Sauce Loss and More Blove

I'm having a heck of a time finishing some things I've been writing on the German Romantic philosophers of aesthetics (as you might imagine), and I've just gotten all turned around (in a good way) because Jacques Ranciere showed up on my doorstep this weekend with his aesthetic discontents. So I'm going to use today's lunchtime to give a shout out.

I don't know if I've properly linked to Erica before (like with an introduction or explanation of why you need to follow her funnies) but I will do that now. I've been thinking about food (I've got half a dozen or more entries on it, but nothing spectacular -- see "Eats" label at left) , but she writes about it and cooks it better than I. So here is a recent post of hers aptly titled "Food."

I like this post because I have been watching my friend (of almost 13 years!) develop as a writer just in the past few months she's been keeping up her blog. The ending paragraphs of "Food" had me laughing out loud. And when something actually makes me "LOL" it becomes even funnier just because neither Erica nor I would ever use that horrible acronym unless we were simply dying laughing.

My food thought for the day is nowhere near as interesting as sharkskin wasabi graters, but it is a principle that anyone who cooks for themselves, single or family folk, should know about. It is called sauce loss, and is a tragic yet avoidable predicament of multi-pot n' pan cooking, and of everyday living.

We all know intuitively that you try to conserve as much sauce, batter, or whatever other liquidy, pasty substances might be left behind when you scrape or pour from bowl to dish, from dish to plate. The easiest way, and most time-saving and environmentally friendly way, to avoid loss of precious prep minutes to scraping, and loss of precious sauce to sauce loss, is to make single dish meals -- things you can mix and cook and serve with one pan or pot. This might seem desperate or even low class -- but these are hard times America! Conserve your sauce! (Similarly, any reduction in the amount of transfers of the foodstuffs between containers will save sauce. Transfers are your sauce's worst enemy!)

Another way to reduce sauce loss, especially if the use of multiple mixing bowls and pans cannot be avoided, is to use proper scraping technique and proper scraping tools. The technique you must learn in the kitchen, from an experienced sauce conservationist, or by your own saucy trial and error. Supple wrists are beneficial. But the tools -- the tools I can tell you about. Forks and whisks will never do. Plenty of things mix up nicely with forks and whisks, but they also get stuck between the tines, and the fork especially cannot get the sauce out of the bottom of the mixing bowl, a problem that is exacerbated if your bowl is deep and very curved at the bottom. Budding cooks, you must own an assortment of rubber spatulae! (There is also much to be said for the hand-me-down wooden spoon, seasoned and smoothed by decades of storied sauces and butt-whackings, miraculously adapting its rigid form to every household application. But the spatula is key.) These simple, economical devices are your sauce saviors. You do not need the color coded Williams Sonoma spatula set in assorted hardnesses and textures. You just need a couple different sizes that will last. They clean off the forks, the bowls, the beaters, and generally reduce sauce loss by up to 50%, even in the hand of an amateur spatuleer. Plus, they are much more pleasant to lick (not a loss at all) than a fork or a beater.

Finally, all I can tell you kitchen dwellers is to simply be aware of your sauce. Awareness is the first step in reducing catastrophic sauce loss. Too often I have seen recipes go awry because of lack of some saucy ingredient called for in an exact measurement. Too often I have seen bowls strewn in sinks with batter or tomato sauce stuck to the sides and edges. A soaking nightmare, a waste of wash water, and a really big stink if they don't get cleaned right away. Not to mention the the loss of the thirteenth biscuit or the gratuitous serving of spaghetti sauce that could have been had if those ingredients -- those sauces! -- had had watchful stewards.

Note: Sauce loss does not only occur with cooking. It can happen when eating out, with drinks, shampoo, laundry soap...pretty much anything you pour or might transfer to another container. Watch it!

An excerpt from "Food" in case you didn't click on it yet:

"If I was rich, I might not be so negative about the fancier things. If I was rich, I would have a platter of oysters sitting here by the computer to eat at my leisure. I would sear fois gras in the salty tears of the sturgeon who's eggs I would be eating on toast points. I picture myself laughing hysterically during all of this."

There's still time!

"From the Sandwich Board"

A painting that hung on the wall at the original Austin's.

Restaurant menus have long been a surefire place to find some good puffery and hyperbole. Different restaurant styles call for different methods of food embellishment. The high end bistros simply put the whole number with no dollar sign to play up the "it must be good because look at that price" factor, and boggle your culinary vocabulary with words like "reduction" and confit. Mid-priced chain restaurants rely on food photographers and their abilities to photograph things that were never food, but happen to look very foodlike. My personal favorite menus, however, are those of the local diner. They can't afford pictures. They can't afford laminators. Their prices are unintimidating. But their owners often have quite the knack for painting verbal pictures of mile high hamburgers and dripping sandwiches that shine through the stains on the paper and the smears on the plastic menu sheets.

I served at a diner while I was in art school. This place was itself hyperbole. Open since 1959 in a historic "strip mall" (in the 1950s that meant three stores in one building with a shared parking lot) near downtown Tucson, Austin's Ice Cream was a hit with young and old, rich and poor. Twenty-six ancient laminated tables, labeled with the letters of the alphabet, plus a fifteen seat counter stained with prehistoric splotches that I could not get out, no matter how many times the old people at the counter (where they thought the tip should be lower) told me to put more elbow grease into it. No more than four servers worked the floor at any given time, so serving ten or eleven tables was common. (For comparison, chain restaurants do now allow you more than three or four tables. This place had sixteen-year-olds hopping from fountain to floor like it was still 1959.)

Most guests expected the hectic scene at lunchtime, and very few were disappointed by the wait, or by the food that failed to live up to the owner's fantastic, neurotic, menu descriptions (you can find negative reviews of the food online, but the place wasn't exactly for foodies). Patrons sipped on malted milkshakes and chocolate RCs while they waited, and watched the kids run around behind the fountain counter, using our 50 year old soda jerk set-up that had been shipped from an ancient soda shop in New Jersey when Mr. Austin moved west to sell his creamy wares. Austin's was an experience.

I hardly remember some of the sandwich names, as I wrote them all in waitress shorthand. I do remember that the hamburger and cheeseburger had some ridiculous name that people would order it by (the supreme something-or-other). I always wondered why they didn't just say "cheeseburger." The old people, who left me tips of equal amounts pocket change and pocket lint, ordered off the tops of their grey heads. But the tourists and kids would always read the menu, and order exactly what it said there, no matter how silly it sounded.

The food titles were a little funny, but the descriptions were always the best. Everything at Austin's was succulent, juicy, fragrant, dripping, etc. To save money, the owners (no longer Austins since the '80s) made LTO (lettuce tomato onion) and C (cheese) optional on everything. Even burgers. So if you didn't ask for any toppings, you got a dry burnt burger on a bun. Under the menu headings for burgers and sandwiches, it said in small print "Lettuce, Tomato, Onion available, if desired." Passive voice on menus is also funny. The only person making the decision is the guest, but we can't address them. They're trying to read the menu!

My favorite part of Austin's menu was the title for the sandwich section: "From the Sandwich Board." That romanticized sandwiches for me (something I've curiously always romanticized), and I imagined them coming off a wooden chopping block in the front of a country deli with a daily chalk menu in northern Wisconsin or some crap, not from a stainless steel counter in the back of a hot galley kitchen with rubber mats underneath, sweltering in the desert heat that Austin's ancient windows (decorated with a schoolteacher's quaint seasonal renditions of painted, living hot dogs with red lipstick) couldn't keep out.

I really miss Austin's. There are no good sandwiches around here. A few years ago, Austin's closed its lifelong location near semi-bustling (at least interesting) downtown Tucson. It moved far east into the ugly sprawl to take advantage of lower rent. Unfortunately, that put it in a real, post-1980s strip mall, surrounded by chain restaurant competition and terrible traffic, and nowhere near the interstate, the downtown area, or the university. It lost the mystique, it lost the location, it lost its older guests who couldn't find it or access it in shopping mall land, and it lost the mid-town tourist crowd and all the U of A students seeking cheap sandwiches by bike or bus. Austin's closed this past December. They couldn't pay the rent.

Despite the exciting menu writing, the owners did not have the business sense to keep Austin's open through the recession. Though I loved their style. They refused to carry Pepsi or Coke products because RC is classic. They never remodeled to update their look, only to replace broken seats or equipment. They played classic rock all day, even when the 10:30am old lady crowd had to stuff their ears with carrot sticks to be able to eat their early bird lunches. They supported local artists with their whimsically painted windows. They gave jobs and supervisory positions to kids, not to keep turning them over like a fast food restaurant, but to give them a chance at some hardcore table waiting skills, and decent money for young folk. They used only vintage equipment for the ice cream making and storage, unless health regulations made it impossible or unsafe to do so. They made all their own ice cream, and tried some strange flavors like ginger and jalapeno, but kept all the old fogey favorites in those aged freezers. And most endearing to me, they did a bang up job on the silly, unillustrated menu writing. But they were also kind of strange, unfriendly, and obviously didn't completely know what they were doing.

I wrote a short story about a girl who worked there (based on my experiences, but not me). Here's the part at the diner, "Keller's". Now I wonder if Austin's comes off better in narrative or in description. I write a little different from this now, so it's weird to see the story again. Although, it's in the first person, and I guess the voice is Nicole's and not really mine. She's 21-ish, a U of A student, more of a boy than I am, and covered in ice cream.

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They were playing the “lite rock” station that day, and I pained under the soft tunes as I mixed three chocolate shakes. The Kellers usually let us play classic rock in the restaurant, but one too many cranky old women had complained. Van Halen did sound kind of loud at ten in the morning, but that’s what they get for eating lunch at goddamn ten in the morning. It was after two now and we were waiting for the rush to ease off. But December was the height of Snowbird season, so no end was in sight.

I stabbed away at my three silver shake tins, pushing the stray chunks of ice cream down to get pulverized, ignoring the sawing sound and horrible vibration that ran though my hand and up to my shoulder every time the spoon hit the spindle. It was one of those work routines that had become comfortably monotonous. I purposely commandeered the six spindle machine, while the younger servers fought over the three open spots. I was a pro at milkshakes. Customers still complained sometimes, especially when it was a hundred and twenty outside and their milkshakes were not as thick as usual. It never got to me though. I was damn fast at sundaes too. One time a housewife who couldn’t tell that I was waiting on nine other tables walked out while I was making a banana split for her, three different goddamn ice creams with three different toppings. At least she left a tip.

At four o’clock, eight of my ten tables were full, and I was a little worried. At five we would start breaks, and I would be on third and counter – all my tables plus a possible fifteen seats at the counter, filled with spinning, dribbling children who order lots of shakes and don’t leave tips. Food was easier than shakes because I didn’t have to make it. Things were going well though, I had sixty in my pocket already, and most of the tables were finishing up. The awkward exchanges of my “How is everything?” answered with a food-muffled “Good” were through, and I retreated to the safety of the counter area to do the desserts. The desserts sold themselves, no suggestion needed. I had three ice cream orders in my head, and my hand was dipping quickly in and out of freezers, gloves be damned, gingerly placing perfectly formed scoops into the antique glass cups. I listened to the music of the freezer doors slamming and the glass dishes clinking to drown out Little Richard. My knuckles and arm hairs were sticky and colorful by then, even though I sometimes stopped to wipe off with a bleachy towel. It was amazing there were still hairs there at all. The muscle I had developed on my right forearm was amazing as well. I hoped I was the only one who noticed it. Left handed scooping was out of the question at these break-wrist paces.

A couple hours of spotty rushes went by, as well as a few games of Clyde and me stepping on each other’s feet. Clyde was the only other server there who was as old as I was. Both going into our mid-twenties and inexplicably stuck working at the ice cream shop. Fortunately for our dignity we both looked about fifteen. Though I don’t know if that helped or hurt our tips. We always daydreamed about working together somewhere that served alcohol, so we could “make bank” on the drink-inflated bills. It never happened though. Neither of us liked things to be expected of us, and at a fancy restaurant, people would expect things. And I wouldn’t want to dress nice around Clyde anyway. He already bothered me enough with the way he’d examine me in my ice-cream stained pink polo shirts and sticky ponytail.

I bent down behind the counter to squeeze the grimy chocolate juice out of the tattered brown hems of my jeans, careful to avoid pointing my butt in the boy's direction. When I popped back up to re-bleach my hands, there were Mike and Donna right in front of me at the counter.

“Weeelll, fancy meeting you here.” I gave my typical cheesy greeting. I liked it because I knew my friends would get it. Sometimes I thought we’d all been born in the wrong decade.

“Yes, Cheerio. We thought we’d pop in for a bit and have a taste of your wares.” Mike’s British was not that good.

Donna elbowed him in the gut.

“Jeez Donna!” His voice got high like it always did when she pissed him off.

“So are you guys eating?” I was hopeful.

“Yup,” answered Donna. “I’ll have the usual.”

“And I as well, love.” Donna threw another elbow, but he blocked it this time.

I was overly smiley and refreshed to see my friends, as if somehow their presence at the counter protected me from the self-worth crushing stares of the customers and the ever-escalating Clyde-tension. I had asked Mike and Donna to stop by when I was called in to work, but I figured they wouldn’t come – Keller’s didn’t serve alcohol.

I got them their usuals – Donna’s was invariably the double cheeseburger (PLU 187) and Mike’s the Santa Fe (PLU 118). I delivered their orders to the cook in Spanish (“doble hamberguesa con chips y una Santa Fe con muchas cebollas y mucho queso!”), which always gave the kitchen staff a hoot, and strutted back to the fountain. I made myself a chocolate RC and illegally hopped over the counter to settle in next to Donna and take my “break.” Since I was on counter I still had to get up if a take-out order came in or if someone needed help with their ice cream. Some break.

“So what are your plans for tonight?” I didn’t really want to drink again, but we probably would. I savored the syrupy chocolate mixture. We still made sodas old-fashioned style at Keller’s, with real syrup pumps and fizzy water.

“Fourth Ave,” Mike said, without an accent. “We’re going to park and walk around. Probably end up at Che’s.” Che’s was a socialist bar with lots of angry artwork on the wall, tritely lit in red from below. I wasn’t sure if the place was ridiculously serious or ridiculously tongue-in-cheek. The drinks were expensive and you had to order the nice ones or risk a faux pas. But the conversation was usually better than at the Bay Horse. My interest was piqued. Maybe we would get some dinner too, that didn’t include popcorn or the Bay Horse’s signature frozen Tombstone pizzas.

"Neee-coooaaal!" came the kitchen cry. My food was up.

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I quit Austin's when I was 23, when I found out I was pregnant (what!?). No pregnant girl could work those tables, or even fit behind the counter. Of course I had to work somewhere though, and Providence (or Buddha or somebody) came through with a cushy, friendly job at school within two months of my quitting. I will never work at a restaurant again. But I wouldn't trade those long hours of diner din, awkwardness, sweet sweat, bleachy stickiness, and numbing hunger for anything.

Tuscany, by any other Name

I have long been disturbed and maddened by advertisers' use of nearly meaningless words and catch-phrases to strike people's fancies. Any meaning these phrases originally had has been lost, and replaced by the advertisers' intended meaning (or sometimes not much meaning at all). I've written before on the phrase "Now More Than Ever," and that one had a lot of angles to tackle. Today's awful word is a proper noun (or an adjective, depending on whether they're using it in copy or as a product name), and though it may not have the potentially devastating powers of manipulation as the aforementioned phrase (NMTE!), it is quite, quite stupid. TUSCANY.

I have two other beefs that I'll lump together with this one. Tuscany is on my shit list, but there are a couple of other examples of naming-manipulation that don't rub me quite so roughly in the wrong direction. They just irk. Paint colors -- specifically Ralph Lauren's are on my list of ridiculousness. (Though I'm sure there are worse paint names out there, I'm familiar with Ralph's. As a loyal customer, I can make fun of them.) Finally, I have to return to my feeble complaints about Anthropologie, this time about their product names. Feeble my complaints are, because Anthro's name games, more than any others, work like heck on me.

Tuscan chicken. Tastes like a dish from Tuscany. Reminds you of the Tuscan hills. Do people even know where Tuscany is? It's become the poster child for everything Italian, even though it's only one specific region not even home to the biggest cities people think of when they think "Italy." Most of the Italian food we eat is southern Italian, with the red sauces and all. Or Sicilian even, like the meats and some pizza styles. I'm no Italian foodie, so I know Toscana for its cultural contributions more than its culinary ones. Florence is there, you know, where Michelangelo's David is? The marketing doesn't remind us of that sort of thing. Advertisers working for fast food joints, housepaint brands, supermarkets, etc. have led us to associate "Tuscany" with peppers, chicken (they're actually bigger on beef there), cheese, beige things, things with pictures of grapes on them and a faux crackle finish...cypress trees, maybe. Hills. Something like California, but better (in consumer's minds) because it's Italy. I'm sure it's a lovely place, but the attention it's getting is directed at all the wrong things, and being used to promote some very American products. Mostly awful food.

Fortunately no cars have been Tuscany's namesake. I think the Hyundai Tucson beat carmakers to it, and fears of dyslexic drivers confusing the names (they probably don't know where Tucson is either) may have GM holding off on putting the "Chevy Tuscan" out just yet (they're the worst at car names). I did see a suburbanite with the license plate "Tuscan 1" on her champagne colored SUV. What the hell does that even MEAN!? I bet she has a beige kitchen with faux crackle finish walls and a wallpaper border of purple viney grapes. And lots of chicken in the freezer. And those friggin' bottles with oil and peppers and shit in them that just sit there on the counter looking "Tucsan."

Ralph is next. Ralph Lauren paint is great. I try to buy it exclusively for my tiny old house. It has a cream base instead of a white base, which makes it look warmer, more natural, muted, a little dirty, maybe even a little Tuscan. Goes with my ancient wood floors and the cobwebs on the crown molding, and covers the mystery spots on my walls that are made out of some pressed material that predates drywall. Behr paint, on the other hand, has a white base and I hate it. I used the Behr in my bathroom because I got some free paint. I thought the bathroom might be one room that would benefit from not having paint that looks pre-aged and pre-dirtied, but I was wrong. (See photo. "My God what have I done...white base!") So there, I love Ralph but I can't stand his paint names.

In the series that I usually buy from -- the "Vintage Masters" series -- the colors are great and really come from a master's palette (a term we arties actually use). Some of the names follow the series theme and are spot on -- "Vermeer Blue" is just like the blue on the head wrap of the girl with the pearl earring, "Impressionist" is just the color of a Monet sky, "Medieval Purple" matches the faded, once royal purples on the tapestries.

Some are typical paint names, you know, something about a meadow or a lilac, and those are okay. Others leave too much up to the imagination or just miss the mark, in both the realms of the concrete and the abstract. What color is "Basalt"? Well it's not a faint whisper of light blue like Ralph thinks it is. Ralph failed geology I guess. And most people probably would have no guess what "Basalt" is supposed to look like anyway. Next up, "Countess" -- what color is a countess? She's grey. And the "Duchess of Windsor" is pink, apparently. And what color is a "Hotel Room"? They're all grey. My living room color is called "Composed." Unless you've seen my living room, would you have any idea what color that is? It's a beautiful muted gold that changes colors in the light, accepts sun-dappling with grace, and resists scuffing from toy hammers, Hot Wheels cars, and little shoes. I love it. But "Composed" sounds like a blue to me, or a deep grey. It deserves better. I would have called it "Buckskin" or something. Or even "Sun Dapple." Though I guess my living room does compose me pretty well. "Temptation" is another interesting and abstract one. It's a light delicate pink, not deep pink or green or some other passionate color. Maybe delicate pink was "temptation" to a Victorian dandy who looked for that color in the face of his betrothed (since he couldn't see any more of her).

So "Composed." Me in my yellow living room.

Finally Ralph just has some "what were you thinking" color names. "Essex Cream"? -- I can hear Beavis and Butthead snorting at that one. "Pink Lips" (another delicate barely-there pink, maybe the china lips of someone who's had massive blood loss) is another doosy. And the made up person names! I can accept the paint namers trying to associate well known figures from history with regal looking colors (Edwardian Burgundy, Victorian Lace, Lady Elizabeth White...) but who the hell is "Larrington"? It's like you're supposed to make up some high falutin' story for the guy and make your guests think your dining room is painted like the fictitious Lord Larrington's salon. Maybe he was some 18th century fop who liked swollen purple colors on his painted floors. Ralph should make up the story for you and print it on the back of the paint chip. Then you can bring home a little pile of paint chip novellas and decide which narrative best suits your mud room.

Last for today I will complain a little about Anthropologie, but like I said, they know what they're doing with names. The 2010 spring catalog doesn't even use traditional names for the articles of clothing being described. Not only does the one-shoulder, drop-dead gorgeous piece that's caught your eye have a whimsical write-up, but it's not even referred to as a swimsuit -- it's a maillot! A gleaming pewter maillot! How can a girl resist? I can't blame them for fancying up the name. Their swimwear passes as evening wear. This one's even being worn as a shirt by this distracted Demeter over there. Other items I liked at first look but got pulled in by the name: Inked Paradise Dress (perfect -- I must have it), Drifting By Dress (shown on a blonde, probably wouldn't work on a brownie like me), Warm Season Romper (that sounds a little off, but real fun), Archeologist Button-Up (jeez!). I think that last one is the shirt you buy if you don't have an archeologist boyfriend to give you his. Then you can wear it around and play hard-to-get at the next big dig. "So... are you seeing anyone?" "Not really. I just sleep with archeologists and steal their shirts."

As I write these names out I can see some of them are not as whimsical when not paired with the photos, and some of them are just as devoid of meaning as "Tuscany." However, they are poetic. They lend themselves to story-weaving, like Ralph's made up lords and ladies. The sound of Anthro's names is good. They sound like they look.

Perhaps when you have a product that is good, waxing poetic about it is not a bad idea. Especially in a smaller target market like romantic clothing for 20 - 30 year old women, or paint for people who like old-looking houses. But using imagistic or emotionally loaded language to sell something crappy to everyone who walks by is just not cool. Tuscany, I'm boycotting your products (that have nothing to do with you). Anthropologie, I know what you're doing to me, but I'd like to place an order...

Bengal Gram and Other Edible Treasues

So often I come back to food. Usually my food musings are really yearnings inspired by hunger and boredom. But today, a big yellow bowl of bengal gram dumplings is my muse. Bengal gram is what they call chickpeas in India. These little chunks are like squishy falafel floating in yellow currry. Mmm-mmm.

I often think this thought: "I like almost any food I can think of yet so many people out there are picky eaters. What's wrong with them?"

When I say "any food" I mean foods that would be served in some corner of the United States. And maybe a few outlying delicacies. There are unimaginable foods, I'm sure, eaten in the wilds of Africa or on the shores of Ecuador that I would not care to sample. But as far as the ethnic fare I've been exposed to goes, I dig all of it.

Fried Guinea Pig -- An Ecuadorian Treat

But I'm not just talking ethnic food either. Even though I still hold that people who refuse to try sushi or Indian food or whatever are just being big babies, these people also refuse to eat things like mushrooms or celery or avocados.

I understand that everyone's palate is different, and I respect rigid food choices that are made for health reasons. But the refusals I see happen every day are not educated or health concsious ones, but childish "eeew!" reactions. I too have foods that I like more that others or that I would rather not eat if something else is available. But I can't think of anything I would completely refuse if nothing else was available, save meat (and that's not because I don't like it).

Since the internet loves lists, here we go.

Foods I like that many college kids don't eat:
Sushi
Indian food
Thai food
Hummus and other Middle Eastern salads like Mama Ganoush, Tabouli, Tahini sauce...
Falafel
Sprouts
The icky vegetables (broccoli, spinach, raw tomatos, etc)
Fancy beer
Wine
Unsweetened soymilk
Flavored waters with no sweeteners
Honest Teas (5g sugar, compared to Lipton's 24g)
Hot Tea

The only foods I can think of that I would rather not eat:
Meat (I'm a vegetarian, otherwise I'd be all over it. And when I did eat it I liked weird stuff like Prosciutto and goose liver pate)
Eggplant (No one ever cooks it right, but I can take it in Baba Ganoush.)
Chips (I am always thirsty and they just make it worse. They do taste good though.)
Raw Squid (I tried it several times before I made it official that I don't like it.)

Many people are much pickier than that. Some have arrived at their decisions by trial and error, but many have not based their rejections on any developed sense of taste. They flat out refuse foods that contain one unfamiliar or pungent ingredient, and deaden their mouth senses even more by eating repetitively and by consuming flavor-engineered processed foods. The same people can't eat or drink things that don't have added sugar, because they can no longer taste natural sweetness. The same people end up in the bathroom if they eat a few fresh vegetables.



Another list.

What the girls in line at the "Cart" (our snack stand at school) always buy:
Doritos
Cherry Pepsi
Bagel with four cream cheeses
Mountain Dew
Frosted Flakes bowl
Technicolor yogurt bowl
Fluorescent orange Buffalo chicken chunks
Coffee with ten creamers (the older students)

So I guess I am blaming the destruction of the American palate on the food industry. Scores of kids grow up drinking Sunny D and eating chicken nuggets with ketchup, and their tastes never develop beyond adopting the adult versions of these foods -- sports drinks and KFC and any tomato based sauce. It's as if people who don't eat this crap can handle stronger flavors (i.e. curry, pates) as well as more delicate flavors (i.e. cucumber water), and appreciate both.

Eating crappy stuff has begun to have a cool factor as well, which in the age and land of cool doesn't help matters. If you're in the car with your buddies and you refuse McDonald's, telling them you need to stop off at the health food store and grab a vegan burrito to-go, you won't hang around with those buddies long. As for the popularity of fast-food salad these days, I think it's laced with something.

I can't get into the whole food conspiracy here. It's an evil industry and we'll leave it at that. My favorite health food store is in Tucson, Arizona and it's call Food Conspiracy Co-op. I am not sure if they are referring to themselves as a haven from the enemy (the processed food conspiracy), or as the counter-culture conspirators who smuggle healthy food into town. Probably both.

I just wish young people (and some older people too!) could get past their fears of ethnic, unsweetened, raw, or strongly naturally flavored foods. I am embarrassed for them. And so are my bengal gram dumplings.

Ode to A Greasy Muffin

Whenever I am tired at school I find myself writing about food.

In art school, years ago, I had a notebook page full of food doodles. Stacks of drippy pancakes, floating pieces of crispy, stripey bacon, McDonald's oblong hash browns peeking out of their little sleeves.

A year ago, during a semester of poetry, I found myself writing an elegy to the hot chocolate machine. I actually did two revisions of it before I tucked it away in my old notebooks, with all the other ramblings of sleep-deprivation.

Today, in the midst of a particularly trying semester of literary analysis and philosophical reflections on aesthetics, I yawned a big yawn, and got the urge again. Out came: "Ode to A Greasy Muffin."

I won't blast your sensibilities with that text here, but I will share with you my inspiration. Then someday, when the Ode is on the page next to other Odes (I was making reference to Keats' "Ode to A Grecian Urn" for those of you who aren't English majors), you can do a contextual analysis of it. And then the formalists and I will disapprove of you.

I was tired and hungry enough to consider a nap on a sunlit couch in the atrium of Dunham Hall. Upon closer inspection, the sunlit couch was found to be a stinky couch. I considered going to McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin, sans Canadian bacon. Then I remembered my promise -- I swore I wouldn't eat McDonald's for a year. It's not like they even have much I can eat. But something always draws me back there.

So I looked like a damn fool pacing around the building, looking out at my car on the street, weighing the options. If I go, I lose my parking spot. And it's a good one. If I go I'm going to feel shame for padding Ronald McDonald's pockets. But I'm so goddamn hungry! I started outside.

Halfway to the car: "WAIT! They have egg sandwiches at school!" In the same building, there is a little snack bar with some packaged sandwiches and soups. I snagged one, tossed the ham in the garbage, and popped the muffin in the microwave. It tasted ten times better than the "Mc" version, and I didn't break any promises or waste any finite resources (unless you count "pig" as a finite resource).

If I ate ham, which I don't, I would have been even further impressed with this little muffin. It was real shaved ham, folded over so that there was more than one layer of meat. Nothing like the round piece of pink stuff that McDonald's factory stamps out of a twenty foot wide sheet of Canadian bacon. Or do they squeeze it out of a tube and cut off thin slices, like kids do with their Play-Doh factories? No matter.

The thing was good, and it deserved an Ode.

Vittles for Vegans

I am a vegetarian. The first of this year marked my one year anniversary of going down the leafy green path. It was not a 2008 resolution, but some bad Christmas meat of 2007 that was the catalyst for my conversion. That, and several years of learning about "what's in the meat" and what it does to the planet.

So while I am vegetarian for both health and ethical reasons, there is nothing militant or proseletyzing about my attitudes on my food orientation. There is no meat in my house, but there is quite often meat in the stomachs of my family members. How they come by it is not my business.

Yesterday my son had a sample at Trader Joe's. He thinks we go there just for the samples. He thinks that's going out to eat. The "sample lady" was carving a pink, juicy prime rib into bite sized morsels, stabbing them with toothpicks, and flopping them into little cups. Mikey grabbed one and downed it. "It's...it's MEAT MAMA!" Chew, chew, chew. "Mmm! Dontcha wanna try some mama!?" This kind of thing comes up often at the sample table, and I often worry the "sample lady" thinks I'm preaching to her as I explain to my son (again) why I don't eat meat.

So I have a sense of humor about the whole thing. I crave meat and I joke about it. I see the Arby's five for $5.55 on TV and I tell my kid, "I'm goin' to get it! Right now. I'll smell them all, maybe lick off the sauce and chew on the drippy buns a little..." He tells me I'm crazy. I'm still imagining the pleasures of horseradish sauce mixed with blood as I hear the next commercial begin: "Badda bah bah baaaaah! I'm lovin' it." And it begins again.

Not that I ate such disgusting things when I ate meat. I ate it infrequently even then, and my favorite things were borderline healthy. Beef was never on my shopping list, and my number one meaty meal was the carnitas burrito from Chipotle -- that's some happy pig meat you know. Mmm, carnitas...

But, curiously, vegetarianism has lately had me craving things that I never would have eaten, even as an omnivore. Arby's, hot dogs, Big Macs, SPAM! And also things I rarely ate, like huge fatty slices of bacon, salty shavings of cured ham, or... Trader Joe's prime rib.

All this has led me to come up with loving names for all my favorite fake meats, to find a way to hold them close to my heart and my palate so that any cravings for the "real thing" can be instantly squelched with a bite of surrogate meats. Yes, I eat fake meats. And I find it hard to explain to someone that I had a killer BLT for lunch, when really there was no "B" in it at all (and certainly no killing). "I thought you were vegetarian?" Explaining this stuff always sucks.

So here is a list of monikers I've come up with for fake meats of all brands, selected to replace the meats they are copying almost seamlessly in any conversation about what you had for lunch:

Bacon = Facon (Fake-un)

...hence BLT = FLT

BBQ Riblets = Fiblets

Hot Dogs = Not Dogs

Sausage = Falsage (False sausage)

Ham = Sham (Ha! My favorite!)

Spam = Sham Can

Bologna = Baloney bologna

Jerky = Nicey

Meatballs = Cheatballs


The corporates have already come up with "Tofurkey" and I can't get it out of my head -- so I have yet to coin a new fake-turkey title. I never eat the stuff anyway. Their Thanksiving loaf is like a giant turkey pill with a gelatinous brown capsule shell, filled with gooey rice and stuffing medicine.

The only cheat (i.e. meat) favorite of mine that I have not found a name for is vegetarian corn dogs. It's torturing me!

The title includes vegans (which I am not) because all of the cheats listed here are available in vegan form, so those dedicated plant-eaters can join in the lunch conversation too. Fortunately for vegans (but not for America) so many people are lactose intolerant and/or afraid of eating eggs that the extra step of throwing in a reference to soymilk or egg substitutes won't throw off their meal talk.

Although, if someone invents fake honey (agave syrup?) they may have to start calling it "funny." Wait -- many meat-eating people are not thoughtful enough to realize that vegans don't eat honey! Shoot. I'd better move on before I belie my earlier claims of food tolerance.

I'm going to go look at the Steak and Shake coupons that came in the mail today...just look. And maybe chew the corners a little.

UPDATE 5/9/09: Tofurkey is now my friend. I think I'll just call it Tofurkey, except that confuses things because it comes in ham, Italian beef, etc. I've been making "kicked out of the club" sandwiches with Facon and Tofurkey. Anyhow, I take back what I said about the gelatinous meat capsule, and I might just try to make one this fall.

The Good, the Bad, and the Burpy

Explaining how to pour. (Beer is good in warm places too.)

When you live in a cold place you must drink beer to survive. The southerners in this country, they drink bourbon whiskey. The southerners in Europe, they drink lots of wine. We northerners, all over the globe, need our beer.

My toes are freezing, and I am imbibing a dark chocolatey brew called Edmund Fitzgerald. You all know the reference? It's a ship that sank in Lake Eerie in 1975. Old Gordon Lightfoot sang about it the next year. The bottle even has a sense of humor: "...our Edmund Fitzgerald will taste smoky, robust, dark and bittersweet. Thanks to our environmental efforts, if you take a swig of Lake Eerie it won't taste smoky, robust, dark and bittersweet." I like raillery in a beer. Plus it's got that Guinnessy flavor, without the dogfood aftertaste.

Another beer I can't live without is your over-hopped IPA. That's India Pale Ale for you oenologists who have neglected your beer studies. And it's not Indian at all. It was originally brewed with extra hops so it would last the journey to India from Great Britain, back in the good old days of British Imperialism.

Hops are a preservative as well as a steroid. Drink an IPA if you want to have a long life and fight off inflammation. Dogfish Head Brewery has a 60 minute and a 90 minute IPA that will make you cough and burp a lot.

Speaking of Dogfish Head, they make an ancient brew called Midas Touch. It is based on a recipe that was supposedly derived from examining the contents of beer barrels that were dredged up with a shipwreck. It is quite heavenly. I think the "ancient brews resurrected" category of beers is my absolute favorite.

Another good one is 1554, which is New Holland's Belgian black ale based on a recipe found in someone's 16th century notebook. A flood destroyed the orginal research, so they had to travel to Belgium and find the recipe again by sifting through old manuscripts! I love tasting something that possibly tastes exactly like what stinky enlightened men of yesteryear used to drink by the fire.

It's funny, but anything but the alcohol of yore would probably be quite disgusting to our modern palates. I know this from experience because I checked out a medieval recipe book from the library and cooked some of the dishes. The only edible meals were the ones made with nuts or potatoes. Every other recipe called for way too much calf's blood, dandelions, and tree bark.

I will try any beer once, whether it is a sickeningly thick tar-ale or a bargain basement old-man can that says something about crystal clear waters. I tried just about everything when I lived in Canada. I miss the trips to the beer store -- a semi-socialist phenomenon where the names of beers are listed on a board (no pictures) and your purchases get anonymously sent out on a conveyor belt, the only outlet from the corrugated steel warehouse hidden behind the flapping plastic curtains. That was the only time I ever gained weight -- I ate chocolates and beer for six months solid.

In my ten or so years of tasting adventures I have come across a few nasties, so here's a short warning list.

Miller Chill. This is Miller's "Mexican" beer, pre-limed and with a dash of salt. Stick to Corona if salt and lime are your thing. This beer tastes like it was poured through the urine-soaked streets of Tijuana and scooped back into the bottle, making sure to include the hearty flavor of cigarillo butts. Budweiser answered this with Bud Lime, which causes a slightly less intense gag reflex than its competitor.

Sprecher Pizza Beer. A local invention we Fox River Valley residents should be ashamed of. How did this guy get Sprecher to brew his beer? It is actually made with pizza ingredients: tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and basil. Sounds intriguing, but 9 out of 10 beer enthusiasts only try it once. I am saving you the trouble. Pizza burps without the full pizza belly are no fun. Plus, as many critics have mentioned, beers are paired with food because they complement the foods, not because they taste exactly like them. Yuck.

Tom Seefurth thinks he's "all that."

What next, wasabi beer to go with your sushi? Actually that sounds good...

It is perfectly fine to put spices in beer, but you can't just choose them based on the foods you like. Most men who would never admit to sniffing coriander and juniper go head over heels for these aromas in their liquor! Same for the fruity aromas in various weiss beers -- fruity drinks with twists are ok for boys if the fruit is suspended in the four magical ingredients.

Rogue Chipotle Ale. I actually like this one, but it is intense. It is actually smoky and spicy. It comes close to being too food-flavored, but not close enough to make it disturbing like the orange pizza water. If you like spicy, go for it. Otherwise, avoid this brew. Rogue's Dead Guy Ale is one every drinker can appreciate. And it hasn't even a whiff of formaldehyde.

As usual I am procrastinating on my homework, so I'll pick up my beer reviews later. I'm supposed to be writing about the problem of free will. Well, the problem of alcohol and the problem of free will are not entirely unrelated subjects!