Circe's potion kind of worked

"She led them in and sat them on couches and chairs and stirred cheese, barley and pale honey with Pramnian wine for them, and she mixed evil drugs into the food, so that they would forget their fatherland entirely. Immediately after she struck them with her wand, she confined them to pigsties. They had the heads, voices, bristles and bodies of swine, but their human minds remained as they were before" (Odyssey 10.233-240).

Bolstered by my success with Hecamede's kykeon, I finally decided to try my hand at Circe's potion. Odysseus' comrades drink it down willingly, so it must have been familiar to their palates, and Homer treats it as beautifully as the other food described in the Odyssey. But somehow the mixture does not sound delicious to me. Barley, cheese, honey and wine? Seriously? The constituent parts all sound good but ... all mixed together?

A couple of years ago, several students from my Great Books class took it upon themselves to cook up versions of the potion and bring them to class. Being the teacher, I felt morally obligated to taste the concoctions made from oatmeal, various types of cheese (whatever they had lying around -- usually cheddar), grape juice (so they wouldn't get in trouble for bringing alcohol to school). They were nasty, even though the some went through the trouble of decorating their containers with glitter to make the potion somewhat more appealing. One bottle of their Circe's potion is still displayed on my bookshelf (in my collection of classically themed liquids, alongside Ajax dish detergent and Ethos water). I like to think of it as inspirational.

Thus inspired, Amy and I made two batches of potion, one using ricotta and the other feta. I had used semolina for Hecamede's kykeon, but Circe's called for barley. I had found a bag of peeled barley at m2m on Third Ave., cooked it as I would rice and mixed it, still hot, with cheese. Meanwhile, Amy heated up the kosher wine I had lying around from a tasting I did a few weeks ago (I figured the heat would negated any need for the wine to have Pramnian origins) and stirred in some honey (I didn't have any ancient Greek honey nor do I keep bees, so we had to use the kind that comes out of the plastic bear). Mixing honeyed wine with cheesy barley was impossible; they could not be incorporated, even when put through the food processor (which Homer does not mention).

Both potions were by now a sickly pink color. The one made with feta was closer to the baby food consistency of Hecamede's kykeon, but far lumpier. The ricotta potion was much like bubble tea -- the barley sank to the bottom like tapioca pearls in liquid. We left out the evil drugs because I couldn't decide what modern equivalent I could substitute in. Tylenol? Not nearly evil enough. Not evil at all, actually.

Amy and I tasted both potions and decided that neither was revolting and if we were hungry enough from sailing around Greece and being shipwrecked, we would probably go ahead and eat them. But they really weren't good; they tasted sickly pink.

We didn't forget our fatherlands and we didn't turn into pigs, but being female, we decided that we weren't the best guinea pigs for this experiment, so we forced a bit down my boyfriend's throat. He declared the potion gross but not that gross and ultimately, nothing happened.

...Until about five hours later when I found him on the bathroom floor vomiting up every last trace of the potion and shouting, "Circe got me!"

It was horrendous; he was sick for two whole days. He didn't turn into a pig but he only seemed a little shy of total metamorphosis. I guess I should have discovered what moly was before I inflicted the power of Circe upon him.

The Charybdis Picnic

"You will see the other cliff, lower down than the other, Odysseus: they are near one another and you could even shoot an arrow between them. On it is a giant fig tree, sprouting many leaves, and below it, Charybdis swallows down the black water. Three times a day, she vomits it up and three times she sucks it back down. Don't go there when she swallows it back down for no one could save you from disaster, not even the Earth-shaker. But rather, sailing close to the rock of Scylla, drive your ship swiftly by, for it is much better to lose six comrades from a ship than everyone together" (Od. 12.101-110).

I laugh in the face of danger (or speedily away from it as it throws rocks at me). If my middle name were not very long and Hawaiian, surely it would be "Danger" or "Man of Pain." Also, I live on the edge.

It is up to me then, to find out why Charybdis Playground in Astoria Park is named, well, Charybdis Playground. It seems a little odd that a public playground would be named after a scary sea monster in Greek mythology, especially in a predominantly Greek neighborhood. And monstrous name or no monstrous name, it is a lovely spot for a picnic on a sunny springtime afternoon.

 

I set to work packing a lunch: the previously mentioned Honeyed Mushrooms (the nasty ones, since I did use a whole box of white button mushrooms and had plenty of leftovers), kykeon

(porridge) made according to Dalby and Grainger's recipe in The Classical Cookbook (which is based upon a recipe from Cato's On Agriculture), Ceres brand guava juice (I drank gallons of this stuff when in South Africa and managed to find a tetra-pak of it at JAS Mart on St. Mark's), Ion almond chocolate and some modern egg salad sandwiches and white-bean-and-leek soup so the boyfriend and I wouldn't starve.

I tried making The Classical Cookbook's kykeon as a precursor to Circe's magic potion (still gearing up for that one) since it is remarkably similar, calling for semolina, ricotta, honey and a bit of beaten egg. All that was lacking were the Pramnian wine and evil drugs. Dalby and Grainger cite the kykeon that Hecamede prepares in the Iliad, which requires Pramnian wine, goat's cheese, and barley  (Il. II.638-41). It had symbolic and perhaps ritualistic significance as well, "As a mixture of wine and cereal, it brings together the gifts of Dionysus, the wine god, and of Demeter, the goddess who gave us wheat and barley" (40). Dalby and Grainger declare their search for a precise kykeon recipe an "impossible quest" but its "first clue comes from the name itself, for kykan means to churn or clot or thicken by stirring. This suggests something like a soup or even a porridge."

Cato's recipe, or Hecamede's sans wine and with semolina instead of barley, really was quite good. It was lightly sweetened by the honey and had the consistency of baby food. When my sister tried it before the picnic, she said it would be terrific with bacon. Perhaps if I added some wine and evil drugs, the stuff would produce its own bacon. My sandwiches and soup were pretty damn good, too, and we even managed to avoid losing comrades.

After the very lovely (and totally badass) picnic, I finally bothered to google Charybdis Playground. While the New York City Parks Department calls it a "magical spot along the East River that serves Astoria's children," it also explains that the name comes from the playground's proximity to Hell Gate in the East River, where ships have crashed and treasure still lies sunken.

References:

Dalby, A. and Grainger, S. The Classical Cookbook. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996

New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. "Astoria Park: Charybdis Plaground."  http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/AstoriaPark/highlights/10759