasses of vino and maybe eight or nine beers. Or ten. I don't drink every single day, and often go two or three days between drinks, but it still averages out to a couple drinks daily.

I've made a conscious effort for quite some time to try keeping my consumption of beer to the lower ABV ranges, and all in all, I drink far less than during my peak Public House period, now more than ten years ago.

At 58, it's absolutely inconceivable to me that I could still put away as much beer (and sometimes wine) as I did then. A 12-pack of Sierra Nevada during an NBA doubleheader on Sunday afternoon?

It hurts just thinking about it, so what does all this mean?

I've no clue. However, here is a year's-end summary of Chiles' moderation efforts, written by the reduced drinker himself.

What happened next? ‘Drinking for the sake of drinking. It’s madness’: how Adrian Chiles cut back on booze, by Adrian Chiles (The Guardian)

He used to drink an awful lot – and now drinks a lot less. It is well worth the effort in the long run, he says

 ... The documentary I made this year, Drinkers Like Me, definitely changed me. I used to drink an awful lot and hardly ever talk about it. Now I drink a lot less, but talk about it all the time. I can’t go for a quiet pint without someone having a word with me. This could involve a gentle expression of concern that I have fallen off the wagon (I never went on the wagon). Or, more often, a long sort-of confessional about that person’s drinking habits. Everyone seems to have a story about alcohol, about how much they drink or used to drink or how much their families drank or whatever. And this year we were even told that no amount of alcohol is good for our health.

His conclusion.

Moderating, as opposed to abstaining, is seen as a bit of cop out. Trust me, it isn’t. It requires constant thought; hundreds of decisions have to be made every week. But it is worth it: I am a bit lighter, a bit calmer, a bit healthier and what I do drink, I enjoy more.

For me, alcohol is like fire, water, religion, politics and many other things: it’s not the thing itself, it’s what you do with it. It can do you and others harm, or a little good. I think I am managing to edge from one to the other.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: London's "Gay Hussar" restaurant faces extinction, and one reason is that booze no longer animates British politics.

The Gay Hussar may be closing.

Last orders at the Gay Hussar – the left’s hotbed of plots, gossip and goulash, by Rebecca Smithers (The Guardian)

For 65 years, the Soho restaurant has been the place where Labour lunches. But next month might see it shut

The Gay Hussar is among the most celebrated restaurants in London but its fame rests not so much on the quality of its chilled wild-cherry soup and its goulash, but on its reputation as the beating heart of political gossip.

The Hungarian restaurant in the centre of Soho has played host to generations of politicians, many drawn from the left, including Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot, Tom Driberg, Ian Mikardo and Barbara Castle. It is also rumoured to be where the Tory wets fruitlessly plotted the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.

But after 65 years as a hotbed of political plotting, backstabbing, deal-making and gossip, it is due to close its doors for the last time in June.

It's always fascinating to consider an eatery or watering hole with a back story ranging far beyond everyday food and drink, but first things first. In the present context, a "Gay Hussar" describes a merry, carefree light cavalryman, with the adjective "gay" reverting to its original use.

Gay meaning ‘homosexual’ became established in the 1960s as the term preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. It is now the standard accepted term throughout the English-speaking world. As a result, the centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ have more or less dropped out of natural use. The word gay cannot be readily used today in these older senses without arousing a sense of double entendre, despite concerted attempts by some to keep them alive. Gay in its modern sense typically refers to men (lesbian being the standard term for homosexual women) but in some contexts it can be used of both men and women

Times (and words) do change. Hussar originally described a specific sort of Hungarian horseman of the 15th century, and the term later was adopted by cavalrymen of a similar model, irrespective of national origin.

The etymology of "hussar" is muddled. The word may date to ancient Rome; at the very least, the Hungarians borrowed it from nearby Serbia, where a "husar" was a type of medieval brigand, often conducting what we'd now call "guerrilla" warfare against the Ottoman Turks.

Much later there was a popular Hungarian operetta called The Gay Hussars, written by Emmerich Kálmán, which probably accounts for the name of London's Gay Hussar restaurant, where the only beer on the menu is Czech Budvar -- but we always can make do with Bull's Blood wine from Eger.

Speaking frankly, my mouth waters while reading the menu of Hungarian dishes. What I'd give for a properly rendered töltött káposzta (cabbage roll) at this precise moment. Significantly, the author of The Economist's "Bagehot" column does not share my favorable view of Hungarian cuisine, explaining the probable demise of the Gay Hussar by reference to an alarming social trend.

Last orders for political drinking

Waning interest in booze is transforming British politics

 ... But the restaurant’s imminent death surely has something to do with the decline in political drinking. Few people went to the Gay Hussar for the food. Hungary’s is not one of the world’s great cuisines and the Gay Hussar’s rendering of it was more faithful than inspired. Nor did they go for the comfort. The tables are cramped, particularly upstairs, and the corridors are higgledy-piggledy. They went for the booze—or, more precisely, for the intoxicating mixture of drink and gossip, alcohol and plotting, that once made British politics such a joy.

Drink has certainly not disappeared from public life. The Westminster village is about to embark on a long cycle of summer parties (last July David Lidington, a Tory MP, blamed plots against Theresa May on “too much sun and too much warm prosecco”). The summer season will be followed by the even boozier party conference season. Drink still has the power to change the course of political history. Ed Miliband introduced the current system for electing the Labour leader because a drunken Labour MP, Eric Joyce, assaulted four other fellow drinkers and the party’s attempt to replace him produced fears of vote-rigging by unions. If Mr Joyce hadn’t got so sloshed, Jeremy Corbyn might still be on the backbenches, and Labour might have campaigned much more vigorously for Britain to stay in the European Union.

That said, today’s Westminster looks like a temperance meeting compared with the Westminster of old ...

The conclusion is unspeakably melancholy.

The saddest reason is the rise of a professional political class. Drink provided a link between politics and society. The Labour Party recruited MPs and activists from working men’s clubs that existed in large part to provide workers with cheap drink. Ministers routinely let their guard down when they demolished the ministerial drinks cabinet with their civil servants and advisers. Today, both Labour and the Tories recruit their MPs from think-tanks and ministers keep up their guard at all times. The decline of political drinking has snapped yet another link between the political elite and the people that they are supposed to serve.

The medieval diet: "White wine makes you piss better than any other wine."

It's where the love of history meets the needs of a foodie.

I Tried a Medieval Diet, And I Didn't Even Get That Drunk, by Sarah Laskow (Atlas Obscura)

The Salerno health regimen was based in the humoral theory of medicine, which is focused on keeping balance among the body’s four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Foods were thought to possess qualities that could help maintain that balance: each hot or cool, dry or moist. These ideas originated in the ancient Mediterranean world, most prominently with the Greek physician Galen, and were passed to doctors in the Arab world, before returning to Europe.

Way back in the late 1980s, I bought "The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece and Rome," a cookbook by the late Jeff Smith. From the outset, he cautions readers not to expect rich tomato-based sauces in the Roman recipes.

The selection of vegetables in medieval Europe was relatively small, to begin with. It would not have included plants native to North or South America, which means no potatos, no corn, no tomatoes, no avocados, no peppers, and no beans (with the exception of fava beans). Spinach came from Persia, via Arab conquests of southern Europe, in the 800s, and gradually replaced other greens, like sorrel. Sugar first reached Europe in 1148, when Crusaders brought it back from their war, but it was a luxury product, with limited availability, for centuries. Coffee didn’t come regularly until the 17th century.

She can't do without coffee, but otherwise the author of this post imagines the medieval diet, and actually lives it for a few days.

Portions: We eat too much, and we exercise too little. It isn't nuclear physics, is it?

It also wouldn't hurt to cut back on the deep fryer, and stuff a few bits of fruit and vegetables into your pie hole. However, as a recovering trencherman, I know all too well that it isn't easy. Long before I drank alcohol, eating was my stress reliever. Nowadays my aim is to judiciously balance food and drink in their recreational senses.

There are good days, and there was yesterday ...

Our gigantic problem with portions: why are we all eating too much?, by Bee Wilson, Jay Rayner, Tamal Ray and Gizzi Erskine (The Guardian)

... In a world where food is ever-present, many of us have become like Alice in Wonderland, controlled by cakes that say Eat Me and bottles that say Drink Me. As the nutritionist Marion Nestle remarked 10 years ago in her book, What to Eat: “It is human nature to eat when presented with food, and to eat more when presented with more food.” The trouble is that we are pushed more food, more often, every day. In 2013, the British Heart Foundation published a report called Portion Distortion on how portion sizes in Britain have changed since 1993.

Back then, the average American-style muffin weighed 85g, whereas 20 years later it was not uncommon to find muffins weighing 130g. Ready meals have also ballooned in size, with chicken pies expanding by 49% and the average shepherd’s pie nearly doubling in size since 1993 (from 210g to 400g). To overeat in such an environment may be less about lacking willpower than being set in your ways. Food psychologists talk about “unit bias” meaning that we are inclined to think that a portion equals one of something, no matter what the size. Even when it’s the 2,000-calorie single slice of pizza that nutritionists managed to buy in New York City: a whole day’s worth of calories in a single snack.

My kingdom for a horse (sausage), part two ... the backlash bits.

Part one here.

Andrew Higgins ends his New York Times piece about food as a barometer of the European Union's enduring cultural divisions with this observation:

Some French fans of horse meat are hoping that the fuss could add a frisson of excitement to eating horses and help lift the stigma from a fare that, even in France and Belgium, is generally viewed as old-fashioned and uncool. Several popular Paris restaurants are reported to be interested in adding horse to their menus.

Make it organic and locate a euphemism, and we may have a deal.

Ever since the European "horse meat in my Whopper" scandal broke, I've been thinking back to a couple of magazine pieces written by John Ed Pearce in the late 1980's in the CJ's old Sunday magazine, in which the perennial curmudgeon sought to offend every dog lover in the metro area by professing the culinary potential (and cultural relativity) of Bowser Burgoo and other canine dishes. Folks were plenty steamed, but really, aren't parts just parts once you've resolved to eat meat?

In an era of foodie-ism, the literal hot dog is an idea whose time finally may have come, although some eaters are ready for a systemic counter-revolution, as considered in this Guardian essay from the fall of 2012. The excerpt below makes reference to The Trip, which the Confidential household viewed last year. Poole's essay is lengthy, but well worth the time, so put some civet coffee in the Ikea press pot, and enjoy a good read.

Let's start the foodie backlash, by Steven Poole (Guardian)

Food is the new sex, drugs and religion. Cookery dominates the bestseller lists and TV schedules. Celebrity chefs have become lifestyle gurus and cooking is referred to as a high art. Steven Poole has had his fill of foodism.

 ... One thing I do know is that "brawn" is pâté made from a pig's head: the name is an obvious example of menu euphemism. Verbs tend to ascribe benign agency to the parts of a dead animal, as with the announcement by the waiter at L'Enclume who, in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's TV series The Trip, introduces a dish thus: "You've got some little manx queenies which are baby queen scallops. They're resting on grilled baby gem and parsley coulis as well as a light creamy horseradish sauce." When the waiter leaves, Brydon comments: "Rather optimistic to say they're 'resting'. Their days of resting have been and gone. They are dead."

Today's Tribune column: "Open Air conditioning mechanisms."

Alongside the remainder of the annual Harvest Homecoming, Fringe Fest at Bank Street Brewhouse opens today at 2:00 p.m. I decided to leave HH and FF out of the weekly column, instead focusing on aftermath of Monday's council meeting, as modified by the experiences of a life spent drinking, and reading about drinking.

BAYLOR: Open Air conditioning mechanisms.

Modern literature in the West has produced numerous examples of the seasoned drinker as heroic protagonist, both compelling and doomed. These fictional creations reflect an existential aspect of the human condition. To be succinct, what is to be said or done when life’s fundamentally surreal futility seems better assayed through the bottom of a lifted glass, one quickly draining?

Mike Kopp and downtown New Albany dining in the C-J.

A link I missed earlier in the week:

Restaurants revitalize New Albany; Downtown booster Mike Kopp credited along with streamlined liquor licenses, by Jenna Esarey (Special to the Courier-Journal)

... Fueling the restaurant boom to an extent was the creation of the Riverfront District. The state allows New Albany to sell the normally difficult-to-acquire liquor licenses within the district for $1,000.

“We are not creating an area full of bars,” said Kopp.

“Toast has a liquor license so they can sell mimosas with breakfast. La Rosita is relocating downtown so they can sell margaritas.”

There's a deep discussion waiting, although I'm not entirely sure there's time for it today.