Milk is enough, you say? Prefer your dry cold cereal with a single dairy product spilled all over? Then I beseech you, listen: Yogurt will take your morning breakfast bowl over the top, to the limit, the next generation of cereals... your children's children will ask you, "Grampie, did you really just pour milk on your Futuristic Fruitie-Oh's when you were a kid??" Don't be left out. Join us. Here's why.
1) Viscosity - It ain't just for motor oil anymore. Milk is all well and good. But there's no denying the fact that it has a singular problem: It's quite thin. Even whole milk lacks the smooth, creamy texture necessary for the ideal bowl. And those extra 8 grams of fat will not make your frosted flakes stick to granola like a good heaping spoonful of Vanilla Yogurt will. Which brings me to my second reason...
2) Flavor - Suddenly, your cereals will have the same variety of added flavors as your Tall Latte Extra Whipped Cream Soy Special something-or-other. You a chocoholic? Add some Chocolate yogurt to your Shredded Wheat for an unexpected taste of the cocoa bean. Strawberry Fanatic? You see where this is going. Me, I'm a vanilla nut myself. Dannon's Light&Fit Vanilla yogurt is relatively cheap by the 64 ounces (I think that's the size... if that's an absurdly large quantity, disregard) and has a nice, soothing not-too-artificial vanilla flavor. Much better than Columbo. And Stonyfield, love 'em as I do, but their yogurt has more gooey texture somehow that just doesn't work with how I like my Cereal+Yogurt combo. Some may enjoy it. I prefer the creamier consistency of the non-organic stuff.
3)Amalgamation - I could have used a better word. But what I'm trying to say is, when the milk mixes with the yogurt, you now have an entirely different dairy conidment working it's moistening magic: neither liquidy milk, nor solidy yogurt, the new combination is an impossibly thick flavored milk, a flowing gush of paradoxically unpourable yogurt (because you don't pour it; the reaction happens already in the bowl). It's a more filling sensation, a more satisfying one. Hard to explain, yes. But most perfect things in this world are, aren't they?
So: please consider adding yogurt to your next batch of ho-hum milk-topped cereal. You and your morning tastebuds will thank me.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Ode to a Belgian Waffle
Inspired by this morning's lazy sunday breakfast....
Aunt Jemima mix, fall into my
Toastmaster Belgian Waffler...
Together you do magical things:
Abracadabra, mashed banana,
Chocolate Chips!
Too much syrup?
Nay, do not linger here
Your kind will not mix
with mine.
If only I had a glass of orange juice.
If only I hadn't forgotten my pre-cooked sausages.
A day made tasty by late-morning...
Let my hunger grow again
So that by nightfall
I can eat a second.
-------
Aunt Jemima mix, fall into my
Toastmaster Belgian Waffler...
Together you do magical things:
Abracadabra, mashed banana,
Chocolate Chips!
Too much syrup?
Nay, do not linger here
Your kind will not mix
with mine.
If only I had a glass of orange juice.
If only I hadn't forgotten my pre-cooked sausages.
A day made tasty by late-morning...
Let my hunger grow again
So that by nightfall
I can eat a second.
-------
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Two-Faced French Toast
This morning I had a revelation, somewhat coincidentally based on an old joke from my high school french class. And it was this: One egg is not enough. (an egg = "un oeuf") At least when it comes to French Toast batter.
So I crack my medium-sized egg into a shallow bowl. Something horrible happens--what comes out is not the usual viscuous, clear-ish white with an orange-yellow nucleus of yolk, but some half-addled grossness, an egg over developed in the womb, or burnt by the harmful UV rays of the sun, or left out to curdle and then siphoned somehow back into the shell by mysterious new technologies in osmosis. The white is yellow and chunky, the yolk is not set apart and floating but one and the same with the aforementioned abomination. It leaves streaks in the white bowl when sloshed around. No more description is necessary here. I fear the horrid chicken that produced such a spawn: gnarled claws, mutant beak, feathers pre-dipped in tar. Maybe it was fed ketchup. Who knows.
But none of that is what I wish to discuss. After thoroughly rinsing the bowl, I cracked another egg over it--now we're talkin'. Poured in a bit of milk (8th continent vanilla soy milk... wasn't sure what the soy would do, but I was willing to take the chance), a few generous dashes of cinnamon, and whisked away. Dropped in a slice of Cinnamon Burst bread, medium thickness, poked it around the bowl a few times, and let it soak. I heated up the skillet, an 8" Emeril pan I got for Christmas. (I didn't have the heart to speak my gut reaction out-loud to my mom, giver of the Celebrity-endorsed product: 'Emeril!? Why... why did you choose to get me a pan with Emeril's signature carved into the stainless-steel, stay-cool handle? I want my pancakes to cook in anonymity... I want to pan sear my Boca Burgers in a teflon surface without identity, faceless, eager to distribute heat evenly, not shout and throw garlic over a plate of linguini.' But by then I would have lost her, and she would've felt bad about what was actually quite a nice gift, and what do I honestly have against Emeril? Nothing, really. The pan's been great so far. Bam. Whatever.)
ANYway, I drop some magarine in the pan (again, this is entirely my mom's fault, this penchant for fake butter.... I'm slowly trying to ween myself off of its partially hydrogenated fakeness, but Parkay is in the fridge, so Parkay it is), throw the soaked bread on the sputtering surface, and go make my coffee. Flip the bread, a lovely brownish eggy crust formed, the bits of cinnamon from the bread peaking out, eyeing me. Our apartment is cold, so I place a plate on top of the pan for about 15 seconds, to take the chill off, then spatula the French Toast onto the room-temperature plate, slice it into the requisite 7-8 vertical columns to allow for ideal syrup absorption, and take a seat with my Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Here's where I approach my "point." I had readied my second slice of Cinnamon Burst bread to engorge the leftover batter, but there wasn't enough in the shallow bowl. So, hoping to stretch out, or extend, what I had, I took my "Vanilla Nut" CoffeeMate creamer and dripped a little into the bowl to mix with the remaining batter. Dropped a tad more soy milk in there. Whisked it up. The mixture was lighter, more "milky" (quel shock) but I lay my bread in the bowl and let it sit while I enjoyed the first cooked slice. I read a cover story on Bill Cosby's dissertation on how Fat Albert can save the plight of Black America and their children. Interesting stuff. I myself watched the show as a kid, and though I didn't know much of racial inequality at the time (nor my privileged position as a middle-class white kid living in a suburb of Detroit), holy cow did I want that squeaky magical pen that talked. You know the one. But I'm growing more tangential by the moment. Pardon the ever-furtive gaze; the periphery is always an alluring subject. Not sure why this is. I welcome your suggestions.
So, the bread soaks up all nice and yellow on one side, but the other side is half-coated in a strangely bright white coating--surely this is not Toast as the French intended. I cook one side to a lovely eggy brown, but the other merely crisps, as it would in the toasted. So I do what I do on toast: spread the crispy side with peanut butter and a raspberry jam, half the bread, and dunk it in my coffee. French Peanut Butter & Jam Toast sticks, dunked in coffee, eaten over an essay on the enduring lesson of Fat Albert. 'Twas a good second portion, but, as I found out, when making French Toast batter is concerned, one egg is not enough.
So I crack my medium-sized egg into a shallow bowl. Something horrible happens--what comes out is not the usual viscuous, clear-ish white with an orange-yellow nucleus of yolk, but some half-addled grossness, an egg over developed in the womb, or burnt by the harmful UV rays of the sun, or left out to curdle and then siphoned somehow back into the shell by mysterious new technologies in osmosis. The white is yellow and chunky, the yolk is not set apart and floating but one and the same with the aforementioned abomination. It leaves streaks in the white bowl when sloshed around. No more description is necessary here. I fear the horrid chicken that produced such a spawn: gnarled claws, mutant beak, feathers pre-dipped in tar. Maybe it was fed ketchup. Who knows.
But none of that is what I wish to discuss. After thoroughly rinsing the bowl, I cracked another egg over it--now we're talkin'. Poured in a bit of milk (8th continent vanilla soy milk... wasn't sure what the soy would do, but I was willing to take the chance), a few generous dashes of cinnamon, and whisked away. Dropped in a slice of Cinnamon Burst bread, medium thickness, poked it around the bowl a few times, and let it soak. I heated up the skillet, an 8" Emeril pan I got for Christmas. (I didn't have the heart to speak my gut reaction out-loud to my mom, giver of the Celebrity-endorsed product: 'Emeril!? Why... why did you choose to get me a pan with Emeril's signature carved into the stainless-steel, stay-cool handle? I want my pancakes to cook in anonymity... I want to pan sear my Boca Burgers in a teflon surface without identity, faceless, eager to distribute heat evenly, not shout and throw garlic over a plate of linguini.' But by then I would have lost her, and she would've felt bad about what was actually quite a nice gift, and what do I honestly have against Emeril? Nothing, really. The pan's been great so far. Bam. Whatever.)
ANYway, I drop some magarine in the pan (again, this is entirely my mom's fault, this penchant for fake butter.... I'm slowly trying to ween myself off of its partially hydrogenated fakeness, but Parkay is in the fridge, so Parkay it is), throw the soaked bread on the sputtering surface, and go make my coffee. Flip the bread, a lovely brownish eggy crust formed, the bits of cinnamon from the bread peaking out, eyeing me. Our apartment is cold, so I place a plate on top of the pan for about 15 seconds, to take the chill off, then spatula the French Toast onto the room-temperature plate, slice it into the requisite 7-8 vertical columns to allow for ideal syrup absorption, and take a seat with my Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Here's where I approach my "point." I had readied my second slice of Cinnamon Burst bread to engorge the leftover batter, but there wasn't enough in the shallow bowl. So, hoping to stretch out, or extend, what I had, I took my "Vanilla Nut" CoffeeMate creamer and dripped a little into the bowl to mix with the remaining batter. Dropped a tad more soy milk in there. Whisked it up. The mixture was lighter, more "milky" (quel shock) but I lay my bread in the bowl and let it sit while I enjoyed the first cooked slice. I read a cover story on Bill Cosby's dissertation on how Fat Albert can save the plight of Black America and their children. Interesting stuff. I myself watched the show as a kid, and though I didn't know much of racial inequality at the time (nor my privileged position as a middle-class white kid living in a suburb of Detroit), holy cow did I want that squeaky magical pen that talked. You know the one. But I'm growing more tangential by the moment. Pardon the ever-furtive gaze; the periphery is always an alluring subject. Not sure why this is. I welcome your suggestions.
So, the bread soaks up all nice and yellow on one side, but the other side is half-coated in a strangely bright white coating--surely this is not Toast as the French intended. I cook one side to a lovely eggy brown, but the other merely crisps, as it would in the toasted. So I do what I do on toast: spread the crispy side with peanut butter and a raspberry jam, half the bread, and dunk it in my coffee. French Peanut Butter & Jam Toast sticks, dunked in coffee, eaten over an essay on the enduring lesson of Fat Albert. 'Twas a good second portion, but, as I found out, when making French Toast batter is concerned, one egg is not enough.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
My Name is Not Red Delicious
Hi,
My name is Jonathan. I like food. And though I've been weary of these web log dealios (I much prefer Frosted Cheerios), I also have made too many fantastic sandwiches not to share them with you, the nebulous mass of unphysical space out there. The hope in writing this is threefold: 1) that I get to speak my mind on all things edible, such as the various strengths and weaknesses of certain cereal combinations, and you, the aforementioned intangible pair of eyes, can absorb this knowledge happily, or glances over it, sees no mention of Famous Actress X or Hunky Male Model Y (or their celebrity spawn XY) and forges ahead, undeterred. Either of these options are fine. As with most of these expeditions into online keyboard-crunching, this is a purely solipsistic venture. But you're welcome to peek over my shoulders. 2) Practice, practice, practice. And 3) I'm allowed the opportunity to quote Roland Barthes whenever possible. "Writers are on holiday," he says in his collection Mytholigies, "but their Muse is awake, and gives birth non-stop." So consider this space a dual-purpose delivery room, where you receive both crates of Tropicana Medium Pulp Orange Juice with added Calcium, and, um, the infinity of my inspiration's goo-covered babies. Moist Towelettes available upon request.
My name is Jonathan. I like food. And though I've been weary of these web log dealios (I much prefer Frosted Cheerios), I also have made too many fantastic sandwiches not to share them with you, the nebulous mass of unphysical space out there. The hope in writing this is threefold: 1) that I get to speak my mind on all things edible, such as the various strengths and weaknesses of certain cereal combinations, and you, the aforementioned intangible pair of eyes, can absorb this knowledge happily, or glances over it, sees no mention of Famous Actress X or Hunky Male Model Y (or their celebrity spawn XY) and forges ahead, undeterred. Either of these options are fine. As with most of these expeditions into online keyboard-crunching, this is a purely solipsistic venture. But you're welcome to peek over my shoulders. 2) Practice, practice, practice. And 3) I'm allowed the opportunity to quote Roland Barthes whenever possible. "Writers are on holiday," he says in his collection Mytholigies, "but their Muse is awake, and gives birth non-stop." So consider this space a dual-purpose delivery room, where you receive both crates of Tropicana Medium Pulp Orange Juice with added Calcium, and, um, the infinity of my inspiration's goo-covered babies. Moist Towelettes available upon request.
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