In the interview, you’ll find tidbits of wisdom like this:

Sunday, January 29

I went to lunch with some friends at Hotel Griffou, which is way “cooler” than anyplace I would ever normally go. But my girlfriend is Portuguese, and they started doing this Portuguese brunch. We had the rissois de camarão, which are shrimp turnovers; the pasteis bacalhau, salt-cod fritters; the kale soup; pork and clams; and the baked eggs with chorizo. There was something weirdly delicious about that dish.

Not that I’m suggesting it was frozen food, but it had this fro-mami quality about it. You know, that deliciousness you only associate with frozen food, like when you go to a [crappy] pizza place and get the eggplant parm sub and you know they’re just pulling it out of the freezer, but it’s delicious anyway. That’s fro-mami. I think the food at Hotel Griffou was well prepared, but there was something to it. I had coffee, too. Black.

That night was the Pro Bowl. Watching the Pro Bowl is really admitting your addiction to football. So I was at home, watching the goddamn Pro Bowl. On the stove I had chickpeas stewing in a little bit of wine, soy sauce, kale stems from the other day, carrots and a bunch of other vegetables, and dried shrimp roe, which is another really awesome ingredient.

And

Tuesday, January 31

That night was supposed to be that incredible ice storm of 2011, where you’re stuck inside and you find out all these awful revelations about your girlfriend and you break up. So to prepare for that, my girlfriend and I stayed near home and went to Frankie’s. She had the braised octopus salad — far and away the best thing they have. I had the pork braciola and polenta. Totally great. And they have these prunes. They’re stewed in red wine and come with mascarpone. Totally delicious, with this cinnamon-y red-wine reduction.

Then we went home and waited for the ice storm and the revelations, but neither really happened.

For more of this inanity — and what one eats for Chinese New Year — check out the full story here.

This association is the reason why Bolivia’s campaign to end the U.N. narcotics ban of the coca leaf will fail today. The ban, which began in 1961, lumps the leaf — and all products made with it — in with the powder, and called for the elimination of all forms of coca consumption. The United States, as the largest consumer of cocaine and home of the “War on Drugs,” leads the opposition (Britain and Sweden have also filed objections), and its argument against the leaf basically boils down to “mo’ coca, mo’ cocaine.”

But coca has been used as a food and medicine in Andean culture far longer than crack has ravaged American cities, far longer than lines on a counter were a party favor. Since before Incan times, Andean tribes have chewed or brewed the leaf into teas, extracting a mild stimulant entirely unlike the über-concentrated crazy-making stuff in cocaine. (The effect is comparable to a weak cup of coffee.) Coca is packed with nutrients and aids in oxygen absorption, which makes it particularly important to the Andean people who live at high altitude, and its use and consumption has become a powerful marker of cultural pride among indigenous people. It is why Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian elected to that office, has made it his pet project to repair the little green leaf’s reputation, starting with amending the U.N. ban.

Still, the U.S. just isn’t having it — after all, we’ve spent the past several decades and a lot of taxpayer dollars bulldozing, burning and spraying coca crops with herbicide from planes. However, with Morales’ encouragement, a local array of coca food products has exploded to provide a legal market for coca farmers. Coca has always been a dominant crop in the Andes, and many farmers had no other options but to sell their products to cocaine manufacturers.

Of course, coca leaves have attracted curiosity outside the Andes before. A 19th century French chemist created a precursor to Four Loko, called Vin Mariani, out of Bordeaux wine and coca leaves. It was so popular that an American company developed its own non-alcoholic coca drink, which you may have heard of: Coca-Cola. Incidentally, Coca-Cola is the only coca product in the world that may be exported overseas (the cocaine component is removed first). For the most part, though, the Western reaction to coca use has been negative, ever since the Europeans first penetrated the Andes and railed against the “pagan” practice. In fact, the 1961 ban is largely based on an unsubstantiated 1949 report claiming that coca made the natives lazy and drove up poverty levels.

This history lends a sense of urgency to the development and marketing of this new slew of coca products. On Friday, indigenous activists organized a mass protest of the U.S. opposition, with thousands of Bolivians gathering to chew coca outside the U.S. embassy in La Paz and throughout the country. For them, legalization is but a long overdue recognition of the value of indigenous culture.

And then there’s the economic development of the Andes. Of course, in America, where little-known “exotic superfoods” like açai and goji can suddenly become enormously popular, “valuing indigenous culture” is often just fancy talk for a marketing opportunity. Retailers have successfully sold us on products like agave nectar with lovely narratives of pristine streams, muggy rain forests, mysterious ancient origins and so on. We seem to respond to these stories, believing in the exotic, “natural” authority of the natives. Maybe we can chalk up this reaction to Western guilt, or maybe we are genuinely excited to be exposed to another culinary culture. Either way, coca’s history is certainly long and rich enough to capture the imagination.

Why shouldn’t coca farmers be able to capitalize on the romantic ideas of post-colonial, fair-trading Westerners like everyone else seems to be doing? It’s not hard to imagine a Whole Foods display of the goods already on the market in Bolivia. Forget those pop-up ads touting the shocking truth about açai or the rare African weight-loss fruit: “Meet the energizing wonder-leaf, the ancient secret of the Andes, full of all-important B vitamins! Don’t guzzle Coke, grab a Coca!”

But a recent mea culpa from the cake’s actual creator broke through our collective efforts to block its memory from our consciousness. On the Huffington Post, food stylist and recipe writer Denise Vivaldo claimed essentially to have been backed into a corner to make this thing up. Needing the money to pay her staff, she researched and wrote the recipe, she claims in a story that spares no opportunity to trash Lee at every turn. (The word “disgusting” takes a star turn, and there’s some mention of blood seeping from the walls when Lee gives her a call.)

But it’s easy to throw Lee under the bus when she’s a millionaire for making food from cans. And after watching her crack open and pour a can of apple pie filling into the hole of an angel food cake for the ninth time, I had to ask, “Wait, someone ‘researched’ Kwanzaa for this cake?” Can this dish actually have something to do with Kwanzaa tradition?

I talked to Jessica Harris, a professor at Queens College, and author of dozens of books on the foods of the African diaspora, including a cookbook called “A Kwanzaa Keepsake,” and the forthcoming “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America.” During our conversation, we talked about the real problem behind Lee and Vivaldo’s cake, what foods are important for Kwanzaa, and what Kwanzaa really is, anyway.

When I first e-mailed you the link to this video, you wrote back saying, “It is just so wrong, disrespectful (and yes that was done with a full frontal Aretha-esque finger snap!)” So let’s start from the top: What do you find disrespectful about this cake?

Well, I first want to say that I don’t find the semi-homemade thing problematic. It’s called “doctoring stuff up,” and it’s fine. So the questions become: What’s the end result? And how do you attribute that cake to a holiday that is not of your ethnic persuasion?

The thing that’s potentially offensive to me is characterizing/determining a holiday about which neither the cake preparer nor the recipe designer has the first clue. When you create a recipe to be attributed to someone else’s culinary tradition, that demands a knowledge of the culture and a judicious handling of things. But this cake has no cultural relevance.

Worse, it’s just something I don’t want to put in my mouth. Much of the offense for me, personally, comes from that. You’re going to make that and call it mine? No thank you! You have to question what kind of holiday cakes the recipe writer makes for her own people.

I’m not saying the food of the African diaspora can’t be an inspiration for other people, because that’s a sign of a great cuisine. But this cake is an abomination. I wouldn’t want that on the table and be called my birthday cake, and that’s the biggest holiday I know!

So you can’t see anything even vaguely Kwanzaa-related in this cake? Did the recipe developer just make it all up?

Let’s see what there is in this thing. Angel food cake is certainly not an African-American tradition; maybe if it was pound cake. Cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon frosting — cocoa does grow in Ghana, but is that where she was going with this? I don’t know about the cinnamon, which is not indigenous to Africa, and don’t even ask me about a whole teaspoon of it! Pumpkin seeds, apple pie filling … corn nuts. Well, corn is called for in the Kwanzaa holiday.

And then there are the candles, which the recipe writer went to lengths to insist were Sandra Lee’s fault, but the candles are the only thing that give that cake any connection to Kwanzaa. Otherwise it’s just an ugly brown cake!

Corn is used in Kwanzaa? What other foods are traditional on the Kwanzaa table?

In the Kwanzaa ceremony there is an ear of Indian corn — dried corn — on the centerpiece for each child of the house. As somebody once said to me, “Corn is primordial,” because if you have corn, you have more corn in it. You can grow corn from corn, so it’s a symbol of potential.

Corn is the only thing I know that is called for. There is supposed to be a basket of fruit on the table, but it’s up to interpretation; there’s no mandated tradition. On my Kwanzaa centerpiece, I try to have black-eyed peas, yams, sugar cane, things that have significance to Africans and the places they have gone to.

But what’s a holiday with no food traditions?

There really are no specific foods attributed to the holiday, nothing that says, “It isn’t Kwanzaa if there isn’t X.”

The name comes from the Kiswahili “matunda ya kwanza,” “first fruits of the harvest,” and it’s based on East African or pan-African harvest traditions, but it’s a very new holiday. It’s only 44 years old. So there are individual familial traditions, but none that are codified.

I wrote a cookbook for Kwanzaa because there are no foods, and so all foods are possible. One of the fun things about this new holiday is that you get to create your own family tradition in a real way, based in a real framework; it’s fertile ground for the African-American talent of improvisation. Speaking of cakes, at one point, I thought, why not do a Kwanzaa cake, but with the icing made to look like kente cloth? You could do it with store-bought stuff, but it would be rooted in some form of African tradition.

It’s not designed as a religious holiday; it’s secular and about community, reflection and self-affirmation, so you can celebrate it alongside your faith traditions. It’s a seven-day event, with each day focusing discussion on a different principle; the words are very “’60s political”: collective responsibility, self-determination. [Unity, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith are the others – Ed.] Each night, the family gathers around the centerpiece and pours a libation for their ancestors before reflecting and discussing the day’s principle. And then, of course, there are gifts.

This video is 2 years old; its popularity is no doubt because of the cheesiness of Sandra Lee’s shtick mashed up with the idea that she was celebrating an African-American holiday. Why was there not more outrage?

Well, if it weren’t for you, I would have lived my life in blissful ignorance! I don’t think it was the folks celebrating Kwanzaa watching the video. I think the people who were watching it thought it was hysterical because she’s clearly misguided in her efforts. It’s the juxtaposition of that woman, that awful cake and a holiday that is attributed to folks that don’t look like the lady involved. But equally, that same trifecta probably took it off the radar of the folks who do celebrate Kwanzaa.

I have written encyclopedia articles about Kwanzaa, but I hadn’t seen this. So that to me indicates that the video phenomenon really just kind of existed in a different sphere. I mean, her Chanukah cake seems to be equally horrific, and that didn’t raise any hackles either. 

Santa’s cookies usually include a combination of store-bought and homemade. The holidays bring out everyone’s inner baker. Some families have traditional recipes handed down through the generations. For others, it may be as simple as slicing and baking pre-made refrigerated cookie dough. Some communities host elaborate cookie exchanges, and this can lead to the establishment of temporary cookie-baking sweatshops in previously peaceful kitchens. Baking Christmas cookies is all about sharing and tradition, and a whole lot of butter, sugar and flour.

Instead of baking cookies for Christmas, the Mexican tradition is to make and share tamales. It’s a laborious task best shared by many hands, and what better excuse is there to sit around for hours sharing gossip? The traditional Christmastime tamale-making party is known as a tamalada navideña. My fellow SKC enthusiast, Gavin Fritton, shared an excellent depiction of the tamale-making gatherings in his family. In Mexico and in other parts of Latin America, tamales are eaten throughout the year, but they have a special place during the Christmas season. They are traditionally eaten during the religious rituals known as posadas, the reenactments of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem that take place in the nine days leading up to Christmas Eve. They are also eaten on Epiphany, or El Dia de Reyes, which follows Christmas.

For years, I’ve been the enthusiastic recipient of a one-way Christmas tamale exchange with my Mexican-America neighbor, Teresa. You may remember her from when I wrote about her recipe for the best rice pudding on Earth. In addition to being honorary Abuela to my girls and an ever-ready and experienced source of advice, Teresa is a wonderful cook of homestyle Mexican food. It’s hard to be grumpy when the doorbell rings before 8 o’clock on a Sunday morning when it’s Teresa, bearing a piping hot plate of just-cooked chilaquiles. And that’s on an ordinary day.

Every Christmas, she cooks up dozens of tamales, both savory and sweet. Savory tamales, such as the ones Teresa fills with pork in a red chile sauce, are the kind most available in restaurants. In Mexico and other parts of Latin America, the variety of fillings is infinite. They may contain meat, chiles, cheese, vegetables and any combination thereof. The sweet ones, called tamales de dulce, are less common, and can be as simple as an unfilled sweetened corn tamale, or perhaps studded with plump, juicy raisins. Sweet tamales, the kind we can’t buy even at our local tamale specialist, San Francisco’s Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, are my favorite. When we get our bags of tamales from Teresa, we know what we’re having for dinner and dessert.

The tradition of making and eating tamales is alive and robust in 2010, but tamales have been around for a long time. Historians trace their origins to Mesoamerica as early as 8000 to 5000 BCE, popular at the time of the Aztec and Maya civilizations. The essence of a tamale is its ground corn filling, called masa, milled from limewater-treated corn, or hominy. The ground, dried corn is combined with lard and broth or water to make a dough, which is then filled and wrapped in a corn husk (or sometimes a banana leaf) before being steamed. This is the basis for both savory and sweet varieties. Sweet corn tamales, tamales de elote, capture the flavor of a fresh ear of corn without the distraction of other tastes.

For my Christmas cookie this year, I decided to try to encapsulate the essence of a sweet corn tamale into a cookie. Teresa and my little tasters were ecstatic with the result, which tastes something like a corn muffin but better, because it’s a cookie. These have chewy centers and crisp edges, to satisfy both camps of cookie eaters. To gild this lily, I’ve rolled the edges in golden sugar, pretty enough to decorate a Christmas tree, and special enough to leave for Santa.

 Sparkly sweet corn cookies

Fruitcake is not a tradition in my home, although my mom makes stellar “fruitcake cookies.” (That recipe is hers and I hope to share it soon). I do buy candied cherries, to top Mom’s sandy, crispy, buttery shortbread. Shortbread is the easiest, most elemental cookie: butter, confectioner’s sugar, flour, salt and vanilla. When I wake up in early December and say, “It’s cookie baking time,” I always put a tray of shortbread in the oven first. Like Sook and Buddy’s fruitcake, it’s a tradition, and it’s simple; I already have butter, sugar and flour out and the oven’s preheating.

Scotch shortbread with candied fruit