Welcome to

Last Saturday night, while we were out for our weekend date, my husband informed me that he’d like to have a go at vegetarianism…and then he even said veganism.  He said this while we were munching a beef quesadilla, by the way, with our respective orders of chile relleno con queso and enchiladas mole fast approaching.

I was less surprised at his idea than you might think.  Only that afternoon, we’d read an article in the weekend Wall Street Journal about a nearly-vegan pro football player, Tony Gonzalez.  The story chronicled Gonzalez’ road to eliminating meat and dairy from his diet, what worked for his training and health, and what didn’t. 

Truth be told, my husband does not adore vegetables in the same way I do, so if one of us would decide to be a vegan (I was at various points in my impressionable youth, a vegetarian), it would probably be me.  Moreover, my family would eat meals based around vegetables, especially in the summer.  My husband did not grow up doing that.  To me, sitting down to a table covered in steamed corn, sliced tomatoes, and zucchini pancakes seems downright tantalizing.   

Cooking this way will be a challenge.  I’m going to avoid too much “faux” this and that, but I am willing to try meat and cheese substitutes to see which brands are acceptable.  I’ll chronicle our vegan adventures in following posts, but for right now let me just say that last night I found myself searing Italian-flavored soy sausages to go with our whole-wheat pasta and pesto.  I used fake parmesan cheese to make the pesto, I’m ashamed to say. It wasn’t hideous. It was pretty good.  All the other ingredients were real and fresh, right down to the basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, and olive oil.  But I’m sure Mario Batali would have slapped my face had he been there.

By way of confession, I have no desire to eliminate meat and dairy completely from my diet, and haven’t.  Yesterday I ate two barbecued spare ribs for a mid-morning snack, quickly chased by a full-fat plum yogurt.  But I gladly enjoyed almond milk instead of organic two-percent.  Almond milk is totally delicious, if you haven’t tried it, much better mouth-feel than soy.

I was recently twice miffed while eating out.  On the first occasion, my husband and I had gone out to dinner at a local pub.  I ordered a rib-eye steak sandwich and he had the jambalaya.  Two weeks after that occasion, I ordered a delmonico steak entree special at a local cafe.  Not only was the cut not a true delmonico, but it was spoiled AND cooked to well when I had ordered it medium rare.  Nasty.

My sandwich at the pub was adequate, but the jambalaya was a bizarre concoction.  Let’s just say it was not the hearty soup/stew you’d expect, it clearly lacked a roux, it was EXCRUCIATINGLY spicy, and there were mushrooms in it. Lots of them.

We’ve eaten at the pub before, and while the food’s never been terrible, it’s rarely been outstanding.  What galls me about this jambalaya is that clearly the cook did not have the ingredients and/or the skill to execute even a reasonable version of this dish.  Instead of asking our server to have my husband choose something else, he/she just took a half-baked stab.

And then there was the truly awful delmonico which was beyond excuse on many levels.  The cook must have reached blindly into the fridge, had a terrible blocked nose, and no conscience, all at once.  Why do kitchens do these things?  WHY? 

It’s beyond me, really.  I know on the occasions my workplace cannot accomodate an order, we tell the customer as soon as possible.  Yeah, sure there are the random and rare nutjobs that react angrily, but the operative word is “rare.”   Restaurants, good ones that care, tell customers the simple truth when they can’t fill an order properly.  It’s not rocket science. 

Shopping at Target today I noticed the word “toffee” jumping out at me from labels, on everything from cookies to coffee to boots.  Yes, boots.  I guess toffee is officially a color now, and will bury in our consciousness, just as we’ve managed to accept camel and spruce as colors, divorced from their origins.  Why is that the word “toffee” is everywhere, but real toffee itself isn’t?  Sure you can find it if you look, but it’s much easier to find toffee-flavored things than toffee proper.

The real toffee, the crunchy squares of butter-sugar candy, is rarely to be found these days.  Well-made toffee is a marvel, hard yet smooth and light.  It can be bitten in two without much effort (as long as enough air has been incorporated) and chewed up swiftly.  Or if you desire, it can be savored slowly and dissolved in the mouth like a hard cardy.  You’ve probably eaten a Heath candy bar at some point in your life, and while they’re pretty good, they’re liking eating a slate tile compared to handmade toffee.

This holiday season I’ve decided to try my hand at homemade toffee.  I think I’ll try to flavor it with maple and pecans chopped to dust.   I’ll be researching methods and recipes, and hopefully I won’t inflict any candy-making burns on myself.  Have you ever had a candy burn?  It’s the worst.  Boiling sugar is hotter than boiling oil.

Well, the scientific world is finally coming online to the fact that we humans have the capacity to taste something beyond the four “majors,” sweet, salty, sour, and bitter.  And that taste has been christened umami.  The Japanese (and other Asian cultures) have referred regularly to this fifth taste, which we refer to as glutamate.  In 1907, a Japanese professor, Kikunae Ikeda chemically isolated glutamate, in the process proving that it has none of the properties of the four majors tastes, yet we can still taste it.  Most of the world just ordered in Chinese food for the next hundred years, and wondered why it didn’t taste as good when they asked for it without MSG. 

Long before Ikeda, the first French master chef, Auguste Escoffier claimed the knowledge of glutamate, but as he lived in and for the kitchen, was never able to scientifically prove its existence, or even name it.  Scientists the world over, ever since the days of the classical Greek philosophers, insisted there were only four tastes humans could comprehend, end of story.  Escoffier would cite the miraculous transformation that occurs in a long-cooked stock compared to a short-cooked one, but nobody really listened.  Those fortunate enough to taste his cooking just knew it was the most amazing food they ever tasted, but didn’t care much as to why. 

Want to know more about umami/glutamate?  Visit www.glutamate.org.  This site will explain it far better than I ever could.  The short explanation about umami is that it occurs naturally in some foods, and in other cases is the result of cooking or fermentation. 

Revel in the knowledge that your tongue can taste five glorious flavors, not just four.    P.S… Sensitivity to MSG is extraordinarily rare.  Check out Jeffrey Steingarten’s essay, Why Doesn’t China Have A Headache?

I am not a fussy eater.  I truly enjoy almost any food if it’s well-prepared.  The astute Jeffrey Steingarten has written hilariously and well on the topic of food aversions, coming to the conclusion that anyone can eat anything and like it if they just give it enough chances. 

I have to admit I have a certain impatience and disdain for fussy eaters, being that there are so few foods I don’t like myself.  I honestly can’t wrap my mind around not liking beets or brussel sprouts.  Up until two short months ago, the foods I didn’t care for were lamb, cantaloupe, and tarragon.  Weird, huh? 

This past summer, for some unknown reason, I began to crave lamb, seared or grilled to a medium rare.  Gone are the  days when my husband and I would sit pondering a restaurant menu, and I would suggest he order “the lamb, since I never make it at home.”  Steingarten’s theory of overcoming food aversions hangs on the premise that at some point we either accidentally or intentionally consume a food we don’t like a certain number of times.  In other words, we cross a threshold from dislike to like simply from a certain amount of exposure.  I think he must be right, because while I’ve never hated lamb, I had never, ever sought it out.  I would try bites of it here and there, just to see how I felt about it. 

My friends with children tell me that when introducing flavors to infants, it’s essential to try feeding them new foods on several occasions.  More often than not, the babies will end up liking the flavors and stop refusing them.  Also key is making the flavor introduction a positive experience, with no forcing or acrimony.  My mother never forced me to eat anything, but then again, she never had to.  I’m a big eater from way back.

So I’m figuring that at some point in the future, I’ll start to like tarragon and cantaloupe.  Maybe there is some deep-seated trauma I subconsciously associate with these flavors.  It’s true that tarragon tastes like a cobwebby dried bouquet that’s been sitting in someone’s closet, but every so often I’ll accidentally ingest some in a sauce or soup.  And as far as I’m currently aware, cantaloupe still tastes faintly rotten and slippery, as if it’s just been rescued from a garbage pail in July.  So perhaps I first tasted these things while hidden in a closet or too close to the trash, respectively. 

What foods don’t you like?  Think you could try the exposure experiment to see if it works?  Get back to me.  I’ll keep working on the tarragon and cantaloupe.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I own and use a few pieces of kitchen equipment that are old, low-tech, and downright homely.  But I can’t bear to part with them because of how I acquired them or to whom they once belonged.  They don’t even work as well as they could, or once did.  But each time I use them, it’s a very special if brief connection to a person or a memory.  Does anyone else feel this way about kitchen tools they own, or am I the only one?

First, I have a crystal cake stand/punch bowl my mom gave me.  She is, thankfully, very much alive, but this item at one time was often used in our house when I was a kid.  It’s a clever construction wherein you can turn the stand upside down as well as the lid, and the lid’s rounded handle fits neatly in the base, making the lid a generous-sized punch bowl.  Many times I can recall seeing it filled with sherbet-and-soda concoctions, piled with cookies, or holding a cake.  Good times.  It wasn’t an expensive item, I know.  I can recall my mom getting it on sale at a a discount department store called Jamesway.  But it’s priceless to me because it evokes the feeling of childhood, family parties, and a belly full of good things.

I also regularly use my great Aunt Anna’s flour sifter.  I think it may sometime soon qualify as an antique, but for the fact that it’s definitely seen better days.  The handle sticks, it’s got a thin line of rust on its outside seam, and  it’s dented from getting banged around in a box the last time we moved.  But every time I use it I think of Aunt Anna…her poundcake, the unique old-lady smell of her house (very pleasant, actually, a combination of L’Air du Temps, laundry starch, and plant food), and the wooden crate of Coke in small glass bottles she always had around.  She could be a tough lady at times, but she liked to spoil me a little.  I loved staying overnight at her house.

I never got to know my husband’s grandmother Marie very well, something I feel a gentle pang of regret over because he was clearly so fond of her.  She passed away not long after he and I began to date.  Along with her stack of recipes, I was given the opportunity to choose things from among her bakeware.  To this day, I often reach for a cake pan she owned, another hybrid item.  It’s both a bundt pan and springform pan.  It has a bit of corrosion on the outside, but it’s a very heavy aluminum, the likes of which you just don’t find anymore.  Everytime I use it  I feel glad because what little I know of Marie, she’d be so pleased that someone was getting use out of her things, that her memory is cherished and her name spoken often.

I hope none of these things ever degrades to the point that they break or become unusable.  If you have a kitchen tools that you don’t use because they’re hand-me-downs, get them out, wash them up, and put them to use.  You’ll find yourself remembering times and people you haven’t thought of in years.

I have never intentionally cooked or eaten a bug.  Unintentionally, yes, I have.  I’ve got a few good stories about stepping on our insect friends in bare feet, too.  But the growing popularity the TV show Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmer has got me thinking.  The case for eating insects is nutritionally sound.  They’re a cheap and plentiful source of protein, and some cultures covet certain insects for their particular taste and/or texture.  In Southeast Asia, food vendors on the street sell bagfuls of deep-fried meal worms (larval crickets, I know this because I used to buy them for my lizards R.I.P.) as a popular snack.  In Thailand, red ant eggs are gleefully harvested for soup.  I’ve heard of African cultures pillaging termite mounds for a tasty treat. 

Years ago, I recall seeing something on the tube about the proud bug-eaters of America.  I think it was on that show Real People.  I don’t remember the exact details of the story, but I do remember seeing a great number of people chowing down on grasshoppers, crickets, and some kind of big ant.  It all appeared to take place in a reception hall;  it appeared to be a convention.

Well, I’ve decided to take the opportunity to eat bugs should it present itself.  Anybody else with me?  I’m not going to seek out the bug-eating experience, but if a knowledgeable bug-eater crosses my path, I’m in.  Shimmy and Sesame (my dead lizards) were always pretty darn glad to gulp down the meal worms, so maybe they, Andrew Zimmer, and half the world, are really on to something.  Maybe the rest of us are really missing out!  Maybe in a short while I’ll find myself sprinkling fried crickets on my salad like croutons.

For the past two days, I’ve had no idea what to write for this blog.  Nothing interesting has happened in the kitchen or in my head.  I’ve lacked for source material.  Until, that is, thoughts of food writing made me think of my favorite food writers.

For many years I’ve adored M.F.K. Fisher.  She began her writing career in Hollywood as a young woman in the 1940’s, I believe, and her solitary life out in California led her to cook for herself as a source of entertainment and solace.  Throughout her life of career, marriage, divorce, and love affairs, she continually cooked, ate, traveled, and wrote.  To a modern American woman, her life might seem at turns tragic and joyful, but altogether romantic and charming.  But put in the context of when she wrote, her willfulness to live life as she pleased is astonishing.  She not only cooked and ate with gusto, she did all things so.  The humanity of her writing can break your heart to this day, as well as make you ravenous.  Many of her books have now been bound together in single volumes, so if you’ve never read her, just pick one and go.  Be sure to have some good snacks on hand before you begin. 

Ruth Reichl, also editor of Gourmet magazine, has written some lovely and often hilarious books about her food adventures.  Garlic and Sapphires, in particular, chronicles the outrageous lengths to which she would go to avoid being recognized at restaurants during her stint as food critic for The New York Times.  Tender At the Bone is a poignant account of Ruth’s childhood, as necessity and circumstance led her to love the kitchen. 

Last, but most definitely not least, my favorite food writer of all time is Jeffrey Steingarten.  I’m fairly certain that if I should ever get the chance to meet him, I would be rendered stuttering and clammy.  His wit, appetite, and tenacity for perfect recipes is legendary.  You can read his column monthly, as he is food editor of Vogue (I’m still having trouble believing most of the people who read it actually eat), but his best work is contained in his books The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must’ve Been Something I Ate.  I could go on forever about him, so I won’t even begin.  You may also have seen him as a judge on Iron Chef America.  He’s the one who looks like a portly Phil Donahue and talks like a drily humorous Supreme Court Justice.

There are lots of food writers out there who deserve mention here as well,  Elizabeth David and James Beard chiefly.  And Isabel Allende, acclaimed novelist, had written one amazing food book in the nineties called Aphrodite.  Check some of these folks out.  You’ll be glad you did.

I’m aware of the importance of whole grains in a healthy diet.  You can’t get away from whole grains these days even if you tried.  And while I’m far from a health food fanatic, the truth is that a lot of whole grain foods are truly tasty.  I cook with them often, even going so far as to make barley pilaf instead of rice.  And as far as rice itself goes, I’m much more inclined to use brown rice, unless on the rare occasion I make risotto.

Yesterday, though, I decided to see if I could sneak a cup of whole wheat flour into a chocolate and strawberry cake.  My theory was that the intense flavor of the cocoa and the fancy vanilla extract would completely obfuscate the whole wheat flour’s presence.  And in a further fit of health-conscious substitutions, I decided at the last minute to not use any butter in the cake.  I used a mixture of apple sauce, raw sugar, canola oil, and two eggs for the liquid.

Well, the cake was really, really moist, a good thing.  But it tasted of the whole wheat flour, which was a disappointment in a piece of chocolate cake.  I learned a lesson (for the umpteenth time) that despite what you might hear, healthy substitutions do not always work out for the better.  I would sooner have no cake at all than a lackluster, “healthy” cake.  My suspicion that you’re better off having a decadent dessert just once in a while as opposed to fiddling with a good recipe proved true.

The upside to the whole story is that I had no qualms about eating a piece of the cake this morning.  It made a fine breakfast, with whole grains and fruit to boot!

So I need to know if anyone else has noticed homemade food being peddled.  No, I’m not talking about kids selling stuff for fundraisers and the like.  I’m talking about adults knocking on your door or coming into where you work with very specific food items.

My first experience with this happened late last spring.  I was napping on the couch in my living room when a knock at the door made my dog go crazy.  I opened the front door, but not the storm door, to view through the window a small, dark man with a open box of flan in his arms.  Between the dog barking and the man’s accent, I managed to glean it was homemade flan at a very reasonable price.  Now I like flan as much as the next gal, but I would never entertain the thought of buying one from a stranger at my door.  The man went on his way to knock at the neighbor’s. 

Odd as that was, it gave me a good story to tell everyone I knew.  And like me, no one I knew had had anything like it happen to them.  I thought it was an amusing fluke.  But yesterday, something similar happened where I work.   It’s true I work in a food establishment, and professionally-dressed sale people from different food distributors stop in all the time. What I’m about to tell you was very different.  A youngish, wild-eyed and disheveled guy with a toddler in tow stopped in to ask the owner, “Where is your smoked salmon?”  My boss said, “We don’t carry smoked salmon.”  To which the man replied, quite aghast,  he just couldn’t believe it.  But he did happen to sell the best smoked salmon on the East Coast, and would she like to try it?  Sure, she said slowly.  I observed he had neither a cooler nor a bag of any sort with him.

To make a long story short, he did actually leave for a few minutes and return with some fish to sample.  It was quite tasty, but it wasn’t even cool, it was almost warm.  I didn’t want to know where he’d been keeping it.  But his approach to cold-call food sales was just as bizarre as the guy with the flan.  What in the world is going on?