Edible Wrecks

Please Do Not Eat These Foods.

2010-10-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

If you have any decency left in your withering bodies, do not seek sustenance here. Go elsewhere. This will not fill your bellies. This will only addle your brains.

Since we're all so connected and the distance between Cyber- and Internal-space is becoming thinner by the day, we all know what the other people are thinking about with the help of a little tool called 'Trending Now.' At least on the Yahoo home page, a litany of terms greet you when you sign in, expressing that these terms are being searched about more than most. Earlier today, I noticed an alarming topic that was, for some reason known only to Transylvanian seafood restaurant owners, 'trending now.' That topic?

Dracula fish.

I don't know what they are. I daren't even click on the link, lest my love of Dracula and fish become enmeshed and, thereby, ruined. And I don't care if "daren't" isn't a true contraction. Darn well should be.

Then I reloaded the page a few hours later in the day. Now trending?

Spaghetti Tacos.

So there's mid-term elections coming up, the MLB playoffs have begun, terrorist plans have just been obtained, a new fuzzy video of Bin Laden is floating around out there, obesity epidemic research is positing new and relevant theories, my sister is turning 38..... and a high percentage of the internet-searching public are looking for information on Dracula Fish and Spaghetti Tacos?

Maybe Wired magazine was right. The Web is Dead. At least British pub owners will have something new to put on their menu for the first time in 1,000 years. ("They're bloody Fish 'n Chips! Get it?")

"Theeeeeey're Bueno!"

2010-05-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last week I trekked down to Playa del Carmen, just outside of Cancun, for a hometown buddy's wedding. To be sure, much good eats and drinks were consumed. Fresh guacamole topped everything from omelettes to cheese sandwiches. Pork Tacos were made and brought to you pool-side. The Corona flowed like wine. But a highlight of this international gastronomic feast?

So, Tony's south-of-the-border cousin is shilling for Kellogg's too, eh? Take a closer look at his bandanna and you'll see that his name is "Tigre Tono." The sun must have an effect on tiger's physical features, too. Let's compare our renowned American version:

Notice the slight double-chin, the yellowed eyes... the American Tony is apparently chubby and has jaundice. Shame on you Kellogg's of America for furthering the stereotype that U.S. citizens are inactive alcohol-abusers.

Another point of interest is the lack of a shadow on Tigre Tono. Whatsoever does this mean? Is Guillermo del Toro's new book series a hint that Mexicans are not simply stealing Americans' jobs with cheap labor, but another type of blood-suckers altogether??

Oh wait--vampires don't have reflections... right.**

So eat a bowl of Zucaritas today!

**The content on EdibleWrecks has no relationship to the personal or political views of its author.

In Response to a Certain "Lauren"...

2010-04-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

So last post I explained ever so carefully how to make your very own Peanut Butter Toast, complete with Nutella and Jam. I hope the Paint picture diagrams helped.

Then some wiseacre out there, with the pseudonymous label "Lauren," had this to say in the comments:

Lauren said...

Ewww! You like PEANUT BUTTER?!?

And so to this "Lauren" I ask: What is that, some kind of sick twisted joke?

Honestly. I don't even understand the words.

Fess up, or risk my Smooth & Creamy wrath.

How To Make Peanut Butter Toast

2010-04-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

Step One: Toast your bread. What kind of bread? Good question. NOT Rye. Caraway seeds are tiny little explosions of putridness. Instead, how about a nice 12 Grain? Any Whole Wheat variety is good. For special occasions, I like anything with Oatmeal or Nuts... Today, I use Country Kitchen "Oatnut."

Step One-point-five: Make sure you toast your slice at around Medium-High. Enough to get a nice crisp to things, but nothing too dark. And we're not just warming our bread up here. Toast means it's toasted. Turn that dial up, please.

Step Two: Remove toast from toaster. Don't burn yourself. Patience, geez! Let it sit there for, like, three seconds. No need to be hasty.

Step Three: Begin with a smooth, thin layer of Nutella down the middle, vertically.

Step Three: Smear a good portion of peanut butter over each remaining half, overlapping a tad with the nutella. Now--and this is important--the peanut butter must be natural. No hydrogenated oils, please. Teddy's is a great choice. The Smucker's Natural is actually better than expected. Smooth or Chunky: AYW (as you wish). I'm not entirely without feelings, you know.

Step Four: Fill in the hazelnut-less halves with a smattering of jam. I like blackberry or raspberry (with seeds!). If you're feeling up to it, go for an Apricot. Marmalade is an advanced maneuver... proceed with caution. Only under the most dire of circumstances will I abide by Grape Jelly. Think about the repercussions of your actions for once.

Step Five: Split vertically down the middle, so that each half has a bit of Nutella on each side. Then, dunk in coffee and enjoy. Behold, the finished product!

The salty of the peanuts, the sweetness of the jam, the warmth and creaminess of the Nutella, the subtle crunch of the toasted bread... a more perfect combination of flavor I do not know. Be gentle and kind with this knowledge. Now go, and eat toast.

"That is No Way to..." #1

2010-02-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

To the Asian sir on the subway train traveling north yesterday: That is no way to eat a burrito.

The burrito itself looked adequate, above-average even. Good helping of shredded chicken, some black beans, rice with maybe a hint of lime. Nice skein of guacamole. But first was the Bite Size. Whoa, man. The mouth cavity is only so big for a reason. To lunge at a burrito with such ferocity, tearing at it with ripping incisors, goes against all things digestive. I like to eat my food, not destroy it. Now if the burrito had it coming, I understand. But maybe the burrito was just defending its manhood. Maybe the burrito was projecting its own low self-image onto you. Does that give you the right to attack it like that? Does it? Huh?

I've gone off-track.

Here's the point: You can eat a burrito however you wish. That's fine. But what is not fine is eating one while listening to your iPod. Have you ever chewed something with ear buds in? It sounds like you're walking through an underground tunnel with heavy boots on over bubble-wrap. And you're on the train, anyway. Can you really hear your music over the screeching brakes and whooshing noise?

Then he pulls out his flip-phone. With one hand, he's texting back a friend. With the other, he holds the poor foil-wrapped burrito, and collapses his face onto it again.

Listening to your iPod while texting your friend on a subway train taking gigantic bites: That, Asian guy, is no way to eat a burrito.

Where No Oh!s Have Gone Before...

2010-02-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

I've been known to employ some nontraditional methods in eating the simplest things. Melted ice cream over cereal? Sure. Oatmeal instead of ground beef in a taco? Why not. Normally, the Ladyfriend Companion grimaces and clenches her stomach in witnessing such acts. But this morning, the ol' LfC went one step beyond even I'm willing to go.

She brewed some coffee. Ate her cereal, the stellar Oh!s (like a large Cheerio with honey-flecked oats and granola stuffed in the middle). Then, in lieu of half-and-half or a splash of 2%, she dropped a few spoonfuls of her cereal-milk into her coffee mug.

I was on the other side of the kitchen when she told me what she was doing.

"Ha, yeah right," I said, thinking she's just mocking my experimental whims.

"No, seriously," she said, and I turned to see her dip a spoon into the cloudy milk and drizzle some into the mug.

"OH!" I was not repeating the name of the cereal. "Oh wow... that's gross, dude."

To my sweet lady: I cannot abide. Drink it separately if you will, but do not taint the miracle that is Coffee with your leftover cereal-dampening fluid.

A Modest Request

2010-02-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

So: Just had a thought. I hope my future offspring are not obese. Why? Not for the unhealthiness of it. Not for the social impediments. Not for the potential for low self-esteem. Not for the difficulty in finding tuxes/dresses that fit for their first high school dance.

But because they'd require a higher caloric intake to fully nourish their bodies. Which would require more food. Which means more money spent on food. And frankly, the way things are going, I just don't know if I'll have the income for it.

Is this sick? Honest? Cheap? Fiscally conservative? Thoughts/insults are welcome.

Answers to Your Questions #2

2010-01-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

A: Yes, you should combine your breakfast and lunch leftovers and create the ultimate hybrid dessert: The Oatmeal Taco.

Step 1 - Lay out your tortilla of choice. My preference is soft, as it forms around the softness of the primary filling, but I can see how a hard shell might yield unexpectedly positive results, too.

Step 2 - Spread your base. Here, I've chosen Nutella. For me, this takes the place of refried beans, or some other sticky foundation on which to lay the remaining ingredients. Note: You don't have to go overboard; a little hazelnut-chocolate goes a long way.

Step 3 - Additional flavors/textures. I've used small dollops of Crunchy Natural Peanut Butter from Trader Joe's. (For my money, TJ's does the best natural peanut butter on a pure value basis. Not quite the stuff that Teddie's is, but for almost a dollar cheaper, it's tough to argue with the Hawaiian-shirted ones.)

Step 4 - The Oatmeal. And I don't mean any quick 1-minute stuff, or instant sugary packets with dinosaur eggs that reveal little candy-dinosaur pieces once you add milk. I mean real, normal, "slow" cooked Oats. I added raisins and a dash of cinnamon to mine.

Step 5 - The topping. Oatmeal isn't oatmeal without a sprinkling of brown sugar. Think of this as the shredded cheese of the standard taco. Some heap it on there; some add just a wee bit. This is your Oatmeal Taco, so do it up as you please.

Step 6 - Fold it up and nosh away.

Okay, to be honest, I was a tad skeptical of the O.T. The ladyfriend companion was less on the fence. "I'm going to leave before I blow chunks," she said, choosing the slushy mess of a New England sleet-storm to a warm tortilla filled with luscious oats. And yes, at times we use Wayne's World-era jargon in passing. That's for a later discussion.

Sadly for her, she missed out on a surprisingly robust treat. Each flavor rose to the forefront with each subsequent bite, no one element overpowering the whole. The nutella's foundation added a creaminess and underlying tang of hazelnut. The peanut butter's peanuts gave a much-needed crunch to what would otherwise be a one-note texture of varying mush. And the oatmeal itself holds up incredibly well; you get the oaty taste, you feel the smooth ripples of grain and cooked wheat, but the raisins add a brightness that cuts through the many rich flavors on offer. Halfway through, I bit down and crunched into a small pile of brown sugar that had yet to dissolve into the larger filling. It reminded me of my youth, when I'd pack a spoon full of Domino's dark brethren and drop the clump in my mouth whole, allowing the nugget to dissolve. Back in the present: Nary a speck of crumb was left on the plate.

The Oatmeal Taco is well worth discovering for yourself. The collection of familiar tastes in an unfamiliar surrounding tricks your palette into delighting at something in a new way, even if you've enjoyed these flavors, in this same combination, for years. The Oatmeal Taco is many things: Creamy, crunchy, sweet, even--dare I say--sensuous. You owe it to you and your loved ones to give this a shot.

Speaking of shots: Has anyone seen my epinephrine? I think I might be going into anaphylactic shock...

My Answer to Your Question #1

2010-01-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

The first in a series of answers to questions not yet posed but brewing out there in the ether....

A: Yes, you should add Reese's Pieces to your pancakes. Wait!!--not in the batter, are you foolish? Drop them in on the uncooked side, while the 'cake is starting to cook in the pan. That way, you can determine ratio and distribution to your liking. The end result is a a smattering of brilliant little melty gems of peanut-butteriness, all surrounded by a tiny crisp layer of candy crunch. And now you have something to do with that leftover box of candy from when you saw Avatar, but couldn't eat the whole thing, what with your mouth agape for 3 hours straight.

Enjoy.

The Border Toward Which I Ran

2010-01-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Taco Bell is the cheesecake of fast-food. It tastes damn good... but only in moderation.

One slice of cheesecake is divine. But: Have you ever eaten a whole cake in one sitting? My old roommate knows what I'm talking about.

Similarly, a soft taco with a layer of Fire sauce is a lovely thing.
So, too, is a warm, gooey Meximelt.
I'm also a fan of the new Beefy 5-layer Burrito.

I mean, look at that thing! Seasoned beef, refried beans, sour cream, melted cheese... and then more nacho cheese sauce around a layer of soft tortilla! All for, holy Sam Shepard, less than 90 cents. I don't care what you say or what your food inclinations are... that's a miracle in your mouth.

The problem isn't eating any one of these individually. The problem, sadly, is what happens when you eat these sequentially, in one sitting, with (yep) small dollops of sour cream from your fridge.

Do you hear that, too? My stomach is spouting obscenities at me. Cover your ears, kiddies. Them be bad words my tummy is rumblin'.

And the Casserole Will Save Us...

2009-12-05T09:51:00.000-08:00

A plate of food is a sacred object. The plate is but a vessel; the food, mere sustenance. But bring them together and a holy union ensues: life itself made digestible.

I'm reminded of the Sankara Stones, those glowing orbs needed to defeat Mola Ram, the evil voodoo sorcerer from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Separate, the stones merely look pretty (or burn the skin from your hands while clutching a rope-ladder suspended over a cliff). But bring them together, and they wield unfathomable power. So, too, does the Plate of Food bind disparate elements into one.

In the vast range of Plates available to us in any given meal, there is one that stands above the rest: The Thanksgiving Dinner. Within its oval confines, the plate holding said feast procures an alchemy of the highest order; sliced turkey, mounds of potatoes and gravied stuffing changes into something resembling divine fruits plucked from an elysian field. Simply put, they sure do taste good. Our thanks are many on this day.

This most recent outing was no exception. Let us look closely at one such example, and attempt to understand how simple foodstuffs attain the glory otherwise held for the successful rescuing of stolen journalists, or a surprisingly robust box-office draw.

Behold!

That is a serious plate of food. Notice how the only regions uncovered are the very outskirts of the plate. And between each section, barely a speck of plate below is visible. To begin to see how this plate works so well, let us break down each component.

Clockwise, starting at the top:

-Pink = Yam Apple Casserole
- Green = Sausage Stuffing
- Magenta = Dark Meat (Turkey)
- Yellow = White Meat ( " )
- Blue = Mashed Potatoes
- Red = Spaghetti Squash
- Black = Green Beans
- White = Cauliflower Casserole

The Yams
Originally a recipe from my step-dad's sister-in-law, the origins of this dish make perfect sense: This is many steps beyond your typical "yam" or "apple" dish, and to eat it makes you feel like Steven Seagal in Above the Law, schooled in martial arts and out for revenge... for all those people eating less-tasty sweet potato dishes. How dare they consume burnt marshmallows atop bright orange paste when they could be eating this? Sumptuous, sweet, and with a viscosity approaching "creaminess," the yams are a vital part of this plate. Best to be eaten first, while still hot. Also a nice addition to post-holiday turkey sandwiches in the form of a tangy condiment.

The Stuffing
See those slightly darker chunks amid all that flaky, scrumptious brown? Those, ladies and gents, are the sausage pieces. This stuffing is not stuffed inside the bird, but instead made separately. Any flavor this variant might be missing due to the lack of turkey-osmosis is overcome by the spicy warmth of the sausage. Some traditions remain -- celery still adds a crisp kick, and the stuffing should still be eaten as an ensemble, as it benefits mightily from a forkful of turkey and a dollop of mashed.

The Dark Meat
Oh, how it glistens. That shine is the beacon of taste, the glint off a moonlit pond beckoning us to disrobe, run down to the water's edge, and jump. The higher fat content of the dark meat allows for a richer, more succulent flavor, which makes most eaters' propensity for white meat all the more unsettling. Do not fear the Dark! For it will encompass you in its shadowy mass, and you will feel safe.

The White Meat
Serviceable as a carrier of protein.

The Mashed
Unfortunately, at least in the sample that I scooped, there was an absence of potato skin. Otherwise this was a fine representation of all that a good mashed can do. The mashed potato is a veritable contradiction: girthy and light, dense yet fluffy. It serves here as a palate cleanser, to be spooned between other, more powerfully flavored bites. Also, its malleability affords one to create a reservoir for gravy. Dunk your bite into this saucy well, then eat the container. Truly a rare delight.

The Spaghetti Squash
Here we come to the dark horse categories. Vegetables, like war, are often foul but necessary. The mother-chef has an answer to such untasty claims: Butter and Brown Sugar. Slice that squash in two, drop heaping piles of each additive into the cavity, and let those puppies bake for X minutes at X degrees. The product is closer to candy than either of its appellations. Also to be eaten early, so as to maintain its ideal temperature. Keep away from the gravy.

The Green Beans
As a young child, green beans filled me with a dread known only to those lost at sea on an inflatable raft losing air. I hated the soft texture, the murky color, the too-cute rhyme scheme of their name. Imagine my surprise, then, when our non-related guests (former housecleaners from Poland) brought a dish of the vile sticks and--shock of shocks--they were yum'tastic. I can't pinpoint the exact flavor that took them from abhorrent to worthy of James Beard. Perhaps their pantry of Western European spices holds a secret taste that, while barely detectable, rectifies even the worst foods into something edible. Call it Umami II.

The Cauliflower
This dish, a specialty of my Aunt J. who sadly cannot eat gluten, is the reason I still come home for Thanksgiving. (Or it would be, if I had an especially dysfunctional and unhappy family. Which I do not. But if I did, I would still come home for this dish alone.) Why? Three words: Butter, Cream, Bacon. Sure there's some cauliflower in there, but the eponymous veggie is not the highlight of this ridiculously good casserole. Here, the cauliflower acts like the tuba in a marching band. Without it, the entire group would fall apart, but nobody's watching the tuba in awe of its tuba-ness. And so the Cauliflower Casserole gets the prominent Center Position in my Thanksgiving Day Plate, allowing it to rub up against as many other dishes as possible to maximize its singular flavor, both exotic and familiar.

:::

I hope you understand better the subtle machinations inherent to a plate of food. Did I dish up a perfect plate? No I did not. Nor do I imagine I ever will. But I can keep trying, and heaping, and scooping, and hoping that this one is the one. And if not? Well, I'd love to go back for seconds, thank you.

There's an Apple for that

2009-11-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered about the origin of certain words. 'Cantankerous,' for example. But food words especially arouse the curious feline within. Some are logical: Popcorn, Gumball. But others defy explanation. We've come to accept so many words as normal and obvious when, if made to stop and think about the actual words themselves, they cease to make any sense. This is all well and dandy if we're talking about monolithic search engines or the like: intangible, abstract, invisible at their root, 1s and 0s. When we stuff these nonsensically-named things in our mouths, though, is when I start demanding answers. Or at least a clever story. It's just dawning on me this whole exercise is a very similar concept as those Cheez-It commercials, where the kid explains how they got all that cheese flavor into such a small cracker. Oh well. So, without context nor explanation, I list a few top-'o-the-head edibles that get me wondering...

Lollipop
Marshmallow
Tofu
Cottage (?) Cheese
Barbeque Sauce (okay, it's used on meats grilled over a barbeque... but what the heck-fire is barbeque supposed to mean?)
Toast
Orange Juice (kidding)
Milk
Bagel (I know why it's called a "donut" but the unfried version evades me)
Seasoning (add a touch of fall here, some summer there...)

Um... Meatloaf? No, that makes sense. Cupcake? No, that makes sense, too. Okay, this is harder than I thought. And I realize a lot of the other strange food words (brenois, bouillabaise, burrito, etc.) are loanwords from other languages, or brand-names devised by white-collar types paid to think like ten-year-olds (Twinkee, Snickers, Miracle Whip). So... fine. You win. I detract my argument. You win. Happy? Excuse me while I gorge myself on toast (I get it now) with peanut butter (easy) and jam (yep).

Lobsters hurt. And so do I.

2009-11-02T11:28:00.000-08:00

Forget, won't you, the questionable grammar of that title. My point is this: After having re-read David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster" for the class I teach, I'm reminded of the extraordinary loss we* experienced last fall when the aforementioned author took his own life. He was 46 years old.

A. J. Liebling, another thinker/humorist/journalist, albeit one with a seemingly happier life than DFW, wrote a vast quantity of his most-beloved books after age 46, included The Sweet Science, The Earl of Louisiana, and Between Meals.

John Updike, prolific and revered, wrote nearly half his oeuvre after his fiftieth birthday: the latter two Rabbit books, eight short-story collections, four books of poetry, both Eastwick novels, seven other novels, and eight collected works of essays and nonfiction.

Joan Didion, still with us, published her vaunted collection The White Album in her forty-fifth year. Two novels and six nonfiction tomes came after, including After Henry, Salvador, and The Year of Magical Thinking.

The exercise could continue. But imagine: All this, erased, never put down on the page. Others would have filled those lines, somehow. I can't believe they would have matched the energy and vigor with which these writers continued to document their surroundings. Maybe this is a fruitless thought-drama: "Take away Shakespeare, and.... go!" Maybe I'm holding up DFW to unfairly high standards, to peers in higher echelons. I don't think so. But it makes me slightly ill to predict what the guy might have conjured up as his acerbic and athletic mind grew sharper with age. And that's what hurts the most: We have no idea what these conjurings might have been. We will never know.

----
*"we" = readers, eaters, state-fair attendees, cruise-ship travelers, tennis players, mathematicians, Lynch devotees, Adult movie watchers, jesters, interviewers, hideous men, Illinoisians, Pomona grads-to-be, those with reactive sweat glands, unpretentious polyglots, bandana-aficionados, i.e., literate and up-right human beings.

The Cheese is Mightier than the Pen?

2009-09-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

So I'm at Panera Bread in beautiful, closed-minded Quincy, MA. In front of me: the remnants of a toasted Dutch Apple Raisin bagel, with a smidgen of butter and a layer of strawberry jam. Also: A tall mug of coffee that is 2 parts Dark Roast, 2 parts Hazelnut, and 1 part Decaf. Normally I'd wax digestive on the crunchy, brown sugar topping, or the moist succulence of the embedded raisins. But this is not what interests me today. There is a sign on the wall directly across from my table, about 6" x 8", and this is what it says:

"Asiago Speaks
Louder Than Words."

It's an advertisement for their Sourdough bread with chunks of asiago cheese baked right in. And yes, I agree, this is a tasty combo. Many a high school lunch was dominated by the cheesy girth of an Asiago bagel, which I then pronounced ah-ZAH-gee-oh before a cashier took pity on me and called out the order for me properly. Because of this abundance of bagel, and the requisite chewing, my jaw now cracks and clicks anytime I chew, with the decibal output ranging from a Whisper in a Quiet Library (30 dB) to a Telephone Dial-tone (80 db) to, if the submerged morsel is particularly tough, Sandblasting or a Loud Rock Concert (115 dB). This becomes worrisome when you learn that the level of volume at which sustained exposure may result in hearing loss is a paltry 90-95 dB. This same list explains that "Pain begins" at 125 dB, the same volume as hearing a Pneumatic riveter at a distance of four feet away.

Does it get this bad? When I chew, has pain ever begun? For the answer to this, I point you thusly: Ask my ladyfriend companion.

[LfC response forthcoming]

ANYway... I take slight umbrage (if umbrage may be slight) with this sign, stating the alleged power of this pungent, hard to pronounce cheese.

Louder than words, you say? Scoffing, I stuff the last of the Dutch Apple Raisin in my mouth and spout, "Nothing is louder than words! Words bear witness to the truth of history! Words have crumbled empires! Words have stricken down the influence of false gods, stripped Kings of their bejeweled crowns, stripped women of their underthings, confused readers of congressional bills! Words are power! Asiago? Asiago is but a puddle of old milk left to rot. Nothing is louder than words."

Nothing, that is, except my chewing jaw.

Why drink Hot Cocoa...

2009-07-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

.... when you can enjoy a delicious, steaming hot cup of Chicken Broth!

So I'm checking out the soup aisle for some casserole ingredients. Lo and behold, a bevy of stock and broth options lay before me. I pick one up. Swanson. No MSG, check. 99% fat free, check. Then I read this:

"Use in your favorite recipes or serve as a piping hot beverage." (italics mine)

People drink this stuff straight? On a cold wintry night, people actually shove aside the Nestle's or the Swiss Miss and grab that carton of Swanson's Chicken Broth to quench their chilled thirst? And enough of them do so to necessitate printing the idea on its very package?

I can't believe this is true. But, let's face it, perhaps nobody else out there cares too much about this strange, atypical recipe. So. Here's the deal. If I get over ten comments to this post, I will call Swanson's Question/Comment Line (1-800-44-BROTH) and ask them about this very issue. Together, we can stop the proliferation of disgusting drink ideas everywhere.

"You'll sip. You'll chew." You'll... what?

2009-06-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

I like free things. Whether it's a platter of sample mini-cheesecakes on the counter of the nearby grocery's Bakery section, or a cardboard box on the curb filled with paperbacks and old utensils, or a dog that just happens to follow you home (even though you did pick it up through that one suspect neighborhood--I'm looking at you, KZ), free things are the one vestige of socialism to squeak through this very Capitalistic system, and I, for one, am happy they exist. That being said, not every thing given, or taken, for free is worth it.

"But what do you mean, 'worth it'? Isn't that the whole point of free stuff? You pay nothing, so whatever you get is a bonus! Frosting on the cake, so to speak."

I appreciate the food-metaphor, disembodied quote, but I beg to differ. Did you pay for your Syphillis?

"Erm.... good point."

That's right. Not everything given for free is desired. Which brings me to the topic of this meandering post.... Fruit 2Day.

Fruit 2Day is a new product by a company calling themselves Hero. An unassuming lady was giving away samples on the street, a small cardboard container holding two 6.75 ounce bottles. I nabbed one as I passed. Who wouldn't? They were free. They looked tasty, even. The cardboard packaging promised "Real Fruit bits. Juicy Bliss." This phrase was trademarked, by the way, so all prospective burlesque dancers itching to go by the stage name Juicy Bliss, be forewarned. The top of the package promised yet more: "A juicy snack with real fruit bits. Imagine." This, too, was trademarked. Okay, by now I know this thing better have fruit bits in it, they better be real, and it all better be pretty freaking juicy.

When I arrive home, I release one of the bottles from its cardboard noose. On the back, there's something of an instruction: "Snack on real fruit bits in a splash of natural juice." And then, an ominous addendum: "You'll see."
First of all--I'm frightened at this point. Is that a threat? A warning? Are these samples like give-away bottles of some illicit fruit-flavored pleasure drug, destined to suck all curious pedestrians into a hopeless state of addiction to their juicy, fruity bits?
And second of all--How many slogans can one product have?
Below the UPC code, another one: "So many fruits. So good." Okay! I get it. You like to spin pithy remarks about fruit. The good news: 'So many fruits / So good' has not yet been trademarked. Use and abuse, fair readers.

I begin to open the bottle, but hesitate. The package promises a deluge of fruit chunk projectiles, as if popping the top was akin to saying, "Ready.... aim..... " I do not wish to be punished by a rush of airborne cherry halves.

But I open, lift off the aluminum foil seal, peer inside. Looks like juice. I sip. And then, by god... I chew.

Real fruit bits! They weren't joking. And by that I mean: None of this is funny whatsoever. Picture it. You open the bottle. You lift it to your mouth. You allow the sudden rush of what they are calling "Cherry Grape" flavored liquid to pass through your lips. And it tastes like Cherries, and Grapes, and this is all fine and good. But then: Little pieces of something flow in with the juice. You drink and swallow but also bite down. You are grinding what should be liquid into a mash with your molars. In my Books of Rules, anything coming out of a bottle should have no need for mastication. And yet, with Fruit2Day, oh yes, you will masticate.

So I go to the Ingredients list. What, exactly, am I chewing on? The picture shows chunks of cherries and grapes, along with that sploosh of red-colored juice. The name of this specific flavor is "Cherry Grape." With this in mind, I begin reading off the list of ingredients:

"Apple juice from concentrate and puree...
Banana puree
Pear pieces..."

It is at this point that I say: What the 'eff are you playing at, Hero? But I go on.

"...Red grape juice from concentrate
Cherry puree
Acerola cherry juice from concentrate
Natural flavor."

So we have cherries, and we have grapes. But the only pieces of anything in that bottle, adorned so brightly with luscious red cherries and deep purple bunches of grapes, are tiny little soaked bits of pear. By the time they reach your mouth, hey, they feel and taste like 'cherry grape,' alright. Today's 'Natural Flavor' technology has come a long way, baby. But it's the misdirection that irks me. This is not the first or worst case of Blatant Food Packaging Lies, of course, only the most recent. So go and grab that free sample of Fruit2Day, if you must. Truth be told, it's pretty yummy, if you can get by the texture that feels something like eating your own bottled vomit.

Good luck to you, Hero. May all your fruit chunk dreams come true.

It's Alive!!... and high in antioxidants

2009-06-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

The debate between vegetarians and those that choose to enjoy life's varied pleasures is one I remain neutral on. Both sides have their strong points: a juicy burger smothered in cheese, topped with a fried egg, and set between a toasted bun is one of the purest joys of summertime backyard gastronomy; meanwhile, green beans are not, as previously hypothesized, poisoned food-darts. So I understand how each community feels loyal to their cause. But I've just come across a new product at the local supermarket which might just put a dent into Anti-Meat arguments across the globe...

Many friends have told me, "I can't eat something if I know it was alive." They are referring, one assumes, to steak (cows) or bacon (pigs) or buffalo wings (chicken) or hot dogs (D: All of the Above) or Taco Bell (E: origin remains unclear). Several well-known authors have opined on the subject. David Foster Wallace, in the title essay of his 2005 collection Consider the Lobster, asks the rational question, "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?" while reporting on the Maine Lobster Festival. (Answer: It's complicated.) The good news is that the high-pitched whine coming from the emerged crustacean is not a shrill death cry, as popular myth asserts; lobsters talk through an exchange of urine suffused with pheromones, not any sort of vocal box, which is both comforting and unsettling, while also giving one possible explanation for why my roommate always pees with the door open. The bad news is that lobster is way overrated, tasting like molded erasure rubbings dunked in butter. But Legal Seafood's Lobster Bisque is delicious. As you can see, the debate is a fierce and complex affair.

In an article for Real Simple, author Jonathan Safran Foer gives his thoughts on his on-again/off-again vegetarianism: "[I]f a fish, a chicken, or a cow has a consciousness that in any way resembles George's [his dog]...to so much as harm it, much less kill it for food, would be the ultimate act of barbarism." And yet he eats fish on days he craves something other than soybeans, and he cooks lampchops for George. Again, there seems to be no definitive answer other than this: Meat tastes good.

Perhaps French philosophy can aid our quest for understanding? Roland Barthes, in his piece "Steak and Chips" from the collection Mythologies, muses on the titular beef: "One can well imagine the ambrosia of the Ancients as this kind of heavy substance which dwindles under one's teeth in such a way as to make one keenly aware at the same time of its original strength and of its aptitude to flow into the very blood of man." Roland. You're not helping.

So when I discovered this particular item in the supermarket aisle, I thought: Here is evidence to combat those who would paint my burger-holding hands red. Next to bags of iceberg and coleslaw, I found a collection of strange, plastic-encased bunches of lettuce. I drew nearer. The label proclaimed: LIVING Lettuce. I picked up one of the orbs, looking very much like a 50's-style astronaut helmet, or the protagonist's in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Underneath the crisp leaves was a close bundle of roots, still attached to the leafy greens. The back of the package explains: "Tanimura & Antle Living Lettuce is hydroponically grown using regenerative farming practices helping to protect & sustain our environment."
Which sounds great, but merely obfuscates the truth. They package and sell lettuce... that is alive! Instructions on the inside label even suggest prolonging the poor vegetable's suffering: "Use only what you need for each serving, keeping the roots intact." Suddenly it all comes clear. Vegetarians have reacted so strongly against our carnivorous ways not out of animal pity, but out of fearful self-delusion. For every 1/15th of a cow we burger-eaters have killed, our herbivorous brethren have murdered entire villages of corn just for a Southwestern Salad.

As I ponder this new reality, waves of revelation sweep over me: Why are they called heads of lettuce? What exactly is the origin behind Artichoke hearts? Sweet merciful gravy. All this time I've felt bad about those factories filled with cage-enclosed hens pumping out my omelettes. Now, I've stumbled upon what might be a 21st century Shroud of Turin. Finally, evidence of vegetable's capacity for feeling. Here is Lettuce and it is Living. And so brazenly marketed as such, right on the package! Then I noticed the price tag: A very reasonable $2.89. Suffice to say, my ladyfriend companion and I enjoyed this lettuce's last days alongside a nice tomato-and-mozzarella stuffed gnocchi and thick-sliced garlic bread.

Poor Man's Paella

2009-05-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

The trusty Food Lover's Companion defines paella as, "A Spanish dish of saffron-flavored rice combined with a variety of meats and shellfish (such as shrimp, lobster, clams, chicken, pork, ham and chorizo), garlic, onions, peas, artichoke hearts, and tomatoes." Truly, a robust and flavorful meal.

But what if you don't have all that stuff? What if, like me, you are poor? And yet, if you're anything like me (who are you, anyway? And why are we so damned similar? You worry me with your imitative ways. First it's the facial hair. Then it's the t-shirt. Before I know it you'll be sleeping with my ladyfriend companion under this guise, and, as Chris Elliot's character in Groundhog Day once said, "Nobody touches the horn but me, pal, okay?" ) then you'll love food too much to deny yourself its simple pleasures. So. I give you an alternative version, suitable for our economic times.

Poor Man's Paella

1 cup leftover brown rice, Carolina brand
1 Tbs tap water
1/4 cup of powdery remnants from almost-empty bag of shredded mild cheddar cheese
A few spritzes Frank's Red Hot

-Take Glad container of rice out of fridge. Bring to room temperature.
-Add water to container. Stir lightly with finger.
-Heat container in microwave on HIGH for 45 seconds.
-Remember something bad someone told you once about microwaving plastic.
-Wonder if Gladware products are, in fact, plastic.
-Wonder if you should transfer rice to microwave-safe plate.
-Worry for the health and safety of your future children.
-Hear "ding."
-Remove container from microwave. Empty rice onto small plate.
-Pour cheese over rice. The residual heat will begin to melt the tiny cheddar bits, but not so much that they completely melt, creating a texture not unlike poorly-stirred Kraft Mac 'n Cheese.
-Run fork through mixture 6 or 7 times, enough to distribute cheese while leaving a few mounds of powder on top. This will make for a variety of flavor bursts throughout, both subtle and intense.
-Spritz mixture with Red Hot, to taste.

Enjoy while sitting on the floor, standing and flipping through last week's Sunday paper, or in front of your laptop while watching reruns of The Dana Carvey Show on Hulu since your TV hasn't worked since the all-digital upgrade began in February.

Tomato: Nature's Kidney

2009-05-01T11:25:00.001-07:00

Tomatoes have many commendable traits: a pleasing red color, the flexibility of preparation (it's a sauce! it's a salsa! it's a salad! etc.), that darn Lycopene you keep hearing about, their aptness as projectile... the list goes on. Instead of telling you things you already know, we here at Edible Wrecks wish to broaden your horizons. Our goal is to show you the world of food from a new perspective. To inform you of the extraordinary, near-limitless potential of our most common crops and pre-packaged snacks. The tomato, you see, has a secret. Once the scientific world gets wind of this, we might have a firestorm of R&D on our hands, trying to harness this remarkable, and, until now, unheralded ability. Let's just hope it is used for the power of Good. Lord knows there are hundreds of grown-up pranksters--the little brother who stuck your finger in warm water overnight, the sword-fighting cousins, the Aunt with the lackadaisical bladder--who would use such knowledge for their nefarious schemes. So please, guard this information. Share it wisely. And know that tomatoes are not just a nutritious fruit (vegetable?) rich in antioxidants. They are, it seems, something else entirely......

Like kidneys, a tomato will, over time, collect and distribute a large quantity of urine.

"How do they do this?" you ask. "What sort of remarkable auto-urethra makes this possible in an organism with no known digestive system?" So far, it's a mystery. But the fact remains: A slice of tomato, given time to sit out on a kitchen table, will, as if by some reverse photosynthesis, produce and collect a sizable volume of what looks exactly like piss.

I give credit to my roommate for the discovery, and I thank him for allowing the speciman to remain, untouched, until the phenomenon was properly documented.

Look into the future! And imagine the possibilities...

To Steve Almond: A Rebuttal

2009-04-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

About five or so years ago, Mr. Almond wrote a book called Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. It was well-received, and the man became known as chief arbiter of taste for all things nougat-filled, caramel-injected, or sugar-coated. And with good reason: He begins the tome with the admission, both enviable and worrisome, that "[t]he author has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his entire life." Almond knows his material. And the story itself, part-memoir, part-literary journalism, is great fun: If you've ever desired intimate knowledge of someone else's oral cavity (and who hasn't?), you will find it here.

The narrative hinges on the author's investigation into the increasing amount of small candy factories being shut down by that other Big Three--Nestles, Hersheys, and Mars. The book is a tribute to these providers not only of flavor but of regional identity. Without their Twin Bing, older Idahoans will have lost a pathway to their youth, with nothing but the same five chocolate bars, from Seattle to South Beach, as available succor. Without the GooGoo Cluster, southerners would have to bond over something messier, like barbeque or a shared embarrassment over their glacial-thaw realization that slavery was a bad idea. Candy, Almond points out, is not merely for hyperactive children. It delivers solace. It brings companies billions. Whether personal or multi-corporational, it is a force, and as such deserves to be talked about.

There is one section that I do take umbrage with, and it is the subject of my titular rebuttal. (Which is also a good name for a Pam Anderson biopic.) On page 25 of the paperback copy, for three and a half pages, Almond lists and denounces those candies he does not see fit to eat; moreover, he eviscerates them, writing, "when I disapprove of a candy, the sentiment often veers into wrath." He titles this section Mistakes Were Made. Yes, Mr. Almond. Yes they were.

*Twizzlers
He begins with an inquiry into the red licorice straws' popularity, describing its texture as "fall[ing] somewhere between chitin and rain poncho." Chitin, by the way, is the hard, glossy material that makes up the exoskeleton of certain insects. I admire the description: tangible, surprising. And honestly, I can see what he means. Just because it may feel like I'm gnawing on an ant's molted torso doesn't mean that Twizzlers aren't completely satisfying. Embrace that plasticity; Derive pleasure from the slow release of artificial strawberry flavor from the chewed upon rippled stalks. I believe Almond's error was one of mastication strategy. In order to unleash the Twizzler's full potential, you must keep the single straw whole for as long as possible. Place one bite's worth of Twizzler in your mouth, but do not sever! Nibble the edges. Employ some light suction. As the bite lingers, it will dissolve, ever so slowly, transmogrifying from that tough, bendy rope into something else altogether, with a nuanced, developing flavor and, dare I say, subtle hints of ambrosia.

*White Chocolate
Almond describes a cross-country flight where, after scarfing down a white-chocolate lollipop, he threw up profusely. Vomiting, he writes, struck him as a proper response to this product which, truthfully, is not even chocolate, having not an ounce of cocoa. He makes a valid point. White Chocolate should not, in fact, be called 'White Chocolate.' It should be named something more representative. May I suggest a few ideas: Tongue Beauty Cream; Heavensent Yummy Yum; Milky Superness; Deliciousosity; The Edible Incarnation of Kathy Ireland, circa 1994.

*Marshmallow Peeps
(Otherwise known as, the greatest recombinant of sugar and sugar since that one fateful night with the Sugar twins of Beverly Heights.)
Our author dismisses Peeps for "encourag[ing] the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring." He notes the "piss yellow" color of the original. But look beyond the weird carnivoristic subtext. Grab a box of the brand new Green Peeps if you must. They come in rows of five, each baby chick attached at the malformed hip. Take the end one. Bite off the side-wing first. Relish the extra sugar, as the middle three will not be privy to such things. Then take out the head; no need for those beady food coloring eyes to stare longer than necessary. Consider this an act of mercy. Finish off the torso in two small bites or one, depending. It is the marshmallow you can eat whole while remaining socially accepted. Since bags of Jet-Puffed mallows became ubiquitous, you've yearned to eat them unadorned with melty chocolate or crumbled graham. The Peep is your permission slip, your gateway to anaphalactic bliss.
Whole or in bites; Fresh or stale: Truly, a Peep's house has many mansions. When microwaved, they bloom up to four times their size. Its granulated membrane barely contains the ooey goodness within, now warm and deflating, the very act itself mirroring our own growth and subsequent decay. Leave them out and their skin hardens. These are no Twinkee anomalies, immortal and ever-lasting. Peeps do expire with time. But be patient, for next spring those pliant chicks will rise again, fresh and puffy and new, waiting to abscond with our past candy-eating sins.

I hope I've made clear my position on Mr. Almond's rash judgments. He also disavows coconut and Lime LifeSavers, among others, but those will have to wait. I just opened a package from home filled with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Vanilla Cream Chocolate Eggs, and, of course, Marshmallow Peeps. We're about to get down with some serious self-consecration...

Chyawanprash

2009-03-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Chyawanprash is a type of Indian supplement made from fruit and herbs. The concoction most closely resembles a very thick jam, if that jam was made not from strawberries or apricots but instead the thick clots of muck and twigs found in your gutters every spring.

I found the bottle in a nearby Indian market. Their shelves overflow with delicious-looking sauces and huge burlap sacks of Jasmine rice. For some reason I was drawn to this strange, humble container.

Okay: maybe not humble. View the full-size image and you'll read its intoxicatingly persuasive slogan, "Strength from Within." How could one not buy this for $3.49, especially when one needs quarters for the laundromat? One needn't worry. In fact, one was told by the waif-ish Indian girl who works there that its consistency was like Nutella. One should have paid more attention to her immediate addendum.

"But no," she said, waving her hands, as if waiting for me to throw the rope in the water, "it does not taste anything like that!"

I plunked it down on the counter, next to my frozen onion-flavored parathas. When I got home I read the instructions, not realizing I was reading instructions for what I thought was a spicy jam that boosted my immune system.

'Take with hot water, milk, or juice. May also be taken as Bread spread or Jam.'

Take? Why 'take'? As I soon learned, you do not merely take something made with 43 natural ingredients using a 2000 year-old recipe. It takes you.

That next morning, I spread half of my toast (I was being cautious) with a thin layer of Chyawanprash. Known for its antioxidant properties, this alternative to my morning spread of raspberry would surely make me leaner, healthier, happier, an altogether stronger person. From within. Other studies show I'm not alone in wanting to improve through a daily regimen of the stuff. I would learn later, after the toast, far too late to derail the effects, that Chyawanprash has been proven to prevent steroid-induced cataract in the developing chick embryo. None of this can be good.

While I still can.... before it's too late.... you must know the cause of this, whatever is happening to me..... here are the ingredients, the nutrient-rich list of herbs and fruit that is causing me to grow strong, oh so strong, until I can no longer bear my own strength and break from my skin like a tumescent cob of corn from its own inferior husk.... please help......

1. Fresh Indian gooseberry fruit, 2. Sugar, 3. Honey, 4. Clarified butter, 5. Long pepper, 6. Sesame oil, 7. Giant potato, 8. Cardamom, 9. Bamboo manna, 10. Indian kudzu, 11. Winter cherry, 12. Asparagus, 13. Cinnamon Bark, Dashmool (14. Bengal quince, 15. Migraine bark, 16. Indian trumpet flower, 17. Indian Purple Trumpet, 18. Sal leaf, 19. Urara pitch, 20. Indian nightshade, 21. Small nightshade, 22. Small caltrops, 23. Cashmere bark), 24. Country mallow, 25. Wild green gram, 26. Wild black gram, 27. Galls, 28. Feather-foll plant, 29. Raisins, 30. Ceylon-cow plant, 31. Irish root, 32. Chebulic myrobalan, 33. Round zedoary, 34. Nut grass, 35. Spreading Hogweed, 36. Blue water lily, 37. Malabar nut, 38. Liquorice [sic], 39. Ice plant, 40. Sandalwood, 41. Clove, 42. Chinese cinnamon, 43. Indian Rose Chestnut

And so I bit into that side of toast, the one with the gleaming black layer underneath the earthy nut-brown of Teddy's SuperChunk. The familiar buttery, peanutty taste soon fell away, as did I, into a swirling mass of pepper and anchovy and ketchup and sand and baby vomit and Coca-Cola and rhubarb and burnt hair and passing diesel trucks and baker's chocolate and carrots cooked far too long and dentist's fluoride and blood and the taste in your mouth when you realize you'll never be 12-years-old again...

Goodbye.

The Next Great Discovery

2009-02-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

Breaking up is hard to do. That's why this is one of the more difficult decisions I've made in my brief time as an upright, masticating lad. It's been great, even lovely at times. But as we've seen so recently in the political world, sometimes change is okay. Sometimes it's just what we need to shake ourselves out of that glossy-eyed, routine-induced languor we find ourselves after 1, 5, 10 years of the same thing, time and again, making the safe choice because we no longer wish to feel anything like uncertainty. Certainty feels good. Risk begets fear. Fear begets discomfort. Discomfort begets gurgling stomachs and dry throats. So, I implore you, take a sip of water and listen to what I have to say. It might sound scary at first. But so did space exploration. So did transcontinental railways. So did mixing mayonaise and dijon mustard. Do you want to live in a world void of Dijonaise--a world where future Dijonaise-like discoveries will never be uncovered, never brought into the warming light of a people's awareness, just so you can stay on that straight and narrow? Broaden your minds with me. Expand. Be the changing tastebuds you want to eat with in the world.

Put away the maple syrup. Next time you have a waffle, top it with a poached egg. Break into that yolk. And let the yellow nectar flow into each nook and cranny, every doughy well in which your syrup used to pool. Bye-bye, Aunt Jemima. Hello, Grade A Jumbo Brown.

To all sayers of nay, bear with me. Allow the thought to sink, much like the oozing yolk will run down into the waffle's core. Whether Belgian or Eggo, it will maintain its structural fortitude while gaining that barely detectable tang of unbirthed chick. In more adventurous circles than the standard Brunch circuit, delicacies are often those foods that are most like their natural state--the raw oyster, the fish eggs, the duck fat. In France, one such dish is the Ortolan. A small bird that migrates from Sweden to North Africa, they are caught in nets and forced into a dark box filled with seed. They eat until gorged. Then they are drowned in Armagnac, a type of brandy. (This act of cruelty is one reason why they are banned from being served in restaurants. They continue to be eaten in shadowy dining rooms across France. One practictioner submits that being suffocated in liquor is a better way to go than boiling alive in scalding water, a la Lobsters, which is a good point. If you eat meat, you've already signed off on condoning unseen cruelties, so let's not split hairs, hmm?) After being plucked, their overflowing bodies are spritzed with salt and pepper, cooked for eight minutes, and served immediately. You place the entire bird (about the size of a young girl's fist) in your mouth, all except the head and beak, which sticks out of your mouth like a boasting youth's tongue. But your tablemates don't see this; to eat the Ortolan, you first place a large napkin over your head, much like a veil, to capture the aroma and hide the mess. Purists are said to take 15 minutes to finish. And no wonder: Skin, breast, thigh, organs, bones.... that's a large swallow to bite.

I fear I've gone off track. My point: birds taste good. Why else would chicken be the most popular meat in hometown kitchens across the nation? Why else do we eat turkey to celebrate our annual remembrance of colonialism with a (geno)cide of cranberry sauce? Why else did TV-watchers of the 70s eat up The Partridge Family? I could go on.

Instead, I will say one last time: Add an egg to that waffle. If you need to lay some syrupy goodness down on those parts left un-yolked, okay. If you wish to soft-boil in lieu of poaching, hey, be my guest. But be bold. Veer off your one-lane highway of Log Cabin. And exit into the small-town of Hen Baby, pop. 1, welcoming you to a new and delicious future together.

Carrots We Can Believe In

2009-02-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

My roommate recently made some grilled vegetables. Much to our surprise, they took on a familiar and empowering shape....

Best. Meal. Ever.

2009-02-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

Superlatives are a slippery fish. They should be easy to catch, right? Best film, best book, best birthday... But once asked, their outsides congeal like day-old bacon drippings, and we fumble with them to grab onto something firm, something right. "Erm, uhhh.... Spaceballs? No, that can't be... Goonies? Close, but not quite... Dr. Strangelove? Wait, too dark... " What seems like the easist question to answer becomes, in its very answering, an inevitable impossibility.

Food is even less concrete than other arts. (Unless the Ladyfriend Companion has her way with a burger. She likes them cooked all the way through, the better to throw at my head when I tell her to stop complaining about her chipped tooth. [That could be taken the wrong way. The meat's really tough and overcooked, I mean. {Hm, I guess that could be misconstrued also. Let us forge on.}])

Meal preference changes. My best meal as a kid? Homemade Enchiritos. It had all the fixin's of a Taco Bell burrito, cooked lovingly in our decades-old microwave. (My hypothesis: The higher radiation levels of early Micros gave the cheese a meltier, gooey goodness unable to accomplish now.) A soft flour tortilla, spread thick with refried beans, topped in seasoned ground beef, shredded cheddar cheese, Old El Paso taco sauce, then folded over and topped with more sauce and more cheese. Stick a toothpick in it and zuke that baby until all cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly. Let cool for 10 seconds, take a bite, burn the top of your mouth, let the boiling hot cheesy bite drop out of your mouth onto the plate, damn yourself for doing that again, wait another 2 minutes, and enjoy.

At 11, nothing's so good as cheese and meat and sauce. A decade and a half later, tastes expand. So the question of a Best Meal Ever necessitates many an asterisk and footnote and ever-increasing list of asides. Nostalgia accrues many points, swaying even the most hardened foodie away from the perfectly cooked monkfish and back to that pot of perfect chili eaten before the big game. A satisfying answer demands a massive system of specification, like animals and their many classes (family, genus, etc.) Is it a vertebrate? Mammal? Egg-laying multi-cell organism that breathes only bog water? I've gotten off track. Suffice to say, it's a hard question to answer. But one important enough to belabor the process.

For now, though, I have no doubt in my mind. My best meal took place in the spring of 2005, at the gone-but-not-forgotten Restaurant Bandol, in Portland, Maine. A full transcription of the experience would take many words, too many, and for me to say such a thing is remarkable. If a picture's worth 1000 words, a duck leg is worth, oh, 12,000. So I'll let the menu tell the story for me. Thanks, Erik and Jess.

-American Spoonbill Caviar with Creme Fraiche
-Caspian Osetra Hard Cooked Egg
-Winterpoint Oyster with 100-year-old Sherry Vinegar
-Italian Black Pearl Caviar with Coddled Egg
-Glazed Carrot Soup with Stewed Apricots
-Crispy Duck Tongue, sauce Graliche, Frisee Salad
-Maine Diner Scallop, Black Perigod Truffle, Creamy Leeks
-Crispy Calf's Brain, Capers and Cabbage in a Brown Butter Vinagrette
-Duck Tartare, Swiss Chard Wrapped Breast, and White Bean Cassoulet
-"Roquefort Papillon" with housemade Brownbread and Wildflower Honey
-Sorbet
-Creme Brulee
-Valrhona Chocolate Mousse Mille-Feuille with Creme Anglaise

Accompanying this was six small glasses of wine. I finished off with a coffee and housemade madelaines. Total Time: 4+ Hours. End result: Giddy euphoria, but that's not quite right. You've heard of Food Coma? This was Flatliners, prix-fixe style. They took me under and brought me back. I was changed that night. Into what--that is what we still don't know.

If you care to nibble on some of the tastes above, your best bet is Evangeline, Erik Desjarlais' newest foray in downtown Portand, ME. You might not get the Tartare or the Tongue, but by god, try the Crispy Calf's Brain. Best. Bite. Ever.

Two words, One unstoppable force: Pancake Puffs.

2009-01-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

Watch this video, and see the future of gastronomy.

Highlights to watch for:
- The post-infusion ooze of an unnamed chocolate cream
- "No more pizza deliveries!"
- ILM-produced special effects to convey the even distribution of heat. My sources tell me this "red glow" effect was originally used for the Terminator's cybernetic eyes.
- The fairy dust sparkle sound when the pan's nonstick surface is wiped clean.

Buy one today! It's Pan-freaking-tastic.

"And on your right, an Olfactory..."

2009-01-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

After a very patriotic day of consumerism, I walked back to the T station near Kendall/MIT. Then, it hit me: The unmistakable smell of Corn Muffin. I looked around. Was a homeless man holding out not the usual coffee mug or outstretched palm, but a crumby, warm, just-baked corn muffin slathered in honey? Had I snuck one into my pants, to eat later as a mid-day snack, and now my pockets were full of yellow bits? Were the very Green residents of Cambridge now using cornmeal as their alterna-fuel du jour? But no. I looked up, and saw this:

Billowing clouds poured from this building's smoke-stacks, giving the surrounding atmosphere an inescapable scent of Corn Muffin. Thank you, Industrial Revolution. If Marlboro could invent a tobacco with such euphoric fumes, I'd inhale a pack a day.

What Goes In...

2008-12-16T11:22:00.001-08:00

I just stumbled upon a new type of degree, one that is, I suspect, even less practical than a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

The world's first Master in Fine Food and Beverage.

Hey, I'm all for expanding the palettes of the mainstream beyond high fructose corn syrup and cheezburgers. I think Top Chef is excellent television. The fondest eating experience I've had in my post-SpaghettiO days involved crispy calf brains and a Meyer Lemon souffle. (R.I.P. Portland, Maine's Bandol) And the idea of higher education finally supporting and preparing those interested in the pursuit of gastronomic greatness fills me with something not unlike the cream-filling in my step-mom's homemade cannolis: rich, sweet, and studded with chocolate chips. In short, happiness personified. So what's the problem?

Below, their online banner ad:

This is the first image of an animated GIF file. Unfortunately the rest of the images do not cycle through after uploading the picture. Here is the text that appears in the white space above:

"Come and see" ... "how tasty" ... "A Master in Management can be."

Then: "The world's first Master in Fine Food & Beverage"

The program is run through an Italian business school called SDA Bocconi. It begins in 2009, and runs for 12 months. Sorry, latecomers--The deadline for applying was June 30th, 2008. You'll have to wait until next year to learn how to prepare, cook and sell the very finest coils of moist poop.

I Recommend: Brown Bread. Plus, a dialogue.

2008-12-14T12:58:00.000-08:00

The name says it all. This is Bread, it says. Also, it is Brown. Now eat me.
"But why?" you might say. "You are but brown bread. I know few breads which are any other color."
What of white bread?
"The most elusively named of all the breads. Look closely: That is a light, light brown."
And marble rye?
"Merely different shades of the same hue. Brown and brown."
Pumperknickel?
"A quite dark brown, but brown nonetheless."
Sourdough?
"Please. That is no bread. That is an antacid pill given form. Press it to your skin, and in time you will develop a slight burning sensation. Is it the high yeast content? The flaky texture? No matter: As the nipple chafes under constant shirt-rubbing duress, so, too, does the stomach yield to the Sourdough."
What are you talking about?
"I am trying to talk about Brown Bread."
Well, go on then.
---
It's cooked in a can. Take that old soup can of yours, fill it with flour and molasses and other ingredients (this is no recipe, but an appreciation), and throw it in the oven. Soon you will have what is known as Brown Bread, and though it is assuredly the former, I'm not sure you can call it the latter in good faith. But you can believe me when I say: It is a tasty diversion. And shaped like a cylinder, no less.

Now slice that silo-shaped brick. Thin, thick, however you choose; I prefer a medium slice, about one-half inch wide. Toast it. Not too dark, but you'll want a slight crispness to the surface. Once it's warm and toasty, spread your chosen condiment atop the dense surface. Two favorites:
-cream cheese with green onion and chives
-a thin layer of cinnamon butter, a thick layer of chunky natural peanut butter
Take small bites and chew slowly. The air is cold; the longer you consume, the more blood will circulate in and around your stomach, allowing the skin around that most sedentary of torso locations to warm up, heating your body from the Belly Button outward in concentric circles. Now, look closely: Those are the indentations from that molded aluminum can, the same shapes surrounding the outer surface of your Brown Bread, the ever-rippling water after the first cast stone...

Also available with raisins!

In the Pie of the Beholder, or: Giving Thanks.

2008-11-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

A pie is a unique thing. Some might say "important," even. It brings together disparate* elements into one cohesive form. What sets pie apart from other concepts with this many-into-one trait (cake, sangria, the U.N.) is that each element remains distinct. It reminds me of some Catholic mass prayer not-yet-uttered: "Lo, thou hath given us the crust, and we bid you great tidings; and here, thy filling remains, invigorated with the shine of our unholy decadence, for which we regret and are forgiven through the use of fresh whipped cream." And so we have the crust and the filling, or topping, or sometimes both. But where a Carrot Cake takes its spongy body and cream cheese frosting and carrot shavings and becomes one, the Pie is and always will be many.

---

At Thanksgiving this year, our table was again covered from coast to coast: large serving platter after serving platter, with a casserole dish or two in between. In fact, we didn't even use a table. Our embarrassing modern-day cornucopia was laid out on the top of my uncle's indoor Hot Tub. Though the molded plastic top was opaque, it occurs to me now how cool it would have been to have a transparent covering between the food and the blasting jets, our dark meat and cranberry relishes and chunky mashed potatoes being warmed by the primordial bubbling seen below. Or maybe all that artificial foam would have been unappetizing.

We ate well. Regardless of the fact that this particular suburb was mere miles from the bailout-free auto industry's epicenter, Detroit, and that the host worked for one of the Big Three, and that an attending cousin worked on a factory line soon-to-be shutdown, we ate well. Our turkey had been brined, soaked for 24 hours in a solution of salt, pepper, brown sugar and herbs, then rinsed and cooked. Its moistness rivaled the glass of nouveau Beaujolais I sipped between bites of tender thigh. The stuffing was flecked with hearty chunks of sausage, an ingredient sorely missing from other traditional menu items. Imagine: Sausage-smashed potatoes? Gravy au jus de saucisson? An annual highlight is the cauliflower casserole, a gluten-free miracle of science and butter that screams for national prominence and a high-profile ad campaign alongside giants of industry like Stouffers or Sara Lee. The cranberries were serviceable, if only for that added dart of bright red on a plate heaped high with brown and beige. I don't remember anybody getting seconds, but nobody needed them. We ate well.

After a cup of decaf, so hot and soothing, cutting through the post-gorge film of satiated saliva, the desserts appeared. And this is where my little holiday reminiscence takes a turn toward horror show. As often is the case, the previews were the best part. Another cousin had made and brought Rum Balls, a name deserving of puns which will go undiscussed here. But damn, they were tasty. Small spheres coated in confectioner's sugar, you could pop 'em in your mouth whole if you wanted to, but you shouldn't. Bite that itty bitty ball in half. Notice the subtle ting of sweet from the sugar coating, the chewy consistency of uncooked cookie dough, the sharp and surprising spike of rum in the back of your throat. A variation was coated in peanuts, but I preferred the sugared ones, smaller with a smoother mouthfeel. Eat enough of them, and you won't be feeling your mouth anytime soon.

Next to this platter were two dishes. The Pies. Someone asked about the whipped cream, and the host flew up and back down the stairs (we dined in the basement) with the immediacy of a Samaritan spotting a street-crossing old woman.** Their fresh-made whipped cream was legend; the cold cylinder once again held fluffy treasures, this year with a hint of cinnamon. But as topping to what? First: a sliver of Apple Pie. The crust "lid" was elegant, with a purposeful triad of swooping lines etched out of the top. Golden brown in color, a darker hue around the edges hinted at filling overflow, but no matter. The familiar insides held true to the formula: sliced Granny Smiths, sugar & cinnamon, nutmeg, dabs of butter long since soaked up. The crust foundation was sturdy, if not as flaky as a flake-hound might hope for, but I am not he. Also: My mom made it. It was delicious.

What is left? Why, the Pumpkin, of course. Thanksgiving without Pumpkin pie is like Halloween without pumpkin-carving, a Presidential election year without a few pumpkin-faced candidates (2008: M. Romney, J. Richardson, R. Paul). But something looked off. This pie was not the rich, deep-orange color I knew and dreamt of. This was a lighter orange, similar in hue to the coating of a creamsicle. And like that, it was melting. As was my heart.

"It's a Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie," my step-aunt said. She might have said it was destined to murder my first born. "'Pumpkin ice cream pie?'" I repeated, a cry into a canyon for justice, mercy, only to have the echoing answer reconfirm the existence of life's cruel absurdities: "Pumpkin ice cream pie."

Now, I love me some pumpkin-flavored products. With the coming of fall comes great seasonal treats, centered around the famous gourd. Pumpkin pancakes? Oh yeah. Pumpkin chai? Sure. Pumpkin ravioli? Why not. Grilled Pumpkin & Cheese sandwiches? No--who let you in here? Get out. Sorry about that.

But the Pumpkin Pie is a sacred and holy vessel. As a kid, I admit, I didn't love the odd consistency, the pungent odor, the lack of visible chunks. But I've grown to adore the sweet unctuous filling, the shiny appearance. Its complexity is found in how simple it is. Nothing bears even a passing resemblance to it. The Apple Pie has its siblings of Apple Crumb, Apple Brown Betty, Apple Tart. A Cherry Pie has the Cherry Cobbler. French Silk Pie, Chocolate Mousse... what's the difference? But the Pumpkin Pie is singular, mysterious in its conception. That a successful Pumpkin pie can be made with 80% of its ingredients from a can makes me think of another miraculous birth. Is it any surprise to find out that myrrh is reddish-brown in color?

But this: This is no Pumpkin pie. This is pumpkin-flavored ice cream smushed inside a graham-cracker crust (fine in its own right but an accomplice to a crime, like a valedictorian student driving the getaway car) with caramel sauce drizzled over top. As a dessert, you could do worse. If this was a third option, I would take note of the maker's chutzpah and scoop a bite or two. And it was tasty; I scraped the melted pie and graham crumbs off the plate with my spoon. But as a replacement for true, succulent, satisfying Pumpkin Pie? No. No no no. This was the inevitable stolen from time; this was the uninevitable. My pumpkin pie was taken away from me. And I'm still stinging from its absence. Guess there's only one thing to do... learn to make it.

*On Princeton's online dictionary, a curious example phrase is used to help define the word: "such disparate attractions as grand opera and game fishing." In this analogy, my guess is that the filling is Pie's opera, and the crust is its fishing, but I know crust aficionados who would disagree.

**I could do better. Alternatives are welcomed in the comments section.

Like Rice In A White Kid

2008-10-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

As a burgeoning eater, I was fearful of the mix. I can remember sitting at my family’s dinner table, staring down at my plate, and immediately going to work. Knife in left hand, fork in right (I had not yet learned the European style I so preciously attend to now), I would nudge the chicken breast to the lower-left corner, keeping the flowing lemon-pepper sauce at bay with the flat edge of the knife. The vegetables were fairly reliable in their stoicism; still, my fork pushed them back toward the perimeter of the plate, in case a broccoli floret happened to tip and the resulting momentum urged it on toward the mashed potatoes. My plate management had no firm guidelines, though a buffer zone of an inch or two usually sufficed.

And then there was the rice. My mother the cook was nothing if not consistent, and her strict adherence to the unwritten rule of three was stirring in its regularity. The rule of three: Meat, Vegetables, Starch. My accompanying glass of milk almost completed the Food Pyramid quidfecta – it was if she expected representatives from the FDA to barge in unannounced, brandishing special measuring devices looking suspiciously like syringes, and test our plates for the recommended allotment of proteins and carbohydrates. On those days when mandarin orange slices topped our cottage cheese salad, the missing Fruit portion was accounted for, and the spying neighbors went to sleep that evening assured of my mother’s meal-crafting dominance.

But back to the rice. Its strengths and my own commingled like squid ink over oatmeal—not at all well. I prided myself on separating each of my meal’s components like instable chemicals, as if not knowing which might be the catalyst for catastrophe. This may or may not have been the product of my father’s own dinner plate tectonics; he mashed chicken into potatoes, finagled peas into flounder, coerced cube steak into an A-1 aided roux. I was horrified by the resultant muck on his plate, and even more terrified when he shoveled it in with voracious glee. I took pains not to mimic his disgusting manner; I kept my opinion of his habit like my lap napkin, secure and out of sight.

The rice, seriously. If allowed to absorb the sauce, it would undoubtedly be a tasty and satisfying side. If taken in bites with forkfuls of seasoned veggies, the texture would add a much-needed quality, I am certain. The necessity to limit any touching between plated foods admittedly did a disservice to this otherwise capable carb. The white rice on my plate remained plain: the maneuvered pile, a clump of flavorless, granular nothing. I should have blamed myself. Instead I blamed the rice, and as such, did not deem it worthy of my swallowing. Most nights I choked it down. One evening, I decided to revolt.

I took a forkful of plain white rice in my mouth. The fork came out; the rice stayed in, but it was not going down. And if it did, its next direction would surely be up. Tight-lipped and silent, I thought about swallowing, but did not. My abstinence was not demonstrative; this wasn’t a protest to Rice-Eaters around the globe, just to the clump of it in my mouth that, for some reason, I could not bear to let slide down the food tube. My father-the-mixer’s prognostication was keen—he ordered, “Swallow the rice, son.”

But I couldn’t. It sat in my mouth, slowly dissolving into a mass of white, unchewed cud.

“You may not leave this table until you swallow that rice,” my father said.

I mumbled a rice-addled retort indecipherable to the room. The remaining occupants—my older brother and sister, my mom—silently chewed and swallowed their food. Then my sibs left. Though I don’t remember for sure, they might have caught my eye while leaving, a gesture-free nod of solidarity—Stay strong. I remained, my cheeks puffed, the back of my tongue pressing more and more firmly against the opening of my esophagus with each passing second. In hindsight I do not even know why I was so dead-set on not eating the rice. I’d done it before; sure, it wasn’t my favorite thing, but neither was brushing my teeth, yet I hadn’t set an embargo on Crest Fresh Mint Gel. There was something else at work here, some malevolent, unseen, psychological force. Perhaps I knew in five years time he would not be living with us anymore, moving into an apartment two miles down the road, and this was my one chance, feeble as it might have been, to take a stand. Or maybe I just really didn’t want to eat my rice. The longer it marinated in my saliva-filling mouth, the worse the eventual gulp would be. There had to be another way.

“Swallow it,” he said, rising from the table. My eyes widened. He stepped heavily over to my seat. I made a few more sounds of resistance. He placed one hand over my already clenched mouth—

“Swallow it!”

I shook my head meagerly back and forth, humming more and more resistant cries into his palm placed against my lips. My mom finally piped in—“R_______, please, stop it!”—and he relented, storming off, leaving his mess of combined food to stew on his unkempt plate. I peered over to my mom, silently asking permission. She nodded, and I opened up, letting the clump of soppy white mush fall onto the plate, uncaring that it plopped squarely on my remaining bites of chicken and broccoli.

I was sent to my room. My father came up later, maybe ten minutes, maybe two hours, to spank me. That was the sole example of corporal punishment against me I can remember.

Fifteen years hence, the “rice incident” has become one of those family myths, often referred to, the story never regurgitated fully. “Swallow it” is now a tagline or sorts, a quip playfully thrown out during mealtimes whenever anyone gets a bit testy. You mean you liked that movie? A good-natured argument breaks out. “Swallow it!” someone says, our plates long since cleaned. We laugh. My dad honestly says he doesn’t remember saying it. And I now possess an almost compulsive desire to have each bite I take incorporate every single element on my plate. A slice of ham, a segment of pineapple, a trace of sauce, a wedge of potato, a sprig of cabbage. And sure, maybe even a grain of white rice.

(Alternate Title: "Rice of Passage")

Three Diners in Three Days

2008-09-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Today's Day O' Labor was the third in a three-day breakfast binge. The father-figure was in town, and we went diner-hunting. (And I've ran of out hypens--of dashes, however, I have plenty.) In the spirit of competition, I ate almost the same plate at all three aluminumly sided establishments. But first, the purveyors in question:

-Kelly's Diner, in Ball Square, Somerville
-Deluxe Town Diner, in Watertown
-Rosebud's, in Davis Square

The plate: Two eggs, two pancakes, sausage/bacon, home fries, toast, bottomless coffee.

All three were exceptional. All three, eaten on subsequent mornings, necessitate a weeklong detox of cold cereal and valencia orange juice. But there were differences. And like babies, though all bundles of joy and miracles of nature and what have you, some are cuter than others.

The waitress*: KsD - Red hair, youthful (in comparision to the lifers working the counter), efficient though not overly chatty. Coffee Refill Score: 6.5

DTD - The youngest (20s), the tallest (6'2"-the father figure asked), and the most heavily eyelinered. From Belarus. Points for accented small-talk. CRS: 9

Rs - The oldest, and the most likely to have ridden cross-country with one of her former customers forty years ago. Points for make-up'ed cheeks matching color of diner name. CRS: 7.5 (minus 2, for the bad coffee itself) = 5.5

First set goes to Deluxe Town Diner.**

The Food (Skillet): KsD - Wheat toast, pre-buttered to a satisfying absorption, allowing the crispness to remain while having a bite or two in the middle still be dredged in butter, enough so that pressing down with the flat side of your knife onto the toast actually brings the soaked-in spread to the surface. From now on, we shall call it The Squeegee Effect. Two Poached Eggs, uncooked enough so that the yolk bursts in a satisfying deluge of yellow onto the toast, which has been expertly placed below it to catch the liquid rays of sunshiney goodness, cooked enough so that the white is solid. Sausage patties, salty and greasy and a fine supplementary flavor to bread and egg, packing some spice but not overpowering the unctuous warm magma. Homefries, providing good olfactory notes, a soft/crunchy texture, but honestly the least important element to the meal.

DTD - Wheat toast, slightly less buttered, but one extra slice, so that six halves stack up on the outskirts of the gigantic plate. Ultimately, one half will go unused. The opportunity is appreciated though. Two Poached Eggs: Oooh, this is where the DTD shines, such pillowy dollops, impossible nuggets of gold, King Midas' eyeballs after removing a lash with a pinky. I punctured the yolk and a jet of silky plasma shot out three inches to the right. Luckily, the toast was there to cushion the fall. But it is the white that secures this egg's place in the top ranks of my Poached Choice of Champions, because this white has been transformed, resembling nothing so much as the stuffing from the quilt stitched by your now-deceased great-grandmother, approximating a cumulus cloud turned physical, the cotton tail from that rabbit your sister had as a pet growing up which got out once and bit you but you still loved for its innocence and twiching nose before "accidentally" leaving the door of its cage unlatched and watching its little tail hop, hop away into the busy street before being punctured by a rolling Goodyear and its own jet of silky plasma shooting out along the sidewalk in my mind....*** um.... Three or so strips of bacon, thick, meaty, dark, cooked well, hearty. Home fries, again, fine and all, spritzed with tabasco, but, alas, forgettable, which is okay.

Rs - No toast. Two eggs, over-medium, which were really quite successful, in that they still ran and melded with the sausage links and home fries, but were still cooked enough to be slightly hard on the perimeter of the yolk, and the whites provided a solid balance, with no trace of liquidy globs, so like pre-digested orange pith that I frankly don't wish to consider the uncooked egg white any longer. On the whole, a lot better than this verve-less description makes it sound.

Second set? Deluxe Town Diner, in a 7-6 tiebreaker with Kelly's.

The Food (griddle): KsD - Two pancakes, 8" diameter, studded with chocolate chips. Some have melted inside, which is a good thing. Unique component: An unidentified something or other, which the father-figure has guesstimated as malt, which gives the cakes a sturdy heft and underlying complexity, similar to throwing Pop Rocks into a smoothie. The result is 1000% more delicious than the Pop Rocks analogy would indicate. The F-F's "Best Pancakes Ever." Points for being the prime motivation of his trip out east, aside from his youngest son, of course.

DTD - Two pancakes, 8" diameter, also studded with chocolate chips. Unique component: There's Sour Cream in the batter! Result is a tangy, fluffy cake that holds the chips and soaks in the real (!) maple syrup with equal aplomb.

Rs - Two pancakes (instead of the toast). 5 1/2" diameter. Points for butter mounded on the side, instead of the epicenter of the top cake. Serviceable, if un-outstanding. To be fair, Rosebud's was the third of our three breakfasts, so perhaps I was feeling less ambitious, not requesting the chocolate chips. In hindsight, should have given the French Toast a try.

Third Set? A tough call. For loyalty and my eating companion's sake, I'll give Kelly's Diner a win on an unforced error by Deluxe Town Diner. But Kelly's had to hold off two break points.

The Atmosphere: KsD - Classic, unpretentious, giant wooden cowboy statue, tableside jukeboxes, gruff-in-a-groovy way service. SelfPromo Score - 6, with a framed photograh with host of Food Network's show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

DTD - Negative points for widescreen TV. Positive points for channel set to CNN ("Home of the best political team on television.") Guy who sat us was an older guy with greying, spiked hair who wore chunky-frame black and yellow glasses... call it a push. SelfPromo Score - 3.5. They sold too much of their own merchandise.

Rs - Nice mix of neon and antique artifacts. Tv in corner, but muted, and with a 4:3 standard ratio. SelfPromo Score - 7.5, with only a "Diners of New England" book for sale. Points for being featured in a "Ziggy" comic, which the author is finding funnier and funnier these days.

Fourth Set, in a surprise flurry of aces and cross-court winners, goes to Rosebud's.

Overall, all three are Diner-licious. If you're looking for a cool space to timewarp back fifty years, go to Rosebud's. If you're seeking out some serious pancakes and a heaping plate of good eats with charming old-lady service on the side, check out Kelly's. And if you want the finest Poached Egg this side of St. Peter's gates, roll on over to Deluxe Town Diner. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to lie down. Weekend brunch is just around the corner.

------
* It is an inevitable fact, that the person who serves you at a truck-stop/diner will be female. Reasons range from the highest level of socio-economic debate to the murky perversions of those prone to driving 2-ton rigs carrying liquid nitrogen for 48 hours straight. I'll leave you to debate amongst yourselves.

** The game of tennis is a fine analogy for a good diner. There is a back-and-forth, a kind of symbiotic relationship between customer and server/atmosphere. Love is involved. And at some point, you're probably going to arrive at Deuce.

*** Though the sister and pet were real, the door-unlatching vengeance was not. Honest.

Encyclopedia Wine

2008-07-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

Tempted \`temp-tid\ n: 1. To be drawn in, as if by curiosity or allure. 2. My application video for the 2008 Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia Journalism Internship. Enjoy.

(Please set volume above to the halfway point. Thanks.)

The Taste of Powerlessness

2008-06-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Power brings with it many things, depending on the circumstances: responsibility, access, self-multipication, a feeling of overwhelming strength and invulnerability. But then something happens. You blow out your knee. You overstep your bounds, bringing upon you and your family the swift vengeance of a Don, or a Ghengis. You lose the ability to keep perishable foodstuffs cold. Sometimes, what we do when we lose our power is more important, and greater evidence of our character, than how much of it we have in the first place.

So when the spring-meets-summer winds clashed and ravaged southeastern Michigan this past week, rendering my host's home without electricity for four days, I had a decision to make. Do I go out for breakfast? Or do I enjoy my morning ritual of combined cereal in an oversized bowl, only this time, [gasp], without the milk? Let me breakdown for you the consequences of that meteorological disaster.

Day 1: The evening before, our power had gone out. In times past the problem out there in ElectricityLand was fixed within one score hours. Knowing this, I awoke to a note saying, among other things, "and try not to open the fridge," and immediately opened the fridge. My Cinnamon Toast Crunch + Raisin Bran Crunch + Life needed their Skim, and I, my daily allotment of pasturization. Anyway, the power would go back on within the day, I told myself, and all foods would remain chilled. I was not without sensitivity: I opened and closed with great haste. The cereal that morning was fine, if laced with a tinge of guilt, sticky and cloying in the back of my throat.

Day 2: Power still out. This time, the threat was not a seeping out of all-important cold air keeping our cottage cheese curdled but once and our processed cheese solid. Instead the milk itself had been compromised--over 40 hours of lingering refridgeration can keep a gallon only so pourable. This morning's warning was more specific, even in its unwritten, assumed state: "Don't eat anything from the fridge." A case could be made for the blackberry jam (it's mostly sugar and pectin anyway) and perhaps the spicy brown mustard (if anything, it'll be more spicy!) but the edibility of the milk was not in question.

And yet. I opened the fridge and grabbed that milk by the handle. I took a smaller bowl, somehow thinking the lesser volume would save me from the miniscule creatures swimming through the lukewarm kiddie cow pool, and splashed an inch into the bottom. After placing the milk back into the impotent Sub-Zero (no need to let it lose its lukeness), I poured the cereal over the milk. Why, I don't know, but this reversal in order of operation lessened, in my mind, the likelihood that my stomach would grow angry and convulsive after absorbing its morning medicine. Just in case, and since I needed more moisture for even distribution, I added tap water over the cereal, making the "mil-ter" that rose halfway up the see-through bowl the color of paint thinner. Of all the cereals, the Life morsels took most poorly to the change, being more prone to mushiness than that of the heartier "Crunch" varietals. Still, the end result was satisfying enough.

Day 3: The energy people have told us not to expect power until at least the following midnight. For fear of lumps dropping over my cereal and ruining the flake-to-raisin ratio, I did not risk using the Skim. Water fell into my bowl like blood running from the throats of the accidentally massacred. I am tired of compromising my breakfast.

Day 4: Last evening, on the way home from my sister's house, where my niece and nephew basked in the glory of their ice-cold sippy cups and thier Tivo'ed Nickelodeon (An impromptu rationale: what is breastmilk, if not milk left unrefridgerated for days?), I stopped on a whim and bought a pint of Cookies 'n Cream ice cream. My birthday cake leftovers could wait no longer; they needed the appropriate side dish. So what if it would melt in a few hours' time? I was sick of eating in the soft glow of oil lamps. I needed something to make me forget.

The next morning, that pint of soupy ice cream sat on the granite counter-top, morning light gleaming through drops of condensation coating the paper container. The fridge was now left open and emptied. Alternatives were legion: oatmeal, skillet toast, a choice of diners within five miles on all sides. But I needed my cereal. Another morning of water-moistened flakes might break me. Then I saw the ice cream. Or, rather, what used to be ice cream, but what was now a thick, slightly chunky-but-still-definable-as-liquid, settled into the bottom of that pint. I shook out my cinnamony, raisiny, life-y concoction. And then I spooned that melted ice cream over my dry cereal in a manner appropriating baptism. I spilled it carefully and evenly. The dark cookie chunks that settled on top? A necessary, if chocolatey, evil. I rinsed over them with a few seconds of recalibrating tap water, the better to stretch out the slightly foamy dairy product as the moistening agent it pretended to be.

After a few swirls and mixings, I was ready to dig in. I rose a spoon of cereal into my mouth. Before it even hit the tongue I could smell the sweet cream and vanilla bouquet. When finally my mouth took the offering, after four days of meager approximations, of false promises and tainted attempts, it remembered what it had been missing since last Saturday, nay, since the last twenty-seven years, as I had never switched the normal "milk" with the more ambitious, but now oh-so-obvious substitute of "milk+sugar+cream+flavorings." Finally, when all seemed hopeless, a long-forgotten hero rose from the depths of obscurity and into the cereal-filled bowl of my morning meal, causing stomach-lined euphoria in one very satiated breakfast'er.

In fact, the bowl as a whole was quite rich. I don't recommend it every day. But, if you find yourself without power and, on that fourth day, you need your daily dose, don't hesitate in re-using the previous evening's ice cream to pour over your cereal. Life (and power line vulnerability) is uncertain--Eat dessert first.

I Recommend... ("cookies + milk" edition)

2008-05-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

So, I had me a sandwich for lunch a few days ago. And then, as I'm known to do from time to time, I decided to have some dessert. Just a little sweetness to cap off the meal. Previously, I had set out the remainder of the Vanilla frosting on the counter so that it would become pliable and room temperature--a cold tub of frosting is anathema to my gastronomic libido. I get out three Chips Ahoy White Chocolate Chunk cookies and place them on my favorite small white plate, about 7 inches across. Smear the frosting on the top of each cookie. (Some might say 'spread it along the bottom, allowing a more regular flow onto the flat surface.' I disagree, preferring the tricky terrain of the nobby chips and undulating cookie-peaks on the top. When you spread it along this less predictable surface area, several things happen: the nooks allow for small nuggets of frosting to be wedged into the cookie itself, causing a burst of vanilla-y goodness; also, if you cover the flat bottom in frosting, you have to place your cookies top-side down, and they might tip, thus coating your plate or carpeting or hard-wood floor in frosting, not your tongue. My point made, I move on, unimpeded.)

With cookies agreeably coated, you pour a couple inches of milk into a shallow cup/tumbler/mug. The amount of milk is dependant on you. Me, I like the milk for the dunking, only, so I usually didn't pour much more than was required. If you want to wash down the cookie with a leftover four ounces of milk, please do so. But here is where I come to the eureka moment... on this day in question, I did what I thought was egregious and foul. I overpoured. All that extra milk to be sucked down, by now lukewarm and beset with floating bits. So I dunked and fed on my frosted cookies, and they were as delicious as always, but an inch of milk remained. This is what I do. I place that glass of bottom-hugging milk back into the refridgerator. Three hours go by. Maybe four. I retrieve that glass of milk, sitting between the open jar of pasta sauce and a dish covered in foil that at one point might have held baked beans. The glass is frosty cool by now. I place it to my lips and throw it back like a shot. Ooooh. Hmm. This is good. This is different. This is CookieMilk.

Before, I had done this fine liquid a disservice by merely swilling it down right after all the dunking had been done. It had warmed, grown mealy, a feeble alternate to the proud tradition of bright white cow juice we as lactose-tolerant people have come to enjoy. But this time, in an accident smacking of Fate-capital-F, I chilled it in the fridge. The resultant beverage was a joy to consume. This was cocoa-infused milk, milk+dough, the hybrid love child of childhood itself. To all you cookie dunkers out there, I implore you: Pour a little more. Dunk away. Then save that clarified essence of youth, re-refridgerate, and drink like Santa after House #1. You'll be glad you did.*

*Edible Wrecks, MaybeIndecisive, or the attractive associates of Blogger.com are not responsible for any or all illnesses/disappointments that may or may not occur after consuming room-temperature milk, warm frosting, or cookies that are not Chips Ahoy. Please gorge responsibly.

A Thought Occured to me Yesterday, While Eating a Hershey's Kiss...

2008-04-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

... that the structure and feel of the chocolate Kiss product was probably inspired by the act of suckling a mother's teat.

Here's what happened. I'm walking home from work yesterday, and I find a misplaced Hershey's Kiss in my jacket pocket. Hungry, I unwrap the morsel and pop it in my mouth whole. Something about the crisp spring air has me noticing the mouthfeel of this common candy for the first time. The smoothness of the surface, the shapeliness of the curved line, all ending in a tiny, tittilating tip. "Sweet Jehovah," I think, "The Kiss is a woman's nipple."

It makes a lot of sense. Whether a source of nourishment or eroticism , it's hard to diminish the subconscious appeal of a female's breast in your mouth. Those of us who were breast-fed, baby girls and boys both, have the familiar lip-locking act forever stamped in our primitive directories as something appealing: necessary for survival, even. Once we developed the teeth and gastric juices to chew on solid foods, however, this didn't stop us from seeking out other, non-lactating varieties for a nibble now and then. (Please note the unstated chronological gap of 18 +/- years.)

Someone in central PA thought to take advantage of this yearning in a clever way: By molding a cocoa areola and wrapping it in foil. What the tiny ribbon-opener signifies, this blogger does not know. But he won't hesitate to pop a Kiss in his mouth while pondering, nor will he think about the shapely chocolates the same way again.

The Cod

2008-04-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

Gentle folks,

What you are about to see may shock you. But don't worry. This is merely the digitized fossil of an ancient beast, long ago destroyed...

This is a Cod head.

This is that same Cod head, as seen from the side.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Where can I get one of those for my next pot luck! And I agree, the cod head is a tasty, tasty dish. Sure, its gelatinous cousin (see above) lacks for visual appeal, but only in such a frozen state can one pick and choose the most delectable tidbits for nibbling and such.

Okay that's not true. A fish need not be jellified and molten for one to enjoy it. Nor was this one savored as it appears. This is the aftermath, the happy accident of a forgotten creature left in its ceramic sea for too long. A good friend gave me the fish to serve at a gathering. He taught me the fish's facial geography, so that I could share these secrets (or pluck the fleshy cheek for my own selfish consumption). In a way, the pot o' cod was a hit. Nearly everyone who lifted and peeked under the lid reacted in a way that conferred one of two emotions: utter disgust, or immense satisfaction. I'm an optimist. They thought it too beautiful to ingest. This is why I took home the entire head, minorly pecked at, and why, after a night in the icebox, the above abomination formed as if rising out of the primoridal, Fridgidaire ooze.

Stare at the top-down view of the Cod head long enough and you can see yourself in it. There's a lesson in that, somewhere...

An aside -- The same chef friend who gave me this to serve to people also served me, at his own restaurant, fried Cod sperm. He said it was an experiment; he didn't tell me what it was until after I devoured them. They tasted sort of like freshly made tator tots, with a kick of salt water.

This is what I'm trying to say: Be careful who you befriend in Portland, Maine.

One Month Later

2008-03-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

It saddens me to think that such fine meat sauce went to waste on the streets of Chicago, U.S.A. Do not blame the wind. Blame whoever was so callous as to not send their leftovers to me.

P.S. If you find yourself in the same situation as the sicko who fled the scene above, I implore you: contact me. Honestly, there's something about eating someone else's undesired food. Think me unsavory if you will. But I feel it's not only an act of nourishment, or resourcefulness, but one of decent, heartfelt fulfillment. I speak of both parties here. One eats, the other is eaten: All are satisfied. It is as if I find a little orphan, lost and afraid on a park bench somewhere, and I place it into my mouth. Wait, that's not quite right... where's the backspace on this keyboa---

Now the title means something.

2008-02-20T15:51:00.000-08:00

I noticed something a few days ago while walking outside. It was a windy day, and the regular assortment of street trash blew by my feet: a plastic bag now empty; an old Lil' Debbie wrapper, smeared with chocolate rubbings; an orange peel. And then I saw a cereal box. I believe it was some generic Raisin Bran. Just the cardboard box, no cellophane inner bag, no spilled flakes. But for some reason it reminded me of my trip to Chicago two years ago.

Before meeting my local pals, I spent the day taking pictures around the city. Most of these pictures were of spilled food. Food left out on the street. Food smashed up against the sidewalk. Food growing cold on a cement bench. There was something... poignant about these forgotten leftovers. Scoff if you will. But each one told a story, whether imagined or real. That styrofoam container of spaghetti? A construction worker's lunch, left almost untouched after he remembered he told his wife he'd stop eating meatballs for 30 days after "the meatball incident." The smushed banana? A group of neighborhood teens conducting an experiment: To see if a banana peel actually makes someone slip (they forgot to unpeel it first).

Am I making these up? Of course. Could they be the truth? Sure, why not. Might the real stories be more interesting than I could ever make up? Oh yes. Are the true reasons behind these food gaffes actually quite pedestrian, boring or merely accidental? Maybe. But maybe George Washington didn't actually cut down a cherry tree. You think about that. And while you are, I'll imagine the polka-dotted smear those fallen cherries made on the dirt field outside Mount Vernon, and how they looked just like a constellation of bullet holes...

And that's the other thing. Some of the scenes of food I saw were, in one way, beautiful. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of the image. Maybe the medium used, so often sucked down or nibbled at or twirled on a fork, was always associated with one thing (eating) so that now, to see it splayed out on the cement like Jackson Pollack's supper, was to see it in an entirely new way.

So here's the deal. I'm going to try and post one picture a week of food I've found* in some form, whether lost, crushed, emptied, scattered--any form outside of its usual, pre-eaten structure. The image might resemble something unexpected, like seeing a Chinese dragon in a cumulus cloud. It might trace a pretty line along the sidewalk. It might evoke an imagined story--How did that split pea soup get there? It might just be a funny picture. Whatever the food, however devastating or minor the spill, think about what it says to you. And then tell me about it. Comment on the picture with your own Origin story. Or share a moment when that same disaster happened to you, and the stirring consequences. ("And then I cleaned it up with a paper towel. I was never the same again.")

We eat food everyday. We also toss it out of car windows, or leave it on the picnic table, or shoot for the trash bin but miss. My hope is that we can start to notice such littered gems for what they are, or what they might be, and fully appreciate the potential of these Edible Wrecks.

Here's my first:

* Yes, this idea is somewhat similar to FOUND, a magazine out of my old college town, Ann Arbor, which collects 'found' items (lists, notes, polaroids, etc.) that tell a story. Davy Rothbart and Jason Bitner are good people. If they spill their Mac 'n Cheese into a compelling pattern on the floor, I hope they tell me about it.

Warning

2008-02-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Please.... PLEASE. If you love your parents, if you love the smell of freshly cut rain and the way the air feels after a lawnmower goes by, if you love crappy live-action Disney television shows and old black-and-white Nick at Nite, if you love all that is good and pure and holy in this world that also goes in your mouth, do NOT buy "Fat-Free Columbo Vanilla Yogurt."

Low-fat Columbo Vanilla Yogurt is fantastic. I was surprised myself. The mouthfeel is creamy, the yogurt coats your spoon, has a real heft to it, thick but somewhat delicate. The vanilla is there, and sure, a bit artificial, but not overpowering or treacly (which I just learned means "overly sweet; cloying").

The Fat-Free version does not resemble its low fat brethren in any way outside the similar packaging. When you open the lid, the surface is flat and plasticine, like a soup left out too long. The yogurt slides greasily off your spoon, leaving a thin translucent film. It glistens too much. Worst of all, however, is the aftertaste. Apparently the chemists at Columbo have found a way to remove all fat from yogurt by grinding down tooth fillings into a clear paste and mixing it into pre-existing products. Imagine Aluminum-flavored cough syrup without the woozy side-effects. Add a hint of sugar-free vanilla syrup, stir in some fake Kreem TM for bulk, and you've got a healthy, shudder-enducing glob of white.

If you're looking for a tasty, creamy, flavorful vanilla yogurt, get Columbo's Low Fat Vanilla. Use the Fat-Free stuff to unclog your pipes.

How to Cut a Pancake

2008-02-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

The first time I went to a good breakfast place, I was young and finicky in my tastes. Plastered all over that laminated menu were options worthy of a king's gastric acid: fluffy three egg omelettes, cheese blintzes, fruit-filled crepes, and pancakes--oh, were there pancakes. Buttermilk pancakes, multi-grain oat cakes, chocolate chip pancakes, blueberry pancakes, Swedish pancakes, something called "The Mother Load," and something else, called the Big Apple, which was less pancake than an apple-cinnamony pastry fit for a giant's hands. But I didn't know that yet. All I knew was that I didn't know what it was, which meant it scared me. All of them did. So I asked the only suitable question one can ask when approached by a stranger in a mauve apron carrying a notepad, ready to jot down your every desire. Maybe the pressure of such unfamiliar opportunity made me crack. Because then I said: "What kind of cereal do you have?"

My friend and his dad who took us both laughed. When I waited earnestly to hear the list of boxed dry cereals they had on offer, they realized mine was not a joke, but an honest request. My friend kept laughing. His dad pointed to the menu in front of me, as if to say, "No, they have real food here, look." But I didn't know what I wanted. No--I did know. I wanted Frosted Flakes. My friend's dad saved me from myself.

"He'll have the silver dollar pancakes." And they were good. Not grrrrreat!, but good. I still had a long way to go.

I remember this now and, like my generous hosts then, laugh, but more than that marvel at how far I've come (or how little I inched out of my comfort zone so long ago). I almost pity my former, cereal-requesting self. This isn't even what I wanted to share with you (and when I say you, this isn't some plural usage of the word, to stand in for the nonexistent English variant of the word 'you' that involves multiple people.... no, I am speaking to you, that one person who might be reading this, which, more likely than not, is in fact me.) (Speaking of which: Boy do you have nice hair.) But the story seemed like appropriate introduction to this, my first in a series of posts explaining How To...

...

How To Cut a Pancake (large version*)

Difficulty level: 3
Required skill-set: Low
Ratio of effort to results: 1/5

First, (1) slice into vertical strips, making sure to leave one half fully intact. Make cuts the width of your choice. (see Fig.1 below)
Personally, I like a pretty thin strip. The more cross-section space available, the more potential syrup-saturation you will have. Pancakes are like forests: The border areas are their most vital, active regions. Much like the deer that congregate along the perifery of woodlands, so, too, does the syrup soak into and rest along the edges of the cut 'cake. If you are a syrup junky like myself, I suggest you use this to your advantage.

Pour syrup over slices as you wish and eat.

Then, (2) slice your remaining half into horizontal strips. Why the change in direction? Since now the middle of the whole pancake is a new edge, if you cut perpendicularly from this new, longest side, you will allow yourself more total strips. Each will be shorter, but the resultant gaps between each section of pancake provides more syrup pooling to occur, good for both second-chance dipping and the aforementioned border-soak. Also: By leaving one half intact while eating the first half, your remaining 'cake retains more of its own heat than if sliced all at once. As good as these borders are for capturing flavor, they also allow the natural heat from cooking to escape, thus making for a colder, less satisfying second half experience.

If you have leftover syrup not absorbed into the pancake (3), you can either use the sugary puddles as a nice, prelaid foundation for your second serving, or next time be sure to adjust your pour.

Overall, this technique requires a modicum of patience, and an open mind, but fulfills the potential of a pancake through the use of simple, conscientious decision-making. May your 'cakes stay warm and syrupy.

*If you prefer Silver Dollar, or smaller, pancakes, I can not help you here. My cutting technique is reserved for the large, almost-plate sized versions which I prefer, and which you'll find at most diners or reputable breakfast joints. Quick hint: If you can place your closed fist over the pancake and not see the 'cake anymore, yours are of the small variety. Now, use that fist and punch yourself in the thigh, not hard enough to do any irreversible damage but enough to form a small bruise, so you'll remember your mistake and, hopefully, not repeat it.

Ted's Birthday: Observation #2 (Panera Bread)

2008-01-27T19:12:00.000-08:00

Four seniors were eating lunch in the half booth next to me. One wished for ice cream. Another voted chocolate chip cookie. They left to retrieve their sweets, and five minutes later, returned instead with generous slices of chocolate brownie, outlined in thick frosting. One looked anxiously down at the plate, while the other three peered at each other, nodding slightly and counting under their breath. Then:

“Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Ted
Happy birthday to you!”

I don’t know how I should feel about this. At first I’m happy, to see this ritual of the young being performed by those who usually regard birthdays not as occasions to celebrate but to fear: another notch in the increasingly carved up bed post of life, soon to be woodchips. But these spirited four were exuberant. Ted was even joining in the song, not just passively allowing the day (and thus, recognition of his waning days en masse) to be acknowledged, but actively partaking in the revelry. The five-year-olds in attendance should’ve been taking notes.

My joy for these four soured, however, when I recalled my most recent birthday party. I was similarly among friends and family, but within the warm confines of my home, surrounded by not only plaster and brick, but memories, a past worth being nostalgic over. This mortar was thick; these walls were secure, as was I that day. Among those with whom I share more than genes, in a house I could walk through blind-folded, I was content.

My nostalgia dissolved to the scene in front of me. These four had sung with enthusiasm, yes, over gargantuan pieces of rich brownie, sure. But they were ringing in this special day not at their home, but at a chain restaurant. They were not surrounded by shared consciousness , but with businessmen on their lunch break, and divorced fathers taking their sons out for their weekend treat, and a ballerina class just out of their afternoon session.

It didn’t seem right, having this ritual take place in the public sphere. But perhaps I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe their brick-and-mortar houses have been sold off long ago, and their families have moved away, or visit them only on holidays, the twice-a-year visitation rights of the lonely and burdensome. The building in which they live might have a name that tries too hard to comfort: a Shady Pines, a Sunset Ridge. Maybe by surrounding themselves with all this vitality, this seething mass of book clubs and dramatizing teen girls and ringing cash registers, they immerse themselves in something like home: the human condition.

No one really eats alone. Sometimes, the table just isn’t big enough.

The Perfect Meatball Sandwich

2008-01-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

I know the Meatball Sub (or Hoagie, or Grinder, or Hero, or however you refer to the idea of putting meatballs between bread) is not new. Still, I feel like I've come upon a particularly exciting new sandwich combination. Here me out. Try it for yourself. Then, write your local Meatball provider and share with them this tasty, warm, hearty lunch idea.

Garlicky Meatball Sandwich

But first, the sauce.

The Sauce

Combine equal parts Concord Grape Jelly (cheapest you can find) and Chili Sauce (the red, smooth kind, not the brown, beany mixture that goes on Chili Dogs) in a small saucepan. Heat on low while stirring.

This mixture will, at first, shock you. Do not worry. The Jelly will become less jellified as it heats, and the red chili sauce will coalesce with the purple to create a smooth, beautiful deep maroon. This is the time to drop in your meatballs.

I recommend the frozen kind, as they're easy to have on hand, and they're fun to juggle at parties. Continue to stir every so often. Ladle the sauce over the meat. Rotate each meatball so the outer surface is covered. While the meatballs + sauce simmer, prepare the sandwich elements:

-Two slices bread (Multi-Grain, Honey Wheat, or Potato -- save that Health Nut for morning toast)
-Two butter-knifefuls of Garlic Lover's Hummus, Cedar brand.
-Enough Sharp White Cheddar to cover one slice of bread.

Now: Slather one slice with hummus. Top other slice with cheese. When meatballs are done (the air above the saucepan will smell like old roses), remove about 4 and slice them 1/4" thick. Place the meat slices over the cheese. Spoon over extra sauce to cover unsauced cross-section of meatball. When fully covered, top with Hummus-coated bread, hummus-side down. Slice in half, horizontally (if you must, diagonally, but consider this carefully before doing so).

Eat while meatballs are still warm. Each bite will burst with delicious contradiction: the tangy of the sauce, the warmth of the meat, the chill of the cheese, and a creamy, garlicky finish from the hummus... I dare say this might be the perfect cold weather meatball sandwich with hummus and cheese ever. Let me know what you think.

***

ADDENDUM! The above is good. This alternative version is, possibly, great.

-Substitute the Garlic-Lover's Hummus for Lemon-flavored Hummus. (optional)
-Fry an egg, until yolk is soft, i.e., not runny but not hard and crumbly, either.
-Make sandwich as above, but place egg over meatball slices.
-Once top slice is added, flip sandwich so that heat from the just-cooked egg and meatballs flows upward, beginning to melt the cheese.
-Eat at leisure.

There's a Life in My Soup: Observation #1 (Panera Bread)

2008-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

“We’re having fun now, huh!?”

A man asks this rhetorical, enthusiastic question to his mother, or mother-in-law. He’s older, in his early 60s; the woman might be 90 if not more. He speaks to her as if to a child. Before ordering, another woman, this one younger, possibly the man’s wife and the old woman’s daughter, told her not to go anywhere, pointing out the window and suggesting that she look through the glass and admire, presumably, all the parked cars. She obliged, staring at the distant, recently snow-dusted roof ornaments aligned in orderly rows.

The question in question was in response to their food. More specifically, to the old woman’s soup, which she apparently loves. “She can’t stop saying how good it is,” the wife tells her husband. This repetition, I imagine, is not due to her dementia, of an appearing and reappearing of the soup, each new mirage necessitating another proclamation of goodness. She says how good the soup is because it is good. She can taste the broth, feel the giving crunch of the barley, absorb the warmth of its vapors. Even if her sensory faculties have long since past, I believe her words would be warranted by her past experience with the soup, and not merely a learned knowledge of what to say when given a spoon in front of a bowl of liquid.

Looking at this woman, I could not fathom her having the physical capacity to lift the .2 ounces of Chicken Noodle to her mouth. But she had life enough not only to do this, but to judge it, effusively, as something worthwhile. This soup was not just lunch. It was an affirmation of life.

Her own existence, this grey-haired, stooped-over, breathing carcass of a woman, was nearing its last, china-scraping spoonful. But this soup—Oh, this was tasty. And observing her gives me hope that even the frailest of us can digest sensation.

Lies Your Gastroenterologist Told You

2008-01-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

You've been lied to. All of your life, you've been told one thing, while the opposite is actually true. Your parents? White lies spouting out of their mouths like fake snow falling on a Hollywood sidewalk. Your friends? The ultimate fibbers. Your doctor? Mendacious as all the rest. The Surgeon General? President of the FDA? Liar, liar, patent-pending pills on fire. I am here to tell you the truth. And it is this:

There is no expiration date.

To some, food is good until it is not. You'll crack an egg and cook it sunny-side up and rejoice in the broken yolk as if spurred on by some Heliotropic pagan festival, but only until EXP 2/07. On February 8th, the cardboard henhouse gets tossed in the trash. And all of those unborn baby chickens die a second death.

But this does not have to be the way. Don't you know how many adult hens were brutally harrassed, living in excrement-stained confinement, a meager 10 centimeters of wiggle-room, to produce those eggs? Those eggs are tough. Ounce for ounce, they have more staying power than you do, my friend. Given the average weight of an egg is 56 grams, and an egg allegedly expires after four to five weeks, a 160 lb. man (72,574.78 grams) with the same lifespan as an egg would live to be 540 years old. But here's the thing--They can go even longer! Those white-, brown- and speckled-shell beauties keep on keepin' on like Sting on a tantric binge.

But my message to you doesn't solely concern eggs. My message goes deeper, is more purely satisfying than a simple Scramble or Fried. If messages were eggs, mine would be that most everlasting and tender of all preparations: The Poached. So read my words, allow them passage. Offer me a credence-filled ear. And listen again: There is no expiration date.

Don't believe me? I have evidence. I took leave of my apartment for twelve days over the winter holiday. Two days before my departure, I cooked some spaghetti, browned some ground turkey, heated a bit of Prego, tossed it all together and called it a meal. It was quite good. So I stored the leftovers in a Gladware plastic container, and left it in the fridge. The next night, I cooked brown rice in a roommate's rice cooker, boiled a bag of pre-prepared Indian food bought from a nearby market (a spicy, tomato-based mixture of shredded eggplant, onion and ginger -- post forthcoming), split the bag and let the heated goodness pour out over my fresh rice. I ladled it into my mouth on a pan-friend onion paratha, a sort of thin, flaky flatbread. A fine dinner, too fine to have but once. So I stored the remains next to my turkey pasta. Then I flew home to Michigan.

Cue film montage of twelve calendar pages flipping, dissolving into one another, until the final page flips, December 31st. I return. I spend a fine New Years celebrating with my ladyfriend companion. The next night, I open the fridge, looking for good eats, the first supper of 2008.

"How about this Indian food?" I ask her.
"That's two weeks old!" she answers.
"But it looks okay."
"No way."
"But..."
"No."

So, the following evening, with she of the frivolous taste-buds eating elsewhere, I took out again the Indian food first consumed a fortnight ago. The rice appeared stable, if a bit stiff. The red saucy eggplant portion, though, gave me pause. The sides had congealed, becoming orange. A plasticine film covered the middle. I stood in the middle of my kitchen, looking at this dish, smelling it, peering closely. It had been so good. I wanted to know that taste again. I prodded, delicately, into the aged mass, hoping for an answer within, somewhere next to the still-green peas and chunks of potato. My roommate said: "You know, the microwave will probably kill any bacteria that may be in there." And though I doubted her claim, facetious as it was, the eternal food-optimist inside my esophagus latched onto that faintest of hopes: safety-by-way-of-radioactive-short-waves. I forked the rice into a bowl, then the eggplant on top. Three separate sessions of 90 seconds on HIGH. I swirled the two components together, heating it one last time. I used a new fork, thinking the old food like uncooked chicken, and not wanting to contaminate the newly sanitized, microwaved version. And then I took my first bite. And a second. And a third. It was a tasty dish.

The next night, I found my old bin of turkey pasta. Heated it up in the micro. Buttered a fresh slice of potato bread to eat on the side. Another fine meal.

And so I came to my previously mentioned conclusion. There are no expiration dates. Only expired desires. So take another glance at that week-old meatloaf. Look anew at your forgotten farm-raised tilapia in a citrus-scallion medley. And those eggs? Feel free to get your Jules Verne on, and eighty days later, scramble away.

But more than anything, do not throw away, but eat. Eat long, eat late, eat beyond the tiny date stamped on your plastic or paper bins holding what was once considered fragile, a taste to be sucked up with haste, as if fleeting and ephemeral. Do not label old food "leftovers," but instead, "lastforevers." That tin of peaches, marinating in syrup and its own juices for eight months? Imagine the flavor saturation! The floating scum of green fuzz needs merely to be scraped away, tossed aside like the undesired stowaway it is. What new tastes might be found in such undiscovered country as that which we can now explore: Bottom-Right Shelf, Behind the Pickles, Screwtop Sealed Shut with the Glue of Ages?

Tibetans Have Kitchens, Too: Part I

2007-12-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

After passing by the self-proclaimed "first Tibetan restaurant in Massachusetts!"* for two and half years, I finally stepped through the doors of House of Tibet Kitchen, in Teele Square, Somerville. My ladyfriend companion made the suggestion. And what a keen and fortuitous suggestion it was.

Some background: She and I had made a tentative agreement to treat ourselves to edible goodness at least once a month. To those who label us ascetics, pointing and hollaring about self-hatred, not to mention your blatant misquoting of the Bible ("For Yelp so loved the world it reviewed the best curry joints under $10; go forth into the night and eat!"), just calm down. We're starving artists-in-training, and thus must become familiar with the taut pull of our skin against our protruding ribs. I've switched to 1% milk from my preferable skim, if only to stave off social workers from stopping me on the street and asking me if I'd like a nice goose dinner.

Where was I? Oh yes--once a month "dining." There's the inevitable chinese take-out, or a spontaneous ducking into the nearest pub for the eponymous grub. But given our penchant for good eats, and the dusty realms of our pocketbooks, we decided to compromise. I'd now write something about "eatin' good in the neighborhood," but fear litigation from [_________] (name of chain restaurant deleted. Hint: it's a slant rhyme with Trappable Fleas).

This month, we decided to stretch not only our gustatory horizons, but our geographic ones as well. I proffered Brazillian; she declined, perhaps not wanting to nibble cooked meats off a stick, as such a masculine gesture would appear unfit in the absence of recently departed literary giant (and holder of several machismo-related unofficial world records--whether these include the eating of meats-on-sticks, I can't be sure, but I have my hunches), Norman Mailer. In light of her rejection, I sighed, crestfallen. Whatever that means.**

"How about Tibetan?" she asked.

An off-key Mike D. couldn't have sounded sweeter. Somewhere, a gong rang out in the distance. Birds erupted into flight from a pond-surface stand-still. The decision had been made: Tibetan it was.

----(To Be Continued)----

*Which is sort of like the inverse of "last Morman guy to consider polygamy," if you think about that really hard.

** Princeton's online dictionary offers a synonym for "crestfallen" in lieu of initial definition: Crestfallen --adj., chapfallen. Oh! Crestfallen is the same as "chapfallen"! Now I get it.

Passing a Thanksgiving Dinner

2007-11-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

Lest you think my topic is about a certain moving of the bowels, let me clarify: I speak instead of that choice, made by the wary eater, to skip a plate full of turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberry sauce when offered to them. We know these people by a bevy of names: Lunatics, Crazy Talkers, Pesticide for the Soul, Gastronomical Idiots, Sun-Dried Doodle Berries, The Wrong... I could go on. You know one of these people. You might, in fact, Batali save you, be one of these people. If you read the description above and thought: "Yes. That is me," do not worry. There is still hope. If you read the menu above and thought: "Boy, I truly can't stomach all that food," fear not, for I can save you. And this is how.

You've been eating Thanksgiving dinner much too late.

In years past, my family and I have eaten this annual feast at around, oh, six o' clock. You know, dinner-time. (Note: My house's D.T. is normally around 9:00pm, but that is for another discussion.) It makes sense, really--The pilgrims didn't call it Thanksgiving Brunch, after all! (Note: They called it 'Gratuitous Slaughter of Mainlanders with Wacky Hairdos,' though no official records remain.)

But a few problems occur when you wait so long for such a mammoth meal. You inevitably snack. The cooks are cooking their annual delights; people gather and linger near the kitchen. You sneak a morsel of dark meat here... you scrape a cracker into lump-crab artichoke dip there. You fill your glass, again, with the smooth, thick creaminess of Egg Nog. By the time dinner-time rolls around, you barely have room in your tiny tummy for that first buttered roll, let alone the meat and the taters and all dem loverly fixins'. So my suggestion to you, fair gluttonous warrior -- Eat Thanksgiving Dinner at noon. That's right. 12:oo pm. Call it 'High' if you wish, for you will be soon on all that glorious seratonin coursing through your nourished-by-midday body. I love my breakfast, but sometimes, on those special occasions where long-lost-relatives gather to cook their beloved Cauliflower Casserole and whisk together some potato water and meat scraps into a thick, bountiful gravy, sometimes you need to hold off on the pancakes and tuck into an evening's meal six hours early.

Soon to come: More ideas gleaned from a Very-PA Turkey Day, including Egg Nog Coffee Creamer, and the ludicrous splendor that is Rita's Kielbasa with Pineapple.

More Impromptu Recipes: Or, How poor young people eat.

2007-11-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I glanced in the cupboard. One box of Magic Stars (generic form of cereal rhyming with 'Mucky Barns'), box of whole wheat thin spaghetti, an old corn muffin. I glanced in the fridge. Half a gallon of 1% milk, some vanilla yogurt, a banana cut in half, still in the skin, browning at the edge. And then I looked to the bottom drawer in the fridge, what I call the "meat locker." Some sliced deli ham, 1/4 chunk of sharp cheddar, half a tub of Roasted Pine Nuts hummus. From a carefully selected array of the above, I made quite a substantial, satisfying meal. I share the recipe with you below, less so that you can make your own Ham, Hummus & Cheese Open-Faced Muffin Sandwich, but that you remain fearless when staring an empty kitchen, and an evening of rumbly tummy, in the face.

Ham, Hummus & Cheese Open-Faced Muffin Sandwich

1 corn muffin, week-old.
4 slices ham, thinly-sliced and smelling "okay."
Small hunk of sharp cheddar, about the size of a print cartridge
3 oz. hummus (quantity approximate, for fanciness sake)
Parkay margarine, scraped from the crevices of that tub surprisingly still there.

- preheat skillet over medium heat

- slice muffin in thirds, length-wise

- drop margarine in middle of pan, or slather on muffin cross-section

- heat muffin thirds for 4 minutes on each side, or until yellow-ish brown (the color of your golden retriever's coat in winter)

- meanwhile, slice cheese into rectangles of desired thickness. Recommended: As thick as the white part of your over-grown thumb nail.

Option a) - slather muffin pieces with hummus, then layer with cheese and ham
Option b) - top warm muffin with cheese, then dollop hummus on cheese, capped with a slice of ham

- pick up as you would a cupcake, eat, and enjoy the thrilling fact that you've made it another day without going to the grocery store.

This open-faced sandwich is a great snack for after a late grad school class, on Saturday afternoon while watching your alma mater's football game on ESPNpi, or any time you wish to impress your friends with your skillet-heating skills. Also: The tang of the cheese and hummus goes surprisingly well with the hearty, mealiness of the corn, and if you've timed it just right, that mysterious translucent coating on the ham will give the dish an unexpected mouth-feel somewhere between "carrot cake" and "chunky bleu cheese dressing."

Happy frugality!

Tapas and Spanish Wine: An Appreciation

2007-10-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

At times such as these, I wish for the ability to type an upside-down exclamation point. Let me suggest to future keyboard creators "Shift+forward-slash." The symbol there now is a vertical line broken in the middle. Here it is: Apparently, it doesn't even show up as it's illustrated on the key itself. Whether broken or un-, do we need this mark? Perhaps I'm naive of the stupendous usefulness of the Broken Vertical Line in subjects outside my narrow interests... maybe, when used in conjunction with some typed-in formula in Microsoft Excel, the B.V.L. magically does your taxes, performs a sonnet, and stirs your child's hot oatmeal until perfectly lukewarm. I don't know. All I'm saying is that the inclusion of an upside-down exclamation point in future keyboards would help me best describe my experience at a certain tapas restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, because it was freaking incredible.

Taberna de Haro, at 999 Beacon Street, is a cozy corner restaurant right off the "C" line in front of the St. Mary stop. Saint Mary is right--step inside the glow of mini-hanging lanterns and the open kitchen's blazing pans, aflame with a lucky patron's small dish of choice, and you'll soon be thanking both Him and the mother of His son.

Not that I'm all that religious. But chef/owner/sommelier Deborah is, only her Holy Trinity is the red and white grapes, and fortified Sherries, of Spanish soil. Ask to speak with her, and she'll work with your tastes (and wallet) to find the best bottle of wine for the occasion, explaining to you where it comes from, some history of the vineyard, even replace a popular misconception with the tannin-laced truth. Hers is a bouquet of almonds, cinnamon and rosemary. She may even compliment your lady-friend companion's shirt, and she'll mean it.

So as I don't go all gooey and romantical much more than I already have, I'll simply list and describe the food my companion and I ordered and shared on our recent visit to this highly recommended taberna. My only complaint was that we couldn't taste the dozens of other equally-intriguing dishes on the menu (nor could I understand many of the names in Spanish, as my French language skills only rarely proved helpful, but my lady-friend companion translated, to me, and ordered, to our server, much to her delight).

First, a rather large wedge of potato, tall on the plate and presented almost like a slice of pie. It was soft and near-fluffy, with a sturdiness to the filling that belied its light taste. Hard to describe, and not nearly as dull as this description makes it sounds--if only I remembered the Spanish name. But it went incredibly well with the...

...Fried Bechamel and Ham. Yes, that's right--the rich 'n creamy bechamel sauce of French cuisine, one of the four 'Mother' sauces, basically a thick concoction of milk stirred into flour and butter, was somehow confined into a ball the size of a round kiwi, studded with hunks of jamon (ham), and fried. Slice it down the middle, and your knife will resist the crispy fried surface, before breaking through smoothly and unimpeded, burdened only by the errant bit of salty meat. Cut into quarters, top with a slice of aforementioned potato pie-dish, put in your mouth, and savor.

Then came the Piquillos, the Roasted Red Peppers filled with brandade, a salt-infused cod mash. Though filthy-sounding, I assure you, a smashed up mush of fish and salt stuffed into a pepper and lightly fried is a lovely thing. I was expecting something else, in fact: the same ingredients, yes, but not fried and instead in a pool of deep red sauce, tangy and pungent. That was the Piquillos of my time in the Basque region of France, close to the border with Spain, when prepared by my host family's grandmother. This, while different, was still good, though not benefitting from my preconceived, and altogether tastier, expectation.

Perhaps our favorite dish was also the simplest: a clay bowl of artichoke hearts, in olive oil, prepared as I imagine all fresh vibrant vegetables should be, that is to say very minimally. Not a whole lot was done to these edible pits, the strange contradictory core to this hard, thick-leafed veggie with the unfortunate name of some violent beatnik. And not a lot needed to be done. Take that slice of bread from the table basket and soak up the oily leavings on your plate, the better to optimize all available flavor. And when the final plate comes...

...the selection of five cheeses, nick a small hunk from the milder of them, place it on your bread, top it with a section of artichoke heart, and enjoy the commingling of strong and subtle, wet and dry, soft and solid. Just be wary of the rectangle of deep orange in the middle of the orbiting cheeses. Though you might be wrong, you suspect it's a slice of preserved quince, a fruit often made into jams due to its high pectin content, though with a tart flavor often unpopular with Americans (thank you, 'Food Lover's Companion). It won't be the flavor that will make your lady-friend companion wince: she'll use the word "slime" to describe the texture, and though you'll tease her for her finickiness, you'll see her point, and eat the rest of the cheese without aid of the mysterious shiny centerpiece.

But what an unrepresentative detail to end on! The overall experience was "a delight," pronounced emphatically and with dropped jaw. I yearn to pick mine back up off the floor and take it directly to Taberna de Haro, where the talented cooks will fill it with Spanish goodness. And I hear the sangria ain't half-bad, either.

Hot 'n Spicy Meets AARP

2007-10-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

May 29, 2021: The day the flavor ends. Apparently, the vast majority of people's nerve receptors in those taste-gathering hubs, the nose and tongue, drastically decrease in efficiency after the age of 40. This, according to an article in Sunday's Boston Globe 'Ideas' section by Sacha Pfeiffer, called "Some Like It Hot." Though I'm not sure whether the author is a male or female, I do know this--I cried a little tears for my future self, and his diminished capacity for experiencing the yum.

The point of the article was not to induce everyone to start a Countdown Clock to the moment when all flavor would be dimmed by time's cruel atrophying ways. Nor was it one possible answer to the question haunting all younger-thans, bewildered by the diets of many of their purple-lip-stained elders: Why all the prunes? (That answer can be found by skimming the newest edition of the textbook Gastro-Intestinal Tract at 60: Why Your 'Playground'* Needs Some Grease on the Curvy Slide.) The point of the article was to hypothesis why hot 'n spicy foods seem to crowd the grocery aisles in a way that hasn't been the case in the past 20 or so years. A list of brand-name products kicked up the proverbial notch makes for good reading by itself: Smokin' Cheddar BBQ Doritos; Mo Hotta Mo Betta Cayenne Garlic Hot Sauce; Crazy Mother Pucker's Maniacal Mustard. Seems like every flavorable product out there (foodstuffs manufactured, thereby able to be dusted in a fine, super-spiced flavoring that takes the place of natural, Mother Earth-created taste) has succumbed to some variation on the James Brown 'Too Hot for the Hot-tub!" theme. Chocolate's been given a piquant bite by mixing in chilis with the cocoa. Ice cream and jalepenos have been combined and eaten (and in most cases, regurgitated) with varying degrees of success. Special ketchups are now most popular in their spiciest incarnations.

So the question remains: Why? Pfeiffer wraps up the near-unanimous reasoning in food labs and market research kitchens across the industry--it's because of the Boomers. The Baby Boomers are getting older, and with an increasing amount of disposable income, and for some a wider desire to cook for themselves, or at least spluge at fancier restaurants, the demand for these spicier foods (to counteract their weakened taste-buds) has grown. And the suppliers have responded.

Thus ends the Article Summation section of the post. What I found most intriguing is the description of those types of spice that bust through the decrepit tongues, to still deliver an impactful, powerful burst of flavor. These are a group of flavors labeled "sensory irritants." According to the article, they "hit the body not through taste or smell, but through the chemosensory system, which conveys sensations like touch, temperature, pain, and pressure." This permits an interesting observation--as we age, we seek out foods that smack, heat, hurt, or squeeze us. Do we grow weary and dull from life's constant nudgings, such that we endeavor to find something, anything that can shake us from our repetitious reverie? Throw some Tabasco in that oatmeal, Grandma says. I can barely feel my legs--but those Spicy Nacho chips knock my orthopedic socks off! Maybe these are the ponderings behind an endless array of hot sauces on store shelvees, and why Ultra-Caliente! Chips Ahoy cookies might not be far behind. I'm not sure. But I've got 14 more years of blissful undiminished tasting to find out.

*Assumed reader knowledge: The idiom, "The G.I. Tract is the playground of the emotions."

This time, he's gone too far....

2007-10-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

From first pour to last:

-Honey Graham Oh's
-1% milk
-Cinnamon Toast Crunch
-Columbia Vanilla Yogurt
-Life Yogurt Crunch
-Magic Stars (generic Lucky Charms)
-More Yogurt
-Raisins
-Fruity Pebbles
-More 1% milk

And? Scrum-diddly'umcious.

Faux-reos

2007-09-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I stopped by the local grocery store to stock up on post-lunch dessert options: usually, a cookie of some sort, ideally to be dunked in milk, perhaps pre-coated in frosting. I had a hankering... an Oreo hankering. Much to my dismay, a week earlier I had seen the tell-tale orange cream middle of a new, seasonal variety of the chocolate-sandwich cookies: Halloween Oreos. On September 13th. I know, this is an old whine, but hopefully it ages well. As much as I desired the themed cookie, I couldn't bring myself to jumpstart my favorite holiday season a month in advance. Had I been jewish, this sort of mentality would've driven my forebears to celebrate my manhood at the first sign of upright urination.... and I now realize I've somehow gotten off-track. Oh yes: the faux-reo.

Since I could not abide by the pre-emptive spooky cream-filled chocolate cookie, I was forced into generic-brand-buying action. (And I promise never to use four hyphens in the span of a single sentence again.) This particular store sold their own version of Oreos, called "O'mazin' Os." Which, while clever, seems a tad redundant in their use of the product-shaped letter. The package exclaims: "Like Oreo(R) Chocolate Sandwich Cookies? You'll Love Us!*" (The asterisk leads you to the back of the package, with the disclaimer that Oreo is a registered trademark of Nabisco, and C & S Wholesale Grocers, Inc., [makers of O'mazing Os] is not in any way affiliated with Nabisco. I yearn for the day when a brand-name product asks, "Love Generic Fruity Circle-Shaped Cereal? Then why are you paying $2 more for a box with a tropical bird on it? Are you that much of an ornithophile?" or something to that effect.)

Anyway. The verdict? O'mazing Os, while at first appearing to lack the generous cream-to-cookie ratio of Oreos, stand up quite well to the Nabisco version. The chocolate has a solid dissolve-rate, so that when dunked in milk the cookie retains its form just enough to not fall apart, while aborbing enough of the liquid to ensure that soft, almost creamy texture when it dissolves in your mouth. This might have to do with the miniature floral design on the surface of the cookie itself--visually, a nice, subtle touch, with suitable ridges and depth to capture and hold the milk post-immersion, and not as self-promoting as Oreo's eponymous stamp. And something I've learned just now, while doing some research with the remnants of my morning coffee, is that O'mazing Os taste arguably better dunked in coffee--they remind me of one of my favorite ice cream flavors, "Coffee Oreo." Which, admittedly, makes a lot of sense. Just be forewarned: The heat of the coffee will make your cookie fall apart more quickly than when dunked into cold milk, as the faster-moving molecules will disseminate throughout the cookie with greater haste than the slow, lumbering H2cOw. Still, in my opinion, it's worth the risk.

The Indomitable Oh's

2007-09-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

I take no credit for the topic of this post. All royalties and payment should be forwarded onto a Miss __________, lady friend of myself, who spoke of how she ate her cereal yesterday too quickly and was still feeling the effects of the hard, crunchy circles on her mouth.

So here's the problem: Honey Graham Oh's are quite possibly the greatest cereal ever concocted. Each morsel comprises two things--a circular shape, similar to a Cheerio but somehow thicker and heartier, and a filling of granola-y stuff, sweetened with honey, flecked with graham cracker type bits. Imagine the most flavorful Honey Nut Cheerio ever, some mistake off the production line where the nutty and sweet flavor saturated the cereal more than was originally intended, and THEN someone else infiltrated the factory and stuffed each hole with more goodness, crushed up grahams, a glazing of honey, a residue of nuts and oat off the pristine floor of the Nature Valley factory right down the street (hypothetically).

Then multiply that by a thousand. You've got a box of Oh's. But there exists a malfeasance within all this yummy-in-a-bowl. The cereal by itself, you see, is very crispy and crunchy. And hard. Snack on them one, two at a time, and you'll find no cause for alarm. But pour them in a bowl, and spoon a heaping pile into your mouth (which is what you'll do, as you can not resist the aforementioned flavor combination), and the resultant crunching and smacking going on inside your mouth, around your teeth, over your gums, up on the roof of your mouth, may very well cause these gentle insides to sting a bit. The Oh's, delicious as they may be, are a damaging cereal to the soft, giving flesh of the mouth's inner sanctum. Those same oat clusters and honey-laced circles that taste so good wreak havoc with their sharp edges, their pointy hunks of nut or grain. And yet still you chew, and swallow, and scoop again--the cycle repeats; the mouth is sore the next morning. You eat them anyway, 'cause they're so gob-smackin' good.

I offer you this solution. Pre-soak your Oh's. It sounds a bit scandalous, I know: "He told you to pre-soak your oh's? What does that mean, gargle while moaning?" You misinterpret me. Pour those Oh's in the bowl. Then pour your milk on top, ideally until the milk is just visible within the circles of the unfortunate empties. Then go make your coffee. Brush your hair. Work on that stubborn cuff-link on your right sleeve, the one almost impossible to do without help from a second person, enough to make you question the nobility of a profession that necessitates one wearing a sleeve with an impossible fastener. Now go back, and enjoy that bowl of previously dangerous Oh's, now rendered harmless yet still crunchy and delightful.

Other suggestions are welcome. I hope you can find this scrumptious breakfast food in your local Cereal aisle, as they're not available everywhere. Go, seek, find your Oh's. Before they find you.

The Grilled Muffin: A Recommendation

2007-09-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

You eat your muffins plain, baked once. And you enjoy them. I can appreciate that. I did just the same for many moons... a muffin batter was concocted, filled with all sorts of fillings: berries, cinnamon, chocolate chips. banana mash, what have you. Then it was ladled into baking cups and thrown in an oven, allowed to rise with the heat, cook up into a fluffy yet firm approximation of a mushroomed dome of dough. Yummy when still-warm; very good after being cooled. Nibbled at whole, split down the middle, broken into chunks--The muffin is hard to eat incorrectly.

But there is a better way. To nosh on the once-baked muffin is to enjoy french bread by its lonesome. Certainly, at times this is the preference. Some want their Vanilla, while others opt for the Chunky Monkey. But if you've found your muffins wanting recently, I plead you to consider the Grilled technique.

Split that muffin in half. Spread each side with a thick coat of butter, OR drop a slice of butter in a warming skillet, over medium heat. Or do both. Then, when the pan is hot or the butter is bubbling liquid, place each half cut-side down onto the pan. There will be a tiny sizzle; this is the sound of greatness elevated. An already superb food is slowly transcending its original state, and becoming something much more than the sum of its part. The butter is crystallizing, browning and crunchifying the surface of the cross-section, seeping into the body, infusing the whole with a richness often baked out of the already-butter-rich batter. Your kitchen fills with the pleasant smell of butter and _________ (insert muffin flavor here: sweet banana? apple cinnamon? blueberry crumble? hearty bran? decadent chocolate?). When ready, the cut-side will have developed the deep golden brown of french toast, or grilled cheese. Slide those bad boys into a shallow dish, ideally with a bit of a volume to it, the better to encase the muffin and retain some of its own heat. If heat-retention is a priority, place a bowl over the dish while eating the first half, allowing the rising steam to coat the bowl and keep the muffin warm with its own condensation.

Each bite promises a different sensation. The grilled bits will be buttery, crunchy, hot; the portions kept away from the griddle will be softer, moist, a delightful contrast to the harshness of the grilled edge. Altogether, the Grilled Muffin offers something both accessible and complicated: for me, a delicious newness to a baked good I had enjoyed yet taken for granted in my years of simple-bake consumption. So please, eat your muffins how you wish. But if you haven't already, I implore you to try this revelation of secondary cooking--split, butter and grill, then eat, then swoon over what you've been missing for all these years.

A Beverage with a hearty Thums-Up...

2007-08-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

...is called "Thums-Up." And, oh man, is it amazing. Okay, the (soda) pop itself is fine--the smooth bite of a cola with a crisp, citrusy finish. But it's the bottle that makes me rate it eponymously. The glass container is thin and tall, like a slimmed-down Coca-Cola bottle with better posture. And near the top, the logo displaying its absent-mindedly spelled name: a red silhouette of a hand, its thumb extended, blocky knuckles clenched together, all outlined in a chunky white. When you thought it couldn't get any better, that this was the finest use of heated up, compressed sand ever in the universe of mass-marketed sugar water, you notice a message stamped on the bottle itself: "Contains No Fruit." Yes, this Coke cousin, as freshly squeezed as it looks, contains none of the real stuff. For all you healthophiles, take heed: it's caffiene-free, as well.

So why haven't we been inundated with the next best thing since Fresca? "Thums-Up," itself a product of the Coca-Cola Company, is produced in India. I procured my own at an Indian market near my residence in *********, USA. All you Bombay citizens reading this (psfght... sorry, I just choked on the final swig of the cola-y citrus-y goodness), go out and drink up. When I brought the bottle to the counter, the Indian cashier told me, without prompting: "The greatest soda in the world." After experiencing the caramel-colored brew while doing laundry on a lazy, overcast Sunday, I might just have to agree.

I'm about to have a bowl of ice cream...

2007-08-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

... but I don't have a sufficient foundation. I just ran out of Chewy Chips Ahoy TM cookies. I do have a box of Fudge Brownie mix, but here I am, all by my lonesome, and I'd prefer to preheat the oven with some company to entertain me in the interim. What I do have, are some Cinnamon graham crackers. So here's what I'm thinking: Take one half of the graham, spread some peanut butter (natural) on it, take the other half, spread some frosting (vanilla rainbow chip) over that, and put 'em together. Instant graham cookie sandwich. Hopefully the double layer of cracker will provide enough sustinence to hold up to the ice cream, while the porous nature of the crackers at the same time allows the melted ice cream to seep in a bit, mix with the vanilla of the frosting and peanutty goodness of the PB. Here's the risky part--I'm working with Cookies 'n Cream. Will the sharpness of the cinnamon override the creamy smoothness of the cookies 'n cream? I'm hoping no. But, at this juncture, I just can't tell for sure.
I'll be sure to let you (me) know how it goes. Wish me luck.

Books I've Read (and you should too) About, or Involving, Food

2007-08-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

This just came off the top of my head, y'all (apologies to M. Black):

Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
As They Were, by M. F. K. Fisher
Between Meals, by A. J. Liebling
The Raw and the Cooked, by Jim Harrison
A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood
Candy Freak, by Steve Almond
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
Eating Mammals, by John Barlow
Neither Here Nor There, by Bill Bryson
Heat, by Bill Buford
Kitche Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
The Outlaw Chef, by John Thorne
V., by Thomas Pynchon

Oh, there's plenty more. Good reading on good eating is like one of those cartoon drumsticks: The animated dog takes a bite, chews, and takes another, the turkey leg reconstituting itself like a starfish... point is, it'll never run out.

And if you're thinking, "V.? How is Pynchon's debut novel in here? It's not exactly filled with the edible stuff (hard as the story is to chew, notwithstanding)." But remember, Profane and the boys do drink and eat throughout the tale... and look at that title: It's a wishbone! ('boo' goes the chorus)

Dig in.

An Old Debate Gets New Evidence: Please Rise for this Unnecessary Post

2007-08-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

There is a small piece (an excerpt from a blog, I believe) in the Boston Globe "Ideas" section of their Sunday paper about the historical accuracy of the phrase "Freedom Fry," that most tragic and ill-founded of American buffoon-isms. Apparently, the fried potato fingers were brought over by an Englishman during a British raid against some incoming intruders (redundant?) onto French soil. Forgive me my lack-of-eloquence at explaining political/military events; my background in History extends to yesterday's dinner [burger, 90% lean, cooked medium-well, served on whole wheat toast, with american cheese, fried egg, ketchup, brown mustard, and a side of baked beans]. The point was, of course, that perhaps the change to Freedom Fries after France's refusal to support the American war effort in Iraq (what a bullheaded, cowardly decision that was... tsk, tsk, Chiraq) wasn't even fresh coinage: The fry was already, somewhat, an emblem of freedom. What does this mean to me?
The phrase still makes me cringe and shake my head slowly, so slowly, for those who decided to take the French out of the fry.

In other news... I changed my blog title. I know, I know... that one person (me) who ever read this is going to be thrust into a world of unknowables and frustration. And believe you me, I vow to make this transition as painless as possible. So Goodbye, "My Name is an Apple...." Hello, "Edible Wrecks."

See, that wasn't so hard, now, was it?

"Whoa" -- A Strangeness Observed in Hindsight

2007-07-06T11:30:00.001-07:00

An addendum to 'The Problem with...'
---
I just wrote about hot dog buns, dunked in coffee no less, twice in a row with a month and a half between posts. I had forgotten what I wrote about last. Upon reviewing the previous message, I now am met with an important, if unsettling, realization: I need to stop eating hot dog buns in lieu of traditional sliced bread. O Blogger, thank you for this needed epiphanic moment.

The Problem With Hot Dog Buns

2007-07-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

The problem with hot dog buns is NOT, as generally conceived, the whole erroneous 'bun-to-dog-packaging-ratio' thing. In fact, the real problem exists within the bun itself. We have a faux-density issue.

The bun seems thick, and dense, like an elephant's trunk, able to pick up liquid and transport it to and fro. Not so. Dunk that hot dog bun (first toasted, then smothered in peanut butter, jam, and nutella) into your hot cup of coffee, and if your dunk is cautious, and singular, you might be able to lift it to your mouth and enjoy the now moistened, soft doughy finger of creaminess and zing that is now deposited in your smiling mouth. More likely, the hot dog bun will have soaked up too much of the coffee, rendering its seemingly stable make-up completely unfit for the carrying of such heavy condiments as PB, J, and/or N. The bun will dissolve; the dipped half might very well split apart at the border between dipped and undipped, and fall right into your mug. Dig out the mess with your fingers if you will, but rest assured, the bun as you knew it is now gone. Your coffee? Forever laden with bits of oversaturated white bread. The morning is ruined. And all because of the problem with hot dog buns.

Unknown variation

2007-05-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

Who knew that hot dog buns on the east coast were more like folded slices of white bread, as opposed to the midwest (and until-now-thought-to-be-standard) version of the fully rounded off bun?
Secondary question: What is the ideal number of seconds to dunk aforementioned bun, topped with peanut butter, nutella, and blackberry preserves, into a hot cup of coffee?
Answer: Two (2) seconds, or as many dunks. Anything more will result in the bun dissolving and falling into the coffee. Noboday wants that.

Post-script: It just tastes better, knowing that the bun originally came from a Fenway Park vendor.

TK

2007-05-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Food items I intend on eating in the next few days...

-French Toast Peanut Butter & Jam Sandwich: Like any other PB&J, but the pieces of bread are slices of just-made French Toast. Holy cow.

-Pumpkin Dip: Canned pumpkin, softened cream cheese and powdered sugar, along with a dash of cinnamon and a smaller dash of ginger. Scoop with Ginger Snaps, place in mouth, enjoy.

-Turkey Chili: From a mix sent to me from back home. Apparently, I am meant to add artichoke hearts. Oh, and the ground meat will be pork. Too bad Spring is a-comin', as I do love the hot soups on the chilly days.

-Another Ham, Hummus & Cheese Whiz Quesadilla: That's right, I said another.

In Defense of Spooning Yogurt on Cereal

2007-04-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Ode to a Belgian Waffle

2007-04-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

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.

-------

Two-Faced French Toast

2007-04-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

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.

My Name is Not Red Delicious

2007-04-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

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.