It's the most wonderful time of the year for an economical epicurean, and not because of all the gingerbread and honeybaked ham one gets to consume. Much better than that: this is the time of year when many food purveyors are more generous than usual with their free samples. It would be nice to think it's all in the spirit of giving, but, if you'll forgive my cynicism, they just know you'll be more likely to buy that $20 wheel of Humboldt Fog when you're in a state of holiday marketing hypnosis.
Filling up on free samples has long been one of my favorite pastimes. As soon as I got my driver's license, I started borrowing my parents' minivan for special weekend trips to the grocery stores that enabled my free food addiction. The store I liked best was the long-gone Eatzi's, which peddled 16 oz. cups of soup for $7 (and this was the 90s!). While not so generous in its pricing, Eatzi's was -- for a brief while, at least -- incredibly generous with its samples. It seemed that everywhere you turned there was a different mayo-and-sour-cream based dip to smother a cracker with. These dips sold for around $5 each (and this was the 90s!), so I felt minimal guilt about all the cracker-smothering I did. All good things must come to an end, though, and so did Eatzi's sample stations. It was an omen of bad times ahead, because soon enough, Eatzi's itself was gone, too. I like to think it was the lack of market demand for $7 soup and not my gluttony that brought down the house.
Back in those days, I had no shame about my flagrant displays of greed, but as I've gotten older I've learned the importance of subtlety. There's a Whole Foods not far from my office, so maybe one or two days a week (Tuesdays are the best, I've found) I'll head over there to cruise for freebies. I am not the only one. It seems many people also enjoy this pastime, but most of them appear to lack my talent for it. They stand there filling up their toothpicks with four or five cubes of cheese, stuffing their faces like squirrels before dipping in for another round. To watch it is to fully appreciate why communism is a failed form of government: people are natural gluttons and will always try to take far more than their fair share, never mind the regulatory "Please take one" signs. But there are ways to exercise one's greed without being so obvious, and there are ways to sample heartily without putting grocers out of business. Here's how to eat for free like a pro.
1. Even if you are there to just fill up on samples, you should still carry a basket or push a cart. Better yet, fill it with a couple items you don't intend to buy. Even better than that, put the item that's being sampled (not the sample itself, of course!) in the basket.
2. Okay, actually, you should try to buy something. One person isn't going to force the establishment to stop giving out free samples altogether (though I really do take full responsibility for Eatzi's ban on samples), but what if everyone was there just to fill up for free? A store without samples it would be.
3. Make several laps. Don't loiter. Take one sample and go on your merry way. Come back a minute or two later, and take another one. Repeat. You'll need your exercise anyway.
4. Look as distracted as possible. Play with your phone or recite your "grocery list" aloud. (If you don't have a grocery list, recite that one from Sesame Street: "a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.") Make it look like an accident that you just walked right into that Mediterranean hors d'oeuvres display for the third time. "Oh, hummus, I didn't see you there!"
5. Pick up a sample, eat it, then pick up the container of whatever is being sampled. Examine it closely, as if you are seriously considering it for purchase. Read the ingredients list and say something like, "Hmm. I didn't taste the smoked paprika in there." Have another sample just to be sure.
6. Wear disguises at grocery stores where there are clerks manning the samples, so you can stop by more than once. I'm only half-kidding. They probably don't recognize every repeat offender, but it may not be a bad idea to stash a wig in your bag when you go grocery shopping.
7. If a clerk appears to be giving you the stink-eye after you've sampled one too many, look at them with a sheepish, "Aw, gee!" smile and rub your belly to show how hungry you were. If they don't give you a knowing smile in return, then start muttering incoherently about sinners and the apocalypse. They'll leave you alone.
8. Look for samples in every nook and cranny in the store. The Whole Foods I go to has this one cheese station that's hidden behind a column. Two advantages here: the bowl is nearly always filled with Gouda because so many people seem to miss it, and I can chow down out of public view.
9. Don't stuff samples into your purse. How tacky! Only ladies ages 75 and over can get away with such behavior. And, to reiterate, if everyone acted in this way there would be no more samples. So, maybe just stuff them into your pockets instead; no need to be so ravenous. Just be careful before you do laundry or all your clothes may also be sampling those brownie bites.
Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellany. Show all posts
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
The Skeptic Bride's Slimdown Plan
Hi, friends! Sorry I've been away for so long. And to those of you who landed here from The Skeptic Bride, welcome! This is where I used to write up my own recipes and adapt cookbook recipes to my economical tastes. The blog--not the cooking--fell under severe neglect after I met Special Someone, since who wants to spend their evenings sitting in front of a computer screen when there's an adorable boyfriend to play with? Once he became my adorable fiance, though: PANIC! I needed a new outlet dedicated entirely to wedding madness. Ergo, the Skeptic Bride was born.
Our wedding is now just three months away and I've recently been inspired to start trimming down my physique a bit in preparation for it (I'm fully aware that I sound like I've been corrupted by The Knot, and it's probably true.). Longtime readers of this blog may recall that when I used to feel fat, I would eat massive amounts of cabbage salad. However, cabbage can only do so much to keep you alive. Despite being fibrous and requiring a lot of chewing, it does little to help one feel full for a long time. (Trust me, I've laid awake many a night, post cabbage dinner binge, craving a steak and a baked potato.) So now I'm getting a little smarter: adding more protein, controlling my portions, and getting up from this chair once in a damn while.
Well, duh. Everyone knows that's how you lose weight - eat better, eat less, and move more. To prove I'm not just all hat and no cattle, I'll provide some details (probably more than you care to know), complete with a few recipes. Now, I must admit that this new weight loss program, if you can really call it that, has been going on for only about two weeks. Okay, so maybe I am all hat and no cattle. I don't even know what I weighed to begin with, so I can't provide any numbers proving this thing works. Still, my clothes are fitting better already, I feel more energetic during the day, and I'm convinced my back flab has depleted ever so slightly. So here's what I've been doing:
1. Not going to the Ethiopian lunch buffet near my newish office in NoNoPe (North of NoPe). Another "duh," but it was getting to be a real problem. Still, it's delicious and a great deal at $7.95 on weekdays. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't care what they weigh or can exert good self control at a buffet table.
2. Going for thirty minute "power walks" before I eat lunch. Work gets demanding and weather in these parts is strange, to say the least, so I can't do this every day. But when I do, it involves putting on tennis shoes with whatever business casual outfit I'm wearing (since my work clothes are not nearly dorky enough to begin with), pumping my arms wildly, and admiring all the pretty flowers in residential NoNoPe while walking as fast as I can for a timed half hour. It's an enjoyable, if ridiculous-looking, part of the day.
3. Cooking as much as I can. I've always cooked fairly often, but now I make a conscious effort to cook larger quantities so that I have delicious leftovers to eat for lunch the next day. This helps me avoid Item 1. Some good old standbys that have been enjoying a revival in my kitchen include: Cream of Poverty soup, sweet potato chili, Seth Quinoa Salad, other assorted vegetarian one-pot meals, the occasional peanut butter & cabbage sandwich (now made even more delicious with the addition of Geeta's chili-lime chutney) and, as often as possible, lots of hearty greens like kale and collards on the side or mixed into the pot.
4. Eating as big a breakfast as I can stand (helps control mid-morning fatigue and lunchtime binging). Actually, I made this change awhile ago, but am now expanding upon it. I used to eat, at most, a granola bar or maybe a croissant from 7-Eleven. I would wait until around 10am to eat it; otherwise, if I ate when I woke up, I would be hungry again an hour later. Now, I try to eat a huge bowl of high-fiber, high-protein cereal, drink a glass of milk AND a glass of orange juice, and maybe even top it all off with a fried or hardboiled egg. All this is consumed before I have my first cup of coffee, since coffee supposedly interferes with the absorption of iron that you get from cereal, and I'm iron-deficient to begin with. I would like to start adding smoothies to my breakfast repertoire--my favorite, easy combo is one banana, one plain yogurt, a spoonful or so of sugar, and a cup of OJ--but my blender is broken. (Hello, wedding registry!)
5A. Speaking of breakfast, eating more eggs! But eggs are not just a breakfast food any more. I've gotten really into hard-boiled eggs ever since I learned how to cook them perfectly--who knew they didn't have to have putrid grayish yellow yolks and an aroma of fart?--thanks to another great Pam Anderson technique. You just put enough water in a pan to cover them, as many as you feel like cooking but not so many that they are crowded, then place the pan on the burner and crank it up to medium-high. As soon as the water reaches a rolling boil, immediately remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes. When the 10 minutes is up, rinse out the hot water and run the pan under cold water until it's completely cooled. Then peel your eggs or keep them in their shells if you don't want to indulge right away. Really, I never knew hardboiled eggs could be so delicious, and they're only 70 calories each. I like to bring them to work for a filling snack or chop them up and add them to salads and pasta. And now I don't have to worry about my coworkers being like "Who farted?"
5B. Did I mention I'm eating more eggs? So yeah, omelets! They are not as fattening or as troublesome to make as many people think. Using my method it's just two eggs and one egg white; you don't need to use any butter or cheese; you fill them up with as many delicious cooked veggies as can fit; and then you eat the rest of the veggies that don't make it into the fold. Omelets do not require any talent, just a nonstick pan and a big spatula. Whisk together your eggs and egg white (you could also use all egg whites if you're gung-ho) for about a minute, add a couple teaspoons of vegetable oil to a frying pan and set it on medium to medium-high heat, dump in the whisked eggs once the pan is hot, scrape around the sides as they begin to set, then--once the middle starts to set--flip the whole thing over as best you can. Don't worry if it falls apart, it will still be highly edible. Then add your precooked veggies (lately I've been using a combo of sauteed spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes) to one side of the omelet, flip over the other side like you're folding over a taco, and slide it onto a plate. The whole process, if your vegetables are ready to go, takes less than 5 minutes. And you can save the veggies to use in an another omelet the next day.
6. Eating smaller portions and eating more often. You always hear this bit of advice from the diet cheerleaders, but I've found it's a good one. Lately, when I pack my lunch, I divide it into two containers. I'll eat one around noon and then the other one around 3. It just doesn't work for me to put it all in the same container and attempt to eat only half, like I used to - I would inevitably finish every bite.
7. Telling the whiny food-craving part of my brain to shut the eff up. This is where the "eating less" part is extra hard because my brain always thinks I'm hungry. Like, an hour after I've eaten a full meal. This is not because I'm actually hungry, but because I just love to think about food. When this happens I'll drink lots of water or go for a little stroll around the office. If that's not enough to refocus my brain, I'll have a piece of fruit and then usually forget about food until my next meal.
8A. Not cooking so many "man-pleasing" meals. Just typing this makes me feel lame. For a long time, when I would cook for Special Someone, I would stick to those kinds of meals that guys supposedly love: roast chicken, burgers, steak, pork roast, etc., usually all prepared with some kind of irresistible buttery potato dish. This style of cooking was misguided, fattening, and more expensive and time-consuming than it needed to be. While Special Someone is by no means a foodie (though he claims to disagree with that statement), he has expressed he is happy to eat my hippie-dippy bean/green/whole grain vegetarian melanges. Not that I believe there's anything inherently wrong with a roast chicken or beef stew (they're delicious!) - it's just that, like my skinnier, single gal old self, I'm now cooking these types of meals more occasionally, and am once again saving calories, time, money, and a few innocent cows and chickens.
8B. Or, finding low-fat substitutions for "man-pleasing" meals. Once again: lame. But wait till you make this delicious alfredo (alfred-faux?) sauce. To make enough for six servings of pasta (lately we're enjoying Trader Joe's brown rice penne - it's the most delicious hippie pasta I've found), heat together in the microwave one half cup of 1% milk, one half cup of chicken broth, and two minced cloves of garlic for two minutes. In a small pot, mix together a quick roux: melt 1 tablespoon of butter and whisk in 1 tablespoon of flower. Dump in the milk/chicken broth mixture and stir it until it gets thick. Add grated Parmesan and salt and pepper and serve over pasta (the other night I mixed in sauteed shrimp, white beans, and kale, and it was great). Also brought to you courtesy of that genius Pam Anderson.
9. Trying to cut the booze. Um, not really working. Beer is one of my favorite food groups, and I am loathe to eliminate an entire food group. Still, cutting back is something I need to do. One thing that's good for people to avoid when watching their weight is sugary mixed frozen drinks. As delicious as they are, a frozen margarita has around 700 calories. Dios mio! I'll stick with beer, thank you - hopefully just one.
10. Not obsessing. Wait, what? That seems a bit contradictory to this whole long list I just wrote. Why do so many diet manifestos always end with "Don't obsess" or "Enjoy life"? Because otherwise you go crazy, that's why. When I go out to dinner, I want to be able to enjoy myself, not just order a side salad and stare longingly at everyone else's entrees. I figure, as long as I'm cooking most of my meals--all of which are nutritious and low in sugar and fat--I can indulge on those occasions when I do go out. Otherwise, this eating plan becomes a true diet and, as everyone knows, diets don't work.
Our wedding is now just three months away and I've recently been inspired to start trimming down my physique a bit in preparation for it (I'm fully aware that I sound like I've been corrupted by The Knot, and it's probably true.). Longtime readers of this blog may recall that when I used to feel fat, I would eat massive amounts of cabbage salad. However, cabbage can only do so much to keep you alive. Despite being fibrous and requiring a lot of chewing, it does little to help one feel full for a long time. (Trust me, I've laid awake many a night, post cabbage dinner binge, craving a steak and a baked potato.) So now I'm getting a little smarter: adding more protein, controlling my portions, and getting up from this chair once in a damn while.
Well, duh. Everyone knows that's how you lose weight - eat better, eat less, and move more. To prove I'm not just all hat and no cattle, I'll provide some details (probably more than you care to know), complete with a few recipes. Now, I must admit that this new weight loss program, if you can really call it that, has been going on for only about two weeks. Okay, so maybe I am all hat and no cattle. I don't even know what I weighed to begin with, so I can't provide any numbers proving this thing works. Still, my clothes are fitting better already, I feel more energetic during the day, and I'm convinced my back flab has depleted ever so slightly. So here's what I've been doing:
1. Not going to the Ethiopian lunch buffet near my newish office in NoNoPe (North of NoPe). Another "duh," but it was getting to be a real problem. Still, it's delicious and a great deal at $7.95 on weekdays. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't care what they weigh or can exert good self control at a buffet table.
2. Going for thirty minute "power walks" before I eat lunch. Work gets demanding and weather in these parts is strange, to say the least, so I can't do this every day. But when I do, it involves putting on tennis shoes with whatever business casual outfit I'm wearing (since my work clothes are not nearly dorky enough to begin with), pumping my arms wildly, and admiring all the pretty flowers in residential NoNoPe while walking as fast as I can for a timed half hour. It's an enjoyable, if ridiculous-looking, part of the day.
3. Cooking as much as I can. I've always cooked fairly often, but now I make a conscious effort to cook larger quantities so that I have delicious leftovers to eat for lunch the next day. This helps me avoid Item 1. Some good old standbys that have been enjoying a revival in my kitchen include: Cream of Poverty soup, sweet potato chili, Seth Quinoa Salad, other assorted vegetarian one-pot meals, the occasional peanut butter & cabbage sandwich (now made even more delicious with the addition of Geeta's chili-lime chutney) and, as often as possible, lots of hearty greens like kale and collards on the side or mixed into the pot.
4. Eating as big a breakfast as I can stand (helps control mid-morning fatigue and lunchtime binging). Actually, I made this change awhile ago, but am now expanding upon it. I used to eat, at most, a granola bar or maybe a croissant from 7-Eleven. I would wait until around 10am to eat it; otherwise, if I ate when I woke up, I would be hungry again an hour later. Now, I try to eat a huge bowl of high-fiber, high-protein cereal, drink a glass of milk AND a glass of orange juice, and maybe even top it all off with a fried or hardboiled egg. All this is consumed before I have my first cup of coffee, since coffee supposedly interferes with the absorption of iron that you get from cereal, and I'm iron-deficient to begin with. I would like to start adding smoothies to my breakfast repertoire--my favorite, easy combo is one banana, one plain yogurt, a spoonful or so of sugar, and a cup of OJ--but my blender is broken. (Hello, wedding registry!)
5A. Speaking of breakfast, eating more eggs! But eggs are not just a breakfast food any more. I've gotten really into hard-boiled eggs ever since I learned how to cook them perfectly--who knew they didn't have to have putrid grayish yellow yolks and an aroma of fart?--thanks to another great Pam Anderson technique. You just put enough water in a pan to cover them, as many as you feel like cooking but not so many that they are crowded, then place the pan on the burner and crank it up to medium-high. As soon as the water reaches a rolling boil, immediately remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes. When the 10 minutes is up, rinse out the hot water and run the pan under cold water until it's completely cooled. Then peel your eggs or keep them in their shells if you don't want to indulge right away. Really, I never knew hardboiled eggs could be so delicious, and they're only 70 calories each. I like to bring them to work for a filling snack or chop them up and add them to salads and pasta. And now I don't have to worry about my coworkers being like "Who farted?"
5B. Did I mention I'm eating more eggs? So yeah, omelets! They are not as fattening or as troublesome to make as many people think. Using my method it's just two eggs and one egg white; you don't need to use any butter or cheese; you fill them up with as many delicious cooked veggies as can fit; and then you eat the rest of the veggies that don't make it into the fold. Omelets do not require any talent, just a nonstick pan and a big spatula. Whisk together your eggs and egg white (you could also use all egg whites if you're gung-ho) for about a minute, add a couple teaspoons of vegetable oil to a frying pan and set it on medium to medium-high heat, dump in the whisked eggs once the pan is hot, scrape around the sides as they begin to set, then--once the middle starts to set--flip the whole thing over as best you can. Don't worry if it falls apart, it will still be highly edible. Then add your precooked veggies (lately I've been using a combo of sauteed spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes) to one side of the omelet, flip over the other side like you're folding over a taco, and slide it onto a plate. The whole process, if your vegetables are ready to go, takes less than 5 minutes. And you can save the veggies to use in an another omelet the next day.
6. Eating smaller portions and eating more often. You always hear this bit of advice from the diet cheerleaders, but I've found it's a good one. Lately, when I pack my lunch, I divide it into two containers. I'll eat one around noon and then the other one around 3. It just doesn't work for me to put it all in the same container and attempt to eat only half, like I used to - I would inevitably finish every bite.
7. Telling the whiny food-craving part of my brain to shut the eff up. This is where the "eating less" part is extra hard because my brain always thinks I'm hungry. Like, an hour after I've eaten a full meal. This is not because I'm actually hungry, but because I just love to think about food. When this happens I'll drink lots of water or go for a little stroll around the office. If that's not enough to refocus my brain, I'll have a piece of fruit and then usually forget about food until my next meal.
8A. Not cooking so many "man-pleasing" meals. Just typing this makes me feel lame. For a long time, when I would cook for Special Someone, I would stick to those kinds of meals that guys supposedly love: roast chicken, burgers, steak, pork roast, etc., usually all prepared with some kind of irresistible buttery potato dish. This style of cooking was misguided, fattening, and more expensive and time-consuming than it needed to be. While Special Someone is by no means a foodie (though he claims to disagree with that statement), he has expressed he is happy to eat my hippie-dippy bean/green/whole grain vegetarian melanges. Not that I believe there's anything inherently wrong with a roast chicken or beef stew (they're delicious!) - it's just that, like my skinnier, single gal old self, I'm now cooking these types of meals more occasionally, and am once again saving calories, time, money, and a few innocent cows and chickens.
8B. Or, finding low-fat substitutions for "man-pleasing" meals. Once again: lame. But wait till you make this delicious alfredo (alfred-faux?) sauce. To make enough for six servings of pasta (lately we're enjoying Trader Joe's brown rice penne - it's the most delicious hippie pasta I've found), heat together in the microwave one half cup of 1% milk, one half cup of chicken broth, and two minced cloves of garlic for two minutes. In a small pot, mix together a quick roux: melt 1 tablespoon of butter and whisk in 1 tablespoon of flower. Dump in the milk/chicken broth mixture and stir it until it gets thick. Add grated Parmesan and salt and pepper and serve over pasta (the other night I mixed in sauteed shrimp, white beans, and kale, and it was great). Also brought to you courtesy of that genius Pam Anderson.
9. Trying to cut the booze. Um, not really working. Beer is one of my favorite food groups, and I am loathe to eliminate an entire food group. Still, cutting back is something I need to do. One thing that's good for people to avoid when watching their weight is sugary mixed frozen drinks. As delicious as they are, a frozen margarita has around 700 calories. Dios mio! I'll stick with beer, thank you - hopefully just one.
10. Not obsessing. Wait, what? That seems a bit contradictory to this whole long list I just wrote. Why do so many diet manifestos always end with "Don't obsess" or "Enjoy life"? Because otherwise you go crazy, that's why. When I go out to dinner, I want to be able to enjoy myself, not just order a side salad and stare longingly at everyone else's entrees. I figure, as long as I'm cooking most of my meals--all of which are nutritious and low in sugar and fat--I can indulge on those occasions when I do go out. Otherwise, this eating plan becomes a true diet and, as everyone knows, diets don't work.
Monday, April 12, 2010
On My Mind
I've been thinking a lot about whether to continue with this blog. On the one hand, writing and cooking are two of my favorite things to do. On the other, I've been lacking inspiration for quite some time. Not really on the cooking side, but on the "coming-up-with-worthwhile-things-to-say-about-cooking" side.
About a month ago or so I got a great haircut, the kind that real grown-up women get, one that seemed to give me a new lease on life, at least for a few days, or till I realized I would have to blow-dry my hair for an hour every morning to make it look the way it first did. Similarly, perhaps a makeover to this blog would be good for a spell. Anyone know how to do that kind of thing? I am pretty tired of this generic, late '90s-ish template.
Since right now I don't have anything to say that can be condensed into a single pat post, I will resort to a kind of list of recent musings on cooking and eating. Perhaps this will spark something worthwhile for a better-crafted post next time. One can hope!
~After a brunch of oatmeal with a bruleed crust, my friend Rachel W. was inspired to go out and buy a blowtorch to fancify her morning cereal. The other day she texted me that she was making oat bran brulee. Livin' it up while stayin' regular! So, if you too own a blowtorch, that's something fun you can do. Be careful, of course!
~I've started cooking a lot differently now that a Special Someone is around. I probably don't cook for him more than once or twice a week, but when I do, it's mostly goodbye weird one-pot experiments with ingredients that may or may not work together (see: this entire blog), hello real sit-down dinners with a protein, a starch, and a green vegetable. Like the grown-up haircut, maybe it's a sign of progress. Yes, I AM worth opening that whole package of chicken breasts.
~Speaking of Special Someone, one of our (hopefully not tragic) differences is that he eats to live and I live to eat. But he raved about this one experiment I created a few weeks back, sort of a pasta puttanesca meets spaghetti bolognese. Puttanese? Bolognesca? In any case, I made a spicy tomato sauce with ground turkey (instead of ground beef - so yeah, total insult to both puttanesca and bolognese. But still delicious). It had a lot of garlic, Worcestershire sauce (no anchovies on hand), olives, ground fennel seeds. It was really good, and that is all I can think of to say about it for now.
~I tried Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe for "weeknight tagine" from a couple weeks ago, and have a few thoughts. I'm pretty sad about the end of his blog, Bitten. The Times has condensed all its food blogs into Diner's Journal, which I guess is good news for their budget, but bad news for those of us who have no interest in restaurant trends or wine. Anyway, this tagine, while delicious, was not the first dish of his I've tried that makes me question how well he tests his recipes. He calls for using whole chicken thighs, browning them on either side, and then basically braising them for fifteen minutes. The idea is to turn a traditionally time-consuming recipe into one you can make any weeknight. However, chicken thighs take a much longer time to cook than this recipe implies. My suggestion, if you are strapped for time, is to cut up the chicken into chunks. You can cook them whole, but it will take at least half an hour, not fifteen minutes. Other than that minor misdirection, the recipe is a near perfect mix of sweet and savory.
~As always, I'm really late in catching onto a food craze, but the banh mi sandwich is my new obsession. And it turns out I no longer need to travel all the way to wretched Virginia to get my two-buck fix: Saigonese in Wheaton makes one that, in my opinion, is superior to the original Banh Mi DC Sandwich in Falls Church. Eat that, NoVa!
So, I guess that's all I have to say for now. In the meantime, I'll hang around the stove and see what happens.
About a month ago or so I got a great haircut, the kind that real grown-up women get, one that seemed to give me a new lease on life, at least for a few days, or till I realized I would have to blow-dry my hair for an hour every morning to make it look the way it first did. Similarly, perhaps a makeover to this blog would be good for a spell. Anyone know how to do that kind of thing? I am pretty tired of this generic, late '90s-ish template.
Since right now I don't have anything to say that can be condensed into a single pat post, I will resort to a kind of list of recent musings on cooking and eating. Perhaps this will spark something worthwhile for a better-crafted post next time. One can hope!
~After a brunch of oatmeal with a bruleed crust, my friend Rachel W. was inspired to go out and buy a blowtorch to fancify her morning cereal. The other day she texted me that she was making oat bran brulee. Livin' it up while stayin' regular! So, if you too own a blowtorch, that's something fun you can do. Be careful, of course!
~I've started cooking a lot differently now that a Special Someone is around. I probably don't cook for him more than once or twice a week, but when I do, it's mostly goodbye weird one-pot experiments with ingredients that may or may not work together (see: this entire blog), hello real sit-down dinners with a protein, a starch, and a green vegetable. Like the grown-up haircut, maybe it's a sign of progress. Yes, I AM worth opening that whole package of chicken breasts.
~Speaking of Special Someone, one of our (hopefully not tragic) differences is that he eats to live and I live to eat. But he raved about this one experiment I created a few weeks back, sort of a pasta puttanesca meets spaghetti bolognese. Puttanese? Bolognesca? In any case, I made a spicy tomato sauce with ground turkey (instead of ground beef - so yeah, total insult to both puttanesca and bolognese. But still delicious). It had a lot of garlic, Worcestershire sauce (no anchovies on hand), olives, ground fennel seeds. It was really good, and that is all I can think of to say about it for now.
~I tried Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe for "weeknight tagine" from a couple weeks ago, and have a few thoughts. I'm pretty sad about the end of his blog, Bitten. The Times has condensed all its food blogs into Diner's Journal, which I guess is good news for their budget, but bad news for those of us who have no interest in restaurant trends or wine. Anyway, this tagine, while delicious, was not the first dish of his I've tried that makes me question how well he tests his recipes. He calls for using whole chicken thighs, browning them on either side, and then basically braising them for fifteen minutes. The idea is to turn a traditionally time-consuming recipe into one you can make any weeknight. However, chicken thighs take a much longer time to cook than this recipe implies. My suggestion, if you are strapped for time, is to cut up the chicken into chunks. You can cook them whole, but it will take at least half an hour, not fifteen minutes. Other than that minor misdirection, the recipe is a near perfect mix of sweet and savory.
~As always, I'm really late in catching onto a food craze, but the banh mi sandwich is my new obsession. And it turns out I no longer need to travel all the way to wretched Virginia to get my two-buck fix: Saigonese in Wheaton makes one that, in my opinion, is superior to the original Banh Mi DC Sandwich in Falls Church. Eat that, NoVa!
So, I guess that's all I have to say for now. In the meantime, I'll hang around the stove and see what happens.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Notes from Snowdown 2009
Some lessons for throwing a holiday party during the "Blizzard of the Century," or is it just "Blizzard of the Decade"? Either way, I am still trapped in a knee-deep winter wonderland, with not much to do besides write in this damn blog.
1. Obviously, make tons of food and have ample booze reserves, even if the attendance list is reduced by more than half due to inclement weather. Traipsing through two miles' worth of blizzard builds a big appetite. There were surprisingly few leftovers, and we were clean out of beer a little too early.
2. Maybe we would've had more beer left if I didn't drink about 28 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales. Whoops. Also, try to stay awake until all your guests leave (or crash on your couch, still wearing their snowboots, as the case may be).
3. This is a no-brainer, but party guests will eat anything if it's wrapped in bacon: paper clips, lint, rubber bands, Christmas ornaments. But they will especially like devils on horseback, which is fancyspeak for bacon-wrapped, walnut-stuffed dates. (Actually, I think official devils on horseback contain pecans, not walnuts, but it really doesn't matter when there's bacon involved). Buy one package of bacon (not the thick kind), one container of pitted dates, and one bag of walnut halves. Chop the walnuts so they are thin enough to fit into the dates. The dates and walnuts will make sweet, sweet love, wrapped in a delicious bacon blanket. Gets me all hot and bothered just thinking about it. Oh, use kitchen scissors to cut the slices of bacon crosswise and roll them around the dates. Place them on a baking sheet in a 500 degree oven and bake till the bacon is crispy, about 10 minutes. Serve with toothpicks.
4. It's really easy to make a lot of varieties of crostini, and people will also go wild for these. If you don't have time/inclination to bake your own bread, buy a good quality pre-sliced crusty loaf. Cut each slice into halves or thirds. Set aside and make a couple different toppings, like caramelized onions (the fabulous Miriam aka Hungry Grad has a good recipe) or my sherry mushrooms (just slice up a bunch of mushrooms and half an onion and cook in a couple tablespoons of butter on medium-high heat; add a sprinkling of sugar to aid delicious brownedness; and splash in a good helping of sherry or red wine to make a reduction sauce). These go great spread on slices of bread with goat cheese or blue cheese, or just plain. Assemble and heat in the oven on a baking sheet a few minutes before serving, so everything is nice and warm and melty.
5. Ooh, I almost forgot! Another delicious crostini uses just two cans of white beans, drained; a few cloves of garlic, minced; a third cup or so of olive oil; the juice of half a lemon; salt and pepper; and some chopped, fresh sage and parsley. Mix it all together and dollop onto slices of bread.
6. I don't care what the food snobs say, baked brie is a timeless party classic. Don't bother buying or making puff pastry, though. Just use refrigerated crescent roll dough, a small wheel of Brie, and some kind of jam or chutney (see #7 for recipe for delicious pear chutney, below). Spread out the crescent roll dough as if making a pizza. Place the wheel of brie, rind on, on top of the dough and spread jam or chutney over the rind. Wrap up the brie in the dough as if it's a gift (it truly is!). Brush a bit of egg on top of the dough to get a golden crust. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, or till golden brown. Serve with crackers or slices of French bread.
7. Another gem from Laurie Colwin, my favorite food writer of all time: pear chutney. This stuff has many great uses, among them as a spread for baked brie or a dip for devils on horseback. In a heavy pot on the stove, cook together 3 or 4 large, firm pears (cored but not peeled, and chopped into chunks), 2 minced garlic cloves, 2 t salt, 2 t hot paprika, 2 t ground coriander, 1/2 C vinegar, 1 C raisins (I used Craisins in a pinch), and 1 T ground ginger. When the pears are tender add 1/2 C brown sugar and cook it down till "sludgy but not liquidy." This is not in Colwin's directions, but I like to grind up everything in the food processor if using as a dip.
8. See the recipe for Krunk Jewce, Inquisition Punch, or whatever you want to call this delicious sangria-esque concoction made with very well-disguised Manischewitz - also courtesy of the fabulous and clever Miriam. Truly, a breakthrough in Kosher mixology.
9. Per request, here's my recipe for these delectable little treats that are sort of a cross between chewy molasses cookies and gingersnaps, based on Shirley Corriher's "Cracked Surface Crunchy Gingersnaps" (I make them so that they are not all that crunchy). Before baking, they are rolled in regular granulated sugar, which lends them a festive, shimmery cast once they come out of the oven! They are spicy and gingery and perfect for this kind of weather. Cream 1 and 2/3 C sugar and 1.5 sticks butter, add 1/4 C molasses and blend well. Blend in egg on low speed. Set aside and whisk together 2 and 1/4 C flour, 2 t baking soda, 1/2 t salt, 1 heaping T ground ginger, 1 heaping t ground cinnamon, 1/2 t ground cloves, and 1/2 t ground nutmeg. Add the dry mixture to the wet and form a dough. Roll dough into 1.5 inch balls, then roll them in a plate full of sugar. Bake on baking sheets lined with parchment paper for 8 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Remove, and leave on the baking sheets for another minute or two before removing to a plate.
10. If setting out a vegetable platter, know that carrots are more popular than celery. Just FYI.
11. If people can't tell what something is, they are not very likely to eat it. Curse you, weird feta and red pepper dip with overly pungent briny cheese tang!
12. This is not food- or drink-related, but it is perhaps a lesson in resourcefulness. Say you want to build a fire, but you forgot to collect enough kindling wood and now all the sticks in your yard are buried under several feet of ice. If you are anything like me, about half the furniture in your house has been picked up off the side of the road. You are very likely to own a recycled, left-for-dead Ikea wicker chair that has a big hole in the seat and is pretty much unsafe for anyone but a cat to rest upon. Allow your burlier guests to destroy this chair - it will keep them occupied for at least half an hour. Then, throw the pieces to the flames! You will have the hottest, most raging pyre of all time, and your frostbitten friends will be very happy they traveled near and far to enjoy it.
1. Obviously, make tons of food and have ample booze reserves, even if the attendance list is reduced by more than half due to inclement weather. Traipsing through two miles' worth of blizzard builds a big appetite. There were surprisingly few leftovers, and we were clean out of beer a little too early.
2. Maybe we would've had more beer left if I didn't drink about 28 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales. Whoops. Also, try to stay awake until all your guests leave (or crash on your couch, still wearing their snowboots, as the case may be).
3. This is a no-brainer, but party guests will eat anything if it's wrapped in bacon: paper clips, lint, rubber bands, Christmas ornaments. But they will especially like devils on horseback, which is fancyspeak for bacon-wrapped, walnut-stuffed dates. (Actually, I think official devils on horseback contain pecans, not walnuts, but it really doesn't matter when there's bacon involved). Buy one package of bacon (not the thick kind), one container of pitted dates, and one bag of walnut halves. Chop the walnuts so they are thin enough to fit into the dates. The dates and walnuts will make sweet, sweet love, wrapped in a delicious bacon blanket. Gets me all hot and bothered just thinking about it. Oh, use kitchen scissors to cut the slices of bacon crosswise and roll them around the dates. Place them on a baking sheet in a 500 degree oven and bake till the bacon is crispy, about 10 minutes. Serve with toothpicks.
4. It's really easy to make a lot of varieties of crostini, and people will also go wild for these. If you don't have time/inclination to bake your own bread, buy a good quality pre-sliced crusty loaf. Cut each slice into halves or thirds. Set aside and make a couple different toppings, like caramelized onions (the fabulous Miriam aka Hungry Grad has a good recipe) or my sherry mushrooms (just slice up a bunch of mushrooms and half an onion and cook in a couple tablespoons of butter on medium-high heat; add a sprinkling of sugar to aid delicious brownedness; and splash in a good helping of sherry or red wine to make a reduction sauce). These go great spread on slices of bread with goat cheese or blue cheese, or just plain. Assemble and heat in the oven on a baking sheet a few minutes before serving, so everything is nice and warm and melty.
5. Ooh, I almost forgot! Another delicious crostini uses just two cans of white beans, drained; a few cloves of garlic, minced; a third cup or so of olive oil; the juice of half a lemon; salt and pepper; and some chopped, fresh sage and parsley. Mix it all together and dollop onto slices of bread.
6. I don't care what the food snobs say, baked brie is a timeless party classic. Don't bother buying or making puff pastry, though. Just use refrigerated crescent roll dough, a small wheel of Brie, and some kind of jam or chutney (see #7 for recipe for delicious pear chutney, below). Spread out the crescent roll dough as if making a pizza. Place the wheel of brie, rind on, on top of the dough and spread jam or chutney over the rind. Wrap up the brie in the dough as if it's a gift (it truly is!). Brush a bit of egg on top of the dough to get a golden crust. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, or till golden brown. Serve with crackers or slices of French bread.
7. Another gem from Laurie Colwin, my favorite food writer of all time: pear chutney. This stuff has many great uses, among them as a spread for baked brie or a dip for devils on horseback. In a heavy pot on the stove, cook together 3 or 4 large, firm pears (cored but not peeled, and chopped into chunks), 2 minced garlic cloves, 2 t salt, 2 t hot paprika, 2 t ground coriander, 1/2 C vinegar, 1 C raisins (I used Craisins in a pinch), and 1 T ground ginger. When the pears are tender add 1/2 C brown sugar and cook it down till "sludgy but not liquidy." This is not in Colwin's directions, but I like to grind up everything in the food processor if using as a dip.
8. See the recipe for Krunk Jewce, Inquisition Punch, or whatever you want to call this delicious sangria-esque concoction made with very well-disguised Manischewitz - also courtesy of the fabulous and clever Miriam. Truly, a breakthrough in Kosher mixology.
9. Per request, here's my recipe for these delectable little treats that are sort of a cross between chewy molasses cookies and gingersnaps, based on Shirley Corriher's "Cracked Surface Crunchy Gingersnaps" (I make them so that they are not all that crunchy). Before baking, they are rolled in regular granulated sugar, which lends them a festive, shimmery cast once they come out of the oven! They are spicy and gingery and perfect for this kind of weather. Cream 1 and 2/3 C sugar and 1.5 sticks butter, add 1/4 C molasses and blend well. Blend in egg on low speed. Set aside and whisk together 2 and 1/4 C flour, 2 t baking soda, 1/2 t salt, 1 heaping T ground ginger, 1 heaping t ground cinnamon, 1/2 t ground cloves, and 1/2 t ground nutmeg. Add the dry mixture to the wet and form a dough. Roll dough into 1.5 inch balls, then roll them in a plate full of sugar. Bake on baking sheets lined with parchment paper for 8 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Remove, and leave on the baking sheets for another minute or two before removing to a plate.
10. If setting out a vegetable platter, know that carrots are more popular than celery. Just FYI.
11. If people can't tell what something is, they are not very likely to eat it. Curse you, weird feta and red pepper dip with overly pungent briny cheese tang!
12. This is not food- or drink-related, but it is perhaps a lesson in resourcefulness. Say you want to build a fire, but you forgot to collect enough kindling wood and now all the sticks in your yard are buried under several feet of ice. If you are anything like me, about half the furniture in your house has been picked up off the side of the road. You are very likely to own a recycled, left-for-dead Ikea wicker chair that has a big hole in the seat and is pretty much unsafe for anyone but a cat to rest upon. Allow your burlier guests to destroy this chair - it will keep them occupied for at least half an hour. Then, throw the pieces to the flames! You will have the hottest, most raging pyre of all time, and your frostbitten friends will be very happy they traveled near and far to enjoy it.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Hurry hurry hurry, get your money ready
QUICK! All 10-16 lb. turkeys are on sale for $5 at Safeway (and probably at other gro stos, too) for the rest of the weekend. These birds cost around $28 pre-Thanksgiving, so you will be saving like 85 percent, according my rough, English major calculations. And you can freeze it till Christmas (of 2010, if you want) if it seems too soon to start gorging on gobblers again so soon after Thanksgiving.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Grocery Stores: A Curmudgeonly Rant with Maybe Some Practical Use
For a long time I had been meaning to write some kind of guide to area grocery stores, but I'd never felt much urgency about it until one day recently when I was shopping at the Bethesda Trader Joe's and thinking a steady diet of raw cabbage salad might help awaken my girlish figure from the dead. There wasn't any cabbage in the produce department, so I went ahead and paid for my other items. The cashier kindly asked me if I found everything I was looking for and I asked if they had any cabbages lurking in the warehouse. Her answer: "Oh, we only stock cabbage around St. Patrick's Day."
WHAT?!? It was hard to maintain my composure and I had to remind myself that these ridiculous policies are not up to the cashiers. It's unbelievable to me that any grocery store, even a self-proclaimed "unique" one like TJ's, would fail to stock such a mundane item as cabbage, one that something like 90 percent of humans consume. On the other hand, I think it probably says more about the way people cook (or don't cook, as it were) than it does about the store itself. The ideal Trader Joe's customer, I suppose, thinks it's quaint to make corned beef and cabbage for their annual St. Patty's Day drunkfest, but otherwise would never cook such a lowly vegetable with any regularity (heh, regularity and cabbage, get it?) -- or cook at all for that matter, considering the store's emphasis on pre-made foods. This might also explain why TJ's sells Orange Muscat Champagne vinegar, but you'd be SOL if all you want is plain old white vinegar to make brining solutions or Almost-No-Knead bread.
Despite my frustrations with Trader Joe's (and just about every other food purveyor I've ever visited), I still shop there almost weekly. When it comes to dairy products, TJ's prices-relative-to-quality can't be beat. Wait -- scratch that -- their milk's expiration date is often, like, tomorrow. But it is the place for cheese, butter, and eggs. Love-hate, that's how I am with every grocery store. Below, my take on where to shop (and not to shop), depending on what you're buying. Sadly, even in this age of one-stop shopping, I have yet to find a grocery store that satisfies most of my (admittedly demanding) needs.
Some caveats: This list definitely has a southern MoCo bias since I live in Bethesda and work in NoPe, not far from Silver Spring, but most of the stores I go to are major regional or national chains that don't have too much variation from store to store. I have left out Giant from this list; I personally find it's a lot more expensive than Safeway and the quality is not much better, though I know some people will vehemently disagree. I've also left out Harris Teeter -- I'm a Marylander through and through, and it's only just recently made the long trek from Virginia.
Trader Joe's
Love: Like I said a couple paragraphs ago, this is where you go to buy most stuff that comes from an udder. Just be sure to always check dates on milk, half-and-half, and cream -- you may come across some rare antiques. Cage-free eggs are also a lot cheaper here than at most grocery chains. Some other things I buy at Trader Joe's because of the price/quality correlative: coffee, olive oil, dried pasta, some jarred goods (e.g., olives, capers, pickles), granola bars (only $1.99 per box and the best store-bought variety I've tried), lemons (only $1.59 for a bag of six! That's pretty much unheard of, unless you live in Florida or California), frozen fruit and veggies, canned beans (unfortunately they don't sell dried beans, grrr), bread, jams and jellies, nuts, dried fruit, and two novelty favorites, smoked salmon pieces and mini boiling potatoes. I don't often buy meat there, mainly because I hardly ever cook meat, but I have found that their ground beef and ground turkey is reasonable.
Hate: I hate them 'cause they hate me. It's clear that Trader Joe's likes you better if you don't make anything from scratch because they make more money off all their pre-packaged stuff (a lot of which, I'll admit, is pretty good, but I'm too cheap to buy it). For example, they sell lasagna "kits" but not lasagna noodles. *Wrings hands in fury!* I also avoid most of their produce since it's usually pre-packaged and I prefer to select my own quantities. TJ's is pretty lame when it comes to baking ingredients -- some of their mixes aren't bad, but if you do a lot of baking from scratch, better stick to Safeway or Shopper's. No 5-pound bags of flour to be found. Don't bother shopping here for cleaning supplies or toiletries, unless you can justify spending $5.50 on a tube of Tom's of Maine. And finally, don't get too attached to any one particular item, because TJ's may just decide to drop it one day. I've asked employees on separate occasions about decisions to stop selling Kashi Good Friends and frozen edamame (which has since been brought back), and the reason both times was "a disagreement with the vendor." Be wary of any grocery store that hides behind a chipper nautical theme, all the while burning bridges!
In short: a great place to shop if your idea of cooking means removing from box and reheating; otherwise, stick to mainly dairy products, bread, nuts, and jarred goods.
Safeway
Love: Really, the main thing to love about Safeway is watching all the numbers drop down on the cash register screen after you've scanned your bonus card. The sales can be great, but if you don't have a bonus card, there is absolutely no point in patronizing this pit of putrescence. The produce is pathetic, the meat is....oh, right, I'm supposed to say what I love about Safeway. Okay, so not all their produce is pathetic. Root vegetables and members of the onion family are inexpensive, plus they're hardy enough that it's okay if you don't buy them brand new (trust me, you won't be doing that if you shop here). There's a good selection of baking ingredients with a good range of prices and quantities. The same goes for peanut butter, cooking oils (but not olive oil - TJ's is the best value), and some dried goods like rice, beans, and pasta. Prices on cleaning supplies, food storage items, and hygiene products are competitive, though not as good as Target's. But in all honesty, I'm just here for the cat litter -- the Arm & Hammer brand, which I've determined after rigorous testing and observation has the most effective clumping ability and therefore the lowest changing frequency and consequently the best value, is usually on sale!
Sorry, I forgot for a moment that this blog is about food. If you're still reading...
Hate: Where do I even begin? Produce is often old and overpriced relative to its quality. Most greens are pre-bagged and those that aren't are no longer very green. Citrus fruit is exorbitant, berries are moldy, etc., etc. You know how it's supposed to be best to shop the outer aisles of the grocery store? Well, the opposite is true of Safeway. Stay away from most produce, most dairy (unless, again, you are going antique shopping), most poultry (Perdue's flavorless birds rule the Safeway roost), all fish (it's expensive and already smells before you even take it home; that's a bad sign), and all bread (way overpriced compared to TJ's). So what does that leave you with? Things you should generally avoid eating, such as Chips Ahoy and Clorox.
In short: Go here for vegetables with long lifespans, baking ingredients, some dried goods, and items that are not actually food.
Shopper's Food Warehouse
Love: If Safeway is food purgatory, then Shoppers is food hell, as many people seem to believe. I tend to disagree. Yes, their produce can be questionable, but not much more so than Safeway's, and at least it's cheaper and there's a better variety of it. The good things I've found at Shoppers are always-inexpensive generic Richfood brand items (Safeway, on the other hand, has good sales but can't always be counted upon) and huge baking and "ethnic" aisles. Seriously, I did not know Goya made so many products till I started shopping at the Rockville location. There's a lot of other legitimately ethnic stuff, too, though I do appreciate the wide variety of Goya dried beans. Meat can be hit or miss, but I did luck out one Easter with a $10 spiral cut ham that fed a whole army and happened to also be delicious.
Hate: Hate may be a strong word, for once. I am very forgiving of Shoppers' shortcomings, because at least it acknowledges them by billing itself as a warehouse. Safeway, on the other hand, does not always seem all that safe. Still, I recommend you tread carefully at Shoppers: examine produce closely and check expiration dates.
In short: Go go Goya!
H Mart
Love: H Mart is a Korean grocery chain not for the prudish of palate. If pickled pig's feet and ugly fruit are your thing, you will love it here. I sure do, but mostly for the prices, not because I buy that many exotic items. The place gets packed on weekends and it's not uncommon to hear shoppers sniping at one another in loud Korean or Vietnamese. I think this, along with the incredible variety of produce, meat (and meatlike things), and seafood, makes for one of the more interesting shopping experiences you will find in the DC area.
Hate: Locavores, stay away. Just about everything is imported. Also, though H Mart does carry non-exotic items like milk, eggs, and bread, these can be found a lot cheaper elsewhere.
In short: Go here for rice, tofu, coconut milk, soy sauce, chili sauce, basically anything with an Asian flair, and just about every kind of common fruit and vegetable, plus some very unusual ones. Oh, and don't forget the pig uterus.
Snider's
Love: Snider's, a Silver Spring institution, is old as dirt. This of course adds to its appeal, since everything else in these parts is so damn new. It's also one of few independent grocery stores left in the area, which earns it a very privileged status in teetotaling Montgomery County: yes, it sells beer and wine, too! There are some pretty good sales here, most of them organized on a shelf near the entrance of the store, or in bins toward the dairy department. The other day my roommate brought home a bunch of spices all priced around $1. Most notably, of all the grocery stores on this list, Snider's has the best value on meat and produce (ask my mother, a champion grocery shopper whose experience and expertise far outpaces my own, if you don't believe me).
Hate: Brand names and prepackaged items are pretty expensive here (and there's no generic, obv). Also, the aisles are really narrow and the parking lot is often jammed. Okay...so I'm wracking my brain to think of bad things to say about Snider's. It's really a good place -- just not for everything.
In short: Stick to meat, dairy, sale items (all clearly marked in the same sections), and beer and wine, and avoid most other things.
WHAT?!? It was hard to maintain my composure and I had to remind myself that these ridiculous policies are not up to the cashiers. It's unbelievable to me that any grocery store, even a self-proclaimed "unique" one like TJ's, would fail to stock such a mundane item as cabbage, one that something like 90 percent of humans consume. On the other hand, I think it probably says more about the way people cook (or don't cook, as it were) than it does about the store itself. The ideal Trader Joe's customer, I suppose, thinks it's quaint to make corned beef and cabbage for their annual St. Patty's Day drunkfest, but otherwise would never cook such a lowly vegetable with any regularity (heh, regularity and cabbage, get it?) -- or cook at all for that matter, considering the store's emphasis on pre-made foods. This might also explain why TJ's sells Orange Muscat Champagne vinegar, but you'd be SOL if all you want is plain old white vinegar to make brining solutions or Almost-No-Knead bread.
Despite my frustrations with Trader Joe's (and just about every other food purveyor I've ever visited), I still shop there almost weekly. When it comes to dairy products, TJ's prices-relative-to-quality can't be beat. Wait -- scratch that -- their milk's expiration date is often, like, tomorrow. But it is the place for cheese, butter, and eggs. Love-hate, that's how I am with every grocery store. Below, my take on where to shop (and not to shop), depending on what you're buying. Sadly, even in this age of one-stop shopping, I have yet to find a grocery store that satisfies most of my (admittedly demanding) needs.
Some caveats: This list definitely has a southern MoCo bias since I live in Bethesda and work in NoPe, not far from Silver Spring, but most of the stores I go to are major regional or national chains that don't have too much variation from store to store. I have left out Giant from this list; I personally find it's a lot more expensive than Safeway and the quality is not much better, though I know some people will vehemently disagree. I've also left out Harris Teeter -- I'm a Marylander through and through, and it's only just recently made the long trek from Virginia.
Trader Joe's
Love: Like I said a couple paragraphs ago, this is where you go to buy most stuff that comes from an udder. Just be sure to always check dates on milk, half-and-half, and cream -- you may come across some rare antiques. Cage-free eggs are also a lot cheaper here than at most grocery chains. Some other things I buy at Trader Joe's because of the price/quality correlative: coffee, olive oil, dried pasta, some jarred goods (e.g., olives, capers, pickles), granola bars (only $1.99 per box and the best store-bought variety I've tried), lemons (only $1.59 for a bag of six! That's pretty much unheard of, unless you live in Florida or California), frozen fruit and veggies, canned beans (unfortunately they don't sell dried beans, grrr), bread, jams and jellies, nuts, dried fruit, and two novelty favorites, smoked salmon pieces and mini boiling potatoes. I don't often buy meat there, mainly because I hardly ever cook meat, but I have found that their ground beef and ground turkey is reasonable.
Hate: I hate them 'cause they hate me. It's clear that Trader Joe's likes you better if you don't make anything from scratch because they make more money off all their pre-packaged stuff (a lot of which, I'll admit, is pretty good, but I'm too cheap to buy it). For example, they sell lasagna "kits" but not lasagna noodles. *Wrings hands in fury!* I also avoid most of their produce since it's usually pre-packaged and I prefer to select my own quantities. TJ's is pretty lame when it comes to baking ingredients -- some of their mixes aren't bad, but if you do a lot of baking from scratch, better stick to Safeway or Shopper's. No 5-pound bags of flour to be found. Don't bother shopping here for cleaning supplies or toiletries, unless you can justify spending $5.50 on a tube of Tom's of Maine. And finally, don't get too attached to any one particular item, because TJ's may just decide to drop it one day. I've asked employees on separate occasions about decisions to stop selling Kashi Good Friends and frozen edamame (which has since been brought back), and the reason both times was "a disagreement with the vendor." Be wary of any grocery store that hides behind a chipper nautical theme, all the while burning bridges!
In short: a great place to shop if your idea of cooking means removing from box and reheating; otherwise, stick to mainly dairy products, bread, nuts, and jarred goods.
Safeway
Love: Really, the main thing to love about Safeway is watching all the numbers drop down on the cash register screen after you've scanned your bonus card. The sales can be great, but if you don't have a bonus card, there is absolutely no point in patronizing this pit of putrescence. The produce is pathetic, the meat is....oh, right, I'm supposed to say what I love about Safeway. Okay, so not all their produce is pathetic. Root vegetables and members of the onion family are inexpensive, plus they're hardy enough that it's okay if you don't buy them brand new (trust me, you won't be doing that if you shop here). There's a good selection of baking ingredients with a good range of prices and quantities. The same goes for peanut butter, cooking oils (but not olive oil - TJ's is the best value), and some dried goods like rice, beans, and pasta. Prices on cleaning supplies, food storage items, and hygiene products are competitive, though not as good as Target's. But in all honesty, I'm just here for the cat litter -- the Arm & Hammer brand, which I've determined after rigorous testing and observation has the most effective clumping ability and therefore the lowest changing frequency and consequently the best value, is usually on sale!
Sorry, I forgot for a moment that this blog is about food. If you're still reading...
Hate: Where do I even begin? Produce is often old and overpriced relative to its quality. Most greens are pre-bagged and those that aren't are no longer very green. Citrus fruit is exorbitant, berries are moldy, etc., etc. You know how it's supposed to be best to shop the outer aisles of the grocery store? Well, the opposite is true of Safeway. Stay away from most produce, most dairy (unless, again, you are going antique shopping), most poultry (Perdue's flavorless birds rule the Safeway roost), all fish (it's expensive and already smells before you even take it home; that's a bad sign), and all bread (way overpriced compared to TJ's). So what does that leave you with? Things you should generally avoid eating, such as Chips Ahoy and Clorox.
In short: Go here for vegetables with long lifespans, baking ingredients, some dried goods, and items that are not actually food.
Shopper's Food Warehouse
Love: If Safeway is food purgatory, then Shoppers is food hell, as many people seem to believe. I tend to disagree. Yes, their produce can be questionable, but not much more so than Safeway's, and at least it's cheaper and there's a better variety of it. The good things I've found at Shoppers are always-inexpensive generic Richfood brand items (Safeway, on the other hand, has good sales but can't always be counted upon) and huge baking and "ethnic" aisles. Seriously, I did not know Goya made so many products till I started shopping at the Rockville location. There's a lot of other legitimately ethnic stuff, too, though I do appreciate the wide variety of Goya dried beans. Meat can be hit or miss, but I did luck out one Easter with a $10 spiral cut ham that fed a whole army and happened to also be delicious.
Hate: Hate may be a strong word, for once. I am very forgiving of Shoppers' shortcomings, because at least it acknowledges them by billing itself as a warehouse. Safeway, on the other hand, does not always seem all that safe. Still, I recommend you tread carefully at Shoppers: examine produce closely and check expiration dates.
In short: Go go Goya!
H Mart
Love: H Mart is a Korean grocery chain not for the prudish of palate. If pickled pig's feet and ugly fruit are your thing, you will love it here. I sure do, but mostly for the prices, not because I buy that many exotic items. The place gets packed on weekends and it's not uncommon to hear shoppers sniping at one another in loud Korean or Vietnamese. I think this, along with the incredible variety of produce, meat (and meatlike things), and seafood, makes for one of the more interesting shopping experiences you will find in the DC area.
Hate: Locavores, stay away. Just about everything is imported. Also, though H Mart does carry non-exotic items like milk, eggs, and bread, these can be found a lot cheaper elsewhere.
In short: Go here for rice, tofu, coconut milk, soy sauce, chili sauce, basically anything with an Asian flair, and just about every kind of common fruit and vegetable, plus some very unusual ones. Oh, and don't forget the pig uterus.
Snider's
Love: Snider's, a Silver Spring institution, is old as dirt. This of course adds to its appeal, since everything else in these parts is so damn new. It's also one of few independent grocery stores left in the area, which earns it a very privileged status in teetotaling Montgomery County: yes, it sells beer and wine, too! There are some pretty good sales here, most of them organized on a shelf near the entrance of the store, or in bins toward the dairy department. The other day my roommate brought home a bunch of spices all priced around $1. Most notably, of all the grocery stores on this list, Snider's has the best value on meat and produce (ask my mother, a champion grocery shopper whose experience and expertise far outpaces my own, if you don't believe me).
Hate: Brand names and prepackaged items are pretty expensive here (and there's no generic, obv). Also, the aisles are really narrow and the parking lot is often jammed. Okay...so I'm wracking my brain to think of bad things to say about Snider's. It's really a good place -- just not for everything.
In short: Stick to meat, dairy, sale items (all clearly marked in the same sections), and beer and wine, and avoid most other things.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
First Catering Gig: Lessons Learned
My friend Sara was kind enough to refer me to her parents, who hired me to cater a luncheon they hosted today for a group from their church. I was, of course, disappointed in my debut, but, lucky for me, the hosts were very kind and easy-going.
I've thrown enough parties that I thought this affair, a lunch for just 14 people, would be a no-brainer, but I was wrong. Under pressure, I made a lot more mistakes than I usually do (which, in total, means a LOT of mistakes), but this time the stakes were higher. Yes, I was getting paid, which is both fantastic and completely new, but any time something goes wrong at a party I'm hosting at my house we can just drink enough to compensate, and, I presume, my friends will still like me either way (if this is not true, dear friends, please speak up in the comments section and I will find another hobby). Cooking for someone else's party, I found, was a whole 'nother animal.
I didn't make anything that difficult; even my two poached salmon were surprisingly easy -- you just make a foil pouch for each fish, fill it with chicken stock and some lemon juice, and bake it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. But, for some reason -- I think a combination of nerves, carelessness, bad planning, and inexperience -- things didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. Some lessons:
1) It's difficult to cook and serve at the same time: I am both cheap and controlling, but it would've been well worth it to pay for a helper or two.
2) There are shortcuts I normally don't take when cooking at home that I absolutely should have taken this time; e.g., when catering a party, don't make your own chicken stock or your own bread. No one can tell the difference, or, at least, no one cares.
3) Strictly follow recipes you know to be reliable, or don't stray too far off the beaten path. I tried to get fancy with potatoes -- potatoes! my favorite and my staple -- only to find I had tried too hard. I made scalloped potatoes with feta and olives, something I've mentioned before in this blog, but, fearing that this quantity would not bake evenly, I boiled them for too long before baking them, thinking it would help the baking along. The result was waterlogged potatoes soaked in brine. Too bad, because other times I've served them they've been a huge hit.
4) There are few things worse than lukewarm soup -- I put a pot of butternut squash and roasted garlic bisque on the burner at a point that I amateurishly deemed too early, and so turned off the burner prematurely. The problem came when I started ladling the room temperature soup into bowls, complete with a garnish of homemade garlic bread croutons and fresh sage. The result of this oversight was a mad rush, and a rejuvenated appreciation for the microwave.
5) If you are serving some kind of spinach dish as the vegetable, and you have prepared it ahead of time at home, do not reheat it at the party. Just serve it at room temperature. Trust me! No one wants to eat airplane food on land.
6) With apologies to Laurie Colwin, who said the same thing in More Home Cooking, always buy more lemons than you think you need (this involved an extra trip to the store at 7:30 this morning).
7) At the same time, don't be discouraged if not everyone squeezes lemon juice onto their salmon -- even after you "plated" lemon slices as a pretty and functional garnish.
8) Though it may depend on the crowd, make a bit less than you think you need (see #6 -- there are exceptions made for particular ingredients). This goes against everything I ever learned about cooking for a party, but I fear it's true: I eat more than most people do, and my views of a serving size are skewed.
9) A good dessert can always help you redeem yourself after a mediocre meal. Try this upside-down chiffon cake, and use whatever fruit is seasonable. I used apples this time.
10) Realize that you, as the caterer, care much more about food perfection than any of the guests -- and possibly even the hosts -- do, and try not to beat yourself up over little mishaps, especially on your first try.
I've thrown enough parties that I thought this affair, a lunch for just 14 people, would be a no-brainer, but I was wrong. Under pressure, I made a lot more mistakes than I usually do (which, in total, means a LOT of mistakes), but this time the stakes were higher. Yes, I was getting paid, which is both fantastic and completely new, but any time something goes wrong at a party I'm hosting at my house we can just drink enough to compensate, and, I presume, my friends will still like me either way (if this is not true, dear friends, please speak up in the comments section and I will find another hobby). Cooking for someone else's party, I found, was a whole 'nother animal.
I didn't make anything that difficult; even my two poached salmon were surprisingly easy -- you just make a foil pouch for each fish, fill it with chicken stock and some lemon juice, and bake it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. But, for some reason -- I think a combination of nerves, carelessness, bad planning, and inexperience -- things didn't go as smoothly as I hoped. Some lessons:
1) It's difficult to cook and serve at the same time: I am both cheap and controlling, but it would've been well worth it to pay for a helper or two.
2) There are shortcuts I normally don't take when cooking at home that I absolutely should have taken this time; e.g., when catering a party, don't make your own chicken stock or your own bread. No one can tell the difference, or, at least, no one cares.
3) Strictly follow recipes you know to be reliable, or don't stray too far off the beaten path. I tried to get fancy with potatoes -- potatoes! my favorite and my staple -- only to find I had tried too hard. I made scalloped potatoes with feta and olives, something I've mentioned before in this blog, but, fearing that this quantity would not bake evenly, I boiled them for too long before baking them, thinking it would help the baking along. The result was waterlogged potatoes soaked in brine. Too bad, because other times I've served them they've been a huge hit.
4) There are few things worse than lukewarm soup -- I put a pot of butternut squash and roasted garlic bisque on the burner at a point that I amateurishly deemed too early, and so turned off the burner prematurely. The problem came when I started ladling the room temperature soup into bowls, complete with a garnish of homemade garlic bread croutons and fresh sage. The result of this oversight was a mad rush, and a rejuvenated appreciation for the microwave.
5) If you are serving some kind of spinach dish as the vegetable, and you have prepared it ahead of time at home, do not reheat it at the party. Just serve it at room temperature. Trust me! No one wants to eat airplane food on land.
6) With apologies to Laurie Colwin, who said the same thing in More Home Cooking, always buy more lemons than you think you need (this involved an extra trip to the store at 7:30 this morning).
7) At the same time, don't be discouraged if not everyone squeezes lemon juice onto their salmon -- even after you "plated" lemon slices as a pretty and functional garnish.
8) Though it may depend on the crowd, make a bit less than you think you need (see #6 -- there are exceptions made for particular ingredients). This goes against everything I ever learned about cooking for a party, but I fear it's true: I eat more than most people do, and my views of a serving size are skewed.
9) A good dessert can always help you redeem yourself after a mediocre meal. Try this upside-down chiffon cake, and use whatever fruit is seasonable. I used apples this time.
10) Realize that you, as the caterer, care much more about food perfection than any of the guests -- and possibly even the hosts -- do, and try not to beat yourself up over little mishaps, especially on your first try.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Recipe Redux: A Crazy Rant
Almost every time I read the "Recipe Redux" column in the New York Times magazine, I am reminded that I should have been born at least fifty years earlier. "Recipe Redux" works like this: the Times' food editors choose an archived recipe, reprint it, and create a similar, more updated version. It's the updated part that I can't come to grips with, that sometimes spirals me into the darkest of depressions. Take, for instance, Huguenot Torte, a recipe Craig Claiborne printed in 1965 with permission from The First Ladies' Cookbook. This recipe was featured in the chapter on Mrs. Martin Van Buren - anachronistically, it turns out, since the recipe postdates President Van Buren's term by an entire century. Whatever its origins, it looks like one for the Economical Epicurean's files: a few easy steps yield a crisp crust and a custardlike filling with apples and pecans, which are likely the only ingredients you might need to go out and buy.
Fast forward to the present: Huguenot Torte 2009 is not a torte, or anything you would bake in a dish, but "Thyme-Meringue Cookies with Boozy Apple," created by a woman who wrote a book called Organic and Chic. Go figure. In my nostalgic discontentment, I created this chart to compare the two recipes:
| Recipe Name | Huguenot Torte (1965) | Thyme-Meringue Cookies with Boozy Apple (2009) |
Number of words in name | 2 | 6 |
Number of ingredients | 10 | 12 |
Amount you might have to spend (in 2009) to have a complete ingredient list | $4 | $30 (Maker's Mark is an ingredient) |
Number of steps | 7 | 23 |
| Specified kitchen equipment | "rotary beater" (I think this means electric mixer), whisk, baking pan | two baking sheets; parchment paper; small, heavy-bottomed pan; food processor; standing mixer; piping bag with tip; cup for piping bag to "rest in" |
Maybe you can appreciate my consternation by now? And it's not only the multitude of steps and the extensive and expensive batterie de cuisine needed to make Huguenot Torte 2009 that bring on my existential crisis. It's also the social ramifications! Let me clarify: torte is a group dessert, it's something you cut into and pass around; cookies are more often eaten alone, frequently on the fly, or sometimes while you sit at your cubicle, staring at your computer screen with dead eyes. Torte brings people together; cookies encourage isolation. And notice how these thyme-meringue-boozy cookies are piped out onto a cookie sheet: identical but spaced apart, conformist without coalescence. Cookies -- and, in particular, cupcakes, which are in essence cake for loners -- are tearing at the fabric of society!
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. I have a flair for the melodramatic and a bad case of PMS. A cookie or four will help me feel better.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Economical Epicurean Now Caters!
...Or would like to!
Although it's still just in the idea phase, I'm getting to work on opening a (very small, to start) catering business from my home, and I'm really excited about it! This is not to say I'll be quitting my day job -- for now I will keep it a weekend and occasional weeknight gig only (assuming I can get any gigs in the first place!).
Catering businesses are a dime a dozen in the DC area, and I'm sure demand has declined significantly over the past year. I'm hoping I can develop a reputation as the dirt cheap caterer who uses a lot of seasonal ingredients and brings in da funk. Okay, not dirt cheap, but I do want the privilege of continuing to call myself the Economical Epicurean. And I do want to also bring in da funk, whatever that means.
So, if you or any of your friends and associates are planning a party of any kind (well, any party with 100 guests or fewer -- not sure if my kitchen is equipped for more!), consider me! You'll save a lot of money and time and the party will be awesome! I definitely need to come up with a catchier tagline than that.
For more information, email me at dianaeowen@gmail.com. Thanks!
Although it's still just in the idea phase, I'm getting to work on opening a (very small, to start) catering business from my home, and I'm really excited about it! This is not to say I'll be quitting my day job -- for now I will keep it a weekend and occasional weeknight gig only (assuming I can get any gigs in the first place!).
Catering businesses are a dime a dozen in the DC area, and I'm sure demand has declined significantly over the past year. I'm hoping I can develop a reputation as the dirt cheap caterer who uses a lot of seasonal ingredients and brings in da funk. Okay, not dirt cheap, but I do want the privilege of continuing to call myself the Economical Epicurean. And I do want to also bring in da funk, whatever that means.
So, if you or any of your friends and associates are planning a party of any kind (well, any party with 100 guests or fewer -- not sure if my kitchen is equipped for more!), consider me! You'll save a lot of money and time and the party will be awesome! I definitely need to come up with a catchier tagline than that.
For more information, email me at dianaeowen@gmail.com. Thanks!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Saying Yes to NoPe
In DC, a city with a population that changes drastically with every election, neighborhoods are constantly reinvented and renamed. One of the more irritating of these is NoMa, unimaginatively named for its location north of Massachusetts Avenue (New York, after London, has been naming neighborhoods -- SoHo, TriBeCa -- with this abbreviation style for years, seemingly seamlessly, but when DC tries to do the same thing, it just seems lame and contrived). The original name for this neighborhood -- Swampoodle -- is much closer to reality, as it's a kind of pidgin portmanteau for "swamp puddle," which describes DC's topography to a tee. But, the realtors and developers assume, a name like NoMa sounds cool and will make city newcomers forget they are living in a wasteland of railroad tracks and abandoned buildings. That is, until they step out the front doors of their sparkling but mostly-still-vacant condominiums and see a wasteland of railroad tracks and abandoned buildings.
Such is the way of DC, and I accept it. This is how I arrived at a new name for the neighborhood I work in, known to its residents as Brightwood, which is a perfectly nice name*. However, since I am a) white, b) of British ancestry, c) a saleswoman, d) a saleswoman in the construction/development industry, and e) something of a wordsmith, I decided it is my Manifest Destiny to confer upon Brightwood a name that might resonate better with other potential newcomers to the neighborhood. And so I chose NoPe, which is an abbreviation of North of Petworth, and which, conveniently, has two different pronunciations: "Nope," as in, "Nope, you don't wanna go there," and "No pay," which works pretty well given the number of boarded up buildings along this stretch of Georgia Avenue. Since Petworth has already begun to "transition" (the more sensitive among us prefer to avoid the word gentrify, as it reminds us a little too much of reality), a process that usually takes about 3 months in DC, but may be a little slower now, you know, because of the economy, it's probably time to start spreading the word about NoPe before all the other yuppies conquer it. You too can be a pioneer!
What's my point again? Oh yeah, I was going to write about NoPe cuisine for NoPe-phobes. Say Yep to:
Julia's Empanadas
What: Empanadas, which are like Hot Pockets, but delicious because they're delicious, not delicious because they're disgusting. Also, they are very filling and cost only $3.41 before tax.
Where: 6232 Georgia Ave NW
Why: You've been to the Dupont and Adams Morgan locations, now where's your sense of adventure? NoPe just opened one, and no other white people know about it yet! Jump on it!
Taqueria Distrito Federal
What: Extremely delicious and incredibly cheap Mexican/Salvadorean food
Where: 805 Kennedy St NW
Why: Maybe you've been to the Columbia Heights original after a wild night at Wonderland. Well, guess what, Wonderland is so 2006 and now you can get your tacos con chivo after a wild night at Red Derby!
Teddy's Roti Shop
What: The West Indian specialty, roti, which is kind of like a huge pita stuffed with one metric butt ton of spicy meat
Where: 7414 Georgia Ave NW
Why: Even WaPo has known about this one for years, which doesn't help your street cred. But, getting yelled at by the sassy owner lady because you can't order right makes you feel like this is an Authentic Experience. How quaint!
*For a perfectly nice residential neighborhood; the commercially zoned sections of Brightwood, though full of vacant space, offer plenty of bright spots as well. Sorry for the lame pun.
Disclaimer: The author is aware of the potential offensiveness of this blog post and hopes that readers appreciate her attempt at satire (or at least don't hate her for it). She promises to go back to writing about cooking next time.
Such is the way of DC, and I accept it. This is how I arrived at a new name for the neighborhood I work in, known to its residents as Brightwood, which is a perfectly nice name*. However, since I am a) white, b) of British ancestry, c) a saleswoman, d) a saleswoman in the construction/development industry, and e) something of a wordsmith, I decided it is my Manifest Destiny to confer upon Brightwood a name that might resonate better with other potential newcomers to the neighborhood. And so I chose NoPe, which is an abbreviation of North of Petworth, and which, conveniently, has two different pronunciations: "Nope," as in, "Nope, you don't wanna go there," and "No pay," which works pretty well given the number of boarded up buildings along this stretch of Georgia Avenue. Since Petworth has already begun to "transition" (the more sensitive among us prefer to avoid the word gentrify, as it reminds us a little too much of reality), a process that usually takes about 3 months in DC, but may be a little slower now, you know, because of the economy, it's probably time to start spreading the word about NoPe before all the other yuppies conquer it. You too can be a pioneer!
What's my point again? Oh yeah, I was going to write about NoPe cuisine for NoPe-phobes. Say Yep to:
Julia's Empanadas
What: Empanadas, which are like Hot Pockets, but delicious because they're delicious, not delicious because they're disgusting. Also, they are very filling and cost only $3.41 before tax.
Where: 6232 Georgia Ave NW
Why: You've been to the Dupont and Adams Morgan locations, now where's your sense of adventure? NoPe just opened one, and no other white people know about it yet! Jump on it!
Taqueria Distrito Federal
What: Extremely delicious and incredibly cheap Mexican/Salvadorean food
Where: 805 Kennedy St NW
Why: Maybe you've been to the Columbia Heights original after a wild night at Wonderland. Well, guess what, Wonderland is so 2006 and now you can get your tacos con chivo after a wild night at Red Derby!
Teddy's Roti Shop
What: The West Indian specialty, roti, which is kind of like a huge pita stuffed with one metric butt ton of spicy meat
Where: 7414 Georgia Ave NW
Why: Even WaPo has known about this one for years, which doesn't help your street cred. But, getting yelled at by the sassy owner lady because you can't order right makes you feel like this is an Authentic Experience. How quaint!
*For a perfectly nice residential neighborhood; the commercially zoned sections of Brightwood, though full of vacant space, offer plenty of bright spots as well. Sorry for the lame pun.
Disclaimer: The author is aware of the potential offensiveness of this blog post and hopes that readers appreciate her attempt at satire (or at least don't hate her for it). She promises to go back to writing about cooking next time.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Economical Epicurean Eats Her Way Through Eastern Europe
I feel a strong need to post pictures of Eastern European food before I reach that Statute of Limitations on Writing About Cuisine That I Sampled On a Vacation That Already Seems Like It Ended a Long Time Ago. Anyway, I returned fairly recently from an incredible trip to Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary. "What a fraud!" you might exclaim. "Surely no one who calls herself economical can afford to travel to Europe in the summertime." But, if you do exclaim that, you are wrong! My penny-pinching ways at home allow for the very occasional exotic vacation. Plus, Eastern Europe is dang cheap, airfare aside.
I am on the hunt for a recipe for these hazelnut shortbread Linzer-esque cookies, which can be found everywhere in Budapest. I wish I had written down the name, but it was probably something like ajdhfslofheifanofdiwodfal, with 4 umlauts and 3 other diacritical marks. Magyar is an impossible language.
Okay, when I said "delicious," I was being judicious. For some reason the Hungarians really like Unicum, even though it tastes worse than bathroom cleaner (I'm guessing).
I got into the amusing habit of ordering dishes with completely mysterious menu names (so mysterious that even the Hungarian-English dictionary couldn't help us out). One of these was the Slambuc Plate, above, at Al Foldi in Budapest. Now that I have internet access again, I know, thanks to Jamie Oliver, that Slambuc is a kind of Hungarian shepherd's pie. But to me, it was a delicious doppelganger for vomit. In fact, it reminded me of something I would throw together in attempt to use up some scraps of food that are about to turn. Homely home cooking, that's my style.
I loved the cold sour cherry soup, a Budapest specialty. I wish I had known about it when tart cherries were still in season here in the Mid-Atlantic!
In addition to mystery food, mystery drinks were another favorite thing to order in Budapest. This one is called "The Golden Girl," so of course I ordered it. Then I spilled the whole thing over the table. But the few sips I got to enjoy contained rum and pineapple juice.
Sausage and paprika are both serious business in Budapest -- no shame in that.
The picture didn't turn out well, but those two hanging bowls contain Hungarian fish stew, another staple, one that elevates the plebeian carp and catfish to a gourmet level. I didn't order it, but my friends who did liked it a lot. Might be worth reproducing at home, and it would be a very cheap way to enjoy fish.
Possibly my favorite dish of the whole trip -- and, no, it is not goulash. It's venison in whortleberry sauce, and I ordered it for the sole reason that I had never heard of a whortleberry (which has no relation to the mysterious googooberry). Wikipedia tells me it is more commonly called a bilberry and comes from the same genus as the blueberry. Huh! Anyway, whortleberry sauce and Bambi go very well together. And venison, when eaten in Hungary, is very good and very inexpensive.
Excellent pistachio-cream-cake-with-chocolate-base-kind-of-thing, a caprese salad, and the requisite espresso at a cafe, whose name I think was Cafe, near our apartment on the Buda side of Budapest. I must've consumed about 50 espressos on this ten-day adventure.
This menu translation at a roadside pizza joint south of Budapest was priceless. I ordered the Pizza Verhovina just so I could find out what a "scathing rationale" is. I never did find that out. Through inductive reasoning, we concluded at least that "trotters" are diced ham.
The Pizza Verhovina - tomato sauce, cheese, peppers, onions, diced ham, and a dash of scathing rationale. I'll just have to accept it's an ingredient that I am too feeble-minded to ever comprehend.
Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of any f0od item from Croatia -- we spent just one night there, in the Istrian town of Rovinj on the Adriatic coast. Grapes seem to grow like ragweed around those parts, so you can tell it's a great area for wining and dining.
The alpine town of Radovjlica, Slovenia, is close to the Austrian border, and one order of wiener schnitzel could feed about 12 hungry yodelers. Also pictured here are potato croquettes and, to the left of the fries, the "Slovenian national dish," which is like a very bland kugel. FYI, if you order an iced coffee in Slovenia, you will get a milkshake that contains mostly ice cream and whipped cream, with some splashes of rum and espresso for good measure. Don't expect it to wake you up.
We all loved Bled, Slovenia, so much that it's a good thing our last meal there was a memorable one. Have you ever seen prosciutto and melon arranged more artfully?
For this same Last Slovenian Supper, I ordered the baby squid stuffed with sausage. Unbelievable!
The Slascicarna Smon bakery in Bled had the most delicious pastries. Everyone's favorite was this one -- a horn shaped roll stuffed with a nutty, brown sugary filling and doused in powdered sugar. Again, I wish I had written down the name!
That same bakery is better known for its cream cake, a Bled specialty consisting of two layers of flaky pastry and one metric butt ton of cream in between. I come from a family of almond cream pie fanatics (my people love it so much, it's known simply as AC Pie at home), and I hope they get to try this some day!
At the Gostilna Pri Planincu, where we celebrated Rachel's birthday, the birthday girl and I both ordered these meat patties, which we had no idea were the size of hatboxes till they arrived at the table. That oozing, buttery lump in the middle is a mascarpone-like cheese. Regarding my friend's cleavage, our saucy waiter said it's "quality, not quantity" that matters, but this statement seems at odds with Pri Planincu's serving sizes.
Also at the Gostilna Pri Planincu, I ordered some of the best cream of mushroom soup I had ever tasted. Actually, I think I liked it because was not that creamy at all. I definitely need to try to replicate this one at home.
Slovenia being so close to Italy, a lot of pizza was consumed on this leg of the trip. No "scathing rationale" in this pie, but prosciutto, asparagus, and fresh mozzarella are always delightful.
The pizza diet made me feel a little squishier than normal, so I ordered the "Fitness Plate" at a beachside lunch spot on Lake Bled. Salad greens topped with grilled chicken, toast, yogurt dressing and tomato slices -- I was a new woman!
Beautiful produce at the Saturday farmer's market in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital
And, oh yeah, horse meat. The horse burger was the one thing I didn't have the courage to try. Maybe next time, after a night of drinking too much Slovenian wine.
I did not have very high expectations for the cuisine, which I expected to include goulash, paprikash, and more goulash. I am a meat and potatoes girl in theory, but not in 90 degree heat. Lucky for me, there were so many other delicious things to sample. And it turns out goulash is pretty good in any season. Below, a sampling of the samples, in rather haphazard order (Blogger makes it difficult to move pictures around; also, I am technologically handicapped).
I am on the hunt for a recipe for these hazelnut shortbread Linzer-esque cookies, which can be found everywhere in Budapest. I wish I had written down the name, but it was probably something like ajdhfslofheifanofdiwodfal, with 4 umlauts and 3 other diacritical marks. Magyar is an impossible language. 
Okay, when I said "delicious," I was being judicious. For some reason the Hungarians really like Unicum, even though it tastes worse than bathroom cleaner (I'm guessing). 
I got into the amusing habit of ordering dishes with completely mysterious menu names (so mysterious that even the Hungarian-English dictionary couldn't help us out). One of these was the Slambuc Plate, above, at Al Foldi in Budapest. Now that I have internet access again, I know, thanks to Jamie Oliver, that Slambuc is a kind of Hungarian shepherd's pie. But to me, it was a delicious doppelganger for vomit. In fact, it reminded me of something I would throw together in attempt to use up some scraps of food that are about to turn. Homely home cooking, that's my style. 
I loved the cold sour cherry soup, a Budapest specialty. I wish I had known about it when tart cherries were still in season here in the Mid-Atlantic!
In addition to mystery food, mystery drinks were another favorite thing to order in Budapest. This one is called "The Golden Girl," so of course I ordered it. Then I spilled the whole thing over the table. But the few sips I got to enjoy contained rum and pineapple juice. 
Sausage and paprika are both serious business in Budapest -- no shame in that. 
The picture didn't turn out well, but those two hanging bowls contain Hungarian fish stew, another staple, one that elevates the plebeian carp and catfish to a gourmet level. I didn't order it, but my friends who did liked it a lot. Might be worth reproducing at home, and it would be a very cheap way to enjoy fish. 
Possibly my favorite dish of the whole trip -- and, no, it is not goulash. It's venison in whortleberry sauce, and I ordered it for the sole reason that I had never heard of a whortleberry (which has no relation to the mysterious googooberry). Wikipedia tells me it is more commonly called a bilberry and comes from the same genus as the blueberry. Huh! Anyway, whortleberry sauce and Bambi go very well together. And venison, when eaten in Hungary, is very good and very inexpensive.
Excellent pistachio-cream-cake-with-chocolate-base-kind-of-thing, a caprese salad, and the requisite espresso at a cafe, whose name I think was Cafe, near our apartment on the Buda side of Budapest. I must've consumed about 50 espressos on this ten-day adventure.
This menu translation at a roadside pizza joint south of Budapest was priceless. I ordered the Pizza Verhovina just so I could find out what a "scathing rationale" is. I never did find that out. Through inductive reasoning, we concluded at least that "trotters" are diced ham. 
The Pizza Verhovina - tomato sauce, cheese, peppers, onions, diced ham, and a dash of scathing rationale. I'll just have to accept it's an ingredient that I am too feeble-minded to ever comprehend. 
Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of any f0od item from Croatia -- we spent just one night there, in the Istrian town of Rovinj on the Adriatic coast. Grapes seem to grow like ragweed around those parts, so you can tell it's a great area for wining and dining. 
The alpine town of Radovjlica, Slovenia, is close to the Austrian border, and one order of wiener schnitzel could feed about 12 hungry yodelers. Also pictured here are potato croquettes and, to the left of the fries, the "Slovenian national dish," which is like a very bland kugel. FYI, if you order an iced coffee in Slovenia, you will get a milkshake that contains mostly ice cream and whipped cream, with some splashes of rum and espresso for good measure. Don't expect it to wake you up. 
We all loved Bled, Slovenia, so much that it's a good thing our last meal there was a memorable one. Have you ever seen prosciutto and melon arranged more artfully?
For this same Last Slovenian Supper, I ordered the baby squid stuffed with sausage. Unbelievable!
The Slascicarna Smon bakery in Bled had the most delicious pastries. Everyone's favorite was this one -- a horn shaped roll stuffed with a nutty, brown sugary filling and doused in powdered sugar. Again, I wish I had written down the name! 
That same bakery is better known for its cream cake, a Bled specialty consisting of two layers of flaky pastry and one metric butt ton of cream in between. I come from a family of almond cream pie fanatics (my people love it so much, it's known simply as AC Pie at home), and I hope they get to try this some day! 
At the Gostilna Pri Planincu, where we celebrated Rachel's birthday, the birthday girl and I both ordered these meat patties, which we had no idea were the size of hatboxes till they arrived at the table. That oozing, buttery lump in the middle is a mascarpone-like cheese. Regarding my friend's cleavage, our saucy waiter said it's "quality, not quantity" that matters, but this statement seems at odds with Pri Planincu's serving sizes. 
Also at the Gostilna Pri Planincu, I ordered some of the best cream of mushroom soup I had ever tasted. Actually, I think I liked it because was not that creamy at all. I definitely need to try to replicate this one at home. 
Slovenia being so close to Italy, a lot of pizza was consumed on this leg of the trip. No "scathing rationale" in this pie, but prosciutto, asparagus, and fresh mozzarella are always delightful. 
The pizza diet made me feel a little squishier than normal, so I ordered the "Fitness Plate" at a beachside lunch spot on Lake Bled. Salad greens topped with grilled chicken, toast, yogurt dressing and tomato slices -- I was a new woman! 
Beautiful produce at the Saturday farmer's market in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital
And, oh yeah, horse meat. The horse burger was the one thing I didn't have the courage to try. Maybe next time, after a night of drinking too much Slovenian wine.Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Homo Erectus in the Kitchen
My affliction with epicureanism, no matter well how it satiates my ever-growing gut, sometimes leaves me feeling rather empty, in the metaphorical sense. It's just food! We all have to eat, I remind myself, and most people in the world don't (or can't afford to) get so precious about it. If you do treat cooking as an art, you probably have too much time and money on your hands. Shouldn't I be spending my time and money doing loftier things? Like...I don't even know, that's how shallow I am. Alright, then shouldn't I be spending my time and money doing things that need to be done, like taking my car to get new brake pads? It has needed them for at least two months. Not very economical of me to wait till the brakes potentially need to be replaced altogether.
Today's Science Times had an encouraging interview of primatologist and anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who argues -- very effectively according to this writer with no science background -- that cooking was the key to our evolution from apes to humans. I'm terrible at paraphrasing, but it's a fascinating argument, and one that certainly goes against the raw food movement: our height and brain size are the products of a healthy diet made possible only when foods are cooked. Makes pretty good sense to me, but perhaps I am just biased.
But, to return to my original predicament, can I start to think of cooking as "lofty" because the apes don't do it, because it just may be the thing that makes me a human!?! Indeed, pursuits such as music and art are considered lofty. True, sometimes monkeys make art, like if the zookeeper gives them an open can of paint or something, but the humanly desire to "Create!" does not seem to be there. On the other hand, another thing that separates us from our fellow primates is that we can stand up straight and this, to me, despite whatever literal interpretations you want to make, is not lofty, nor does it make feel particularly special.
Certainly, something that cooking gave us a lot more of, in addition to perhaps size, brains, and longevity, is free time. (Dr. Wrangham's chimpanzees "spend most of their day foraging and chewing extremely fibrous foods," some of which they'll "masticate for a full hour.") For me, cooking -- or spending more time cooking than one has to in order to survive -- is probably nothing more than an enjoyable way to use up some time and give the ol' palate a kick. If nothing else, it definitely beats gnawing on the same fibrous plant till my teeth hurt.
Today's Science Times had an encouraging interview of primatologist and anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who argues -- very effectively according to this writer with no science background -- that cooking was the key to our evolution from apes to humans. I'm terrible at paraphrasing, but it's a fascinating argument, and one that certainly goes against the raw food movement: our height and brain size are the products of a healthy diet made possible only when foods are cooked. Makes pretty good sense to me, but perhaps I am just biased.
But, to return to my original predicament, can I start to think of cooking as "lofty" because the apes don't do it, because it just may be the thing that makes me a human!?! Indeed, pursuits such as music and art are considered lofty. True, sometimes monkeys make art, like if the zookeeper gives them an open can of paint or something, but the humanly desire to "Create!" does not seem to be there. On the other hand, another thing that separates us from our fellow primates is that we can stand up straight and this, to me, despite whatever literal interpretations you want to make, is not lofty, nor does it make feel particularly special.
Certainly, something that cooking gave us a lot more of, in addition to perhaps size, brains, and longevity, is free time. (Dr. Wrangham's chimpanzees "spend most of their day foraging and chewing extremely fibrous foods," some of which they'll "masticate for a full hour.") For me, cooking -- or spending more time cooking than one has to in order to survive -- is probably nothing more than an enjoyable way to use up some time and give the ol' palate a kick. If nothing else, it definitely beats gnawing on the same fibrous plant till my teeth hurt.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Strangely Delicious: The PB&C
The food writer Michael Ruhlman has a great blog that teaches me how to do all kinds of things I will probably never do, like make my own duck prosciutto. It makes for interesting reading, but I prefer to leave the meat-curing to Sanders, who has made his own bacon (that's not a euphemism in this context) and is planning to build a smokehouse in our backyard.
Recently, Ruhlman introduced his readers to the peanut butter and cabbage sandwich, his go-to weekday lunch. He claims to consume "several pounds" of raw cabbage each week, and credits it for his "virile good health." I like cabbage, and I like peanut butter, and I like the idea of virile good health, so I decided to try it. Indeed, it was delicious. I added a sprinkle of red pepper flakes for some oomph. I think a bit of ginger would be good here, too. Hot pepper jelly would be perfect. Heck, you could spread the peanut-ginger dressing from my last post on two pieces of bread, slap some cabbage up in there, and throw a party in your mouth.
If you're still not convinced, think of this sandwich as a relative of celery sticks and peanut butter, only with a lot more nutrients.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Take Back the Tuber
So, I was in fact too busy with the cabana boys to write anything about my road trip to Florida. Besides, a vacation is not really a vacation if it involves a computer screen. And besides that, I figure no one besides me would find my food finds that interesting. But, if you ever find yourself traveling along both coasts or cruising down Route 1 in the Keys, and you are wondering what to eat, get in touch! I did not have a single unimpressive meal -- and this was almost two whole weeks of road food. Also, and this may come as a surprise, I do sometimes do things that don't involve eating (e.g., sleeping, drinking, lying on the beach, petting stray cats), and I'd be happy to pass that related information along, too.
Me in my bathing suit, Siesta Key, February 2009
But the vacation's over, another new job has begun, and news about the economy (is there any other kind of news?) gets more depressing every day. Well, bless her little heart, Jane E. Brody has come to America's rescue by encouraging us to Take Back the Tuber. I suppose I am amplifying her potato praise a bit -- it covered only two paragraphs or so of her Science Times column on March 2. But it did have its own section heading: "Potatoes: One of the Good Guys." Can I get an Amen?!?!
J. Bro goes on to point out that potatoes, defamed in recent years as nothing but carb-heavy repositories of butter and bacon, provide 35 percent of your daily vitamin C, 20 percent of your B6, 10 percent of your niacin, iron, and copper, and 6 percent of your protein. I'll add to that list that if you eat the skin, you also get a shitload (pun intended) of fiber.
Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love the homely old tuber, any way I can get it. But there's really nothing more comforting -- or more affordable -- than a baked potato. Tonight I topped mine with a tiny bit of butter, some salt and pepper, a whole lot of steamed broccoli, and a couple sprinkles of blue cheese (so tempting, all melty and soft in the potato's heat. Methinks my next career will be the first author of tubercentric romance novels, an untapped genre). Baked potatoes are also great for using up leftovers of almost any kind -- think of them as edible landfills (yes, that makes no sense at all) for chicken salad, ground beef, roasted veg, beans, whatever. I'd like to douse a tater with my dal saag or cilantro-garlic yogurt sauce. Talk about a stimulus package!
If you are one of the poor souls who doesn't know how to bake a potato, 1) you are no friend of mine, and 2) here's how to become my friend: turn your oven on to 400 degrees; take a potato, preferably a "Baking Potato," and scrub it under running water for a few seconds; get fancy if you want and slather that wet potato skin with salt; use a knife or fork to poke a few holes in the skin; put it in the oven for about 45 minutes (longer if you are baking multiple potatoes -- maybe about an hour); take it out of the oven; cut a big slit in it lengthwise and get creative with your toppings. Or use just a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper (just salt and pepper if you're watching your figure; just pepper if you're watching your sodium; just plain if you're a self-flagellating monk).
In conclusion, if we want to "get back to our values," as everyone keeps saying, the solution is really quite simple. Buy potatoes and bake them! Really, the slogan of the United Potato Growers of America can legitimately be "Country First." Let me break it down for you:
1) When you buy potatoes, you are "buying American." You really think we are dumb enough to import potatoes from China? Okay, maybe we are. But thankfully, we don't usually do that. In fact, we are the world's fifth largest exporter of potatoes.
2) Even so, supply is outweighing demand, which has caused potato prices to drop. Right now, that's good for you (on the other hand, price drops are usually compensated by federal subsidies, so consumers don't pay much less than they did before). And if we all start buying more potatoes, it'll be good for the farmers and good for the taxpayers!
3) Because they are so cheap, potatoes keep money in your pocket, which you can then stuff under your mattress. When your mattress becomes uncomfortable, you know it's time to hit the fire sales.
4) As Jane E. Brody so wisely enumerates, potatoes, as long as they're not scalloped or turned into fries, are good for your health. Lowered health care costs, my friends! Let's think long-term.
Me in my bathing suit, Siesta Key, February 2009J. Bro goes on to point out that potatoes, defamed in recent years as nothing but carb-heavy repositories of butter and bacon, provide 35 percent of your daily vitamin C, 20 percent of your B6, 10 percent of your niacin, iron, and copper, and 6 percent of your protein. I'll add to that list that if you eat the skin, you also get a shitload (pun intended) of fiber.
Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love the homely old tuber, any way I can get it. But there's really nothing more comforting -- or more affordable -- than a baked potato. Tonight I topped mine with a tiny bit of butter, some salt and pepper, a whole lot of steamed broccoli, and a couple sprinkles of blue cheese (so tempting, all melty and soft in the potato's heat. Methinks my next career will be the first author of tubercentric romance novels, an untapped genre). Baked potatoes are also great for using up leftovers of almost any kind -- think of them as edible landfills (yes, that makes no sense at all) for chicken salad, ground beef, roasted veg, beans, whatever. I'd like to douse a tater with my dal saag or cilantro-garlic yogurt sauce. Talk about a stimulus package!
If you are one of the poor souls who doesn't know how to bake a potato, 1) you are no friend of mine, and 2) here's how to become my friend: turn your oven on to 400 degrees; take a potato, preferably a "Baking Potato," and scrub it under running water for a few seconds; get fancy if you want and slather that wet potato skin with salt; use a knife or fork to poke a few holes in the skin; put it in the oven for about 45 minutes (longer if you are baking multiple potatoes -- maybe about an hour); take it out of the oven; cut a big slit in it lengthwise and get creative with your toppings. Or use just a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper (just salt and pepper if you're watching your figure; just pepper if you're watching your sodium; just plain if you're a self-flagellating monk).
In conclusion, if we want to "get back to our values," as everyone keeps saying, the solution is really quite simple. Buy potatoes and bake them! Really, the slogan of the United Potato Growers of America can legitimately be "Country First." Let me break it down for you:
1) When you buy potatoes, you are "buying American." You really think we are dumb enough to import potatoes from China? Okay, maybe we are. But thankfully, we don't usually do that. In fact, we are the world's fifth largest exporter of potatoes.
2) Even so, supply is outweighing demand, which has caused potato prices to drop. Right now, that's good for you (on the other hand, price drops are usually compensated by federal subsidies, so consumers don't pay much less than they did before). And if we all start buying more potatoes, it'll be good for the farmers and good for the taxpayers!
3) Because they are so cheap, potatoes keep money in your pocket, which you can then stuff under your mattress. When your mattress becomes uncomfortable, you know it's time to hit the fire sales.
4) As Jane E. Brody so wisely enumerates, potatoes, as long as they're not scalloped or turned into fries, are good for your health. Lowered health care costs, my friends! Let's think long-term.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Destination: Florida?
For the next couple weeks I will be cruising around the Sunshine State and hope to post some of my economical epuricean findings therein -- that is, if I'm not too busy ordering pina coladas from sinewy cabana boys and watching this guy do his nightly show in Key West. I have a lot of restaurant recommendations from Roadfood and can't wait to sink my teeth into the following Floridian specialties:
-Stuff made with datil peppers, found all over the northeastern coast
-Ropa vieja, or really any Cuban specialty, in Little Havana, Miami
-Apalachicola Bay oysters on the half shell
-Hogfish, especially if it's hugged by a sesame seed roll
-Key lime pie, obvi
-Lots of BBQ (we tend to forget Florida's still part of the south)
-Some good mullet (and I mean the fish and the hairstyle, both abundant in these parts)
-Some good cooter (and I mean the turtle but not the ladyplaces)
Non-Floridians tend to associate Florida with geriatrics, Disney World, congestion, spring break, endangered manatees, endangered little Cuban boys on rafts, George W. Bush's first election, and violent crime. And by non-Floridians, maybe I just mean me. You would wonder why I want to go there. The main reason is that it's like 50 degrees warmer there than it is here in icy, miserable DC. Besides that, it's a mecca of honky tonk Americana, one of my favorite things. And, I'm quickly and happily learning, it's a mecca of good eating, my absolute favorite thing. I can't wait!
Also, if anyone has any good recommendations for cheap-but-not-scary motels, restaurants, and things to do, pass them along! For now, I'm planning on taking I-95 to Savannah, then switching between I-95 and A1A down Florida's east coast with a few days in the Miami area and Everglades National Park and quite a few days in the Keys (southernmost point of the U.S.!), coming back up along the Gulf Coast, posssssibly hitting up the panhandle, and coming back home through Atlanta, with a stop in Blacksburg, VA, to see the bro. Whew!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The best cookbooks are (practically) free
Despite its mostly well-deserved reputation as a seat of snobbery and high-end retail chains, Georgetown offers a few delightful surprises for the Economical Epicurean--that is, on the rare occasion she can escape her overworked thesaurus and wretched iBook long enough to take a leisurely lunch break. One such surprise is Baked & Wired, her latest frenemy, who once forced her to order not one but four cookies and eat them all in the same brief sitting. Thanks, Baked & Wired, for introducing four new cookie varieties that the Economical Epicurean just HAD to try immediately. Including a small coffee, the check came to about $10. Economical, indeed.
By the way, though I disdain the cupcake fad of late, I would like to add that Baked & Wired beats the frou-frou Georgetown Cupcake at its own game -- and never has that inexplicable line out the door.
ANYWAY, this post is supposed to be about cookbooks, not cupcakes, which brings me to my next great Georgetown discovery, Bartleby Books, on 29th Street near the Canal. What drew me in was a used copy of Pam Anderson's How to Cook Without a Book in the display window. Inside, the store is musty and cramped, full of first editions and other rare treats. Behind the cash register hangs a collection of old maps, including a small 1650 rendering of North America, with California an island hovering to the left of the continent. At $1,300, it is something the Economical Epicurean can only dream of hanging in her house. Alas, used cookbooks are a much more practical pursuit! In addition to the rather ironically titled but nonetheless very helpful How to Cook Without a Book (great for amateur cooks like me who are still shaky with certain techniques), I came across a mint condition copy of Deborah Madison's famous Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. With its hardcover, 700+ pages, and beautiful photography, this book retails at $40, but Bartleby was peddling it for $10. I snatched it up real fast.
The lone employee at Bartleby explained that some serious epicurean had just donated his or her entire cookbook collection. In the pile where I spotted Vegetarian Cooking, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables and Dorie Greenspan's Baking with Julia also beckoned to me, though on this rare occasion the Economical triumphed over the Epicurean.
Probably half the cookbooks in my own collection came from used bookstores or book sales. I'm not sure how people can bear to give these up, but thanks to their poor judgment I've acquired dirt-cheap copies of The Silver Palate, The Silver Palate Good Times, a New York Times cookbook from the Craig Claiborne years, Barbara Kafka's Food for Friends, Marian Burros's Cooking for Comfort, and Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, as well as a few other less notable titles.
One of my favorite finds has been Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans Volume II: Our Cultural Heritage, compiled in 1981 by staff and parents of the city's Ursuline Academy and dedicated to the nuns who ran it. I bought it for 50 cents at a Friends of the Library book sale in Rockville a few years ago. Spiral bound and slightly stained, it is classified not by course but, somewhat archaically, by cuisines special to each major ethnic group of New Orleans, such as the "Creole," "Acadians," "Germans," "Black People of New Orleans," and "Oriental and Polynesian." At the beginning of every section is a brief (but certainly lengthy for a cookbook) history of the particular group's role in New Orleans' culinary heritage. Though these histories occasionally take on a patronizing, essentialist tone -- "As the Black cook prepares it, it is unforgettable" -- the recipes themselves are short, simple, and all derived from local (i.e., authentic) sources. Below, my slightly modified and renamed version of Shrimp Creole, which is much easier than you would expect. If you want to spring for fresh shrimp, great -- but Trader Joe's frozen does the trick.
Recipe: Nun-on-the-Run Shrimp Creole
Adapted from Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans Volume II: Our Cultural Heritage.
Serves 4.
1 lb. shrimp, cleaned
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
4 T (half a stick) butter
1 green pepper, chopped
1 T flour
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 c water
1/4 t dried thyme
2 T fresh chopped parsley
1 t salt
1/2 t ground pepper
dash of tabasco
1/2 t lemon juice
1 bay leaf
In large saucepan, saute onion, garlic, and green pepper in butter for 8 minutes over medium heat. Blend in flour for one minute. Add shrimp, tomato sauce, water, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, Tabasco, lemon juice, and bay leaf. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve over rice.
By the way, though I disdain the cupcake fad of late, I would like to add that Baked & Wired beats the frou-frou Georgetown Cupcake at its own game -- and never has that inexplicable line out the door.
ANYWAY, this post is supposed to be about cookbooks, not cupcakes, which brings me to my next great Georgetown discovery, Bartleby Books, on 29th Street near the Canal. What drew me in was a used copy of Pam Anderson's How to Cook Without a Book in the display window. Inside, the store is musty and cramped, full of first editions and other rare treats. Behind the cash register hangs a collection of old maps, including a small 1650 rendering of North America, with California an island hovering to the left of the continent. At $1,300, it is something the Economical Epicurean can only dream of hanging in her house. Alas, used cookbooks are a much more practical pursuit! In addition to the rather ironically titled but nonetheless very helpful How to Cook Without a Book (great for amateur cooks like me who are still shaky with certain techniques), I came across a mint condition copy of Deborah Madison's famous Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. With its hardcover, 700+ pages, and beautiful photography, this book retails at $40, but Bartleby was peddling it for $10. I snatched it up real fast.
The lone employee at Bartleby explained that some serious epicurean had just donated his or her entire cookbook collection. In the pile where I spotted Vegetarian Cooking, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables and Dorie Greenspan's Baking with Julia also beckoned to me, though on this rare occasion the Economical triumphed over the Epicurean.
Probably half the cookbooks in my own collection came from used bookstores or book sales. I'm not sure how people can bear to give these up, but thanks to their poor judgment I've acquired dirt-cheap copies of The Silver Palate, The Silver Palate Good Times, a New York Times cookbook from the Craig Claiborne years, Barbara Kafka's Food for Friends, Marian Burros's Cooking for Comfort, and Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, as well as a few other less notable titles.
One of my favorite finds has been Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans Volume II: Our Cultural Heritage, compiled in 1981 by staff and parents of the city's Ursuline Academy and dedicated to the nuns who ran it. I bought it for 50 cents at a Friends of the Library book sale in Rockville a few years ago. Spiral bound and slightly stained, it is classified not by course but, somewhat archaically, by cuisines special to each major ethnic group of New Orleans, such as the "Creole," "Acadians," "Germans," "Black People of New Orleans," and "Oriental and Polynesian." At the beginning of every section is a brief (but certainly lengthy for a cookbook) history of the particular group's role in New Orleans' culinary heritage. Though these histories occasionally take on a patronizing, essentialist tone -- "As the Black cook prepares it, it is unforgettable" -- the recipes themselves are short, simple, and all derived from local (i.e., authentic) sources. Below, my slightly modified and renamed version of Shrimp Creole, which is much easier than you would expect. If you want to spring for fresh shrimp, great -- but Trader Joe's frozen does the trick.
Recipe: Nun-on-the-Run Shrimp Creole
Adapted from Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans Volume II: Our Cultural Heritage.
Serves 4.
1 lb. shrimp, cleaned
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
4 T (half a stick) butter
1 green pepper, chopped
1 T flour
1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
1 c water
1/4 t dried thyme
2 T fresh chopped parsley
1 t salt
1/2 t ground pepper
dash of tabasco
1/2 t lemon juice
1 bay leaf
In large saucepan, saute onion, garlic, and green pepper in butter for 8 minutes over medium heat. Blend in flour for one minute. Add shrimp, tomato sauce, water, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, Tabasco, lemon juice, and bay leaf. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve over rice.
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