Cuppa Crap

Nice fruit cup, right?
Cute presentation, decent mix of varieties, good ripeness and freshness.
So why was it such a dud?
Because I could taste the factory farmed flavors.
A couple of years ago, when I first went to this cute, friendly restaurant, I always ordered the fruit cup and a bowl of oatmeal. Seemed like a healthy choice. The oatmeal was especially delicious (and I could never get the proprietors to tell me what brand they use — clever of them, so that I'd always want to get my oatmeal at their place instead of buying some of my own).
Yesterday I returned after a great, great absence. The oatmeal tasted, meh, fine. Good texture, nothing offensive, but — meh.
The fruit cup was a disaster.
I'll tell you exactly where this story is going: I don't think their ingredients have gone downhill, but they don't taste as good to me anymore.
I haven't eaten at this restaurant since I sent my taste buds to boot camp, back in August of 2005. That was the month of the first Eat Local Challenge, when I learned to do most of my shopping for produce at farmers markets. I ate fresh, I ate well, I ate brilliantly. And my mouth thanked me for it.
Then yesterday: a single bite of the green melon and it tasted like you could ignite the vapors in my mouth when I exhaled.
The restaurant owners mean well, I'm sure, and they do their best with a small place in a pricey county. They probably never intended to serve Jet Fuel Crenshaws, because they don't know they are. They can't taste the inferiority.
I'm not the one to try to persuade them to change their supplier. They probably couldn't afford to.
But it's sad, because I won't be going back.

Slow Food

Do you eat fast or slow?
I eat slow. I'm not boasting. I'm not trying to say that taking time with a meal is more genteel. I don't like it, in fact, if my food cools off when I'm only half finished with it.
But I can't eat fast. Especially when it's a special meal, fraught with formality, expense, expectations. Too much tension, and I tense up.
Last holiday season I ran into trouble, twice, while trying to eat fast. Both times I got a chunk of meat lodged halfway down my esophagus that took a couple of minutes to get completely swallowed. Both times, the meal was important. And both times I was in the company of fast eaters, so I was trying to keep up.
I don't try to keep up anymore, for obvious health reasons.
But I wonder why I ever tried to keep up at all. I like eating slowly. I like chewing each bite (and I mean bitesized bite, not one of those huge folded planks of protein fast eaters cram into their mouths; ooh, sorry — value judgment). Yet I've always felt pressure from the fast eaters at my table, as if my slow meal were going to interfere with, I don't know, their pleasure? As if I would be delaying dessert?
Well, last night I threw down the figurative gauntlet, while still managing to daintily clutch my literal steak knife and fork.
Cranky was tearing through his meal. I know he was mainlining comfort; he's been under some stress, and going out for a steak dinner was therapeutic. But, mygaw, he was robotically sawing and stuffing, sawing and stuffing. Couldn't have been much fun. I caught myself fretting because I couldn't eat fast enough, and then I stopped.
"I'm not going to eat as fast as you," I said. I didn't ask him to slow down; I didn't criticize his manners or give him the canned speech on the pleasure of a leisurely meal. I just announced my own plan.
He slowed down. Cranky is a polite boy, and he realized he was nervously wolfing. He snapped out of his foodbot stupor and timed the rest of his meal to keep pace with me.
A fantastic thing happened. I finished my meal (well, not all, but as much as I wanted to eat), and I felt comfortable. Comfortable enough to order a selection of cheeses to nibble on, which rarely happens for me at a restaurant. Usually I'm too rattled and queasy.
And it wasn't until I typed those words just now, "rattled and queasy," that I realized why I hate eating fast so much.

One Lucky Dog

I don't know why I'm so lucky.
Maybe it's because I don't like to feed my dog "wet" (canned or in pouches) food. I've always heard dry kibbles are better for his dental health, so that's what he gets.
I also have chosen to continue feeding the brand of food his breeder started him out on (no label recommendations; sorry, it's a horrific topic and I'm just staying neutral — do the research yourself).
It so happens that the brand we use is safe. No rat poison.
This is a picture of my Bean Sprout in total bliss, on Valentine's Day of this year.
We brought him home for the first time on Valentine's Day three years ago. No romantic intentions; it was just the day he turned 12 weeks old.
We are so lucky.

Eating With Dogs

I think Marin County is becoming increasingly friendly to dogs, but I don't want to jinx my luck.
Monterey County is notoriously dog-friendly, but even so, I don't believe the local government permits doggies inside restaurants. Whatever. We snuck the beautiful and un-barkish Bean Sprout into a lovely seafood place in Pacific Grove, zipped into his stylish tote. Oh, yeah, and we snuck him into a cute breakfasty place there, too. But it was still sneakage.
Today we needed to be away from our house in Marin for a few hours, and we dragged Bean Sprout in his butch black-leather tote to a restaurant that has a generous policy of doggies dining on the sidewalk.
BUT!
They insisted that we bring the beautiful pup inside, into the restaurant.
I resisted. I demurred.
They demanded. I relented.
(Wouldn't you?)
"He's in a bag," said the lovely hostess.
As if that made him sanitary.
He is sanitary, by the way...
So.
Wow, what a fun lunch.
I can only tell you that, on the menu, we were offered the choice of white rice or brown rice.
Not fried rice — brown rice. Healthful. Nourishing. Comforting.
Just what we needed. Oh, and. Bean Sprout was *really* hungry, because he's been derailed and off his feed. So, he just snarfed up handfuls of tender brown rice.
Gosh, what a great place.
So sorry it must remain a secret.
Yay, Marin!

H*A*S*H Unit

It's always a humble, comforting last meal of winter: Corned beef hash, made from the leftover meat and potatoes we cooked for St. Patrick's Day.
It's homely, simple and filling.
And it's not hard to make, once you know what you're doing.
I had to consult the antique Fannie Farmer cookbook on our bookshelf several years ago before I got it right. (Leave it to me to try inventing my own technique.)
The secrets? Milk and time.
Chop up meat and potatoes in about equal proportions, and then add diced onion to your liking (I used about half the quantity of either the meat or potatoes). Stir in some minced parsley if a tinge of green seems nice, but lay off the seasoning. Your corned beef is plenty seasoned.
Stir this mess together, then place it into a hot skillet with a pat of butter. (I confess to using a nonstick skillet for this preparation; come and get me, kitchenware kops.) Stir it around over medium-hot flame until you get a sense that the onions are losing some of their rawness, then turn down the heat and splosh in some milk. Not enough to drown it; just enough to moisten.
Now let Mr. Time be your pal. Leave the hash over low heat for maybe 45 minutes, until the bottom layer is glossy and brown. I sometimes pour in a little extra milk; it's your call.
I cannot flip this cake as a single unit, no matter how many tricks I try. I usually end up scooping out crumbly chunks onto plates; no clever wedge-cutting here, no sir. Tastes the same anyway.
Leftovers will be good with a poached egg on top.
AND: Best of all, this was made from a beef brisket I corned myself; first time. A resounding success, which I hope to repeat (because, egads, I have a whole jar of pink salt now).

Lentil Dental Appointment

It's Meatout Day. Go take a look at one of my favorite vegetarian blogs, What Do I Know?, where KathyF will take you through a look at living without meat for a day.
I like meat, but I don't make it a huge part of my diet. If it seems like I write about meat a lot, it's just because I like to talk about the exciting meals I've experienced. I try to keep my meat consumption ethical, sustainable, blah-di-blah. And that usually means my meat meals are really special, so I talk about them.
But I'm super happy to eat vegetables, fruits and legumes. Milk products, too.
So today, I whipped up a beautiful lentil salad.
I had gone to my dentist this morning for the preliminary treatments prior to her applying my final crown... And she gave me a two-hour break while she crafted the porcelain beauty.
Well, I sped home and cooked up a pot of lentils, fast-fast. Lentils cook really quickly, without presoaking, so lunch was ready in no time.
I shaved some celery on the Benriner and lined two plates with that. I grated a carrot, and hacked up a handful of parsley leaves. Then I drained the lentils and tossed them into the carrots and parsley, along with salt, pepper, good olive oil (I used the delicious Verde from Sylverleaf) and good sherry vinegar. (Nothing from the allium family, because I was due back at the dentist's.)
It turned out to be a most delicious salad. A little warm, still, from the beans, and that was fun. Fast, tasty, and easy to chew with a compromised tooth.
Well, now the tooth is finished, and we are looking forward to our meatless supper of spaghetti, tomatoes and mushrooms. Toothsome!
I could get into this.

War Day

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me laugh, but mostly it made me wince.
It said "BUSH IS PATHETIC".
Because, yeah, he is pathetic, but that evokes too much pity for the moron.
He's evil.
He may not even know he's evil, because he's a moron, so that's pathetic.
But the evil has not gone away. It's affecting us all.
Four years of illegal war in Iraq is too long.
Six years of this illegal presidency is too long.
And two more years of his moronic, evil, pathetic "leadership" is too long.
I wince.

Corned Beef Fixin's

The meat is still simmering, so all I have to show at this point is this little array of dipping sauces in the colors of the flag of Ireland, in my new, second-hand shamrock-shaped dish.
Clockwise, from the left: Sour cream mixed with horseradish, in a membrane-blistering ratio; mm. Dijon mustard tinted with red and yellow food coloring (oh god, so not local and so not natural). Parsley oil, which did not turn out to be the emerald-green crystal-clear unguent I was hoping for. Plus the oil tastes a little off. Bad experiment.
No problem. The beef is almost done, and the cabbage, carrots and potatoes (hey, those colors again!) are prepped and ready to drop into the simmering water.
I haven't tasted the meat yet, but the home-corning experiment seems to be a success. It looks pink and tender, and smells wonderful from the home-concocted handful of pickling spices, thanks to Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's Charcuterie.
Also: No green beer. We're good.
Happy St. Pat's.

Eatin' o' the Green

In case I'm too busy with my home-brined corned beef tomorrow to make it to the Mac, here's a glimpse of some utterly fresh, frisky salad enjoyed by me and Cranky today.
It's a plate of shaved fennel bulb tossed with shaved onion (doesn't take much if your onion is strong; taste it) and shaved celery.
The shaving was done with our Japanese Benriner slicer. It's a cheap but effective substitute for a mandoline, although my fingers are scared to death as the stub of vegetable in their grip gets closer and closer to the blade. Ah, well. I just stop a little short and eat the leftover nub, unshaved.
Anyway, the paper-thin vegetables are tossed with very nice olive oil, very nice vinegar, salt and pepper. C'est tout.
It's so — uh — fresh!

Five-Year Bitch

I mean "Itch." Five-Year Itch Meme.
I've been tagged by Tammy to reveal things about myself in five-year increments, in years ending with -2 or -7...
At first I hesitated, because my list of increments would be so long (wouldn't wanna bore you), but then I decided some of you whippersnappers might like seeing what life was like for a future food blogger back in the pre-Pop-Tart days.
(Yes, there were "pre-Pop-Tart" days! Pop-Tarts didn't just suddenly bloom on the earth 6,000 years ago and walk with the dinosaurs. They evolved!)

1952: Adlai Stevenson is mad, and I eat. Chocolate. That's Crisco in the can, by the way, because this was in the days before frosting evolved into its canned form. Mm. Crisco frosting.

1957: I'm living in Hawaii now, picking papayas off the tree in our backyard. Still not mad, although my brother pisses me off now and then by acting unevolved.

1962: First year of junior high school, and praying my boobs would evolve. Diet: largely tostadas and anything with avocados.

1967: Growth spurt! Craig Claiborne is messing with my mother's kitchen, in which I am a contented galley slave, learning evolved Continental cuisine. So swank.

1972: I ought to be graduating from college now, but I have sneaked off to Japan to taste salmon roe (urk!!), cuttlefish (yark!!) and other pre-evolutionary foods.

1977: One marriage down, one to come. The new prospect has bold kitchen skills and likes Devo.

1982: We are newlyweds in Florida, where cockroaches and mosquitos have failed to evolve from Volkswagen-sized creepiness down to more acceptable (and familiar) urban proportions. I have just tried raw oysters for the first time.

1987: Some cervical cells have interpreted "evolution" all wrong and have grown out of control; surgery puts a stop to that. I am letting Thom Fox feed me as often as possible.

1992: We've moved to Marin County, where the food revolution is lagging. Cooking begins in earnest.

1997: Uh-oh. Office job. Lousy lunches, and Jack Daniels with colleagues for dinner. I spend way too many weekend hours cooking special-diet meals for my ailing dog, which means my own diet has devolved.

2002: Bush has stolen the White House, my madness has evolved to epic proportions, and I eat very well. Coincidence?

2007: Food blogging! You say you want an evolution? I'm happy and I eat.

Spring Cliché

Did everybody else already take this picture of asparagus?
Oh.
Well, here's mine.
I made a pot of green soup today: broth from parsley stems and tough asparagus ends, strained and blended with sliced asparagus stalks (no tips; they all went into yesterday's rice dish) that had done a little skillet time with chopped onions and chopped boiled potato. Sour cream, salt, pepper, blender.
It came out pretty and tasted pastel, but I like the photo of the raw materials better. It looks like the Burghers of Calais at a bondage rave, all bendy and disoriented.

Instant Tradition

Bay Area Blogger of the Week #64 — that would be the Sourdough Monkey Wrangler — recently posted a tale of a loving re-creation, or an attempt at it, anyway, of one of his Italian great-grandmother's traditional dishes, rice torte.
He just wasn't sure he was getting it right. Zucchini aren't in season yet, so he had to substitute broccoli and spinach. He was using dry Jack cheese in place of parmesan (although not only was he surprised at the successful outcome, his mom told him sometimes his great-grandmother used dry Jack).
For D-man, the Monkey Wrangler, this dish is pure family love, a rush of memories, a wallow in the gene pool with grated cheese on top.
For me? Fuhgeddaboudit.
I have no Italian heritage that I know of. I just wanted to eat this food.
It didn't bother me to make substitutions, because I have no benchmark, no cooped-up family guilt, no one to please but myself.
So I pleased myself with an ode to spring.
Asparagus is in the market! Green garlic is in the market! And eggs? What could be springier.
This torte is prepared in three easy steps, but I'm new to step #1: cooking rice in milk with butter. Apparently the electric rice cooker was not designed for this peculiarly non-Asian adaptation. The milk scorched on the bottom of the pot and the rice was still a bit hard... all easily remedied with a splash of water and a little sitting, off-heat. I probably should have used Italian rice instead of basmati.
Step 2 is simple: a skillet full of chopped vegetables, sautéed to a toothsome near-doneness. I used maitake mushrooms, aka hen of the woods, in my mix because I love them.
Step 3 is even easier: a few eggs blended with a nice handful of grated cheese.
Combine these three components, pour into a (well-greased!!) casserole, and bake.
I'm not telling you the proper recipe because this is not a recipe blog. I think you should take a look at D-man's version and riff off of that, if you like.
So what did I come up with? It was guuuud! Cuddly, from the milky softness of the rice, but assertive in a non-kickass way from the asparagus and green garlic. The eggs hold it together and the cheese just sends it over the top.
It reminds me of a favorite savory bread pudding, but actually it's a savory rice pudding.
Thanks for the new "deep-seated aroma memory," D-man.

What's This?

This came in the mail the other day.
I'll be dissolving some of it in water tomorrow and proceeding with a — um — procedure. A seasonal procedure, begorrah.
No fair guessing, Kevin.
Anyone else?
Oh, come on. Plain as rain. Rain sprinkles, and so does...
?

The Other Side

I shifted sensually beneath the sheets this morning, my entire body still a-tingle from some distant, hazy memory of the night before. Something new, something... illicit? Something soundly satisfying.
I yawned, and a delicious scent of previously unknown spices emanated from my mouth, filling the air.
With sticky fingers, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and tried to recall what had been so dark, so urgent, so daring just a few hours earlier.
Rolling over lazily in the bed, I stretched out my legs and draped my arm across Cate Blanchett's pale, luminous skin. She murmured a contented sigh, and I...
I...
Oh, what have I done?
Yes, I have crossed over.
There had been moments previously. A sly look. An innocent nibble. The furtive caress. The occasional salty lick, when nobody was looking.
But last night I went deep. True. Real.
I ate offal.
Without guilt, without disgust.
Openly, lusciously, I ate offal.
Wait. There was a male involved, a rooster, and I ate its cockscomb. Yes, I put a bird's secondary sexual characteristic in my mouth and chewed. It was good. It was gooey.
Well, basically it was a risotto of sorts made from that cockscomb and several duck tongues, probably both male and female. What a night!
Can you believe it? I did it willingly, and for someone who has had digestive issues for the past few days, it was a little bit of a challenge.
But I was not going to forego this challenge. I cowboyed up.
And you know what?
I'm doing it again.

Cold, Refreshing Drinks

With the temperatures nearing 70 degrees all of a sudden, it's time to think about sensible hydrating.
Only that doesn't sound very tasty. What I mean, of course, is cold, refreshing, water-based drinks.
It's also time to think about sensible approaches to hydrating, if you are so inclined. By sensible approaches, I mean inexpensive, healthful and friendly to the earth.
Whoops. That rules out drinks in plastic bottles!
Darn, because both Coke and Pepsi just introduced "healthy sparkling beverages," fortified with vitamins and minerals, to appeal to customers growing ever more wary of the synthetics and high-fructose corn syrup and whatever all's in the regular stuff. (Slogan: "Now with more stuff! Good for you! Please?")
But customers are even warier of this new ploy, to judge from a comment thread at the New York Times today. (And I was lying when I said "Darn." You knew that.)
So, what to do?
I know. You're on the run. No time to prepare a lunch to bring to work, much less something to wash it down with. That's when those refrigerated cases with the dizzying choices of waters and colas and fruity somethings look so convenient.
But: Not inexpensive, not healthful and not friendly to the earth.
Among the choices in the cooler, water is your best bet for health, but how stupid is that? Paying for water in a plastic bottle?
Someone I know who grew up carrying around bottled water — so chic, so urban, so sporty! — once spent some time when she was in her late teens at her grandmother's home. She was appalled that the only water in the house came out of a spigot. It seemed so, so — primitive! And, kinda, y'know, "ew."
Did she want water that came out of an artesian well? A glacial spring? See, that's primitive.
No, all she wanted was modern water that came out of a bottle. We didn't have the heart to tell her the water used by the bottlers comes out of a spigot.
So how do you get around the plastic bottle problem?
Well, yeah, you could use the water cooler at work. But you might want something tasty with a whiff of "good for you." (Stay with me; this is gonna be easy and cheap.)
First, get a Thermos. Buy it once, and reuse it forever.
And then, each night before work or school, add something to the cold water in the Thermos to make it delicious.
Lemon wedges.
Crushed slices of cucumber.
Orange segments.
Bruised cilantro leaves.
Or try brewed green tea, or some other flavor.
Bonus! You can also use the Thermos for hot beverages. Like coffee.
(As if anyone brews their own anymore; everyone knows it comes in paper cups with plastic lids.)

Frog March!

Happy Fitzmas, Mr. Wilson.
So, let's see. One down and two — no, three to go. Rove too.

My Tummy's Crummy

I'm not a foodie today, and I'm not a local-ie either.
Yes, I really do eat this stuff when I feel sick.
I consider it a sodium-delivery system with noodles.
Besides, it's bilingual. Magnifique!

My Friday

This is what my day looked like.
A little winter.
A little spring.
The drugstore in the strip mall where I shot this picture was selling sacks of gardening soil alongside firewood. Seasonal collision.
There were also plants for sale; a good sign of things to come. The only edibles were parsley and oregano; fine.
I've got a couple of packets of seeds I'm planning on getting into the ground any day now. (Peas and chard. Good spring plants, and they should come up, ready to eat, soon!)
Hope the sky stays pretty.

More on Pollan-Mackey

This discussion is from one of the political blogs I read daily, Daily Kos. There has been an increasing awareness of food politics over there — not even counting the prankish habit of printing recipes in response to "trollish" comments, originally intended to be annoying to the offending commenter, but inadvertently amassing a food-curious crowd.
So, tonight there is a discussion of the Michael Pollan-John Mackey conversation at UC Berkeley on Tuesday. It's somewhat naive, but it's fun to watch the participants develop their personal food awareness.
These are, for the most part, politically hip people.
But they're not necessarily culinarily hip people.
Overall, they're not food-politics people.
Well, maybe that's not odd. We're the vanguard over here, in the food blogosphere, even if we don't all think of ourselves as political.
But, you know? Eating is political.
They're learning.
But maybe not learning fast enough.
The presidential candidates, without enough discussion from knowledgeable food activists, are going to go into Iowa and campaign on "corn-ethanol-fuel."
GMO and subsidies. No thanks.
They know nothing.
We must do much more here, friends.

Yestersummer

I'm trying to calculate the remaining time until tomatoes come into ripeness against the dwindling supply of bags of tomato sauce in my freezer.
Let's see. Last year my lone tomato plant was incinerated in a heat wave. The year before that, I was harvesting ripe 'maters by the end of June — that was really early.
This year looks to be kind to farmers, with the exception of citrus growers who were hurt by an extended freeze earlier this winter. Tomatoes should be right about on schedule, which means the really good ones might start showing up in July, certainly August, in markets — but I'll have been dining on my own long before then.
(Yeah, I've decided to plant again this year; maybe four plants.)
So the question remains: How fast should I be scarfing up the frozen sauce?
OK, I've got 8 bags left. Each holds about two cups. There are, let's say, four months to go until the beginning of good tomatoes starts reaching either the market, or ripeness in my garden.
Easy math. I've gotta use a cup of tomato sauce per week, on average, until summer.
Oh my, I've been running behind. I must make loads and loads of wintery tomato dishes. Soup. Spaghetti. Braised shanks.
What a delicious quandary.
How have you been using your preserved tomatoes?
No, really! I need some ideas.