this ain't livin'

Purity and Prejudice | 07Feb08

There are two major supermarkets in Fort Bragg: Harvest and Safeway. Most people shop at one or the other, and it can at times be a divisive issue. Some people think of Safeway as the hick grocery store, for example, while Harvest is the yuppie grocery store.

But this dichotomy leaves out two lesser players, Purity and Down Home Foods. Purity is technically a supermarket, using any definition you like, but it’s more of a market in the style of Mendosas (before Harvest bought it), with a limited selection of basic items and a really good meat and seafood counter which often stocks local food. Down Home is the health food store, a great place for bulk tea and spices and weird hippy food. And wilted produce. Why the produce at a health food store is so bad, I don’t know.

At any rate, I typically shop at Harvest, because I have a Purity prejudice. I can’t really explain it. There’s no reason to not like Purity. The people there are perfectly nice, I’m sure. It’s a bit creepy, as I’ve noticed when picking up the occasional Cappuccino It’s-It there,  but it’s not like Purity has heads on stakes in the produce section or anything. I get a few things from Down Home, like the bulk tea I like, and I get my meat from Roundman’s as a general rule, because they have good, local meat and they’re only a few blocks away. Everything else I get at Harvest.

My Purity prejudice is kind of famous among my group of friends. I remember at one point we needed sugar for something and I insisted on going all the way to Harvest instead of Purity. I can’t rationalize my Purity prejudice, and as I recall my father and I used to shop there when I was a kid. There was just a shift, at some point, where Purity went from being a market to being a void space that I don’t even think of as a source for food.

This week, I decided that it was time to get over my Purity prejudice. It’s stupid to order groceries from Harvest constantly when I can get most of the things I need at Purity. Purity tends to be cheaper, according to those who actually shop there, and I really miss being able to wander around a grocery store and make selections. And I’m all about living within walking distance. Well I could technically walk to Harvest, but it wouldn’t be very enjoyable.

So I actually went to Purity to shop, grocery list in hand. And I have to say, it’s a decent grocery store. They definitely have some shortcomings; I couldn’t find the brand of yogurt I like, for example, and the selection isn’t that broad. But given that I ignore half of the aisles in Harvest anyway, I don’t think it’s fair to pick on Purity for having a limited selection. They have a fair amount of ethnic ingredients, for example, and the produce is of reasonably good quality. Although the tomatoes were greasy. How do tomatoes get greasy?

I don’t think I can satisfy all of my shopping needs at Purity, but I think that I will be shopping there a lot more often. I really like being able to go to the store every few days to pick up things as I am inspired to cook them, rather than forcing myself to think of anything I might possibly want to eat in a week and then making a big grocery order. I’m also looking into local CSAs for produce, and looking forward to the opening of the farmers’ market.

For Lent, I have also decided to try and purchase only base ingredients. For example, rather than buying yogurt or pasta sauce when I have a hankering, I am going to make my own. I’m even going to get experimenting with my own soft cheeses this weekend, although since I can’t get raw milk* up here it’s going to be interesting. Rather than buying boxed pasta or prepared pizza crust for a recipe, I’m going to make my own. I think that I rely on packaged convenience a lot, and while my definitions of convenience foods are different from those of a lot of Americans (I don’t buy tv dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese, and the like, for example), I think that I can make my own damn chicken soup, not buy it in a box. If I want bagels, I can find a recipe and use it rather than settling for the spongy crap everyone here has the audacity to call a bagel (seriously…you cannot get good bagels anywhere in this town).

I’m hoping that this will be a permanent shift, and that when I want things like cream cheese, applesauce, and rye bread in the future, I’ll make them myself. It’s cheaper to buy the base ingredients for these things than it is to buy them in the store, and it also allows me greater control over what I put in my body.

We’ll see how it works out.

*By the way, if anyone has a line on local raw milk and wants to hook me up, please let me know. I promise I won’t compromise your source. I just want real milk. Damnit.

Meringue | 31Jan08

It’s my father’s birthday today. I made him a lemon meringue pie. Actually I made the pie last weekend, because we both tend to be busy during the week, so I thought I would have a better chance of luring him over for pie if I did it on the weekend. He suggested chess pie, which I did briefly consider, but I had a pound of lemons that needed to be used.

I like the process of making lemon meringue pie. It is both exacting and gloriously messy, and the end result is generally universally enjoyed, combining tart glorious lemon with airy meringue which melts away as soon as it gets moist. I’ve also enjoyed making variations like lime meringue and tangerine meringue (which, for the record, did not turn out as fabulously as I might have desired). The trick, I have found, is cutting the sugar dramatically, allowing the tart flavor of the lemons to come through without drowning the tongue in sweetness.

As I was making the pie and experimenting with a fancy-pants yuppie pie crust that turned out like cardboard, I was reminded of the great coconut cream pie adventure, which took place many years ago, when I wore stripes with floral prints and sat at the end of the bar in the Coast Hotel drinking Shirley Temples as my father worked.

My father and I have both been long-time fans of coconut cream pie. Every now and then, as a treat, we would go to the Laurel Deli and have a slice of coconut cream pie together, or sometimes chocolate cream pie. This was in the days when the Laurel Deli was on the East side of Main Street, for those of you who remember those heady times.  And although my father and I were great baking adventurers, for some reason we never tried making our own.

At any rate, a friend of my father’s went to Hawaii, and she mailed back a coconut. I’m not sure you can still that, but you used to be able to just slap a mailing label on a coconut and send it. On my first trip to Hawaii, I sent coconuts to everyone and their sister because I was so excited by the novelty. This particular coconut was decorated from head to toe with delicate pastel drawings, and the label had a finely painted miniature beach scene on it.

For the first few days, we just looked at the coconut, turning it over now and then and trying to decide what to do with it. Finally, my father (or maybe it was me, my memory is thin on this point) said:

“Let’s make a coconut cream pie.”

For some reason, we took the coconut with us when he went to work, perhaps to ask for advice from the Mayan kitchen staff, whom we assumed were coconut experts. When we arrived, it was still early, and I was fired up with enthusiasm, so we proceeded to the loading dock and started hurling the coconut repeatedly against the ground to get it to crack open. This, of course, did not work, so we tried hammers, and mallets, and any number of things, until the whole kitchen staff had arrived and was lined up at the window laughing while they did prep.

Eventually, a small fissure opened in the coconut, and the coconut juice poured out. We, of course, did not realize that coconut juice and coconut milk are not the same, so we had a moment of panic, until one of the prep cooks took pity on us and said that “the milk is in the meat.”

So we took the coconut home and painstakingly chiseled out the meat, which predictably did not yield milk when squeezed, because we did not realize that there was a process for coconut milking. I was surprised to learn that coconut cream pie is not made with coconut milk (or cream), but rather that the recipe called for vanilla cream pie with coconut flakes added. As I recall, we made the cream filling as directed and just threw the chunks of coconut, complete with streaks of grease from the chisel, in. (The recipe called for toasted shredded coconut.)

We decided to eschew the meringue, either because neither of us felt like making it or because someone’s impatience had clouded our judgments, and we popped the pie in the oven and waited with bated breath for it to come out, discussing the delicious and satisfying flavor of coconut cream pie, and how excellent it was going to be to make coconut cream pie from a coconut someone had sent us. Personally. From Hawaii.

When we took the pie out, the filling had developed a definite list to starboard, with a cracked and pitted surface marked by inclusions of leathery coconut meat which stuck out like nuts in brittle. We began to have doubts about the coconut pie mission, but my father gamely cut two slices, pulled two forks out of the silverware drawer, and settled down at the table.

I’ve had a few things in my life I haven’t enjoyed. Durian, for example. But few things will ever equal this coconut cream pie, which has to be one of the most disgusting things I have ever eaten. The filling was way too rich, with a mouth-clogging creamy texture which wasn’t helped by some sort of faint curdling which had happened during the baking process, causing it to form cheesy chunks. I think this may be because we used straight whipping cream, for reasons I cannot recall. The coconut meat, which was coarsely chiseled instead of grated, turned out leathery in places and wooden in others, and it was utterly tasteless.

My father took a few more bites, as did I, as we hesitantly peeked at each other  over our slices.

“Hrm,” my father said.

“Er,” I replied.

And we quietly got up and put our plates on the sideboard, where they rested like unexploded grenades for several hours as we played a game of Monopoly. We really hate wasted food, so there was a quiet underlying tension as we battled for capitalist control of the yellows, with neither of us wanting to say that we should throw the pie away.

“Maybe we should top it with whipped cream,” he said.

“That will be $26,” I replied as he landed on Pacific Avenue. “I think we would still taste the coconut chunks. Maybe we could pick them out. We could serve slices with crab forks.”

“Or maybe we could rinse the filling off,” he said, ignoring the fact that the filling was the most expensive ingredient, “and start again with the coconut chunks.” He peeled $30 off his roll of cash and waited for change.

At the end of the night, I won the game and we tossed the cake, throwing the shreds into the bushes in the back yard. I secretly hoped a coconut tree would grow there.

And I haven’t tried making coconut cream pie since.

Cookie Report for JSP | 25Jan08

Alles gut.

On Cookbooks | 21Jan08

Every now and then, I go through periods in my life when food doesn’t interest me. I suspect that this is related to a medical condition I have, judging from experiences of others with the same condition. Whatever the reason, for several days or weeks, I have a really hard time eating. I can’t remember to eat, and when I do know that I need to eat, nothing interests me. Typically, I force myself to cook something, and I choke down a few mouthfuls before pushing the rest away, feeling nauseated. Inevitably, during one of these periods my Chinese mother invites me over to dinner and I am too stupid to make up an excuse not to go, and she makes something really weird like pickled duck testicles, and I fear I may spark an international incident. The smell of food, which is normally intoxicating, becomes repulsive. Discussions about food are like torture, and photographs of food in my RSS feed cause me to feel slightly faint. (Which is a real problem, when you subscribe to numerous food related sites.)

Long time readers will know that disinterest in food is an extremely unusual state of affairs for me, and these periods tend to be distressing to friends as well, because I do uncharacteristic things like declining free food, ordering a large plate of pad thai and eating two bites, not eating sweets, and looking askance at someone who suggests going on a culinary adventure. I’m not really sure what brings these periods on, and what causes them to end. They just seem to happen with no apparent pattern, and then they stop, just like that, and it’s back to full tilt, balls to the wall eating.

I’ve spent the last week or two sinking into one of these stages, and soliciting recommendations of food from friends. Most of our conversations involve me whining about not knowing what I want to eat, and my friends throwing out perfectly good suggestions which I shoot down with comments like “it’s too green.” (Curried okra.) “There’s too much starch.” (Sushi.) “It might end up being greasy.” (Soup.) And so forth. Luckily, things haven’t reached full blown “talk about food and feel green around the gills” stage, obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this post, but things are starting to look pretty dire. After all, it’s not every day that I turn down a meal at one of my favourite restaurants with a shudder.

So I took a radical step: I bought cookbooks.

I’m not too into cookbooks. I own The Joy of Cooking because I think it is a good reference text, especially for baking, and I own a vegetarian Indian cookbook which I have literally never used. (It was a gift.) Cookbooks and I have never really gotten along, and that’s just how it is. Even my father uses cookbooks on occasions, and he is a far more naturally gifted cook than I am (in fact, perhaps the use of cookbooks contributes to that). I just open cookbooks, stare at the contents listlessly, and then close them again. With the exception of the Joy, which I open to look for very specific things, like the recipe for the dessert I am making for my father on his birthday next week. And sometimes I look at the pictures in the butchering section because they are interesting, or I look up a substitution or a unit conversion.

At any rate, a friend called me yesterday afternoon to see if I wanted to check out the sale at the Gallery Bookshop with her. The Gallery Bookshop, incidentally, for those of you who are not local, is a supercool bookstore in Mendocino which has been in business for basically forever. And they were damaged by a fire last week, which means that they need to get rid of all their inventory so that the building can be repaired, allowing them to restock. So they threw out the stuff that was really messed up, and they’re selling everything else with a major markdown. Whatever doesn’t sell will get scooped up by the insurance company, which claims that it goes to some sort of book recycling company which presumably sells the stock elsewhere at a discount. I would like to point out that I had to be physically restrained from diving headfirst into the dumpster just outside. Anyway, book sale, good bookstore, sure why not.

Now, I have a tendency to go a bit crazy in bookstores. So I made two rules: I had to either get books which I could write off for work, or I had to get books which I couldn’t get in the library. Now, I think you can get some cookbooks from the library, but cookbooks from the library just seem weird, to me. I’m a messy cook, so basically any book I borrowed would end up covered in mysterious sludge. I’m pretty sure that our library shares this concern, and that cookbooks are designated in-library use only, which is pretty reasonable if you ask me because who wants to check out a moldy cookbook with the remains of someone else’s food on it?

Therefore, I decided that maybe it was time to get some cookbooks. I also thought that perhaps I could pique my appetite with some new and interesting recipes. I ended up with Where Flavor Was Born, Mangoes and Curry Leaves, The Arab Table, Soha, and The Essence of Chocolate. I’m planning on experimenting with a few recipes from them later this week, and I’ll probably talk about them, assuming they turn out ok. I figure these books don’t merit full inclusion in the book project, since I’m not embarking on some kind of crazy Julie/Julia project here, and I won’t really be reading them as much as eating them, but one thing I do like about all of these books is that they are fancy-pants hardcover cookbooks with lots of culinary and historical information, so I can learn while I cook.

I don’t know if these cookbooks will address the original problem of not feeling very hungry, but I think they will mark the entry of a new stage in my life: a stage where I use cookbooks. And I think that might actually be a good thing. All of us have a tendency to get stuck in a cooking rut, and I think it might be nice to try and cook something different every week. It doesn’t always have to be fancy or amazing, but by cooking something new, I might expand my palate, learn about new foods, have fun, and spur my appetite.

The real bummer, for me, is that most of these cookbooks are Southeast Asian, and they talk about all sorts of interesting spices which I can’t get here. Although it occurs to me that since I order everything from towels to binderclips on the internet, it’s a safe bet that someone, somewhere sells these spices, so maybe I should get on that. Although I think I will save the really intense, stinky stuff for after my current period of food-phobia ends. Unless I know my landlord is coming over, in which case I am busting out the big barrels because I need to convince him that a stove hood really is necessary, and if my house stinks of asafoetida and seared chilies, maybe I will be successful in the great stove hood campaign. Or even the great kitchen window that opens for ventilation campaign.

Cloning Dinner | 19Jan08

One big piece of news in the food world this week was the FDA approval of food/products from cloned animals. Today is the first time I’ve actually been able to sit down, read a few news stories, and comment on the issue. Needless to say, I have some pretty strongly worded thoughts on cloned food.

One of the things that is most interesting to me about this news story is the widespread opposition to the sale of cloned food, and the fact that the mass media is widely reporting on this opposition. Even CNN had a few comments on the opposition, and CNN is pretty much my source for the pulse of the mainstream media. (That and Fox news, but my sensibilities are fragile this morning, so I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Fox site.) Independent media sources are, of course, shitting their pants.

“Extensive evaluation of the available data has not identified any subtle hazards that might indicate food-consumption risks in healthy clones of cattle, swine, or goats,” says the FDA. This may well be true, although I feel like this is the sort of thing which should be studied for decades, not years. CNN also points out that the FDA admits “food from newborn cattle clones ‘may pose some very limited human food consumption risk.’” Why would meat from calves cause potential health risks, when meat from adult cows would not? Is it because calves are still growing, so their super-cloned-genes will run amuck in the human body? (Kidding. Or am I?)

I will freely admit that I am a bit of a luddite about what I put in my mouth, and cloned food makes me anxious. The fact that I am already unknowingly eating transgenic produce gives me the heebie jeebies; the thought of eating cloned animal products is that much more disturbing. As a regulatory body, the FDA is supposed to protect consumers, and the FDA has the power to make decisions which directly impact my health. In a lot of ways, we as consumers are powerless to take control of our supplies of food and medications, and we rely on the FDA to institute at least a few regulations which are designed to prevent us from, you know, dying. This is especially true for people in the lower classes, as they lack the purchasing power and informed education which could allow them to make their own choices.

Regardless as to whether or not I think cloned meat is safe, the larger issue for me is that the FDA is not requiring labeling. As a consumer, I like to believe that I at least have some choice; I can choose to buy organic vegetables, for example, and I can choose to source animal products from humanely raised animals. In the “land of the free,” consumer choice seems like a really important value to preserve.

Marion Nestle put the issue pretty succintly here:

I am willing to grant that GM and cloned foods are probably safe, but so what? I devote the first chapter of my book, Safe Food, to a serious discussion of this question. To summarize: if you have concerns–moral, ethical, religious, social, or political–about the way food is produced, you might choose not to eat GM or cloned foods. But you don’t have a choice, because neither is labeled. I think they should be.

Furthermore, and this point has also been made elsewhere, what happens if we learn that cloned food is unsafe? How do you stage a recall on cloned meats when they are thoroughly integrated into every level of the food distribution system? How do you alert consumers to a problem when you have no way of tracking the path of cloned meat in our food supply? When you think about this aspect of the issue, the FDA’s decision not to require labeling seems almost criminally negligent.

This news could also impact organic/beyond organic standards. If cloned animals are accepted as identical to their conventionally produced counterparts, this means that they could fairly easily enter the supply of organic/naturally raised meats, and this is a big issue for me. I’m curious to see if farmers who are concerned about the issue start their own standard to try and keep clones out of their barns/fields; I suspect that certified clone free meat (if such a certification could be established) could fetch a pretty price.

I also wouldn’t be too surprised to see the European Union ban American meat and animal products, because they tend to be a bit more cautious about things like this. And whatever they’re doing food regulation wise seems to be working, seeing as how I don’t read about food recalls there every week.

A wise friend of mine would probably say that the news of FDA/USDA approval of cloned food is a pretty persuasive argument for going vegan, and I’d say he might be right. It would be pretty interesting if there was a sudden uptick in veganism in response to this.

If you want to learn more about cloned animals in the food supply, my pals over at the Ethicurean put together a great digest of links.

Comfort Food | 30Dec07

So, on top of having half of my electrical system basically implode yesterday, I am also sick. And as fun as it was traipsing in and out of the house in the rain switching off breakers, I planned to spend today skulking in bed reading a book, but then I remembered that I had to order groceries, which involves dragging my desk across the floor to an outlet that works. (The electrician is coming soon to fix the electrical system, by the way; it’s kind of dependent on his other jobs, but it will definitely happen within the next three days or so.)

The thing is, when I’m sick, I tend to not eat very much. Part of it is a genuine lack of hunger, but some of it is simply because I lose the will and energy to cook. Therefore, there is a sort of set menu of foods which I tend to gravitate towards when I am sick. I think everyone has this, the list of foods that they eat when sick both because they are comforting and because they are easy to make. I thought it might be sort of interesting to compare comfort foods with you, gentle readers, since I think they are so dependent on how you are raised and where you are raised; the foods which people gravitate to in times of stress are often very revealing.

The thing that tops my list, oddly enough, is baguettes. I mean, I like baguettes at other times, but for some reason I especially enjoy them when I am sick, perhaps because my father used to drop them off at the house on Franklin Street when he knew I wasn’t feeling better, and I would eat straight bread dipped in oil, vinegar, and lemon. I should eat baguettes more often, I think, because they are pretty darn awesome. Although I do realize that our weakly American baguettes are a pale imitation of the real thing. This week I splurged and got Brie to eat with my baguettes, despite the fact that I really shouldn’t be eating dairy because it makes my sinuses sad.

I also eat a lot of soup, which makes sense, because soup is easy. I happened to have some borscht frozen, so when the fridge was out for most of the day yesterday and it started thawing, I figured I might as well use it. Baguettes are also good for this because you can tear crusty chunks off and sop up the borscht broth with them. But any soup will do, because soup is made of awesome.

Spicy food is also a given for me, which is why I got the ingredients to make spicy Thai-style (sort of) soup, and I’m looking forward to hot pot with my father and my Chinese mother on Tuesday. Her hot pot is hot in both senses of the word. I also have some peanut sauce which was kindly thawed out for me yesterday by my faulty electrical system, so I sense peanut sauce in my future. Hot foods are enjoyable for me when I’m sick both because I like hot food and because they help clear out my sinuses. I also figure that since one of the main critiques of insanely spiced foods is that the spice overwhelms the flavor, and I can’t taste anything at this point, this is a good time to eat spicy food.

I am also a fan of tea with honey and lemon. Lots and lots of tea. Another family tradition is just hot water, lemon, and honey, which soothes the throat while also encouraging bacteria to find a new place to hang out; hence my decision to order 10 lemons from Harvest this week. My throat is all raspy and foul feeling right now, so that ought to help improve matters. Juice is commonly ingested in large amounts as well.

What do you eat when you’re sick/sad/frustrated? Does your family have a tradition of particular foods, or have you developed your own comfort foods?

Cinnamon Bread | 10Dec07

So I was talking to a friend last night about what I should write about today, and he said that I should write about cinnamon bread. Therefore, I am going to write about cinnamon bread.

Cinnamon bread is one of my favorite foods. I remember making it with my father when I was very young, and for some reason I remember rolling out this impossibly huge piece of dough on the floor and pouring vats of butter on it. I do not think this actually happened. I think that I was just very small, so a reasonably large sheet of dough would have seemed gigantic to me. However, for some reason, my imagination has inflated this mythical cinnamon bread to enormous sizes, which would have required crematorium level ovens for baking.

Anyway, I make ordinary sized cinnamon bread fairly often these days. I actually make two kinds. I make one with my grandmother’s whole wheat bread recipe, and one with the basic milk bread in the Joy of Cooking. In both cases, the procedure is the same. I make the dough, knead it, take it through the first rising, and then the fun begins.

I melt some butter in my French enameled pot. While that’s happening, I roll out the dough into a big rectangle. Then, I pour butter over it, or brush it on, depending on my mood, and sprinkle a ton of cinnamon and sugar on top before rolling the dough up and letting it rise in a loaf pan. Some people like raisins and crap like dried fruit in their cinnamon bread. I do not. I feel that this distracts from the essential point, which is the interaction of cinnamon and sugar. Although sometimes I will sprinkle on some dried cranberries. But then I usually pick them out when I eat the bread, because I remember that I hate crap in my baked goods. Except for chocolate chips.

After the second rising, I bake the bread, and prance around impatiently while the house fills with the smell. I usually cut it open before it is cooled completely, causing one end to get misshapen, and I slather butter all over that piece and cram it into my mouth. For the next few days, I make myself big slices of cinnamon toast. Sometimes I make French toast. Sometimes I eat slices plain with one hand while editing with the other. Often I get into growling matches with the cats as they try to steal my bread.

Anyway, the point is that I never cease to be amazed by the variations that can manifest with bread. Obviously, when I make whole wheat cinnamon bread, it is very rich and nutty. The cinnamon flavor is more muted, but I like the bread better because it has such an intense and awesome flavor. When I make it with the basic white bread recipe, it’s lighter, allowing the cinnamon to come through more clearly. A few weeks ago I let the bread rise too much and it got airy, turning into flaky layers which made the best French toast I have ever had. Sometimes the bread seems to pick up wild yeasts, veering off in a totally new flavor direction, or the flour is slightly different, so the texture changes just a smidge. I like that. I like that bread is unpredictable, in this chemistry-laden field of baking. The same recipe will never come out quite the same.

Whenever people come over and I’ve made cinnamon bread, I notice that their nostrils start twitching. The smell of baked goods in general is awesome, but the cinnamony, yeasty flavor is terrific, and it lingers for a day or so, especially in warmer weather. There’s something immensely homey about it, as cheesy as that sounds, and I think that’s why I like making cinnamon bread and other baked goods in the winter, which can seem grim, oppressing, and dreary. I can smell the baked goods, and for a moment I imagine myself back on a sunny summer day, with a loaf of bread cooling on the counter and friends on the porch talking about nothing in particular.

Right now my house is freezing because I thought I would be able to tough out the winter, so I declined my landlord’s offer to put a heater in until last week, when I finally called and begged for one. However, these things take time, and for now I am wrapped up in a quilt, hunched over the keyboard, thinking that maybe if I bake cinnamon bread, the house will warm up, and maybe the gas company will call about setting up the heater today, and maybe tomorrow will be warm.

Greengrocer | 27Nov07

Lying awake in bed last night, I came up with a new backup plan in case my current attempt at making a living fails: I think I should become a greengrocer. I’d stock seasonally available locally farmed produce, with some wildcrafted foods like mushrooms and berries in season. I’d have a neat little shop with flowers in the window and little slate chalkboards with the daily offerings. In nice weather, a table out front with plump fruits to lure in customers. I’d call it something witty and wear a natty red apron.

Most people here don’t know what a greengrocer is, which is a real pity, since greengrocers are awesome, and if we had one, I would buy all my produce there. The greengrocer was one of the things I loved most about Ireland; going into the bright and clean little shop with beautiful produce laid out like a display in an art gallery, and being able to talk to the proprietor about where the food came from and how to cook mysterious items. I loved the fact that the food changed every day, that the air had a rich, earthy scent from potatoes overlaid with sweet fruity overtones. I loved going next door to the butcher, and wandering down the street to the cheese shop and the bakery.

I like greengrocers because they are so focused on produce that their produce is usually top notch. There’s none of this supplementing a market with a paltry assortment of produce; it’s all produce, all the time. Some greengrocers also go the extra mile and work with local farmers, visiting their farms and interacting with their families. This is good business, especially right now when eating locally is starting to get trendy, but it also makes sense. Local produce is more fresh, and less subject to damage from transportation. It also keeps funds in the community, and by meeting farmers and seeing their farms, you can choose produce from farms which use cultivation practices you support.

It’s such a pity that the supermarket has taken over, making greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, and bakers a thing of the past, or a novelty. We’re really fortunate to have Roundman’s, which is a real honest to Pete butcher shop, and I know that butchers can be found in cities to cater to special customers, but most small towns don’t have the luxury of their own butcher or cheese shop. Or, if they do, it’s aimed at yuppies, and things are overpriced and gimmicky. It seems like there always has to be a gimmick these days.

I had this vision in the middle of the night of a plain, simple, straight up greengrocer. Where I could stand behind the produce I sold because I had visited the place where it was grown. Where people could wander in and pick up interesting local news and some chard. Alas, in the pastiche filled hellhole that this town is becoming, the boosters would probably love it, but I think I could rise above that, because good produce is something which transcends pastiche.

How many of my gentle readers live in a town with a greengrocer?

Local readers, do you think that this town could support a greengrocer?

Cake | 12Nov07

My birthday is rapidly approaching, which means that I have been experimenting with various cake recipes to find the cake, the cake to serve at any celebratory events which may arise. As you can see, gentle readers, my lack of ability to plan anything means that I have not yet planned a party…but I have planned the cake. And I’m not sure what this tells you about me.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been diddling and dabbling in various cakey delights, seeking the perfect and most ideal cake. And at last, I have found it. The base cake of all my dreams. The cake that I lie awake at night thinking about. I baked it yesterday afternoon, and the house quickly filled with an intoxicating scent which became almost unbearable. After whipping up a light maple frosting, I cut off a delicious, moist wedge with a perfect crumb and devoured it, and then I ate another one in quick succession.

So, without further ado, here’s the recipe for vanilla buttermilk cake. Please use it responsibly.

Cream together:
One cup butter
Two cups sugar

And I mean cream. Really blend these ingredients thoroughly into a light and fluffy mass before mixing in four eggs, one at a time, and then adding three teaspoons of vanilla.

In a separate bowl, sift together:

Two and three quarters cup flour
Three teaspoons baking powder
One teaspoon salt

Measure out one and three quarters cup of buttermilk.

Add around half of the flour to the butter and eggs, stir thoroughly, add half the milk, and repeat the process until all ingredients are combined. Bake at 350° Fahrenheit (176° Celsius) for around 45 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool and frost as desired.

Eat.

Reading Food | 28Oct07

I just finished reading two interesting food related books, Good Calories, Bad Calories and Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant. Both totally different, but very interesting; I would recommend them highly if you have any interest at all in food, which I assume that you do, since you probably eat food on a fairly regular basis. Although Good Calories, Bad Calories is a pretty meaty specimen; it’s more for readers who are interested in nutritional politics.

Let’s start with Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant, which was a compilation of essays (and a piece of fiction by Haruki Murakami) about eating alone. The book was birthed in the mind of the editor when she started wondering what other people ate when they were alone, and she wrote to a bunch of authors to solicit essays on dining for one, cooking for one, and so forth. She also excerpted a couple of pieces, like one from MFK Fisher.

The star-studded list of authors was interesting in itself, since a couple of them happen to be personal favorites, so it was interesting to read about what they eat at home.

What was more interesting, for me, was that the book made me realize that most people don’t cook for themselves. I do. I had assumed that this was normal, that everyone actually cooked meals when they were hungry and alone, but apparently that’s not true. Other people throw pasta in a pot, eat saltines and peanut butter, or make other makeshift meals, which seems very alien to me. I make stir fries, roast things and serve them with fluffy mashed potatoes and delicately sauteed vegetables. Invent new pasta sauces, experiment with Indian curry, put together kebabs.

Most of my cooking I learned from my father, who more importantly taught me about the interactions between different foods, and the tricks which could be used to make something out of nothing. Both of us can open a seemingly empty fridge and produce a three course meal with some backup from the cabinets. It’s taken me a long time to learn that most people do not have this ability, which makes me kind of sad. Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant made me sad, thinking of all these people who wouldn’t make a glass of eggnog for themselves because they felt like it. How depressing.

Good Calories, Bad Calories wasn’t much cheerier, to be truthful. It’s a close look at the evolution of official dietary guidelines and policies, looking at the interaction of fats, protein, carbohydrates, and so forth. It’s sort of complicated to explain, but well worth reading if you’re interested in nutritional politics at all. The author provides some very interesting and convincing evidence that our current dietary guidelines are wrong, which makes sense given the rising number of people who are overweight. It takes a profound dietary imbalance to go dramatically over one’s set point, and he argues that this imbalance may actually be encouraged in dietary guidelines, which is a pity.

While explicit dietary advice is not offered, it is clear that the author thinks that two major culprits behind weight gain are complex carbohydrates (white rice, white flour, etc; highly refined foods with reduced fiber, in other words) and white sugar. He’s got a serious beef with sugar, and he might be right, given that we all eat way more sugar than we should probably be eating.

I’ve been thinking of embarking on a project next year where I catalog and review every book that I read. It might be overwhelming, because I read a lot of books, but I thought it might be interesting. The rule, of course, is that I must be strictly honest, which means admitting cheesy popcorn novels right along with War and Peace. Does this project sound interesting to you, gentle readers, or horribly dull?