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An Adventurous Palate

An Adventurous Palate

By Leo Racicot

When I was a kid, I wouldn’t have anything much to do with food. I wasn’t an eater and found most meal items our mother presented alien and strange. I remember a slab of cheese looked and tasted like a piece of plastic, and said so. A hamburger (it had to be plain — no mustard, mayo or ketchup) on a plain bun or a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder bread were all I tolerated. Back then, Diane was the big eater in our family; she’d dig into double portions on everything. Our mother would say, “Leo, you’re going to turn into a peanut butter sandwich one of these days!”  So, it was a shock to family members and longtime friends when I developed an adventurous palate, began branching out on what I’d eat, or even sample. Looking back, I credit Lowell’s rich ethnic diaspora of cuisines from other lands with freeing me from my peanut butter prison. Lowell Technological Institute drew and continues to draw a large Indian student population with its renowned engineering program. In the 1970s, the catastrophic wars in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam brought an influx of Southeast Asian refugees, and their food and traditions to Lowell. Over the years, Mexicans, Hispanics, Africans, Cubans, Dominicans all settled in Lowell where they hoped to make new beginnings, fresh starts. In 2025, a walker in the city can’t go far without passing by restaurants featuring tasty delights from these many cultures.

Indian Food

It was one of my work study students, Samir, who introduced me to Indian food. An engineering student who hailed from RIshikesh, Samir had an interesting background; his father had been a disciple of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s and had actually met and gotten to know The Beatles during their time at the Maharishi’s ashram when they were studying Transcendental Meditation. To earn money to attend college in America, Samir worked shining shoes for tourists from the time he was 8 or 9, saved up his earnings and said he polished so many shoes, his hands turned black from the polish. One evening, when I found him in the staff lounge where he’d taken his meal, my nostrils were filled with a savory fragrance of triangular-sized pastries. I asked him what they were and he told me “These are potato pea samosas. Try one”. The look and smell of them were too hard to resist. Samir was delighted to find I liked them and explained that they’re usually served with a chutney sauce. He was such a mannered boy, he apologized for not having any chutney to go with them. Years later, when I was working and cooking for the Sheas in Cambridge, Ms. Shea requested I learn how to make chutney for the table. I found the very idea daunting but soon learned that chutney was so easy to fix and I came to enjoy making it so much, I’d whip it up without being asked, just for the heck of it. It, and jambalaya, became my favorite dishes to make. I sang the praises of Indian food so vociferously, Samir put me wise to an Indian eatery downtown on Middle Street, Bombay Mahal (which later changed its name to Spice House) and I went and found its offerings so very tasty: Aloo Gobi, Palak Paneer, Butter Chicken, Masala Dosa, Dal Makhani, Naan. it made me a fan such that every Friday, I’d pick up my paycheck, head down and have my lunch there. I did come to love the place and the people who ran it.

This somewhat related story comes to mind — any member of the public can come into a state facility and utilize its services. Visitors to O’Leary Library didn’t have to be university-affiliated, One such visitor was a fellow named Richard Sjogren. Richard was a very tall, very lean gentleman. He had the whitest, most spidery fingers and hands I’d ever seen. He was special needs and spoke in a high-pitched voice that reminded us of Billie Burke, the actress who plays Glinda the Good Witch in the original WIzard of Oz. Richard sported a Swiss Alps hat and lederhosen (even in winter) and looked as if he was about to head for the mountains for a yodeling contest. The poor soul needed a hand tying his shoelaces but was a form of idiot savant because he was capable of speaking and reading Sanskrit and other complex Indian dialects. He and Samir would have long exchanges, and Samir confirmed for me that Richard, indeed, was able not only to converse but converse ably and fluently in these ancient tongues. Samir would say a lot of native Indians couldn’t grammatically manage what Richard managed. Fascinating.

Whenever I visited my dear friend, Priscilla, in Arlington, Mass., we’d hit either Haveli or Punjab in The Center. An absolute love for Indian food was among our common interests. Priscilla and I became good friends when we worked together for Cambridge Public Libraries. In the late ’90s or so, when the aging Main Library building was closed for major renovations and the staff had to be housed in a makeshift library in The Longfellow School up the street in East Cambridge for a long period of time,  she and I set out exploring various restaurants in nearby Inman Square and discovered Punjabi Dhaba on Hampshire Street, an utterly charming place where the food was served on silver military tins and trays (You’d swear you’d been plunked down in Tooting or Wembley, London, or in an outpost in a Rudyard Kipling story. The food was delicious; we very many times had to scramble to finish our meal and scurry back to Longfellow lest we be late from our break. But the rush was well worth it.

And I’ve written before about the sumptuous feast laid out for me and another guest in their home by ULowell PhD candidate, Susheel Deshmukh and his pretty wife, Manisha. Nicer people you’d be hard-pressed to meet. They cooked up a storm that would have been enough to feed an army of people and I sampled everything they set before me, a culinary banquet and an evening never-to-be-forgotten. I bent their ear so often about the wonders of Northern California that, last I heard, they’d decided to make their home there…

In Cambridge, on the steps leading down to The Red Line subway, there was a hole-in-the-wall store. It sold lottery tickets, candy bars, chewing gum, stuff like that. Over to the right of the shop was a hot case containing fresh samosas, curry pies. I could never resist stopping for a samosa which I liked taking down to the area where the trains came in, munching on it hungrily on cold winter days. The warmth of the pastry combined with the condensate emanating from my mouth made for a quick, appealing eating sensation, just as in those days when I used to grab a cone of salty hot French fries at Elliott’s on Elliott Street in Lowell on snowy cold  days, popping one tantalizing fry after another in my mouth as I made my way home up Appleton Street as evening came on…

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Samir

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with the Beatles

Bombay-Mahal Restaurant, Middle Street in Lowell

My dear friend Priscilla

Susheel Deshmukh

Alewife Quick Bite store

Samosas with tamarind date chutney

Indian food spread

Seen & Heard: Vol. 2

Welcome to this week’s edition of Seen and Heard, in which I catalog the most interesting things I’ve seen, heard and read over the previous seven days:

Film: Frankenstein (2025) – I’m not a fan of horror movies but I understood that this new Frankenstein movie, currently on Netflix, was unlike the 1931 film that starred Boris Karloff and more like the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley. The book, which was published just five years before the first textile mill opened in what would become Lowell, was influenced by the turbulent political, scientific, and societal shifts of that time. These included the French Revolution, the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution which raised questions about the role of God as the creator of all things. I thought the new movie was excellent. It’s a period drama that gets at the deep questions raised by the book while being very entertaining. It moves to second place on my list of favorite Frankenstein movies, just behind Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein from 1974.

Podcast: Access with Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger – Access launched as a podcast last September by Vox Media. The two hosts, Heath and Hamburger, are longtime tech journalists. This show provides an inside view of how today’s tech industry works with special emphasis on AI. This episode was recorded during the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the annual gathering of companies and innovators who unveil the latest consumer electronics. This episode featured an interview with Alex Himel, the head of “wearables” at Meta (Facebook) with a focus on Meta’s smart glasses. In general, smart glasses made their debut about five years ago but felt underwhelming. Technology never stands still, so much has improved with  Meta seen as the leader of the pack by a considerable distance. Two things contributing to this was Meta’s partnership with Ray-Bans to design the glasses along with the integration of the latest AI which makes the glasses far more functional according to reviewers. I have a deep distrust of Meta/Facebook so I won’t be submitting my order for these anytime soon, but I do see many uses for them so hopefully some more palatable competitors will soon offer models with equal functionality and style.

Book: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown by Anna Keay – In January 1649, the English parliament, backed by the army, charged King Charles I with treason, held a trial, and then executed him by chopping off his head. For the next dozen years, England operated as a republic, governed at first by a Parliamentary committee but then by Oliver Cromwell, as the king-like “Lord Protector.” Competition among the various factions remained intense, but Cromwell, through the strength of his personality and good relations with the army which he had commanded, held things together. After his death in 1658, however, the government became so unstable that in 1660, Parliament invited King Charles II, the son of the executed king, to return from exile and re-establish the monarchy. Charles agreed and was restored to the throne. In her 2022 book, Restless Republic, Keay, a noted historian of that period, tells this story through the lives of nine diverse individuals who played important roles in the events depicted in the book. Rather than a traditional top-down political history, this book reads like an adventure novel although the outcome is never in doubt. I am especially interested in this period of English history because of the profound impact events in England had on those living here in Massachusetts at the time. 

Newspaper: “Indiana Rising” in New York Times, January 9, 2026. Living in New England, big time football has always meant the Patriots, at least since the start of this century. The last time college football had any great interest for me was on November 23, 1984, when Doug Flutie led Boston College to an upset victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl. Now, when I turn on the TV on a Saturday afternoon in the fall, I’m struck by in-person crowds of 100K or more filling stadiums in much of the rest of the country for college football. I watch those games the same way I watch soccer or rugby or lacrosse or any of the other sports which display impressive athletic ability but which I lack a solid understanding of the attraction. That said, the story of the Indiana University football team has caught my attention this year. Until now, Indiana was noteworthy for having the most losses in college football history. But this year they were undefeated and have one last game, that being for the National Championship on Monday, January 19, 2026, coincidentally against Doug Flutie’s former foe, the Miami Hurricanes. Although Indiana’s quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, won the Heisman Trophy this year and will likely be the top pick in the NFL draft, I’m more intrigued by the team’s coach, Curt Cignetti. I’ve watched several Indiana games this year and have never once seen Cignetti smile, even after a big victory. He first came to my attention two years ago when, during a press conference about new recruits, a reporter asked how he was able to convince anyone good to come play for the team with the worst record in college football history. His blunt response: “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.” The clip went viral, so viral that I, with zero interest in Indiana football, saw it many times. He seemed pretty arrogant, but when your results back up your words, it’s not really arrogance anymore. Anyway, Cignetti has made a fan of me, so I’ll be rooting for Indiana over Miami next Monday night.

Bequests and Budgets

Bequests and Budgets – (PIP #92)

By Louise Peloquin

     Proverbs, slogans and food-for-thought phrases filled spaces in L’Etoile’s columns. Here’s one which is especially appropriate for the article below.

Three things set the value of a gift: sentiment, appropriateness and manner.

– signed Mme. Ricoboni. (Published in L’Etoile on March 1, 1926)

L’Etoile – Front page, January 9, 1926

BEQUESTS TO LOWELL

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George Hovey leaves $5000 for the purchase of a lot to create Hovey Park in Lowell.

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BEQUESTS TO HOSPITALS

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     Chicago, 9. Twelve thousand dollars of a property assessed at $130,000 will go to Lowell, Mass. and to two hospitals as stated in George Hovey’s will, registered here yesterday in front of Judge F.A. Elliott.

     $5000 was bequeathed to the city of Lowell for the purchase of a property to be used as a public park called Hovey Park in memory of Mr. Hovey who died in Chicago on November 24, 1925. Lowell General Hospital and Saint John’s Hospital both received $2,400 to be used at the discretion of the two hospital directors. Finally, Hildreth Cemetery receives a sum of $2000 for the maintenance of the cemetery and of its surroundings.

     Mr. Hovey’s nephew Philip R. Hovey, 2 Fairmount Street, Lowell, and niece Marion Hovey, 75 Crest Avenue, Winthrop Mass., receive $10,000. Mr. George Hovey’s widow, Mrs. Helen Hovey, residing at Hotel Windermere in Chicago, receives half of his personal property and the revenue from the entire property for two years.

     Other bequests of the deceased, who was director of a wholesale hat enterprise, will go to the Chicago Arts Institute, to the village of Dracut Mass., to Dracut’s selectmen and to First Congregational Church and Central Congregational Church both located in Dracut.

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     City services require appropriate budgets. Allotting sufficient funds facilitates effective management. Here is a sample of budget discussions a hundred years ago.

L’Etoile – Front page, January 12, 1926

THE BUDGET FOR PARKS

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The Parks Department will try to manage with only $89,990 in 1926.

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APPROPRIATION OF $98,000 IN 1925

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Superintendent Kernan says that some less urgent work will be postponed to another year – Update on the winter carnaval – Chief Saunders prepares his budget – The Bureau of Hygiene also calculates its figures.

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     The Parks Department will try to finance its construction program for 1926 with an appropriation of $89,990 while that of 1925 was $98,000. Thus was it voted yesterday at the Parks Commission meeting summoned to examine the 1926 budget.

     Yesterday, Superintendent John W. Kernan clearly said that the department would indeed have many projects requiring more considerable spending. However, he believes that these can wait another year. Hence, some savings could be made in at least one of the many municipal services.

     The Commission voted yesterday evening not to organize a winter carnaval this year and to simply hold a dance in the Auditorium. Superintendent Kernan was authorized to make the necessary arrangements.

     Other municipal services are still working on their budget. The Bureau of Hygiene had a long discussion on this subject yesterday and its members will meet on Friday or earlier.

     Chief Saunders of the Fire Department is also finishing his estimates for the year’s end has discovered the need for a $5000 wood lathe for manoeuvers. Last year, Chief Saunders had requested a brick one but the mayor refused it. Chief Saunders believes a wood lathe would meet objectives just as well as a brick one.

     Today, the Bureau of Public Service must set a date to discuss the budget.

     The city auditor’s bureau has not yet received a budget estimate sheet but expects to have one soon.

     During yesterday’s meeting, the Bureau of Hygiene received a petition from Joseph J. Sweeney, in opposition to Mrs. Carmella Rousseau, for a permit to build a stable in Québec Street. After having listened to the pros and cons, the Bureau promised to take the question into consideration and to go in person to examine the location. (1)

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1) Translations by Louise Peloquin.

Trump says the U.S. will run Venezuela. What’s next? by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

For a populist President who campaigned against the foreign entanglements of his predecessors and raged against nation building, it’s stunning that he would launch a military action against Venezuela that the vast majority of Americans oppose, at least without authorization by his reflexively compliant Congress. Trump traditionally says his critics suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. This weekend’s secret assault on Venezuela to kidnap Nicolas Maduro and pledge to “run Venezuela” simply suggest it is Trump who is deranged.

The indictment of Maduro by the District of Attorney of New York, Southern District, makes clear: Nicolas Maduro was a criminal, a narco-trafficker, a partner of drug cartels responsible for thousands of deaths in the United States and elsewhere, a despotic and fraudulently-elected “president” of Venezuela. Now, in a stealthy and powerful military action, the United States has captured him, brought him to the United States, imprisoned him in Brooklyn and arraigned him. That he will stand trial is a good thing.

But, despite the chest-thumping and testosterone-fueled assertions of Donald Trump, Defense (oops, War) Secretary Pete Hegspeth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, all the rest of their outrageous pronouncements and claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Take Trump’s announcement that the United States will take over Venezuela until a proper transition can take place. Meanwhile, he declared, U.S. oil companies will take over Venezuelan oil operations “for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.” Sounds like a return to 19th century colonialism to me. According to experts, activating Venezuelan oil reserves, deteriorating for at least two decades, could take years to move into production and market distribution. So, our populist President will risk American lives for the benefit of American oil corporations? And how long will the United States and Trump’s oligarchical inner circle stay in Venezuela, and how much will it cost? Will U.S. military provide a long-term stabilization force, at sea if not on land?

We may find out this week if Trump will respect the War Powers Act if Congress gets a spine and acts on it.  Every President from Truman to Biden has launched a military strike without Congressional authorization. I don’t know of any who immediately announced the intention to run the country we attacked. And, even where they eventually got Congressional buy-in, the long-term efforts – think Iraq and Afghanistan – failed abysmally.

Notably absent from Trump’s press conference was Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, who would have to defend her 180 from her 2019 Twitter post saying “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders, so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.” Not surprisingly, it went viral after Maduro’s capture.

Gabbard isn’t the only one who could be called out for hypocrisy. As recently as October, Trump Chief of Staff Susy Wiles said that an attack on the Venezuelan mainland would require congressional approval. Now she’s a key player in keeping the Trump team in line behind the President’s lunatic moves.

As a practical matter, how exactly will delusional Trump secure that control over another sovereign country? He may have lopped off the head of the regime, but the regime is still in place. Maduro’s cronies, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez (who has already declared herself interim president), Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino López (who reportedly has deep ties to Vladimir Putin) and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello (head of security, meaning Maduro’s enforcer), as well as Maduro loyalists in the Venezuelan military (who also profited from the drug trade) are already under similar indictments and not about to leave quietly.

Trump has already rejected bringing back opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate María Corina Machado and has made no move toward Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the legitimate winner of the 2024 Venezuelan election. So what’s our authoritarian president’s next grandiose plan if not turning to those who have steadfastly been fighting for democracy and against Nicolas Maduro?

Naively, Trump has also said that those Venezuelans who fled to the United States to escape Maduro’s violence can now return, but early comments from Venezuelans living in Florida indicate that repatriation is impossible until there is a democratic government in Venezuela. Apparently Trump thinks he can do business with Vice President Rodriguez as he is with ISIS terrorist-turned-ally Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria.

Beyond the pursuit of Venezuelan oil (perhaps on the false promise of lowering already-lower energy prices in time for our own election), Trump and Rubio hypocritically insist a major goal was ending the flow of fentanyl into the United States. But the main source of fentanyl and its components is China. Will they try to take out President Xi? And, if drugs were so central to this recent operation, how do they square this with Trump’s December 1 pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández in prison in the United States for 45 years for running 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and related gun charges. He, too, was implicated in widespread corruption.

Without evidence other than personal pique, Trump speciously rationalizes the Hernandez pardon by claiming the prosecutors who brought him to trial and won a major conviction didn’t treat the former Honduran president fairly. Yet it is the same team, the Southern District of New York, that is trying the case of Maduro. So, yesterday’s bad guys are magically today’s good guys?

Perhaps the worst aspect of this insanity is the potential global fallout and what this move signals to Russia and China. Despite Donald Trump’s promise to end “forever wars,” he has warned Mexico to “get its act together;” warned Greenland that our taking over there is a matter of national security, ours not Greenland’s; and made threats to move against Columbia and Cuba. It’s reasonable to fear that such warnings will greenlight Putin to finish off Ukraine and move against Estonia and Poland and promise disinterest if China moves against Taiwan and, indeed, all of the South China Sea. Trump is washing his hands of our allies and international agreements that have kept the lid on world war since the 1940’s.

Trump keeps claiming he has aced three or more cognitive tests, even identifying a giraffe. But passing a cognitive test is a low bar, not a ticket to mensa. But a repeat schedule of tests, far from indicating cognitive capability, suggests some insiders may believe his mental health is worth monitoring. However, I’m not reassured. I won’t hold my breath waiting for someone in that inner circle to resort to the 25^th Amendment procedure for declaring a President to be unfit. Nor would I even lay down money on a bet that Congress will find its backbone and assert its Article I powers and responsibilities.

We can only pray that, at a minimum, voters will remember this fall and in 2028 that the party in power would rather underwrite an illegal oil grab for a bunch of oligarchs than ensure access to affordable medical care for financially struggling Americans. And we must cross fingers that Russia and China are somehow delayed in regional aggression that Trump has green-lighted.